A decade is a strange measure of time. Long enough to watch a garden you planted grow into an oasis. Short enough that you can still remember the feeling of dirt under your fingernails on that first planting day.
In late October, during peak leaf-peeping season, I returned to Ithaca, New York, home of my alma mater, to celebrate the accomplishments of the Einhorn Center for Community Engagement at Cornell University. The event highlighted ten years of progress in community-engaged learning at the university, which got its start from a bold vision: ensuring 100% of undergraduates would have a high-quality community-engaged learning experience as part of their education.
As I sat in that room listening to reflections on the journey from our Trustee David Einhorn, President Michael Kotlikoff, Vice Provost Katherine McComas, and Vice President Ryan Lombardi, I found myself in a true state of awe: I was both fully present in the moment and flooded with feelings of expansiveness and pride. I suppose I felt the weight and wonder of what a decade of commitment and partnership can accomplish.
With rapt attention, I watched videos of students, faculty, and community partners bringing their community-engaged learning experiences to life across every facet of the university. The dedication of every person behind this initiative captured something essential about the work we do: Real change requires patience, perseverance, collaboration, and an unwavering belief that the long view is worth it.
In 2014, we helped seed Engaged Cornell with what we at Einhorn Collaborative call a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal), coined by author Jim Collins to describe bold ideas that often fall in the gray area where reason and prudence might say, “This is unreasonable,” but the drive for progress makes us believe that we can do it nonetheless.
Maybe predictably, at the time, taking on a goal with 100% as its aim felt equally thrilling and daunting. How do you transform an entire university culture? How do you reach every single student – not just those on campus today, but those who will arrive at Cornell generations from now? The answer, it turns out, is one student at a time, one course at a time, one program at a time, one college at a time.
There were years that required keeping everyone’s noses to the grindstone, and when progress felt both slow and incremental. And there were years when an insight from some of our early “trial and error” led to major breakthroughs that unlocked significant advancements.
The infrastructure needed for a campus-wide community-engaged learning effort that could reach every corner of a university as big as Cornell had to be built from the ground up — or rather, woven together from dozens of threads already present across campus into a cohesive, beautiful tapestry with selvages that still have much more room left to grow.
The early years were filled with ideation, testing, seeding, and enrollment. It was in the later years that we could begin to see it all add up.
- When the Cornell registrar added community-engaged learning as a course designation, now recognizing over 200 classes across the studies.
- When seven undergraduate colleges and schools joined the Engaged College Initiative to make community-engaged learning a central part of their curricular, co-curricular, and research programs.
- When the Law School, Business School, and Cornell Tech elevated exemplary practice for professional training through community-engaged clinics.
- When academic-facing and co-curricular efforts were unified within a newly established Einhorn Center for Community Engagement within the new Engaged Cornell Hub.
- When Cornell’s Einhorn Center for Community Engagement partnered with Cornell’s Center for Dialogue and Pluralism, with support from Interfaith America, to help students build connections across differences and improve campus climate.
These milestones weren’t finish lines; they were markers along a much longer path toward a sustainable system forever changed.
Taking the long view means accepting that some years will be about building foundations you can’t yet see. It means trusting that the relationships you’re nurturing today — with partners, with communities, with each other — are investments that will grow over time.
Now, as Cornell approaches that BHAG of 100% undergraduate student participation, I’m struck by what made this possible. It wasn’t a single brilliant strategy or a magic intervention. It was the daily, unglamorous work of staying committed to each other and to achieving a shared vision, even when headwinds threatened to blow us off course.
This professional milestone runs parallel to a personal one. My life has also changed dramatically in the past ten years. My son, who was just learning to walk when we first launched Engaged Cornell, is about to turn 13 and become a bar mitzvah. He’s reached that age where his bedtime routine has shifted from a shared ritual to a solo activity, and I’m reminded again that life moves in seasons. The sweet ache of watching tiny rituals change is its own teacher: pause, notice, and marvel at the beauty that’s born from your hard work and dedication.
What I’ve learned about sustaining a decade-long partnership applies far beyond Cornell. It applies to every ambitious goal worth pursuing.
Taking the long view means accepting that some years will be about building foundations you can’t yet see. It means trusting that the relationships you’re nurturing today — with partners, with communities, with each other — are investments that will grow over time. It means recognizing that transformation isn’t linear; it’s messy and iterative, and it requires the kind of patience our culture doesn’t often celebrate.
As I reflect on this milestone, I find myself looking forward to the next ten years with the same question that has guided our work from the beginning: How can we help people see our shared humanity?
Right now at Einhorn Collaborative, we are taking everything we have learned from the past decade at Cornell and applying it to the broader system of higher education through our grantmaking collaboratives like the Pluralism Accelerator Fund that primarily focused on campus life, and new partnerships like the one we’ve launched at the Institute for Citizens & Scholars with their College Presidents for Civic Preparedness initiative.
I wonder what it will feel like to look back at the next ten years?
I will no doubt have more well-earned wrinkles and gray hairs, and my two nested children will have taken, or be about to take, flight. For our efforts at Einhorn Collaborative, I imagine we’ll see a generation of college graduates who have practiced bridging divides as a core facet of their education, who have learned to sit with discomfort, and who understand that our differences can be a source of strength rather than division. I imagine campuses where belonging and pluralism aren’t buzzwords but a lived reality, where students are equipped with tools and mindsets to build connections for themselves and others in an increasingly fragmented world.
But I also know that getting there will require the same qualities that got us through the first ten years at Cornell: patience, perseverance, collaboration, and an unshakeable commitment to the long view.
If you are in the thick of similarly long, hard, generational work in this moment — whether you’re trying to improve systems, transform organizations, or simply make your corner of the world a little bit more connected, cohesive, and calm — I want to encourage you to stay the course.
The years when you’re building foundations may not feel glamorous. The seasons when progress feels slow may test your resolve. You may be asking yourself the sort of questions filled with doubt that I know oh so well — the ones that wake you before the sun rises or keep you from falling fast asleep. But if the work is based on something true, like our yearning for human connection and our commitment to our shared humanity, then it’s worth the patience it demands.
The next ten years are calling. I’m grateful to walk that path with all of you.
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A postscript: It’s hard to close this piece without mentioning the heartbreaking news coming out of Brown University and Bondi Beach. I was sitting next to my daughter when more information about the two shootings, taking place just hours apart, was released. She asked why I was crying, and I was afraid to tell her the truth about the senseless violence against a group of college students in a classroom where they should have been the safest. I was scared to tell her about the horrific attack during a Hanukkah celebration, halfway across the world. Instead, I wiped away my tears and told her about the incredibly brave actions of a man named Ahmed who courageously risked his life to protect the lives of strangers. This Hanukkah, our family is lighting candles in memory of every beautiful life lost to these tragedies. I’m reminded to hold on to the miracle of light in times of darkness and our shared commitment to keeping the flame burning bright.
