Advisory Committee on the Status of Women

• ACSW & The Cook Awards
• Seeking Nominations
• Previous Award Winners
• Resources for Women

Welcome

Each spring, the Vice Provost for Diversity & Faculty Development sponsors the Constance E. Cook and Alice H. Cook Awards ceremony. The awards honor individuals for their commitment to women's issues and for improving the climate for women at Cornell. The awards are named in honor of Constance E. Cook, Cornell's first woman vice president, and the late Professor Emerita Alice H. Cook. Nominations are accepted through March and reviewed by the Cook Awards Committee. Women and men students, faculty, and staff may receive awards.

History of ACSW and the Cook Awards

In 1972, Title IX of the Education Amendments decreed that educational institutions that receive federal financial assistance must eliminate gender biases in education. That same year, the Women Studies Program was initiated at Cornell University. Three of its faculty members, Alice Cook, Jennie Farley, and Gail McCall founded the Provost's Ad Hoc Committee on the Status of Women. This ad hoc group was eventually made permanent at Cornell University and renamed the Advisory Committee on the Status of Women (ACSW).

Alice Hanson Cook

• Who was Alice Cook?
• The Alice Cook House
• A Lifetime of Labor

Constance E. Cook

• 6 Honored for Commitment to the Practice of Law
  by the Tompkins County Bar Association

To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the group's founding, ACSW hosted the first annual Alice H. Cook and Constance E. Cook Awards in the Spring of 1993. Now the Cook Awards Committee continues the tradition, led by lifetime ACSW member Judy Hart and other former ACSW members.