Cornell University
Encyclopedia
Cornell University is an Ivy League
university
located in Ithaca
, New York
, United States. It is a private
land-grant university
, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell
and Andrew Dickson White
, the university was intended to teach and make contributions in all fields of knowledge—from the classics
to the science
s, and from the theoretical to the applied. These ideals, unconventional for the time, are captured in Cornell's motto, a popular 1865 Ezra Cornell quotation: "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study." Since its founding, Cornell has also been a co-educational, non-sectarian
institution where admission is offered irrespective of religion or race.
The university is broadly organized into seven undergraduate
colleges and seven graduate
divisions at its main Ithaca campus, with each college and division defining its own admission standards and academic programs in near autonomy. The university also administers two satellite medical campuses, one in New York City
and one in Education City
, Qatar
. Cornell is one of two private land grant universities
,The other is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
. and its seven undergraduate colleges include three private, state-supported statutory or contract colleges
. As a land grant college, it also operates a cooperative extension outreach program in every county of New York.
Cornell counts more than 255,000 living alumni
, 31 Marshall Scholars
, 28 Rhodes Scholars
and 41 Nobel laureates as affiliated with the university. The student body consists of nearly 14,000 undergraduate and 7,000 graduate students from all 50 states and 122 countries.
bill that named the university as the state's land grant
institution. Senator Ezra Cornell
offered his farm in Ithaca, New York
as a site and $500,000 of his personal fortune as an initial endowment
. Fellow senator and experienced educator Andrew Dickson White
agreed to be the first president. During the next three years, White oversaw the construction of the initial two buildings and traveled around the globe to attract students and faculty
. The university was inaugurated on October 7, 1868, and 412 men were enrolled the next day.The school opened on October 4, 1898 in the Loomis Laboratory facilities. Since that time, Cornell's medical school has operated in Manhattan.
Cornell continued to be a technological innovator applying its research to its own campus as well as to outreach efforts. For example, it was one of the first university campuses to use electricity to light the grounds from a water-powered dynamo
in 1883. Since 1894, Cornell has included state-funded statutory colleges and has also administered research and extension activities that have been jointly funded by state and federal matching funds. Cornell has had an active alumni since its earliest classes and was one of the first universities to included alumni-elected representatives on its Board of Trustees.The University's charter was amended on April 24, 1867 to specify alumni elected trustees, however that provision did not become operative until there were at least 100 alumni in 1872. Also in 1865, the election of the Harvard University Board of Overseers was shifted to alumni voting.
Cornell expanded significantly, particularly since World War II
, with its student population in Ithaca growing to its current count of about 20,000 students. The faculty also expanded, and by the century's end, the university had more than 3,400 faculty members.Weill Cornell Medical College-NYC medical division units have additional external affiliations with 1,326 full-time and part-time faculty members elsewhere. The school also increased its breadth of course offerings. Today the university has wide-ranging programs and offers more than 4,000 courses.
Cornell received national attention in April 1969 when African American students occupied Willard Straight Hall
in protest over alleged racism. The crisis resulted in the resignation of President James A. Perkins
and the restructuring of university governance.
Since 2000, Cornell has been expanding its international programs. In 2004, the university opened the Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar
, the first American medical school
outside of the United States. It continues to forge partnerships with major institutions in India, Singapore
, and the People's Republic of China. The university, with its high international profile, claims to be "the first transnational
university". On March 9, 2004, Cornell and Stanford laid the cornerstone for a new Bridging the Rift Center located on the Israel–Jordan border.
Cornell's main campus is on East Hill in Ithaca, New York
, overlooking the town and Cayuga Lake
. When the university was founded in 1865, the campus consisted of 209.5 acres (0.85 km²) of Ezra Cornell's roughly 300 acre (1.2 km²) farm. Since then, it has swelled to about 745 acres (3.0 km²), encompassing both the hill and much of the surrounding areas. Some 260 university buildings are divided primarily between Central
and North Campuses
on the plateau
of the Hill, West Campus
on its slope, and Collegetown immediately south of Central Campus. Central Campus has laboratories, administrative buildings, and almost all of the campus' academic buildings, athletic facilities, auditoriums, and museums. The only remaining residential facility on Central Campus is the Law School's
dormitory, Hughes Hall. North Campus contains freshman
and graduate student housing, themed program houses, and 29 fraternity and sorority houses
. West Campus has upperclass residential colleges and an additional 25 fraternity and sorority houses. Collegetown contains two upperclass residence halls and the Schwartz Performing Arts
Center amid a neighborhood of apartments, eateries, and businesses.
The main campus is marked by an irregular layout and eclectic architectural style
s, including ornate Collegiate Gothic, Victorian
, Neoclassical
buildings, and less decorative international
and modernist
structures. The more ornate buildings generally predate World War II
. Because the student population doubled from 7,000 in 1950 to 15,000 by 1970, grandiosity was neglected in favor of less expensive and more rapidly constructed styles. While some buildings are neatly arranged into quadrangles
, others are packed densely and haphazardly. These eccentricities arose from the university's numerous, ever-changing master plans for the campus. For example, in one of the earliest plans, Frederick Law Olmsted
, the designer of Central Park
, outlined a "grand terrace" overlooking Cayuga Lake
. Because the terrace plan was dropped, McGraw Hall appears to face the wrong direction, facing Libe Slope rather than the Arts Quad.
The university is home to several buildings on the National Register of Historic Places
, including the Andrew Dickson White House
, Bailey Hall, Caldwell Hall, Comstock Hall, Morrill Hall
, and Deke House. At least three other historic buildings—the original Roberts Hall
, East Robert Hall
and Stone Hall
—have also been listed on the NRHP, despite their demolitions in the 1980s.
The Ithaca Campus is among the rolling valleys of the Finger Lakes
region and, atop East Hill, provides a view of the surrounding area, including 38 miles (61.4 km) long Lake Cayuga. Two gorges
, Fall Creek Gorge and Cascadilla Gorge, bound Central Campus and become popular swimming holes during the warmer months (although the university discourages their use). Adjacent to the main campus, Cornell owns the 2,800 acre (11.6 km²) Cornell Plantations
, a botanical garden
containing flowers, trees, and ponds along manicured trails.
Cornell has adopted a comprehensive sustainability action plan, and has a number of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design
(LEED) certified buildings on the Ithaca campus. In 2009, a new gas-fired combined heat and power facility replaced a coal-fired steam plant, resulting in a reduction in carbon emissions to 7% below 1990 levels, and to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 75,000 tons per year. The facility meets 15% of campus electrical needs, and a university-run, on-campus hydroelectric plant in the Fall Creek Gorge provides an additional 2%. An award-winning lake source cooling
project uses Lake Cayuga to air condition campus buildings, with an 80% energy saving over conventional systems. In 2007, Cornell established a Center for a Sustainable Future. Cornell has been rated "A-" by the 2011 College Sustainability Report Card for its environmental and sustainability initiatives.
Cornell's medical campus in New York, also called Weill Cornell, is on the Upper East Side
of Manhattan
, New York City
. It is home to two Cornell divisions, Weill Cornell Medical College and Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, and has been affiliated with the NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital
since 1927. Although their faculty and academic divisions are separate, the Medical Center shares its administrative and teaching hospital functions with the Columbia University Medical Center
. These teaching hospitals also include the Payne Whitney Clinic in Manhattan and the Westchester Division in White Plains, New York
. Weill Cornell Medical College is also affiliated with the neighboring Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center, Rockefeller University
, and the Hospital for Special Surgery
. Many faculty members have joint appointments at these institutions, and Weill Cornell, Rockefeller, and Memorial Sloan–Kettering offer the Tri-Institutional MD–PhD Program to selected entering Cornell medical students. From 1942 to 1979, the campus also housed a Cornell school of nursing.
In addition to the medical center, New York City hosts local offices for some of Cornell's service programs. The Cornell Urban Scholars Program encourages students to pursue public service careers with organizations working with New York City's poorest children, families, and communities. The NYS College of Human Ecology
and the NYS College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
provide means for students to reach out to local communities by gardening and building with the Cornell Cooperative Extension. Students with the NYS School of Industrial and Labor Relations'
Extension & Outreach Program make workplace expertise available to organizations, union members, policy makers, and working adults. The College of Engineering's
Operations Research Manhattan, in the city's financial district
, brings together business optimization research and decision support services addressed to both financial applications and public health logistics planning. The College of Architecture, Art, and Planning has a facility on West 17th Street, near Union Square
, to provide studio and seminar space for students and faculty.
Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar
is in Education City, near Doha
. Opened in September 2004, it was the first American medical school outside the United States. The college is part of Cornell's program to increase its international influence. The College is a joint initiative with the Qatar government, which seeks to improve the country's academic programs and medical care. Along with its full four-year MD program, which mirrors the curriculum taught at Weill Medical College in New York City, the college offers a two-year undergraduate pre-medical
program with a separate admissions process. This undergraduate program opened in September 2002 and was the first coeducation
al institute of higher education
in Qatar.
The college is partially funded by the Qatar government through the Qatar Foundation
, which contributed $750 million for its construction. The medical center is housed in a large two-story structure designed by Arata Isozaki
. In 2004, the Qatar Foundation announced the construction of a 350-bed Specialty Teaching Hospital near the medical college in Education City. The hospital is currently under construction and is slated to be completed in the next few years.
in Puerto Rico
, site of the world's largest single-dish radio telescope
, was operated by Cornell under a contract with the National Science Foundation
from its construction until 2011. The Shoals Marine Laboratory
, operated in conjunction with the University of New Hampshire
, is a seasonal marine field station dedicated to undergraduate education and research on 95 acre (0.4 km²) Appledore Island
off the Maine
–New Hampshire
coast.
Many Cornell facilities focus on conservationism and ecology
. The New York State Agricultural Experiment Station
, operated by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
, is in Geneva, New York
, 50 miles (80 km) northwest of the main campus. The facility comprises 20 major buildings on 130 acres (0.5 km²) of land as well as more than 700 acres (2.8 km²) of test plots and other lands devoted to horticultural research. It also operates three substations: Vineyard Research Laboratory in Fredonia
, Hudson Valley Laboratory in Highland
, and the Long Island Horticultural Research Laboratory in Riverhead
.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca's Sapsucker Woods performs research on biological diversity
, primarily in birds. On April 18, 2005, the lab announced that it had rediscovered the Ivory-billed Woodpecker
, long thought to be extinct. The Animal Science Teaching and Research Center in Harford, New York
, and the Duck Research Laboratory in Eastport, New York
, are resources for information on animal disease control and husbandry. The Arnot Teaching and Research Forest, a 4,075 acre (16.5 km²) forest 20 miles (32.2 km) south of the Ithaca campus, is the primary field location for faculty and student training and research related to professional forestry
. The mission of the Cornell Biological Field Station in Bridgeport, New York
, is "to provide a center for long-term ecological research and support the University's educational programs, with special emphasis on freshwater
lacustrine
systems". The Department of Horticulture operates the Homer C. Thompson Vegetable Research Farm and Freeville Organic Research Farm in Freeville, New York
. In addition, the university operates biodiversity laboratories in Punta Cana
, Dominican Republic
, and in the Amazon Rainforest
in Peru
named the Cornell University Esbaran Amazon Field Laboratory.
The university also maintains offices for study abroad
and scholarship programs. The Cornell in Washington is a program that allows students to study for a semester in Washington, D.C.
