The University of Richmond’s 2023 Commencement speaker says a liberal arts education is what is needed in an evolving tech world.

Greg Morrisett, a 1989 alum, is the Jack and Rilla Neafsey Dean and Vice Provost of Cornell Tech and a faculty member in the computer science department at Cornell University. He will address graduates during the main Commencement ceremony at 2 p.m. on May 7 at the Robins Center Arena. His talk will focus on graduating in the age of AI.

As dean, Morrisett is responsible for the academic quality and direction of Cornell Tech’s degree programs and research; develops approaches for working with companies, nonprofits, government agencies, and early-stage investors; and oversees the faculty recruitment and entrepreneurial initiatives of the New York-based campus.

He draws on his UR liberal arts educational background to steward Cornell Tech’s interdisciplinary work.

“There is a notion that the tech world is all about the engineering side of things, but these days, to make tech serve us instead of the other way around, we need a background in philosophy, ethics, sociology, psychology, and the list goes on,” Morrisett said. “That’s the full range of what a liberal arts education can give you, and that model is exactly what we need in a continuing and evolving world.”

Morrisett’s research focuses on the application of programming language technology for building secure, reliable, and high-performance software systems. Prior to joining Cornell Tech, Morrisett was dean of computing and information science at Cornell University from 2015 to 2019. Previously, he held the Allen B. Cutting Chair in Computer Science at Harvard University from 2004 to 2015, where he also served as associate dean for computer science and electrical engineering. Before Harvard, he spent eight years on the faculty of Cornell’s computer science department. 

After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Richmond, he received both his master’s and doctoral degrees from Carnegie Mellon University.

The University will also hold ceremonies for the Richmond School of Law and School of Professional & Continuing Studies on May 6.