Students and alumni gathered in Washington, D.C., over the weekend for a conference focused on leading, collaborating and networking among alumni. The event, called the Cornell Alumni Leadership Conference, attracted hundreds of alumni, along with current students, faculty and administrators.

Though he may not have planned for it, Victor LaValle ’94 is quickly following in the footsteps of past generations of famed Cornell authors, knocking at the doorstep of literary greats like E.B. White, Kurt Vonnegut, Toni Morrison and Thomas Pynchon.

In light of Senator Ted Kennedy’s passing last week — the loss of the patriarch of America’s “royal” family — I’ve been thinking about legacy and its role in present day America, as well as within the country’s university system.

Though Ted Kennedy inarguably had a profound impact on American politics during his 46-year reign in the Senate, the degree to which his success was “deserved” so-to-say is debatable. While he may have been the beacon of modern American liberalism, championing equality and a better life for the underprivileged, he was hardly a man of pristine moral stature.

For an art form that often lives in the shadow of its live-action big brother, animation finally received its share of the spotlight on Saturday at Cornell Cinema’s special event, Homegrown Animation. Headlined by Tara Cooper ’08’s ten-minute short Until the Lake Froze Solid, the program included nineteen animated shorts made by Cornell students over the past six years, as well as a Q&A session with Tara about her MFA thesis film. Although there was no red carpet or hordes of paparazzi waiting outside Homegrown Animation was both a showcase of the cream of the crop of Cornell animation projects and some well-deserved face time for the incredibly talented artists whose work rarely earns the attention that it’s due.

The changing face of the University will continue with the realigning of the Alumni Affairs and Development Office, which is implementing a strategic plan to tighten up resources and increase efficiency. Although the nation’s dismal economic climate was an impetus for the reorganization, the plan has been in the making for a year and a half.

“We’ve been doing strategic planning for about 18 months,” said Charles Phlegar, vice president of AAD. “Over the summer, we took reports from six committees that had looked at our organization. The financial catastrophe … heightened the need to perform more quickly.”

Two Cornell alumni were chosen Sunday to fill senior posts in the Treasury Department, which faces the daunting task of saving the nation’s crumbling economy. President Barack Obama nominated Alan Krueger ’83 as the assistant secretary for economic policy and David Cohen ’85 as the assistant secretary for terrorist financing.

Apart from Krueger and Cohen, Obama also chose Kim Wallace to be the assistant secretary for legislative affairs. The three positions will only be made official after a confirmation from the Senate.

“With the leadership of these accomplished individuals and our whole economic team, I am absolutely confident that we will turn around this economy and seize this opportunity to secure a more prosperous future,” Obama said in a White House press release.

The 105-year-old Creative Writing program at Cornell played a key role in shaping 20th century American literature, several acclaimed literary scholars said at a panel discussion yesterday.

At a talk sponsored by the Creative Writing program as a part of the Spring Centennial Plus Five Reading Series, English department panelists Prof. Roger Gilbert, Prof. Mary P. Brady and Prof. Molly Hite, discussed Cornell writers Prof. emeritus A.R. Ammons, Thomas Pynchon ’59, Manuel Munoz ’98 and Loida Maritza Perez ’87.

Correction appended.

No matter how confident graduates might be about their future job prospects, in the turbulent atmosphere of today’s economy the outlook is grim. Now more than ever, graduates are relying heavily on their abilities to network with alumni who are often willing to advocate for, and even employ, former Cornell students.

Julia Levy ’05 is the chair of the Young Alumni Committee in New York — a program to better accommodate recent Cornell grads in a developing job market. Originally from Atlanta, Levy moved to New York City after graduating from Cornell and began searching for resources through which she could contact alumni. After attending an organizational meeting for the YAC, she decided to join.

Three well-respected alumni authors drove students to delay the start of their weekend on Friday afternoon and gather for a panel discussion in Kauffman Auditorium.

Junot Díaz MFA ’95, Julie Schumacher MFA ’86 and Melissa Bank MFA ’88, three published writers and three graduates of Cornell’s MFA program, offered curious listeners and hopeful writers a look into the world of 21st century fiction writing. At the afternoon panel, they fielded questions from the audience, lending advice to eager minds. Later that evening, they held a reading in Rockefeller Hall, sharing their works before a standing-room-only audience.

To the Editor:

Re: “Univ. Pulls Peanut Products Off Shelves,” News, Feb. 18

I think it behooves us to recognize that Salmonellosis and Salmonella (as written about in the article “Univ. Pulls Peanut Products Off Shelves”) is named after Daniel Elmer Salmon, the first Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, 1876, in the United States. The degree was awarded from Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, the first in the country.

Stanley Scharf