, holding research and internship positions while earning credit
toward a degree. Cornell in Rome
, operated by the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning
, allows students to use the city as a resource for learning architecture
, urban studies, and art
. The College of Human Ecology
offers the Urban Semester Program, an opportunity to take courses and complete an internship in New York City for a semester. As well, the Capital Semester program allows students to intern in the New York state legislature. As New York State's land grant
college, Cornell operates a cooperative extension service
with 56 offices spread out across the state, each staffed with extension educators who offer programs in five subjects: Agriculture & Food Systems; Children, Youth, & Families; Community & Economic Vitality; Environment & Natural Resources; and Nutrition & Health. Cornell also operates New York's Animal Health Diagnostic Center.
Cornell is a non-profit organization governed by a 64-member board of trustees consisting of both privately and publicly appointed trustees. Three trustees are appointed by the Governor of New York
; one seat is reserved for the eldest lineal descendant of Ezra Cornell; two members from each of the fields of agriculture, business and labor in New York state; eight trustees to be elected from among and by the alumni of the university; two trustees to be elected from among and by the faculty of the university at Ithaca and Geneva; two trustees to be elected from among and by the membership of the university's student body at Ithaca (one undergraduate and one graduate student); and one trustee to be elected from among and by the nonacademic staff and employees of the university at Ithaca and Geneva, 37 trustees at large and finally, the Governor, Temporary President of the Senate
, Speaker of the Assembly
, and president of the university serve in an ex officio voting capacity. Peter C. Meinig
has served as the chairman of the board since 2002. The Board elects a President to serve as the chief executive and educational officer. The twelfth and current president, David J. Skorton
has served since July 2006 and succeeded Jeffrey S. Lehman
. The Board of Trustees hold four regular meetings each year, and portions of those meetings are subject to the New York State Open Meetings Law.
Cornell consists of nine privately endowed colleges as well as four publicly supported "statutory college
s": the New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, College of Human Ecology, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and College of Veterinary Medicine. These statutory colleges received $131.9 million in SUNY
appropriations in 2010-2011 to support their teaching, research, and service missions, which makes them accountable to SUNY trustees and other state agencies. The budget also includes $3.9 million of state funds for Cornell Cooperative Extension Residents of New York enrolled in these colleges also qualify for discounted tuition. However, Attorney General
Eliot Spitzer
issued a 2005 opinion asserting that, with respect to their academic activities, statutory colleges should be understood to be private, non-state parties.:1
Cornell is decentralized, with its colleges and schools exercising wide autonomy. Each defines its own academic programs, operates its own admissions
and advising programs, and confers its own degrees
. The only university-wide requirements for a baccalaureate
degree are to pass a swimming test, take two physical education
courses, and satisfy a writing requirement. A handful of inter-school academic departments offer courses in more than one college. All academic departments are affiliated with at least one college; the last department without such an affiliation, the Cornell Africana Studies and Research Center
, merged with the Arts College in July 2011.
Seven schools provide undergraduate programs and an additional seven provide graduate and professional programs. Students pursuing graduate degrees in departments of these schools are enrolled in the Graduate School
. The School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions offers programs for college and high school students, professionals, and other adults. Of the 13,515 undergraduate students, 4,251 (31.5%) are affiliated with the largest college by enrollment, Arts and Sciences
, followed by 3,153 (23.3%) in Agriculture and Life Sciences
and 2,680 (19.8%) in Engineering
. By student enrollment, the smallest of the seven undergraduate colleges is Architecture, Art, and Planning
, with 515 (3.8%) students.
Several other universities have used Cornell as their model, including Stanford University
, the University of Sydney
in Australia and the University of Birmingham
in the United Kingdom; the latter on the recommendation of one of its financiers, Andrew Carnegie
, who was a Cornell Trustee.
The university also operates eCornell
, which offers both certificate programs and professional development courses online. In addition to being New York's land-grant college, Cornell is also is a partner in New York's sea-grant program, is the hub of the Northeast's sun-grant program, and is a part of New York's space-grant consortium.
In 2009, Cornell ranked third among universities in the U.S. in fund-raising, collecting $
446.75 million in private support. In addition to the central University development staff located in Ithaca and New York City, each college and program has its own staffed fundraising program. In 2006, Cornell launched a $4 billion fundraising campaign, which reached $3 billion in November 2010.
by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education since 1921. Cornell operates on a 4–1–4 academic calendar with the fall term beginning in late August and ending in early December, a three week winter session in January, and the spring term beginning in late January and ending in early May.
The university awarded the world’s first degree in journalism
, the nation’s first university degree in veterinary medicine
, and the first doctorates in electrical engineering
and industrial engineering
. It also established the first four-year schools of hotel administration and industrial and labor relations. Cornell was the first U.S. university to offer a major in American studies, and it was the first university to teach modern Far Eastern languages.
Verbal score was 700, while the average SAT Math was a 720. Also, 92% of admitted students for the Class of 2011 were in the top 10% of their graduating high school class. Cornell enrolls students from all 50 U.S. states and more than 120 countries. The Class of 2010 has representatives from all states. As of Fall 2005, 28% of undergraduate students identified themselves as members of ethnic minority group
s. Legacy applicants receive a slight advantage in the admission process.
In 2005, the Graduate School
accepted 21.6% of applicants, the Law School
accepted 20.6%, and the Veterinary School
accepted 10.9%. The Weill Cornell Medical School
accepted 4.3%. In 2010, the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management
enrolled 10.1% of its applicants for its two-year MBA program.
At the time of its founding, Cornell University was considered revolutionary because its founder, Ezra Cornell, was committed to access for all students, regardless of economic circumstance. Section 9 of the original charter of Cornell University ensured that the university "shall be open to applicants for admission ... at the lowest rates of expense consistent with its welfare and efficiency, and without distinction as to rank, class, previous occupation or locality." The University Charter provided for free instruction to one student chosen from each Assembly district in the state. Within the first 10 years of operation, the university admitted women and underrepresented minority students and provided financial aid for many students, using a combination of grant, loan and work-study opportunities. The university awarded need-based grants as early as 1879, and its first endowed scholarship fund was created in 1892.
Starting in the 1950s Cornell coordinated with other Ivy League schools to provide a consistent set of financial aid. However, in 1989, a consent decree to end a Justice Department antitrust investigation ended such coordination. Even after the decree, all Ivy League schools continue to award aid on financial need without offering any athletic scholarships. In December 2010, Cornell announced a policy of matching any grant component of financial aid offers from other Ivy League schools, MIT, Duke University or Stanford, if an accepted applicant is trying to decide between Cornell and those other schools.
On January 31, 2008, Cornell announced a new financial aid initiative to be phased in over the following two years. In the first year, 2008–09, Cornell replaced need-based loans with scholarships for undergraduate students from families with incomes under $60,000 and capped such loans annually at $3,000 for students from families with incomes between $60,000 and $120,000. The following year, 2009–10, the program improved by replacing loan with scholarships for students from families with incomes up to $75,000, and capped annual loans at $3,000 for students from families with income between $75,000 and $120,000. For families above $120,000, need-based loans were capped at $7,500 per year. The initiative costs an additional $14 million per year to fully implement. Although Cornell's endowment dropped 27% in the second half of 2008, its President announced that the financial aid initiative will continue by withdrawing an additional $35 million from the endowment for undergraduate financial aid in 2009–10. Cornell is seeking $125 million in gifts to support the financial aid initiative. In 2010, 1,647 of the 3,181 full-time freshmen enrolled were found to have financial need (40%). Of these, Cornell could meet the full financial aid needs of all 1,647 freshmen. Cornell's average undergraduate student's indebtedness at graduation is $21,549.
, French Studies, German Studies, Jewish Studies
, Latino Studies, Near Eastern Studies, Romance Studies
, and Russian Literature
majors. Cornell was the first university to teach modern Far Eastern languages. In addition to traditional academic programs, Cornell students may study abroad on any of six continents.
The Asian Studies
major, South Asia Program, South East Asia Program and China and Asia-Pacific Studies (CAPS) major provide opportunities for students and researchers in Asia. Cornell has an agreement with Peking University
allowing students in the CAPS major to spend a semester in Beijing
. Similarly, the College of Engineering
has an agreement to exchange faculty and graduate students with Tsinghua University
in Beijing
, and the School of Hotel Administration
has a joint master's program with Nanyang Technological University
in Singapore
. The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
has signed an agreement with Japan's National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences, as well as the University of the Philippines, Los Baños
, to engage in joint research and exchange graduate students and faculty members. It also cooperates in agricultural research with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research
.
In the Middle East
, Cornell's efforts focus on biology and medicine. The Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar
trains new doctors to improve health services in the region. The university is also developing the Bridging the Rift Center, a "Library of Life" (or database
of all living systems) on the border of Israel
and Jordan
, in collaboration with those two countries and Stanford University
. Cornell has partnered with Queen's University
in Canada to offer a joint Executive MBA. The innovative program includes both on-campus and videoconferencing
-based, interactive virtual classroom sessions. Graduates of the program earn both a Cornell MBA and a Queen's MBA.
Cornell University is member of the United Nations Academic Impact
aligning institutions of higher education to the United Nations
and promoting international cooperation.
(which ranks top 12000 universities of the world based on size, web visibility, rich files and scholar), 15th in the QS World University Rankings
and 20th in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings
. (in 2010 Times Higher Education World University Rankings
and QS World University Rankings
parted ways to produce separate rankings). The university ranked 15th in the 2011 U.S. News & World Report
National Universities ranking (tied with Brown University
), tied for 6th with Columbia University
and Brown University
in the 2011 U.S. News & World Report
High School Counselor rankings, and 13th globally in an academic ranking of world universities by Shanghai Jiao Tong University
in 2011. Cornell was ranked 38th nationally and sixth among Ivy League
universities in The Washington Monthly
s 2010 ranking of universities' contributions to research, community service, and social mobility
. In 2006, The Princeton Review
reported that Cornell ranked ninth as a "dream college" for high school students and their parents, however the school is not featured in the 2011 top ten list. Newsweek
named Cornell the 'Hottest Ivy' in its 2007 listing of America's 25 Hot Schools. Instead of using the traditional school ranking methods, Newsweek
offers a snapshot of today's most interesting colleges according to high school counselors, admissions officers, consultants, students, and parents, who noted Cornell for its emphasis on "problem-solving as well as scholarly debate" and "variety on campus" among other things. Forbes ranked Cornell 51st in 2011, based on student criteria.
Many of Cornell's schools have been consistently ranked as some of the top schools in the United States. In its annual edition of "America's Best Architecture & Design Schools", the journal DesignIntelligence has consistently ranked Cornell's Bachelor of Architecture program as number one in the nation (2000-2002, 2005-2007, and 2009-2011). In the 2011 survey, the program ranked first and the Master of Architecture program ranked sixth. In 2011 and 2012, Design Intelligence ranked Cornell's Master of Landscape Architecture program 4th in the nation with the undergraduate program placing 8th for the same two years. In 2011, US News and World Report ranked Cornell's Sloan Program in Health Administration 14th in the nation. Among business schools in the United States, the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management
was ranked 7th by BusinessWeek
in 2004, 9th by Forbes
in 2005, 14th by U.S. News in 2008, and 18th by The Wall Street Journal
in 2005. Worldwide, the school was ranked 17th by The Economist
in 2005 and 36th by the Financial Times
in 2006. U.S. News ranked the Weill Cornell Medical School as the 15th best in the United States in its 2007 edition. The College of Veterinary Medicine
was ranked first among national veterinary medicine graduate schools. The Cornell Law School
was ranked as the 12th best graduate law program among national universities. In 2005, The National Law Journal
reported that Cornell Law had the sixth highest placement rate at the top 50 law firms in the U.S. among law schools with recent graduates.
