P is for PhD —and that’s pronounced “fould”,
So the meter and rhyme of this poem is good.
360 grads who wear our PhD hood
Are now in CS for their livelihood.
There’s a cabbie or two (I think) in the brood,
But most lead CS, as we expected they would.

We started in 1965 with only a PhD program in order to educate PhDs to populate this new field. We have produced about 360 of them, and many are now leaders in academia and industry. There are deans, a vice provost, winners of research honors, and just plain good people who are teaching, doing research, or leading in industry. Plus a few who are making their way in other fields. We are proud of them all. I wish I could list them here, but you’ll have to go to the CS Department Web page to see them. Ninety of them —fully 25%— came to our 40th anniversary symposium, and that says something about our relationship with them.

It has been said that a PhD thesis is a tome ghostwritten by an advisor under adverse circumstances. There is a bit of truth in everything, but at Cornell, this truth is small. We vie with other topnotch CS departments for the best grad students, and we get more than our share. We give them a great education, and they end up providing excitement and out-of-the-box thinking. They make excellent, inexpensive researchers, and we need them!