As Cornell moves forward with a large-scale expansion of Duffield Hall to encompass the space currently occupied by Phillips Hall, the directorship of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering in Cornell Engineering has been named in honor of the late Ellis L. Phillips Sr., Class of 1895.
A portrait of Ellis L. Phillips Sr., Cornell Engineering Class of 1895, hangs in a student lounge in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
In addition to the new named directorship, Cornell Engineering will name the new facility’s main auditorium – the largest lecture and classroom space in the college – as the Ellis L. Phillips Sr. Auditorium.
Phillips was one of the college’s first graduates of electrical engineering, a pioneer in electric power generation and a highly influential businessman, philanthropist and Cornell leader. [Alyssa Apsel](https://www.ece.cornell.edu/faculty-directory/alyssa-b-apsel), the school’s current director and the IBM Professor of Engineering, will be the first to hold the named directorship.
“It is an honor to be named the Ellis L. Phillips Sr. Director of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering,” said Apsel, who has led the school since 2018. “As one of our earliest success stories and transformational supporters, Ellis Phillips played a pivotal role in our institution’s history. I am deeply grateful to his family and to the Ellis L. Phillips Foundation for this opportunity to extend his important legacy on our campus and in the world.”
Born and raised in central New York’s rural Cohocton Valley, Phillips won a county scholarship to attend Cornell, which was the first university to produce graduates in electrical engineering, the field in which he would major.
Phillips helped found and lead the Long Island Lighting Company, which provided electrical service to the rapidly growing population of Long Island. He was named president of the company in 1912, its second year of operation, and led it for 25 years.
In 1930, Phillips established the Ellis L. Phillips Foundation, which remains one of the oldest continuously operating family foundations in the United States. Through the foundation, he made a significant gift in 1953 to support the construction of a building for electrical engineering at Cornell. Phillips Hall opened two years later and has housed what is now the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering for the last 70 years, a period of remarkable growth for the school.
With the endorsement of the Phillips family and foundation, the current Duffield Hall expansion will provide state-of-the-art facilities to help meet contemporary faculty and students needs and to position the school for the future.
“The Phillips family is grateful that the life and legacy of Ellis L. Phillips Sr. will continue to be celebrated at his beloved Cornell. His namesake foundation continues his philanthropic work three generations later, and his inquisitive and generous spirit informs all that we do. We are honored to share that legacy and spirit with the Cornell family,” said Hardy Watts, president of the foundation and great-grandson of the founding donor.
“We are extremely grateful to the Phillips family and the Phillips Foundation for the decades of success they have enabled,” said Lynden Archer, the Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering. “We appreciate their ongoing commitment to our students and faculty, particularly at a time when technological innovations pioneered by Cornell engineers are making a difference in our world.”
_Reeve Hamilton is assistant dean of marketing and communications for Cornell Engineering._