Among graduate engineering programs, Cornell was ranked 9th in the United States by U.S. News in 2008. In 2006, Cornell was ranked 1st in the United States and 4th in the world in producing the most graduates who went on to receive engineering or natural science Ph.D.'s at American universities. In its 2006, 2007, and 2008 ranking of undergraduate engineering programs at universities in the United States, U.S. News placed Cornell 1st in engineering physics
. In 1954, Conrad Hilton
called the Cornell School of Hotel Administration
"the greatest hotel school in the world." According to the latest ranking of National Research Council
in 1995, Cornell ranks sixth nationally in the number of graduate programs in the top ten in their fields. Cornell had 19 ranked in the top 10 in terms of overall academic quality. Also National Research Council
ranked the quality of faculties as 5th in Arts and Humanities, 6th in Mathematics and Physical Sciences, and 5th in Engineering.
The Cornell University Library is the 11th largest academic library in the United States, ranked by number of volumes held. Organized into 20 divisions, in 2005 it held 7.5 million printed volumes in open stacks, 8.2 million microfilms and microfiches, and a total of 440,000 maps, motion pictures, DVDs, sound recordings, and computer files in its collections, in addition to extensive digital resources and the University Archives. It was the first among all U.S. colleges and universities to allow undergraduates to borrow books from its libraries. In 2006, The Princeton Review
ranked it as the 11th best college library,
and it climbed to 6th best in 2009. The library plays an active role in furthering online archiving of scientific and historical documents. arXiv
, an e-print archive created at Los Alamos National Laboratory
by Paul Ginsparg
, is operated and primarily funded by Cornell as part of the library's services. The archive has changed the way many physicist
s and mathematician
s communicate, making the e-print a viable and popular means of announcing new research.
enterprise in the United States. Today, the press is one of the country's largest university press
es. It produces approximately 150 nonfiction titles each year in various disciplines including anthropology, Asian studies, biological sciences, classics, history, industrial relations, literary criticism and theory, natural history, philosophy, politics and international relations, veterinary science, and women's studies.
Cornell's academic units and student groups also publish a number of scholarly journals. Faculty-led publications include the Johnson School's Administrative Science Quarterly
, the ILR School's Industrial and Labor Relations Review
, the Arts and Sciences Philosophy Department's The Philosophical Review
, the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning's Journal of Architecture
, and the Law School's Journal of Empirical Legal Studies
. Student-led scholarly publications include the Law Review
, the International Law Journal
, the Journal of Law and Public Policy
, the International Affairs Review
, the HR Review
, and the Business Review.
or the natural science
s at American institutions, as well as fifth in the world in producing graduates who pursue PhDs at American institutions in any field. Research is a central element of the university's mission; in 2009 Cornell spent $
671 million
on science and engineering research and development, the 16th highest in the United States.
For the 2004–05 fiscal year, the university spent $561.3 million on research. The primary recipients of this funding were the colleges of Medicine ($164.2 million), Agriculture and Life Sciences ($114.5 million), Arts and Sciences ($80.3 million), and Engineering ($64.8 million). The money comes largely from federal sources, with federal investment of $381.0 million. The federal agencies that invest the most money are the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Science Foundation
that make up, respectively, 51.4% and 30.7% of all federal investment in the university. Cornell was on the top-ten list of U.S. universities receiving the most patent
s in 2003, and was one of the nation's top five institutions in forming start-up companies. In 2004–05, Cornell received 200 invention disclosures, filed 203 U.S. patent applications, completed 77 commercial license agreements, and distributed royalties
of more than $4.1 million to Cornell units and inventors.
Since 1962, Cornell has been involved in unmanned missions to Mars
. In the 21st century, Cornell had a hand in the Mars Exploration Rover Mission
. Cornell's Steve Squyres
, Principal Investigator for the Athena Science Payload, led the selection of the landing zones and requested data collection features for the Spirit
and Opportunity rover
s. Jet Propulsion Laboratory
engineers took those requests and designed the rovers to meet them. The rovers, both of which have operated long past their original life expectancies, are responsible for the discoveries that were awarded 2004 Breakthrough of the Year honors by Science
. Control of the Mars rovers has shifted between NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech
and Cornell's Space Sciences Building. Further, Cornell researchers discovered the rings
around the planet Uranus
, and Cornell built and operates the world's largest and most sensitive radiotelescope
located in Arecibo, Puerto Rico
.
The Automotive Crash Injury Research project was begun in 1952 by John O. Moore at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory
, which spun off in 1972 as Calspan Corporation. It pioneered the use of crash test
ing, originally using corpses rather than dummies
. The project discovered that improved door locks, energy-absorbing steering wheels, padded dashboards, and seat belts could prevent an extraordinary percentage of injuries. The project led Liberty Mutual
to fund the building of a demonstration Cornell Safety Car
in 1956, which received national publicity and influenced carmakers. Carmakers soon started their own crash-test laboratories and gradually adopted many of the Cornell innovations. Other ideas, such as rear-facing passenger seats, never found favor with carmakers or the public.
In 1984, the National Science Foundation
began work on establishing five new supercomputer
centers, including the Cornell Center for Advanced Computing
, to provide high-speed computing resources for research within the United States. In 1985, a team from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications
began the development of NSFNet
, a TCP/IP-based computer network that could connect to the ARPANET
, at the Cornell Center for Advanced Computing and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
. This high-speed network, unrestricted to academic users, became a backbone to which regional networks would be connected. Initially a 56-kbit/s network, traffic on the network grew exponentially; the links were upgraded to 1.5 Mbit/s T1s
in 1988 and to 45 Mbit/s in 1991. The NSFNet was a major milestone in the development of the Internet
and its rapid growth coincided with the development of the World Wide Web
.
Cornell scientists have researched the fundamental particles of nature for more than 70 years. Cornell physicists, such as Hans Bethe
, contributed not only to the foundations of nuclear physics but also participated in the Manhattan Project
(see also: List of Cornell Manhattan Project people). In the 1930s, Cornell built the second cyclotron
in the United States. In the 1950s, Cornell physicists became the first to study synchrotron radiation
. During the 1990s, the Cornell Electron Storage Ring
, located beneath Alumni Field, was the world's highest-luminosity electron-positron collider. After building the synchrotron at Cornell, Robert R. Wilson
took a leave of absence to become the founding director of Fermilab
, which involved designing and building the largest accelerator in the United States. Cornell's accelerator and high-energy physics groups are involved in the design of the proposed International Linear Collider
and plan to participate in its construction and operation. The International Linear Collider, to be completed in the late 2010s, will complement the Large Hadron Collider
and shed light on questions such as the identity of dark matter
and the existence of extra dimensions.
In the area of humanities and social sciences, Cornell is best known for being one of the world's greatest centers for the study of Southeast Asia
. The Southeast Asia Program (SEAP) at Cornell is designated as a National Resource Center
(NRC) by the United States Department of Education 2010–2014. Therefore, the SEAP is nationally prominent in promoting advanced foreign language training, area and international knowledge in the liberal arts and applied discipline focused on Southeast Asia. The George McTurnan Kahin Center for Advanced Research on Southeast Asia is located in the historic "Treman House." The house was built by Robert Henry Treman, the son of an enterprising local family and the first member of that family to attend Cornell University and be elected to its board of trustees. The George McTurnan Kahin
Center is home to SEAP graduate students, visiting fellows and scholars, faculty members, and SEAP's Publication and Outreach offices.
For the 2006–07 academic year, Cornell had 901 registered student organizations. These clubs and organizations run the gamut from kayaking to full-armor jousting, from varsity and club sports and a cappella groups to improvisational theatre, from political clubs and publications to chess and video game clubs. They are subsidized financially by academic departments and/or the Student Assembly and the Graduate & Professional Student Assembly, two student-run organizations with a collective budget of $3.0 million per year. The assemblies also finance other student life programs including a concert commission and an on-campus movie theater. The Cornell International Affairs Society sends over 100 Cornellians to collegiate Model United Nations conferences across North America and hosts the Cornell Model United Nations Conference each spring for over 500 high school students. Cornell United Religious Work is a collaboration among many diverse religious traditions, helping to provide spiritual resources throughout a student's time at college. The Cornell Catholic Community
is the largest Catholic student organization on campus. Student organizations also include a myriad of musical groups that play everything from classical, jazz, to ethnic styles in addition to the Big Red Marching Band, which performs regularly at football games and other campus events. Organized in 1868, the oldest Cornell student organization is the Cornell University Glee Club
. The university is home to two secret honor societies called Sphinx Head
and Quill and Dagger
that have maintained a presence on campus for well over 120 years. It also has a Student Innovation Group, a think-tank dedicated to improving student life on campus.
Cornell hosts a large fraternity and sorority system, with 70 chapters involving 33% of male and 24% of female undergraduates. Alpha Phi Alpha
, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter
organization established for African American
s, was founded at Cornell in 1906.
During the 2004–05 academic year, the Greek system committed 21,668 community service
and advocacy
hours and raised $176,547 in philanthropic efforts. However, the administration has expressed concerns over student misconduct in the system. In 2004–05, of the 251 social events registered with the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs, 37 (15%) resulted in a complaint. In that same year, there were five reported instances of property destruction, five reports of bias
, three hazing
incidents, and various other allegations. Misconduct by students, faculty or staff is reviewed by the Judicial Administrator, who administers Cornell's justice system. However, students accused of academic and conduct code violations at Cornell are entitled to representation in the Cornell justice system by the Office of the Judicial Codes Counselor. Judicial Codes Counselors are usually Cornell Law students appointed by the University president to advocate for students accused of academic and conduct code violations. In addition to the right to representation, Cornell students have the right to not self-incriminate during Judicial Administrator investigations, which is an unusual (though very important) right in college justice systems.
, the oldest continuously independent college daily newspaper in the United States; The Cornell International Affairs Review
; The Cornell Lunatic
, a campus humor magazine; the Cornell Chronicle
, the university's newspaper of record; The Cornell Review
, a conservative
newspaper
; and Kitsch Magazine
, a feature magazine
published in cooperation with Ithaca College
. The Cornellian is an independent student organization that organizes, arranges, produces, edits, and publishes the yearbook of the same name; it is composed of artistic photos of the campus, student life, and athletics, as well as the standard senior portraits. It carries the Silver Crown Award for Journalism as well as a Benjamin Franklin Award for Print Design – the only Ivy League Yearbook with such a distinction. Cornellians are represented over the radio waves on WVBR
, an independent commercial FM radio station owned and operated by Cornell students. Other student groups also operate internet streaming audio sites.
, West Campus
, and Collegetown. Since a 1997 residential initiative, West Campus houses transfer and returning students, whereas North Campus is almost entirely populated by freshmen.
The only options for living on North Campus for upperclassmen are the program houses: Risley Residential College
, Just About Music, the Ecology House, Holland International Living Center, the Multicultural Living Learning Unit, the Latino Living Center, Akwe:kon, and Ujamaa. Of these, only Ujamaa, Akwe:kon, and the Latino Living Center have been controversial, due to their dedicated racial or ethnic themes. In an attempt to create a sense of community and an atmosphere of education outside the classroom and continue Andrew Dickson White's vision, a $250 million reconstruction of West Campus created residential colleges there for undergraduates. The idea of building a house system can be attributed in part to the success of Risley Residential College, the oldest continually operating residential college at Cornell.
