Alumni MBA Alum Wins Runoff Election to Become Mayor of Miami The first woman in the post, Eileen Higgins, MBA ’89, is also the first Democrat to lead the city in nearly three decades
Students Math Major Wins Silver in an Unlikely Sport: Chessboxing Will MacLeod ’26 medaled for Team USA at the 2025 world championships—a test of physical prowess and mental acumen
Alumni Trees of Life: Book by PhD Alum Takes a Deep Dive into Evergreens In the tradition of works like Salt, Cod, and Mauve, the Cornell prof charts how something seemingly mundane altered human history
Campus & Beyond As Meinig Fieldhouse Rises, Iconic Red-tailed Hawks Stay Safe Throughout construction of the facility—which opens in spring 2026—staff have worked to protect the birds, who nest nearby
Books Your December 2025 Reads This month’s featured titles include fiction from Thomas Pynchon ’59 and a look at two “unsung giants” of landscape architecture
Alumni At Age 90, a Singer, Collector, and Scholar of Folk Music Goes Digital After a long career onstage and off, Ellen Stekert ’57 is focused on preservation—releasing songs from her vast archive on Bandcamp
Alumni A Big Red Cheer for the 2025 Athletics Hall of Fame Class The honorees—including Olympic gold medalists and a beloved hockey coach—were inducted in a ceremony in late November
Campus & Beyond Bird-of-Paradise Feathers Inspire Darkest Fabric Ever Made With help from the Lab of Ornithology, a doctoral alum who’s a Human Ecology prof developed a novel shade of ‘ultrablack’
Alumni This Alum’s Business Is About Overcoming Obstacles—Literally Joe De Sena ’90 founded Spartan, whose signature endurance races have drawn millions of competitors worldwide
Alumni MBA Alums’ Wine Brand Lets You Raise a (Zero-Proof) Glass Launched by a married couple, Napa Valley-based Sovi aims to offer all the taste of the grape—with none of the alcohol