FOR RELEASE: June 11, 1999
Contact: Roger Segelken
Office: (607) 255-9736
E-Mail: [email protected]
Compuserve: Bill Steele, 72650,565
http://www.news.cornell.edu
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Officials from the Dominican Republic and Cornell University will celebrate the groundbreaking for a multipurpose facility -- a biodiversity laboratory for undergraduate students and a distance-learning center for scholars of the Caribbean nation -- in ceremonies set for June 18 in the Punta Cana region of the Dominican Republic.
High-level officials, including the directors of the departments of Interior and Public Works of the Dominican Republic, are expected to attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
The ceremony is scheduled for 4 p.m. Friday, June 18, at the Punta Cana Ecological Reserve, on the grounds of the Punta Cana Beach Resort.
Representing Cornell will be Daryl B. Lund, the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, where the university's distance-learning Global Classroom Project is based; William L. Crepet, chair of the L.H. Bailey Hortorium, which will manage the biodiversity laboratory; Eloy Rodriguez, the James A. Perkins Professor of Environmental Studies and leader of student biodiversity studies; Laurie A. Robinson, director of the Cornell Development Office, which negotiated support for the project from the Punta Cana Ecological Foundation; and H. Dean Sutphin, associate dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and director of the Global Classroom initiative.
Representing the Punta Cana Ecological Foundation will be Cornell alumnus Theodore (Ted) W. Kheel, the noted labor mediator who is an active supporter of distance learning and other programs of the university; Frank R. Rainieri, president and CEO of Grupo Punta Cana and president of the ecological foundation; and designer Oscar de la Renta, also a principal in Grupo Punta Cana and the Punta Cana Beach Resort, which has set aside 1,555 acres of its holdings on the east coast of the Dominican Republic as a nature preserve.
Approximately 10 acres of the Punta Cana Ecological Reserve will be used for the biodiversity laboratory -- distance learning facility. In addition to a field laboratory for examining plants, animals, marine and microbial organisms of the Dominican Republic, the 5,000-square-foot facility will include lodging for Cornell students and faculty and a distance-learning classroom equipped with state-of-the-art telecommunications equipment, including satellite uplink/downlink capabilities.
With the facility's completion, expected in January 2000, the Dominican Republic will join Sweden, Australia, the Netherlands, Costa Rica and Honduras as sites of distance-learning programs from Cornell University, said Global Classroom Director Sutphin. Distance-learning technologies allow interactive video and computer communication, via satellite and the Internet, among students and instructors at the university and at sites around the world, Sutphin explained.
The site in the Dominican Republic will allow Cornell's student-researchers to explore the rich biological diversity both ashore and in the waters of the Caribbean island, according to Rodriguez, who has directed similar student explorations in Africa and Central and South America. He noted that Hispaniola, which the Dominican Republic shares with Haiti, is home to thousands of plant species, including 600 kinds of ferns, some 226 species of birds, more than 285 kinds of butterflies and 134 kinds of reptiles, including four species of marine turtles.
According to Agriculture Dean Lund, the Dominican Republic initiative "combines the best of what Cornell wants to offer: a major opportunity for undergraduate students to be engaged in meaningful research and a base of operations for our distinguished faculty researchers to conduct studies in an area of amazing diversity of plant and animal species."
While the biodiversity laboratory is under construction, students and faculty members in Cornell's first summer biology program in the Dominican Republic will be guests of the Punta Cana Beach Resort. For more than 25 years, the Grupo Punta Cana and its 14,000-acre resort have been dedicated to sustainable tourism, setting standards for environmental sustainability while serving an international clientele, said Rainieri, who is president of the Caribbean Association on Sustainable Tourism.
The biodiversity laboratory will be built at an approximate cost of $500,000 to the Punta Cana Ecological Foundation, a not-for-profit organization endowed by private donations, and it will be leased to the university for $1 a year.
Additional start-up funds for the laboratory and distance-learning facility are being provided by Kheel, who had previously offered Punta Cana as the site of an international conference on sustainable food systems and the environment for the Global Classroom Project in
1998 and had underwritten a filmed documentary on sustainable tourism. Kheel subsequently heard Rodriguez speak on biodiversity and undergraduate research at Cornell and realized that Punta Cana would be an ideal site for the university's research and education programs in biodiversity as well as an opportunity to extend distance-learning capabilities.
Kheel is an attorney with the New York City firm Battle Fowler, which specializes in international law. He is the founder and chairman of Prevention and Early Resolution of Conflicts Inc. and a labor mediator for more than 50 years. At Cornell he has served since 1989 on the Advisory Council of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. That school has recognized the generous support from Ted and Ann Kheel by naming the Kheel Center for Labor Management Documentation and Archives for them. In the Dominican Republic, Kheel is chairman of the Board of Directors of Grupo Punta Cana. In the international arena, he is president of Earth Pledge Foundation, an organization dedicated to implementing key recommendations -- including sustainable development -- of the United Nations' 1992 Rio Conference on Environment and Development.
Related World Wide Web sites: The following sites provide additional information on this news release. Some might not be part of the Cornell University community, and Cornell has no control over their content or availability.
-- Punta Cana Ecological Foundation: http://www.puntacana.com/enecologyfoundation.htm
-- Grupo Punta Cana: http://www.puntacana.com/historia.htm
-- Bailey Hortorium at Cornell: http://www.bio.cornell.edu/hortorium/sofhortorium.html
-- College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell: http://www.cals.cornell.edu/
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