Additionally, Cornell has several housing areas for graduate and professional students. Of these, Schuyler House (which was formerly a part of Sage Infirmary) and Hughes Hall (which is the domitory wing of the law school complex) have a dorm layout, while Maplewood Apartments, Hasbrouck Apartments, and Thurston Court Apartments are apartment-style, some even allowing for family living. Off campus, many single family houses in the East Hill neighborhoods adjacent to the university have been converted to apartments. Private developers have also built several multi-story apartment complexes in the Collegetown neighborhood. Nine percent of undergraduate students reside in fraternity and sorority houses, although first semester freshmen are not permitted to join them. Cornell’s Greek system has 67 chapters and over 54 Greek residences that house approximately 1,500 students. About 42% of Greek members live in their houses. Housing cooperative
s or other independent living units exist, including Watermargin, Telluride House
, Triphammer Cooperative, the Center for Jewish Living, and the Wait Cooperative.
As of 2008, Cornell's dining system was ranked 11th in the nation by the Princeton Review. The university has 30 on-campus dining locations, and a program called the Cross Country Gourmet Guest Restaurant Series periodically brings chefs, menus, and atmosphere from restaurants to Cornell's ten cafeterias.
Division I institution, Cornell is a member of the Ivy League and ECAC Hockey and competes in the Eastern College Athletic Conference
(ECAC), the largest athletic conference in North America. (Note that ECAC Hockey is no longer affiliated with the ECAC.) Cornell's varsity athletic teams currently are highly successful within the Ivy League and consistently challenge for NCAA Division I titles in a number of sports, including men's lacrosse
and men's ice hockey
. Under the Ivy League athletic agreement, the university does not offer athletic scholarship
s for athletic recruiting.
Cornell University's football
team had at least a share of the national championship four times before 1940 and has won the Ivy League championship three times, last in 1990.
In addition to the school's varsity athletics, club sports teams have been organized as student organizations under the auspices of the Dean of Students. Cornell's intramural program includes 30 sports. Beside such familiar sports such as flag football
, squash
, or water polo
, such unusual offerings as "inner tube water polo" and formerly "broomstick polo" have been offered, as well as a sports trivia competition. Cornell students also often participate in the International Rutabaga Curling Championship
, held annually at the Ithaca Farmers' Market. Cornell also has a rich history of martial arts on campus, particularly Sport Taekwondo. Since 1987, Cornell Sport Taekwondo has competed in the Ivy-Northeast Collegiate Taekwondo League (INCTL). In 2007 after a 4 year slump, Cornell Sport Taekwondo defeated MIT Sport Taekwondo to take the INCTL Cup.
, a celebration held on the last day of classes of the spring semester, and Dragon Day
, which includes the burning of a dragon built by architecture students. Dragon Day is one of the school's oldest traditions and has been celebrated annually since 1901, typically on or near St. Patrick's Day. The dragon is built secretly by the architecture students, and taunting messages are left for the engineering students for the week before Dragon Day. On Dragon Day, the dragon is paraded across the Arts Quad and then set afire.
According to legend, if a virgin crosses the Arts Quad at midnight, the statues of Ezra Cornell
and Andrew Dickson White
will walk off their pedestals, meet in the center of the Quad, and shake hands, congratulating themselves on the chastity of students. There is also another myth that if a couple crosses the suspension bridge on North Campus, and the young woman does not accept a kiss from her partner, the bridge will fall. If the kiss is accepted, the couple is assured a long future together.
The university is also host to various student pranks. For example, on at least two different occasions the university has awoken to find something odd atop the 173-foot (52.7 m) tall McGraw clock tower—once a 60-pound (27 kg) pumpkin and another time a disco ball. Because there is no access to the spire atop the tower, how the items were put in place remains a mystery. The colors of the lights on McGraw tower change to orange for Halloween and green for St. Patrick's Day. The clock tower also plays music.
The school colors are carnelian
(a shade of red) and white, a play on "Cornellian" and Andrew Dickson White. A bear is commonly used as the unofficial mascot, which dates back to the introduction of the mascot "Touchdown" in 1915, a live bear who was brought onto the field during football games. The university's alma mater
is "Far Above Cayuga's Waters
", and its fight song
is "Give My Regards to Davy
". People associated with the university are called "Cornellians".
The university received worldwide attention for a series of six student suicides that occurred during the 2009–10 school year, and they have since added temporary fences to its bridges while more permanent measures are in process. Before this abnormal cluster of suicides, the suicide rate at Cornell had been similar to or below the suicide rates of other American universities, including a period between 2005 and 2008 in which no suicides occurred.
For the August 2008 to May 2009 academic year, Cornell University had 1,639 full-time and part-time academic faculty members affiliated with its main campus. In 2007-08, the New York City medical divisions count 1,235 faculty members and Qatar has 34. In total, 41 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with Cornell as faculty or students. Notable former professors include Carl Sagan
, Thomas Gold
, Charles Evans Hughes
, Norman Malcolm
, Vladimir Nabokov
, M.H. Abrams, Hans Bethe
, Richard Feynman
, Kip Thorne
, Archie Randolph Ammons
, Peter Debye
, Allan Bloom
, Henry Louis Gates, Wole Soyinka
, and Anthony Appiah.
Cornell's faculty for the 2005–06 academic year included three Nobel laureates
, a Crafoord Prize
winner, two Turing Award
winners, a Fields Medal
winner, two Legion of Honor recipients, a World Food Prize
winner, an Andrei Sakharov Prize winner, three National Medal of Science
winners, two Wolf Prize winners, five MacArthur award winners, four Pulitzer Prize
winners, two Eminent Ecologist Award recipients, a Carter G. Woodson
Scholars Medallion recipient, four Presidential Early Career Award winners, 20 National Science Foundation
CAREER grant holders, a recipient of the National Academy of Sciences
Award for Initiatives in Research, a recipient of the American Mathematical Society
's Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement, a recipient of the Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics, three Packard Foundation grant holders, a Keck Distinguished Young Scholar, two Beckman Foundation Young Investigator grant holders, and two NYSTAR (New York State Office of Science, Technology, and Academic Research) early career award winners.
In 2008 and 2009, Cornell was named a "Great College to Work For" by The Chronicle of Higher Education
. This recognition was based upon Cornell's excellent ratings in several factors such as compensation and benefits, connection to institution and pride, faculty-administration relations, job satisfaction, and post-retirement benefits, as determined by a survey of the faculty, staff, and administration of the university.
, weekend festivities in Ithaca, and the International Spirit of Zinck's Night. For the 2004–05 fiscal year, Cornell ranked third for gifts and bequests from alumni, and fourth for total support from all sources (alumni, friends, corporations, and foundations) among U.S. colleges and universities reporting voluntary gift support. In October 2006, Cornell made public a 10 year capital campaign "Far Above...
" to solicit alumni and raise $4 billion to improve the undergraduate experience, attract and retain faculty, and expand the physical plant. Information about Cornell graduates, most of which is submitted by the graduates themselves, is available in Cornell Magazine. The magazine is currently published 6 times a year.
Cornellians are noted for their accomplishments in public, professional, and corporate life. Taiwan
's former President Lee Teng-hui
, former President of Cuba
Mario García Menocal
, and former Iran
ian Prime Minister Jamshid Amuzegar
('50) all graduated from Cornell. Hu Shih
('14) was the ambassador to the United States during World War II and later China's representative to the United Nations. He is widely recognized today as a key contributor to Chinese liberalism and language reform in his advocacy for the use of written vernacular Chinese. In the United States, numerous Congressmen
and Cabinet members
, including Paul Wolfowitz
('65) and Janet Reno
('60), and one Supreme Court
justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg
('54), have been Cornellians. After his Cornell education, David Starr Jordan
(1872) went on to become the president of Indiana University
and subsequently founding president of Stanford University
after former Cornell president Andrew Dickson White
turned down the position. M. Carey Thomas
(1877) founded Bryn Mawr College
and was its second president. Lieutenant Colonel
Matt Urban
('41) is the most decorated serviceman in United States history. Arnold Tremere
('68) was appointed as the Canadian International Grains Institute Executive Director.
Cornellian-headed businesses include: Alamo Rent-A-Car (Michael Egan), Carrier
(Willis Carrier
, 1901), Citigroup
(Sanford Weill '55), Coors Brewing Company
(Adolph Coors
'37), and Burger King
(James McLamore
'47). Cornellian-founded businesses include: Gannett by Frank Gannett
(1898), Grumman Aerospace Corporation by Leroy Grumman
('16), Hotels.com
by David Litman
('79) and Bob Diener, Palm
by Jeff Hawkins
('79), PeopleSoft
and Workday, Inc. by David Duffield
('62), Priceline.com
by Jay Walker ('77), Qualcomm
by Dr. Irwin M. Jacobs
('54), and Staples
by Myra Hart
('62). Businesses currently headed by Cornellians include: Tata Group
headed by Ratan Tata
('62)., Nintendo
of America headed by Reginald Fils-Aime ('83), and Sprint Nextel
headed by Dan Hesse ('77).
In medicine, Dr. C. Everett Koop
('41) was the Surgeon General under Ronald Reagan, Dr. Robert Atkins
('55) developed the Atkins Diet, Dr. Henry Heimlich
('47) developed the Heimlich maneuver, and Wilson Greatbatch
('50) invented the first successful pacemaker
. Dr. James Maas
('66), both an alumnus and current faculty member, coined the term "power nap
". Dr. Gregory Pincus ('24), the co-inventor of the combined oral contraceptive (i.e. birth control pill) was an undergraduate at Cornell. Cornellians also include medical personalities Dr. Benjamin Spock
and Joyce Brothers
('47), as well as the Nobel laureate
maize
geneticist
Barbara McClintock
('23). Dr. Jack Szostak ('77), professor of genetics at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in medicine for discovering a key mechanism in the genetic operations of cells, an insight that has inspired new lines of research into cancer.
A number of Cornellians have been prominent innovators, starting with Thomas Midgley, Jr.
('11), the inventor of Freon. Jeff Hawkins
('79) invented the Palm Pilot
and subsequently founded Palm, Inc.
Graduate Jon Rubinstein
('78) is credited with the development of the iPod
. William Higinbotham
developed Tennis for Two
in 1958, one of the earliest computer games and the predecessor to Pong
, and Robert Tappan Morris
developed the first computer worm
on the Internet
. The most direct evidence of dark matter
was provided by Vera Rubin
('51). Jill Tarter
('66) is the current director of the SETI Institute
and Steve Squyres
('81) is the principal investigator on the Mars Exploration Rover
Mission. Eight Cornellians have served as NASA
astronaut
s. Bill Nye
('77) is best known as "The Science Guy
".
Cornell is the only university with three female winners of unshared Nobel Prizes among its alumni (Pearl S. Buck
, Barbara McClintock
, and Toni Morrison
'55). The latter won a Nobel Prize in Literature
for Song of Solomon
, as well as a Pulitzer Prize
for her novel, Beloved
. The Nobel Prize in Literature was also awarded to Pearl S. Buck
('25), author of The Good Earth
. E. B. White
('21), author of Charlotte's Web
and Stuart Little
, co-wrote the influential writing guide The Elements of Style
with fellow Cornellian William Strunk Jr.
Other Cornellian writers include Junot Diaz
('95), Laura Z. Hobson
, Thomas Pynchon
('59), William Irwin Thompson
('66), Richard Farina
, Kurt Vonnegut
and Lauren Weisberger
('99). Cornellian journalists include Margaret Bourke-White
('27), Allison Danzig
, Dick Schaap
('55), Kate Snow
, and radio personality Dave Ross
.
