The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/departure/)
The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences is on the search for a new Ronald P. Lynch Dean to lead over 3,800 undergraduate students, 1,000 graduate students, 23 majors, 42 minors and 1,500 courses of study.
Huttenlocher, who will depart Aug. 1, served as Cornell Tech’s founding dean since 2012. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate will return to his alma mater to assume the position of inaugural dean of the new MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing.
For two years, all Cornell could talk about was the College of Business. So why is the administration so tight-lipped following the sudden departure of Soumitra Dutta, the college’s dean, on Tuesday? Dutta, who had served as the dean and public face of the controversial SC Johnson College of Business since its launch in 2016, resigned yesterday without explanation. A University spokesman declined to comment because Cornell “does not comment on private personnel matters,” and in an email to colleagues, Joe Lyons ’98, executive director of leadership gifts, communications and donor engagement, said that “no further comment will be coming.”
The college Dutta led is integral to the University’s plan for the 21st century, and Cornell’s lack of transparency is unacceptable. Endowed by the single largest donation to Cornell’s Ithaca campus, housed in the $25-million state-of-the-art Breazzano Family Center, built to catapult the Johnson name into the ranks of Wharton, Sloan, Kellogg and Haas — and yet, not a whisper about why its founding dean has made such an unceremonious exit.