Cornell's president and former University of Southern California Provost Elizabeth Garrett died at 52 on Sunday night due to complications from colon cancer.
Cornell University Provost Michael Kotlikoff will serve as the school's Acting President.
Cornell University announced that Garrett died at Weill Cornell Medicine after receiving cancer treatment. She died less than one year after assuming office as the first female president of the university.
"Being the first woman president of Cornell, just as I was the first woman provost at USC, puts me in the position of being a role model – not just for young women, but also for men," Garrett told Cornell Chronicle. "It is important for women and men to see strong and capable women in positions of leadership, so we understand that certain characteristics such as gender and race do not determine how well people do in those offices."
Garrett first arrived at USC in 2003 and quickly moved from professoriate to becoming senior vice president for academic affairs and the first female provost.
As USC's provost, Garrett oversaw the USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, the Keck School of Medicine of USC and 16 other professional schools. She was also instrumental in faculty recruitment, especially in the convergent sciences, the medical sciences, quantitative social sciences and the humanities.
Outside of academia, Garrett held a commendable record of public service. In 2005, Garrett was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve on the nine-member bipartisan Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform. She also clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and served as one of five commissioners on the California Fair Political Practices Commission, the state's independent political oversight agency, for four years.
Cornell University plans to honor Garrett's memory with a moment of silence, followed by chimes, at 4 p.m. today.
Reach staff reporter Tiaira Muhammad here.
Check back for more updates as the story develops.
Correction: an earlier version story misstated the day Garrett died. She died Sunday.
Annenberg Media