Christopher Reeve
('74) is best known for his role as Superman, while comedian
Frank Morgan
is best known to older generations as The Wizard of Oz
. Howard Hawks
('18) is widely regarded as one of the most prominent directors of the classic Hollywood era, directing His Girl Friday
and The Big Sleep
among many other films. Stand-up comedian Bill Maher
('78), is host of the HBO series Real Time with Bill Maher
. John Kerwin, hosts The John Kerwin Show
, a talk show featuring celebrity interviews, based in Los Angeles. Jimmy Smits
('82), best known for his roles on L.A. Law
, The West Wing, and in the Star Wars films Episode II: Attack of the Clones and Episode III: Revenge of the Sith earned his MFA from Cornell. Greg Graffin
(2003) of the band Bad Religion
, Peter Yarrow
('58) of Peter, Paul and Mary
, singer-songwriter Harry Chapin
, pop star Huey Lewis
, and modern composers Steve Reich
, Christopher Rouse, and Steven Stucky
, all attended Cornell. Ronald D. Moore
created the Battlestar Galactica
remake that debuted in 2004. Carla Gallo
played Lizzie in Undeclared
. Media personalities and Cornell graduates Ann Coulter
('84) and Keith Olbermann
('79) engaged in a dispute, played out on television, over the value of Olbermann's degree from the school's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
The Empire State Building
and Grauman's Chinese Theatre
were designed by Cornell architects Richmond Shreve
(1902) and Raymond M. Kennedy
('15), respectively. Edmund Bacon ('32) is best known for reshaping Philadelphia
in the mid 20th century. Contemporary architects Richard Meier
('57), designer of the Getty Center
, and Peter Eisenman
('55), designer of the Wexner Center for the Arts
, are also Cornellians.
In athletics, Cornellians have won Olympic
and World Championship
medals, been inducted into sports halls of fame
, and led numerous teams as general manager
s and coaches including Glenn "Pop" Warner
(1894) and Bruce Arena
('73), former head coach of the United States men's national soccer team
. Cornellian Gary Bettman
('74) is current commissioner of the National Hockey League
. Kevin Boothe
played offensive guard
for Cornell and the Super Bowl XLII
champion New York Giants
. In addition to playing a regular on Hill Street Blues
, Ed Marinaro
('71) was the runner up for the Heisman Trophy, played in two Super Bowls (VIII and IX) and was named to the College Football Hall of Fame
. Ken Dryden
('69) was a six-time Stanley Cup
winning hockey
goalie
. Joe Nieuwendyk
was a Conn Smythe Trophy
winner with the Dallas Stars
in the 1999 Stanley Cup playoffs
. Bryan Colangelo
('87) is now the President and General Manager of the NBA's Toronto Raptors
.
Fictional alumni have been portrayed in several films, television shows, and books. Characters include Andy Bernard
of The Office and Natalie Keener of Up in the Air
.
Ivy League
The Ivy League is an athletic conference comprising eight private institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States. The conference name is also commonly used to refer to those eight schools as a group...
university
University
A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...
located in Ithaca
Ithaca, New York
The city of Ithaca, is a city in upstate New York and the county seat of Tompkins County, as well as the largest community in the Ithaca-Tompkins County metropolitan area...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, United States. It is a private
Private university
Private universities are universities not operated by governments, although many receive public subsidies, especially in the form of tax breaks and public student loans and grants. Depending on their location, private universities may be subject to government regulation. Private universities are...
land-grant university
Land-grant university
Land-grant universities are institutions of higher education in the United States designated by each state to receive the benefits of the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890....
, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell
Ezra Cornell
Ezra Cornell was an American businessman and education administrator. He was a founder of Western Union and a co-founder of Cornell University...
and Andrew Dickson White
Andrew Dickson White
Andrew Dickson White was a U.S. diplomat, historian, and educator, who was the co-founder of Cornell University.-Family and personal life:...
, the university was intended to teach and make contributions in all fields of knowledge—from the classics
Classics
Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
to the science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
s, and from the theoretical to the applied. These ideals, unconventional for the time, are captured in Cornell's motto, a popular 1865 Ezra Cornell quotation: "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study." Since its founding, Cornell has also been a co-educational, non-sectarian
Sectarianism
Sectarianism, according to one definition, is bigotry, discrimination or hatred arising from attaching importance to perceived differences between subdivisions within a group, such as between different denominations of a religion, class, regional or factions of a political movement.The ideological...
institution where admission is offered irrespective of religion or race.
The university is broadly organized into seven undergraduate
Undergraduate education
Undergraduate education is an education level taken prior to gaining a first degree . Hence, in many subjects in many educational systems, undergraduate education is post-secondary education up to the level of a bachelor's degree, such as in the United States, where a university entry level is...
colleges and seven graduate
Graduate school
A graduate school is a school that awards advanced academic degrees with the general requirement that students must have earned a previous undergraduate degree...
divisions at its main Ithaca campus, with each college and division defining its own admission standards and academic programs in near autonomy. The university also administers two satellite medical campuses, one in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and one in Education City
Education City
Education City is an initiative of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development. Located on the outskirts of Doha, the capital of Qatar, Education City covers 14 square kilometers and houses educational facilities from school age to research level and branch campi of some of...
, Qatar
Qatar
Qatar , also known as the State of Qatar or locally Dawlat Qaṭar, is a sovereign Arab state, located in the Middle East, occupying the small Qatar Peninsula on the northeasterly coast of the much larger Arabian Peninsula. Its sole land border is with Saudi Arabia to the south, with the rest of its...
. Cornell is one of two private land grant universities
Land-grant university
Land-grant universities are institutions of higher education in the United States designated by each state to receive the benefits of the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890....
,The other is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
. and its seven undergraduate colleges include three private, state-supported statutory or contract colleges
Statutory college
In American higher education, particular to the state of New York, a statutory college or contract college is a college or school that is a component of an independent, private university that has been designated by the state legislature to receive significant, ongoing public funding from the state...
. As a land grant college, it also operates a cooperative extension outreach program in every county of New York.
Cornell counts more than 255,000 living alumni
Alumnus
An alumnus , according to the American Heritage Dictionary, is "a graduate of a school, college, or university." An alumnus can also be a former member, employee, contributor or inmate as well as a former student. In addition, an alumna is "a female graduate or former student of a school, college,...
, 31 Marshall Scholars
Marshall Scholarship
The Marshall Scholarship, a postgraduate scholarships available to Americans, was created by the Parliament of the United Kingdom when the Marshall Aid Commemoration Act was passed in 1953. The scholarships serve as a living gift to the United States of America in recognition of the post-World War...
, 28 Rhodes Scholars
Rhodes Scholarship
The Rhodes Scholarship, named after Cecil Rhodes, is an international postgraduate award for study at the University of Oxford. It was the first large-scale programme of international scholarships, and is widely considered the "world's most prestigious scholarship" by many public sources such as...
and 41 Nobel laureates as affiliated with the university. The student body consists of nearly 14,000 undergraduate and 7,000 graduate students from all 50 states and 122 countries.
History
Cornell University was founded on April 27, 1865 as the result of a New York State (NYS) SenateNew York State Senate
The New York State Senate is one of two houses in the New York State Legislature and has members each elected to two-year terms. There are no limits on the number of terms one may serve...
bill that named the university as the state's land grant
Land-grant university
Land-grant universities are institutions of higher education in the United States designated by each state to receive the benefits of the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890....
institution. Senator Ezra Cornell
Ezra Cornell
Ezra Cornell was an American businessman and education administrator. He was a founder of Western Union and a co-founder of Cornell University...
offered his farm in Ithaca, New York
Ithaca, New York
The city of Ithaca, is a city in upstate New York and the county seat of Tompkins County, as well as the largest community in the Ithaca-Tompkins County metropolitan area...
as a site and $500,000 of his personal fortune as an initial endowment
Financial endowment
A financial endowment is a transfer of money or property donated to an institution. The total value of an institution's investments is often referred to as the institution's endowment and is typically organized as a public charity, private foundation, or trust....
. Fellow senator and experienced educator Andrew Dickson White
Andrew Dickson White
Andrew Dickson White was a U.S. diplomat, historian, and educator, who was the co-founder of Cornell University.-Family and personal life:...
agreed to be the first president. During the next three years, White oversaw the construction of the initial two buildings and traveled around the globe to attract students and faculty
Faculty (university)
A faculty is a division within a university comprising one subject area, or a number of related subject areas...
. The university was inaugurated on October 7, 1868, and 412 men were enrolled the next day.The school opened on October 4, 1898 in the Loomis Laboratory facilities. Since that time, Cornell's medical school has operated in Manhattan.
Cornell continued to be a technological innovator applying its research to its own campus as well as to outreach efforts. For example, it was one of the first university campuses to use electricity to light the grounds from a water-powered dynamo
Dynamo
- Engineering :* Dynamo, a magnetic device originally used as an electric generator* Dynamo theory, a theory relating to magnetic fields of celestial bodies* Solar dynamo, the physical process that generates the Sun's magnetic field- Software :...
in 1883. Since 1894, Cornell has included state-funded statutory colleges and has also administered research and extension activities that have been jointly funded by state and federal matching funds. Cornell has had an active alumni since its earliest classes and was one of the first universities to included alumni-elected representatives on its Board of Trustees.The University's charter was amended on April 24, 1867 to specify alumni elected trustees, however that provision did not become operative until there were at least 100 alumni in 1872. Also in 1865, the election of the Harvard University Board of Overseers was shifted to alumni voting.
Cornell expanded significantly, particularly since World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, with its student population in Ithaca growing to its current count of about 20,000 students. The faculty also expanded, and by the century's end, the university had more than 3,400 faculty members.Weill Cornell Medical College-NYC medical division units have additional external affiliations with 1,326 full-time and part-time faculty members elsewhere. The school also increased its breadth of course offerings. Today the university has wide-ranging programs and offers more than 4,000 courses.
Cornell received national attention in April 1969 when African American students occupied Willard Straight Hall
Willard Straight Hall
Willard Straight Hall is the student union building on the central campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. It is located on Campus Road, adjacent to the Ho Plaza and the Gannett Health Center.-History:...
in protest over alleged racism. The crisis resulted in the resignation of President James A. Perkins
James A. Perkins
James A. Perkins was the seventh president of Cornell University. Born in 1911 in Philadelphia, Perkins graduated with high honors in 1934 from Swarthmore College and received a doctorate in political science from Princeton University in 1937...
and the restructuring of university governance.
Since 2000, Cornell has been expanding its international programs. In 2004, the university opened the Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar
Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar
The Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar was established on April 9, 2001, when Cornell University signed an agreement with the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development to bring a branch of its medical school to Education City, Qatar, near the capital of Doha...
, the first American medical school
Medical school
A medical school is a tertiary educational institution—or part of such an institution—that teaches medicine. Degree programs offered at medical schools often include Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine, Bachelor/Doctor of Medicine, Doctor of Philosophy, master's degree, or other post-secondary...
outside of the United States. It continues to forge partnerships with major institutions in India, Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
, and the People's Republic of China. The university, with its high international profile, claims to be "the first transnational
International
----International mostly means something that involves more than one country. The term international as a word means involvement of, interaction between or encompassing more than one nation, or generally beyond national boundaries...
university". On March 9, 2004, Cornell and Stanford laid the cornerstone for a new Bridging the Rift Center located on the Israel–Jordan border.
Ithaca campus
Ithaca, New York
The city of Ithaca, is a city in upstate New York and the county seat of Tompkins County, as well as the largest community in the Ithaca-Tompkins County metropolitan area...
, overlooking the town and Cayuga Lake
Cayuga Lake
Cayuga Lake is the longest of central New York's glacial Finger Lakes, and is the second largest in surface area and second largest in volume. It is just under 40 miles long. Its average width is 1.7 miles , and it is at its widest point near Aurora...
