Updates for our alumni community

Cornell alumni events on campus will not take place this year-- including Homecoming and TCAM. Details about special virtual programming will soon be available.

Many alumni are looking forward to celebrating Reunion weekend on June 5-6. Some had planned to travel to Ithaca, while others planned to join remotely to partake in programming offered by Alumni Affairs, colleges, schools and units. During this unprecedented time, we believe it is important to move forward with a “virtual Reunion” as a means of connecting Cornellians from around the world and bolstering our Big Red spirits. Please see the message from Michelle J. Vaeth, ’98. We hope that as many alumni as possible will save the date and plan to attend one – or all – online sessions! Read our Reunion FAQ.

While we sincerely hope to hold our traditional Commencement Weekend, it is unknown at this time whether that will be possible. Members of the commencement office and colleagues from across the University will review all options and make a recommendation later this month.

Thursday, March 12, was our annual Giving Day -- ordinarily a day for team spirit and friendly rivalry amongst Cornellians while raising funds for great Cornell causes. Given the unprecedented changes happening on campus this past week, and the impact on our students and their families, we thought long and hard about whether we should continue with Giving Day. In the end, it felt right to continue - to unite Cornellians around the globe in a common effort. We also felt the weight of how our students and Cornell causes – including pivotal research into human and animal health – need support now more than ever. We are deeply humbled how the Cornell community responded and rallied behind this year’s Giving Day – including students and parents who took steps to self-organize support on that day. Over 10,000 of you from 50+ countries and all 50 U.S. states participated in Giving Day 2020. We are so grateful. For more information on Giving Day, please visit https://givingday.cornell.edu.

For now, all large on- and off-campus events have been cancelled through June, and small events are expected to follow social distancing practices and all local regulations. On May 29, Governor Cuomo announced that the Southern Tier has met the necessary criteria to move to Phase 2 of reopening. While Phase 2 does allow businesses in certain sectors, including higher education administration, to resume in-person activity, and enable us to expand our phased restart of research and related activities to ultimately cover all research, it excludes full campus reopening at this time. As such, all faculty and staff who are currently working remotely should continue to do so. Only those employees who have been previously scheduled to come to campus for work should follow through with their plans. Cornell’s reactivation planning committees continue their work on recommendations for campus reactivation; the results of their work will be announced in late June.

For more on the importance of social distancing practices during a public health crisis, please see President Martha Pollack’s message to the Cornell community on March 11.

For other coronavirus-related questions, please visit the FAQ section of the University’s coronavirus resource website.

Many AAD photos and videos were produced before the COVID-19 pandemic impacted federal, state, local and university health regulations and contain scenes that do not reflect our current commitment to new and emerging health guidelines which include wearing masks and face coverings, physical distancing and observing travel restrictions. AAD strongly supports and adheres to these guidelines.

Visit our contact page for the best way to be in touch for alumni-specific questions.