. When the university was founded in 1865, the campus consisted of 209.5 acres (0.85 km²) of Ezra Cornell's roughly 300 acre (1.2 km²) farm. Since then, it has swelled to about 745 acres (3.0 km²), encompassing both the hill and much of the surrounding areas. Some 260 university buildings are divided primarily between Central
Cornell Central Campus
Central Campus is the primary academic and administrative section of Cornell University's Ithaca, New York campus. It is bounded by Libe Slope on the west, Fall Creek on the north, and Cascadilla Creek on the South.-History:...
and North Campuses
Cornell North Campus
North Campus is a residential section of Cornell University's Ithaca, New York campus. It primarily houses freshmen. North Campus offers programs which ease the transition into college life for incoming freshman. The campus offers interactions with faculty and other programs which are designed to...
on the plateau
Plateau
In geology and earth science, a plateau , also called a high plain or tableland, is an area of highland, usually consisting of relatively flat terrain. A highly eroded plateau is called a dissected plateau...
of the Hill, West Campus
Cornell West Campus
West Campus is a residential section of Cornell University's Ithaca, New York campus located west of Libe Slope and between the Fall Creek gorge and the Cascadilla gorge. It now primarily houses transfer students, second year, and upperclassmen. West Campus is currently part of a residential...
on its slope, and Collegetown immediately south of Central Campus. Central Campus has laboratories, administrative buildings, and almost all of the campus' academic buildings, athletic facilities, auditoriums, and museums. The only remaining residential facility on Central Campus is the Law School's
Cornell Law School
Cornell Law School, located in Ithaca, New York, is a graduate school of Cornell University and one of the five Ivy League law schools. The school confers three law degrees...
dormitory, Hughes Hall. North Campus contains freshman
Freshman
A freshman or fresher is a first-year student in secondary school, high school, or college. The term first year can also be used as a noun, to describe the students themselves A freshman (US) or fresher (UK, India) (or sometimes fish, freshie, fresher; slang plural frosh or freshmeat) is a...
and graduate student housing, themed program houses, and 29 fraternity and sorority houses
Fraternity and sorority houses
North American fraternity and sorority housing refers largely to the houses or housing areas that fraternity and sorority members live and work together in...
. West Campus has upperclass residential colleges and an additional 25 fraternity and sorority houses. Collegetown contains two upperclass residence halls and the Schwartz Performing Arts
Performing arts
The performing arts are those forms art which differ from the plastic arts insofar as the former uses the artist's own body, face, and presence as a medium, and the latter uses materials such as clay, metal or paint which can be molded or transformed to create some physical art object...
Center amid a neighborhood of apartments, eateries, and businesses.
The main campus is marked by an irregular layout and eclectic architectural style
Architectural style
Architectural styles classify architecture in terms of the use of form, techniques, materials, time period, region and other stylistic influences. It overlaps with, and emerges from the study of the evolution and history of architecture...
s, including ornate Collegiate Gothic, Victorian
Victorian architecture
The term Victorian architecture refers collectively to several architectural styles employed predominantly during the middle and late 19th century. The period that it indicates may slightly overlap the actual reign, 20 June 1837 – 22 January 1901, of Queen Victoria. This represents the British and...
, Neoclassical
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
buildings, and less decorative international
International style (architecture)
The International style is a major architectural style that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, the formative decades of Modern architecture. The term originated from the name of a book by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style...
and modernist
Modern architecture
Modern architecture is generally characterized by simplification of form and creation of ornament from the structure and theme of the building. It is a term applied to an overarching movement, with its exact definition and scope varying widely...
structures. The more ornate buildings generally predate World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Because the student population doubled from 7,000 in 1950 to 15,000 by 1970, grandiosity was neglected in favor of less expensive and more rapidly constructed styles. While some buildings are neatly arranged into quadrangles
Quadrangle (architecture)
In architecture, a quadrangle is a space or courtyard, usually rectangular in plan, the sides of which are entirely or mainly occupied by parts of a large building. The word is probably most closely associated with college or university campus architecture, but quadrangles may be found in other...
, others are packed densely and haphazardly. These eccentricities arose from the university's numerous, ever-changing master plans for the campus. For example, in one of the earliest plans, Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted was an American journalist, social critic, public administrator, and landscape designer. He is popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture, although many scholars have bestowed that title upon Andrew Jackson Downing...
, the designer of Central Park
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...
, outlined a "grand terrace" overlooking Cayuga Lake
Cayuga Lake
Cayuga Lake is the longest of central New York's glacial Finger Lakes, and is the second largest in surface area and second largest in volume. It is just under 40 miles long. Its average width is 1.7 miles , and it is at its widest point near Aurora...
. Because the terrace plan was dropped, McGraw Hall appears to face the wrong direction, facing Libe Slope rather than the Arts Quad.
The university is home to several buildings on the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
, including the Andrew Dickson White House
Andrew Dickson White House
The Andrew Dickson White House, commonly referred to as the "A.D. White House," is a Second Empire house on the campus of Cornell University, designed by William Henry Miller and Charles Babcock...
, Bailey Hall, Caldwell Hall, Comstock Hall, Morrill Hall
Morrill Hall
Justin Morrill Hall, known almost exclusively as Morrill Hall, is an academic building of Cornell University on its Ithaca, New York campus. As of 2009 it houses the Departments of Romance Studies, Russian Literature, and Linguistics...
, and Deke House. At least three other historic buildings—the original Roberts Hall
Roberts Hall (Ithaca, New York)
Roberts Hall is a building on the Ag Quad of Cornell University, and is the second building of that name. The original Roberts Hall was built in 1906, and was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1984. The 1906-built Roberts Hall was demolished before the construction of the...
, East Robert Hall
East Robert Hall (Ithaca, New York)
East Roberts Hall was a building on the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. It no longer exists.It was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1984...
and Stone Hall
Stone Hall (Ithaca, New York)
Stone Hall was a building on the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, named after John Lemuel Stone, a CALS professor of farm practice during the early 1900s. It no longer exists....
—have also been listed on the NRHP, despite their demolitions in the 1980s.
The Ithaca Campus is among the rolling valleys of the Finger Lakes
Finger Lakes
The Finger Lakes are a pattern of lakes in the west-central section of Upstate New York in the United States. They are a popular tourist destination. The lakes are long and thin , each oriented roughly on a north-south axis. The two longest, Cayuga Lake and Seneca Lake, are among the deepest in...
region and, atop East Hill, provides a view of the surrounding area, including 38 miles (61.4 km) long Lake Cayuga. Two gorges
Canyon
A canyon or gorge is a deep ravine between cliffs often carved from the landscape by a river. Rivers have a natural tendency to reach a baseline elevation, which is the same elevation as the body of water it will eventually drain into. This forms a canyon. Most canyons were formed by a process of...
, Fall Creek Gorge and Cascadilla Gorge, bound Central Campus and become popular swimming holes during the warmer months (although the university discourages their use). Adjacent to the main campus, Cornell owns the 2,800 acre (11.6 km²) Cornell Plantations
Cornell Plantations
The Cornell Plantations are botanical gardens located adjacent to the Cornell University campus in Ithaca, New York. The Plantations proper consist of of botanical gardens and of the F.R. Newman Arboretum...
, a botanical garden
Botanical garden
A botanical garden The terms botanic and botanical, and garden or gardens are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word botanic is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens. is a well-tended area displaying a wide range of plants labelled with their botanical names...
containing flowers, trees, and ponds along manicured trails.
Cornell has adopted a comprehensive sustainability action plan, and has a number of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design consists of a suite of rating systems for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings, homes and neighborhoods....
(LEED) certified buildings on the Ithaca campus. In 2009, a new gas-fired combined heat and power facility replaced a coal-fired steam plant, resulting in a reduction in carbon emissions to 7% below 1990 levels, and to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 75,000 tons per year. The facility meets 15% of campus electrical needs, and a university-run, on-campus hydroelectric plant in the Fall Creek Gorge provides an additional 2%. An award-winning lake source cooling
Deep lake water cooling
Deep lake water cooling uses cold water pumped from the bottom of a lake as a heat sink for climate control systems. Because heat pump efficiency improves as the heat sink gets colder, deep lake water cooling can reduce the electrical demands of large cooling systems where it is available...
project uses Lake Cayuga to air condition campus buildings, with an 80% energy saving over conventional systems. In 2007, Cornell established a Center for a Sustainable Future. Cornell has been rated "A-" by the 2011 College Sustainability Report Card for its environmental and sustainability initiatives.
New York City campus
Upper East Side
The Upper East Side is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, between Central Park and the East River. The Upper East Side lies within an area bounded by 59th Street to 96th Street, and the East River to Fifth Avenue-Central Park...
of Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. It is home to two Cornell divisions, Weill Cornell Medical College and Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, and has been affiliated with the NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital
NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital
NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital is a prominent university hospital in New York City affiliated with two Ivy League medical schools: Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons and Cornell University's Weill Medical College. It is composed of two distinct medical centers, Columbia...
since 1927. Although their faculty and academic divisions are separate, the Medical Center shares its administrative and teaching hospital functions with the Columbia University Medical Center
Columbia University Medical Center
Columbia University Medical Center is an academic medical center that includes Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, College of Dental Medicine, School of Nursing and Mailman School of Public Health...
. These teaching hospitals also include the Payne Whitney Clinic in Manhattan and the Westchester Division in White Plains, New York
White Plains, New York
White Plains is a city and the county seat of Westchester County, New York, United States. It is located in south-central Westchester, about east of the Hudson River and northwest of Long Island Sound...
. Weill Cornell Medical College is also affiliated with the neighboring Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center, Rockefeller University
Rockefeller University
The Rockefeller University is a private university offering postgraduate and postdoctoral education. It has a strong concentration in the biological sciences. It is also known for producing numerous Nobel laureates...
, and the Hospital for Special Surgery
Hospital for Special Surgery
Hospital for Special Surgery is a hospital in New York City that specializes in orthopedic surgery and the treatment of rheumatologic conditions....
. Many faculty members have joint appointments at these institutions, and Weill Cornell, Rockefeller, and Memorial Sloan–Kettering offer the Tri-Institutional MD–PhD Program to selected entering Cornell medical students. From 1942 to 1979, the campus also housed a Cornell school of nursing.
In addition to the medical center, New York City hosts local offices for some of Cornell's service programs. The Cornell Urban Scholars Program encourages students to pursue public service careers with organizations working with New York City's poorest children, families, and communities. The NYS College of Human Ecology
Cornell University College of Human Ecology
The New York State College of Human Ecology is a statutory college at Cornell University. The college is a unique compilation of studies on consumer science, nutrition, health economics, public policy, human development and textiles, each part of the discipline of human ecology.Students at the...
and the NYS College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
The New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences is a statutory college at Cornell University, a private university located in Ithaca, New York...
provide means for students to reach out to local communities by gardening and building with the Cornell Cooperative Extension. Students with the NYS School of Industrial and Labor Relations'
Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations
The New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations is an industrial relations school at Cornell University, an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, USA...
Extension & Outreach Program make workplace expertise available to organizations, union members, policy makers, and working adults. The College of Engineering's
Cornell University College of Engineering
The College of Engineering is a division of Cornell University that was founded in 1870 as the Sibley College of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanic Arts...
Operations Research Manhattan, in the city's financial district
Financial District, Manhattan
The Financial District of New York City is a neighborhood on the southernmost section of the borough of Manhattan which comprises the offices and headquarters of many of the city's major financial institutions, including the New York Stock Exchange and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York...
, brings together business optimization research and decision support services addressed to both financial applications and public health logistics planning. The College of Architecture, Art, and Planning has a facility on West 17th Street, near Union Square
Union Square (New York City)
Union Square is a public square in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York.It is an important and historic intersection, located where Broadway and the former Bowery Road – now Fourth Avenue – came together in the early 19th century; its name celebrates neither the...
, to provide studio and seminar space for students and faculty.
Qatar campus
Qatar
Qatar , also known as the State of Qatar or locally Dawlat Qaṭar, is a sovereign Arab state, located in the Middle East, occupying the small Qatar Peninsula on the northeasterly coast of the much larger Arabian Peninsula. Its sole land border is with Saudi Arabia to the south, with the rest of its...
is in Education City, near Doha
Doha
Doha is the capital city of the state of Qatar. Located on the Persian Gulf, it had a population of 998,651 in 2008, and is also one of the municipalities of Qatar...
. Opened in September 2004, it was the first American medical school outside the United States. The college is part of Cornell's program to increase its international influence. The College is a joint initiative with the Qatar government, which seeks to improve the country's academic programs and medical care. Along with its full four-year MD program, which mirrors the curriculum taught at Weill Medical College in New York City, the college offers a two-year undergraduate pre-medical
Pre-medical
Pre-medical is a term used to describe a track an undergraduate student in the United States pursues prior to becoming a medical student...
program with a separate admissions process. This undergraduate program opened in September 2002 and was the first coeducation
Coeducation
Mixed-sex education, also known as coeducation or co-education, is the integrated education of male and female persons in the same institution. It is the opposite of single-sex education...
al institute of higher education
Higher education
Higher, post-secondary, tertiary, or third level education refers to the stage of learning that occurs at universities, academies, colleges, seminaries, and institutes of technology...
in Qatar.
The college is partially funded by the Qatar government through the Qatar Foundation
Qatar Foundation
Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development is a government-funded, chartered, non-profit organization in the state of Qatar, founded in 1995 by decree of Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Emir of Qatar and chaired by Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned...
, which contributed $750 million for its construction. The medical center is housed in a large two-story structure designed by Arata Isozaki
Arata Isozaki
Arata Isozaki is a Japanese architect from Ōita. He graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1954. Isozaki worked under Kenzo Tange before establishing his own firm in 1963. He was awarded the RIBA Gold Medal in 1986.In 2005, Arata Isozaki founded the Italian branch of his office: Arata Isozaki &...
. In 2004, the Qatar Foundation announced the construction of a 350-bed Specialty Teaching Hospital near the medical college in Education City. The hospital is currently under construction and is slated to be completed in the next few years.
Other facilities
Cornell University owns and operates many facilities around the world. The Arecibo ObservatoryArecibo Observatory
The Arecibo Observatory is a radio telescope near the city of Arecibo in Puerto Rico. It is operated by SRI International under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation...
in Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
, site of the world's largest single-dish radio telescope
Radio telescope
A radio telescope is a form of directional radio antenna used in radio astronomy. The same types of antennas are also used in tracking and collecting data from satellites and space probes...
, was operated by Cornell under a contract with the National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
from its construction until 2011. The Shoals Marine Laboratory
Shoals Marine Laboratory
Shoals Marine Laboratory is a seasonal marine field station located on Appledore Island, Maine. Appledore Island is the largest of the Isles of Shoals archipelago, a group of rocky islands just offshore of the border between Maine and New Hampshire. The laboratory is cooperatively operated and...
, operated in conjunction with the University of New Hampshire
University of New Hampshire
The University of New Hampshire is a public university in the University System of New Hampshire , United States. The main campus is in Durham, New Hampshire. An additional campus is located in Manchester. With over 15,000 students, UNH is the largest university in New Hampshire. The university is...
, is a seasonal marine field station dedicated to undergraduate education and research on 95 acre (0.4 km²) Appledore Island
Appledore Island
Appledore Island, Maine, is the largest of the Isles of Shoals located about seven miles off the Maine/New Hampshire coast....
off the Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
–New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
coast.
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
. The New York State Agricultural Experiment Station
New York State Agricultural Experiment Station
The New York State Agricultural Experiment Station at Geneva, Ontario County, New York State, is an integral part of the New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University. It is a mission-oriented experiment station with a strong emphasis on applied research...
, operated by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
The New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences is a statutory college at Cornell University, a private university located in Ithaca, New York...
, is in Geneva, New York
Geneva, New York
Geneva is a city in Ontario and Seneca counties in the U.S. state of New York. The population was 13,617 at the 2000 census. Some claim it is named after the city and canton of Geneva in Switzerland. Others believe the name came from confusion over the letters in the word "Seneca" written in cursive...
, 50 miles (80 km) northwest of the main campus. The facility comprises 20 major buildings on 130 acres (0.5 km²) of land as well as more than 700 acres (2.8 km²) of test plots and other lands devoted to horticultural research. It also operates three substations: Vineyard Research Laboratory in Fredonia
Fredonia, New York
Fredonia is a village in Chautauqua County, New York, United States. The population was 11,068 as of 2009.The Village of Fredonia is in the Town of Pomfret south of Lake Erie...
, Hudson Valley Laboratory in Highland
Highland, Ulster County, New York
Highland is a hamlet in Ulster County, New York, United States. The population was 5,060 at the 2000 census.Highland is a community in the Town of Lloyd, on U.S. Route 9W. Routes 44 and 55 run through it as well...
, and the Long Island Horticultural Research Laboratory in Riverhead
Riverhead (town), New York
The town of Riverhead is in Suffolk County, New York, on the north shore of Long Island. The population was 33,506 at the 2010 census. The name signifies that the mouth of the Peconic River is in this town...
.
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions...
, primarily in birds. On April 18, 2005, the lab announced that it had rediscovered the Ivory-billed Woodpecker
Ivory-billed Woodpecker
The Ivory-billed Woodpecker is or was one of the largest woodpeckers in the world, at roughly 20 inches in length and 30 inches in wingspan. It was native to the virgin forests of the southeastern United States...
, long thought to be extinct. The Animal Science Teaching and Research Center in Harford, New York
Harford, New York
Harford is a town in Cortland County, New York, United States. The population was 920 at the 2000 census.The Town of Harford is in the southwest part of Cortland County and is south of the City of Cortland.- History :...
, and the Duck Research Laboratory in Eastport, New York
Eastport, New York
Eastport is a hamlet in Suffolk County, New York, United States. The population was 1,454 at the 2000 census.Eastport straddles the borders of the Towns of Brookhaven and Southampton....
, are resources for information on animal disease control and husbandry. The Arnot Teaching and Research Forest, a 4,075 acre (16.5 km²) forest 20 miles (32.2 km) south of the Ithaca campus, is the primary field location for faculty and student training and research related to professional forestry
Forestry
Forestry is the interdisciplinary profession embracing the science, art, and craft of creating, managing, using, and conserving forests and associated resources in a sustainable manner to meet desired goals, needs, and values for human benefit. Forestry is practiced in plantations and natural stands...
. The mission of the Cornell Biological Field Station in Bridgeport, New York
Bridgeport, New York
Bridgeport is a hamlet located partly in the Town of Sullivan in Madison County, New York and partly in the Town of Cicero in Onondaga County, New York...
, is "to provide a center for long-term ecological research and support the University's educational programs, with special emphasis on freshwater
Freshwater
Fresh water is naturally occurring water on the Earth's surface in ice sheets, ice caps, glaciers, bogs, ponds, lakes, rivers and streams, and underground as groundwater in aquifers and underground streams. Fresh water is generally characterized by having low concentrations of dissolved salts and...
lacustrine
Lake
A lake is a body of relatively still fresh or salt water of considerable size, localized in a basin, that is surrounded by land. Lakes are inland and not part of the ocean and therefore are distinct from lagoons, and are larger and deeper than ponds. Lakes can be contrasted with rivers or streams,...
systems". The Department of Horticulture operates the Homer C. Thompson Vegetable Research Farm and Freeville Organic Research Farm in Freeville, New York
Freeville, New York
Freeville is a village in Tompkins County, New York, United States. The population was 505 at the 2000 census.The Village of Freeville is in the Town of Dryden and is east of Ithaca.-History:Dryden was in the former Central New York Military Tract....
. In addition, the university operates biodiversity laboratories in Punta Cana
Punta Cana
Punta Cana is part of the newly created Punta Cana-Bávaro-Veron-Macao municipal district in La Altagracia, the easternmost province of the Dominican Republic. The area is best known for its beaches and balnearios, which face both the Caribbean and Atlantic, and it has been a popular tourist...
, Dominican Republic
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of La Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries...
, and in the Amazon Rainforest
Amazon Rainforest
The Amazon Rainforest , also known in English as Amazonia or the Amazon Jungle, is a moist broadleaf forest that covers most of the Amazon Basin of South America...
in Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
named the Cornell University Esbaran Amazon Field Laboratory.
The university also maintains offices for study abroad
Study abroad
Studying abroad is the act of a student pursuing educational opportunities in a country other than one's own. This can include primary, secondary and post-secondary students...
and scholarship programs. The Cornell in Washington is a program that allows students to study for a semester in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, holding research and internship positions while earning credit
Credit (education)
A course credit is a unit that gives weighting to the value, level or time requirements of an academic course taken at a school or other educational institution.- United States :...
toward a degree. Cornell in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, operated by the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning
Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning
The College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University was established in 1871 as the School of Architecture with the hiring of Charles Babcock as the first Professor creating the first four-year course of study in architecture in the United States...
, allows students to use the city as a resource for learning architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
, urban studies, and art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
. The College of Human Ecology
Cornell University College of Human Ecology
The New York State College of Human Ecology is a statutory college at Cornell University. The college is a unique compilation of studies on consumer science, nutrition, health economics, public policy, human development and textiles, each part of the discipline of human ecology.Students at the...
offers the Urban Semester Program, an opportunity to take courses and complete an internship in New York City for a semester. As well, the Capital Semester program allows students to intern in the New York state legislature. As New York State's land grant
Land grant
A land grant is a gift of real estate – land or its privileges – made by a government or other authority as a reward for services to an individual, especially in return for military service...
college, Cornell operates a cooperative extension service
Cooperative extension service
The Cooperative Extension Service, also known as the Extension Service of the USDA, is a non-formal educational program implemented in the United States designed to help people use research-based knowledge to improve their lives. The service is provided by the state's designated land-grant...
with 56 offices spread out across the state, each staffed with extension educators who offer programs in five subjects: Agriculture & Food Systems; Children, Youth, & Families; Community & Economic Vitality; Environment & Natural Resources; and Nutrition & Health. Cornell also operates New York's Animal Health Diagnostic Center.
Organization and administration
| College/school founding | |
|---|---|
| College/school | Year founded |
| Undergraduate | |
| NYS College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences The New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences is a statutory college at Cornell University, a private university located in Ithaca, New York... |
1874 |
| College of Architecture, Art, and Planning Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning The College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University was established in 1871 as the School of Architecture with the hiring of Charles Babcock as the first Professor creating the first four-year course of study in architecture in the United States... |
1871 |
| College of Arts and Sciences Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences The College of Arts and Sciences is a division of Cornell University. It has been part of the university since its founding, although its name has changed over time. It grants bachelors degrees, and masters and doctorates through affiliation with the Cornell University Graduate School... |
1865 |
| College of Engineering Cornell University College of Engineering The College of Engineering is a division of Cornell University that was founded in 1870 as the Sibley College of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanic Arts... |
1870 |
| School of Hotel Administration Cornell University School of Hotel Administration The School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University is a specialized business school for hospitality management founded in 1922 as the first four-year intercollegiate school devoted to the field... |
1922 |
| NYS College of Human Ecology Cornell University College of Human Ecology The New York State College of Human Ecology is a statutory college at Cornell University. The college is a unique compilation of studies on consumer science, nutrition, health economics, public policy, human development and textiles, each part of the discipline of human ecology.Students at the... |
1925 |
| NYS School of Industrial and Labor Relations Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations The New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations is an industrial relations school at Cornell University, an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, USA... |
1945 |
| Graduate | |
| Graduate School Cornell University Graduate School The Cornell University Graduate School confers most professional and research master's degrees and doctoral degrees in various fields of study for the university. The departments under which instruction and research take place are housed in Cornell's other schools and colleges. The administrative... |
1909 |
| Cornell Law School Cornell Law School Cornell Law School, located in Ithaca, New York, is a graduate school of Cornell University and one of the five Ivy League law schools. The school confers three law degrees... |
1887 |
| Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management The Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management is the graduate business school of Cornell University, a private Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York. It was founded in 1946 and renamed in 1984 after Samuel Curtis Johnson, founder of S.C... |
1946 |
| Weill Cornell Medical College | 1898 |
| Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences | 1952 |
| NYS College of Veterinary Medicine Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine The New York State College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University was founded in 1894. It was the first statutory college in New York. Before the creation of the college, instruction in veterinary medicine had been part of Cornell's curriculum since the university's founding... |
1894 |
Cornell is a non-profit organization governed by a 64-member board of trustees consisting of both privately and publicly appointed trustees. Three trustees are appointed by the Governor of New York
Governor of New York
The Governor of the State of New York is the chief executive of the State of New York. The governor is the head of the executive branch of New York's state government and the commander-in-chief of the state's military and naval forces. The officeholder is afforded the courtesy title of His/Her...
; one seat is reserved for the eldest lineal descendant of Ezra Cornell; two members from each of the fields of agriculture, business and labor in New York state; eight trustees to be elected from among and by the alumni of the university; two trustees to be elected from among and by the faculty of the university at Ithaca and Geneva; two trustees to be elected from among and by the membership of the university's student body at Ithaca (one undergraduate and one graduate student); and one trustee to be elected from among and by the nonacademic staff and employees of the university at Ithaca and Geneva, 37 trustees at large and finally, the Governor, Temporary President of the Senate
Majority Leader of the New York State Senate
The Majority Leader of the New York State Senate is elected by the majority of the members of the New York State Senate. The position usually coincides with the title of Temporary President of the State Senate, who presides over the session of the State Senate if the Lieutenant Governor of New York...
, Speaker of the Assembly
Speaker of the New York State Assembly
The Speaker of the New York State Assembly is the highest official in the New York State Assembly, customarily elected from the ranks of the majority party....
, and president of the university serve in an ex officio voting capacity. Peter C. Meinig
Peter C. Meinig
Peter C. Meinig is a business executive.Meinig received a BME degree in 1962 from Cornell University and an MBA in 1964 from Harvard University...
has served as the chairman of the board since 2002. The Board elects a President to serve as the chief executive and educational officer. The twelfth and current president, David J. Skorton
David J. Skorton
David Jan Skorton is an American professor of medicine and an academic administrator. He is currently serving as the president of Cornell University.- Education :...
has served since July 2006 and succeeded Jeffrey S. Lehman
Jeffrey S. Lehman
Jeffrey Sean Lehman is an American scholar, lawyer and academic administrator who is currently serving as the chancellor and founding dean of the Peking University School of Transnational Law in Shenzhen, China...
. The Board of Trustees hold four regular meetings each year, and portions of those meetings are subject to the New York State Open Meetings Law.
Cornell consists of nine privately endowed colleges as well as four publicly supported "statutory college
Statutory college
In American higher education, particular to the state of New York, a statutory college or contract college is a college or school that is a component of an independent, private university that has been designated by the state legislature to receive significant, ongoing public funding from the state...
s": the New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, College of Human Ecology, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and College of Veterinary Medicine. These statutory colleges received $131.9 million in SUNY
State University of New York
The State University of New York, abbreviated SUNY , is a system of public institutions of higher education in New York, United States. It is the largest comprehensive system of universities, colleges, and community colleges in the United States, with a total enrollment of 465,000 students, plus...
appropriations in 2010-2011 to support their teaching, research, and service missions, which makes them accountable to SUNY trustees and other state agencies. The budget also includes $3.9 million of state funds for Cornell Cooperative Extension Residents of New York enrolled in these colleges also qualify for discounted tuition. However, Attorney General
New York State Attorney General
The New York State Attorney General is the chief legal officer of the State of New York. The office has been in existence in some form since 1626, under the Dutch colonial government of New York.The current Attorney General is Eric Schneiderman...
Eliot Spitzer
Eliot Spitzer
Eliot Laurence Spitzer is an American lawyer, former Democratic Party politician, and political commentator. He was the co-host of In the Arena, a talk-show and punditry forum broadcast on CNN until CNN cancelled his show in July of 2011...
issued a 2005 opinion asserting that, with respect to their academic activities, statutory colleges should be understood to be private, non-state parties.:1
Cornell is decentralized, with its colleges and schools exercising wide autonomy. Each defines its own academic programs, operates its own admissions
College admissions
University admission or college admissions is the process through which students enter tertiary education at universities and colleges. Systems vary widely from country to country, and sometimes from institution to institution....
and advising programs, and confers its own degrees
Academic degree
An academic degree is a position and title within a college or university that is usually awarded in recognition of the recipient having either satisfactorily completed a prescribed course of study or having conducted a scholarly endeavour deemed worthy of his or her admission to the degree...
. The only university-wide requirements for a baccalaureate
Bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
degree are to pass a swimming test, take two physical education
Physical education
Physical education or gymnastics is a course taken during primary and secondary education that encourages psychomotor learning in a play or movement exploration setting....
courses, and satisfy a writing requirement. A handful of inter-school academic departments offer courses in more than one college. All academic departments are affiliated with at least one college; the last department without such an affiliation, the Cornell Africana Studies and Research Center
Cornell Africana Studies and Research Center
The Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University is an academic unit devoted to the study of the global migrations and reconstruction of African peoples, as well as patterns of linkages to the African continent . ASRC offers around 23 graduate and undergraduate courses each semester...
, merged with the Arts College in July 2011.
Seven schools provide undergraduate programs and an additional seven provide graduate and professional programs. Students pursuing graduate degrees in departments of these schools are enrolled in the Graduate School
Cornell University Graduate School
The Cornell University Graduate School confers most professional and research master's degrees and doctoral degrees in various fields of study for the university. The departments under which instruction and research take place are housed in Cornell's other schools and colleges. The administrative...
. The School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions offers programs for college and high school students, professionals, and other adults. Of the 13,515 undergraduate students, 4,251 (31.5%) are affiliated with the largest college by enrollment, Arts and Sciences
Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences
The College of Arts and Sciences is a division of Cornell University. It has been part of the university since its founding, although its name has changed over time. It grants bachelors degrees, and masters and doctorates through affiliation with the Cornell University Graduate School...
, followed by 3,153 (23.3%) in Agriculture and Life Sciences
Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
The New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences is a statutory college at Cornell University, a private university located in Ithaca, New York...
and 2,680 (19.8%) in Engineering
Cornell University College of Engineering
The College of Engineering is a division of Cornell University that was founded in 1870 as the Sibley College of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanic Arts...
. By student enrollment, the smallest of the seven undergraduate colleges is Architecture, Art, and Planning
Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning
The College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University was established in 1871 as the School of Architecture with the hiring of Charles Babcock as the first Professor creating the first four-year course of study in architecture in the United States...
, with 515 (3.8%) students.
Several other universities have used Cornell as their model, including Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, the University of Sydney
University of Sydney
The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...
in Australia and the University of Birmingham
University of Birmingham
The University of Birmingham is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Birmingham Medical School and Mason Science College . Birmingham was the first Redbrick university to gain a charter and thus...
in the United Kingdom; the latter on the recommendation of one of its financiers, Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist, businessman, and entrepreneur who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century...
, who was a Cornell Trustee.
The university also operates eCornell
ECornell
eCornell is an online learning company established and wholly owned by Cornell University, an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, U.S...
, which offers both certificate programs and professional development courses online. In addition to being New York's land-grant college, Cornell is also is a partner in New York's sea-grant program, is the hub of the Northeast's sun-grant program, and is a part of New York's space-grant consortium.
In 2009, Cornell ranked third among universities in the U.S. in fund-raising, collecting $
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
446.75 million in private support. In addition to the central University development staff located in Ithaca and New York City, each college and program has its own staffed fundraising program. In 2006, Cornell launched a $4 billion fundraising campaign, which reached $3 billion in November 2010.
Academics
Cornell is a large, primarily residential research university with a majority of enrollments in undergraduate programs. The university has been accreditedAccreditation
Accreditation is a process in which certification of competency, authority, or credibility is presented.Organizations that issue credentials or certify third parties against official standards are themselves formally accredited by accreditation bodies ; hence they are sometimes known as "accredited...
by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education since 1921. Cornell operates on a 4–1–4 academic calendar with the fall term beginning in late August and ending in early December, a three week winter session in January, and the spring term beginning in late January and ending in early May.
The university awarded the world’s first degree in journalism
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...
, the nation’s first university degree in veterinary medicine
Veterinary medicine
Veterinary Medicine is the branch of science that deals with the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease, disorder and injury in non-human animals...
, and the first doctorates in electrical engineering
Electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...
and industrial engineering
Industrial engineering
Industrial engineering is a branch of engineering dealing with the optimization of complex processes or systems. It is concerned with the development, improvement, implementation and evaluation of integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information, equipment, energy, materials, analysis...
. It also established the first four-year schools of hotel administration and industrial and labor relations. Cornell was the first U.S. university to offer a major in American studies, and it was the first university to teach modern Far Eastern languages.
Admissions
For the undergraduate class of 2014, Cornell admitted a total of 6,673 students out of 36,338 applicants, for an acceptance rate of 18%. Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences admitted less than 14% of applicants for the class of 2015. For the students enrolling in the class of 2014, 89% of were in the top 10% of their class. For the undergraduate class of 2013, the admission rate was 19.1%. For the undergraduate class of 2012, the admission rate was 20.4%. Of those admitted, the average SATSAT
The SAT Reasoning Test is a standardized test for college admissions in the United States. The SAT is owned, published, and developed by the College Board, a nonprofit organization in the United States. It was formerly developed, published, and scored by the Educational Testing Service which still...
Verbal score was 700, while the average SAT Math was a 720. Also, 92% of admitted students for the Class of 2011 were in the top 10% of their graduating high school class. Cornell enrolls students from all 50 U.S. states and more than 120 countries. The Class of 2010 has representatives from all states. As of Fall 2005, 28% of undergraduate students identified themselves as members of ethnic minority group
Minority group
A minority is a sociological group within a demographic. The demographic could be based on many factors from ethnicity, gender, wealth, power, etc. The term extends to numerous situations, and civilizations within history, despite the misnomer of minorities associated with a numerical statistic...
s. Legacy applicants receive a slight advantage in the admission process.
In 2005, the Graduate School
Cornell University Graduate School
The Cornell University Graduate School confers most professional and research master's degrees and doctoral degrees in various fields of study for the university. The departments under which instruction and research take place are housed in Cornell's other schools and colleges. The administrative...
accepted 21.6% of applicants, the Law School
Cornell Law School
Cornell Law School, located in Ithaca, New York, is a graduate school of Cornell University and one of the five Ivy League law schools. The school confers three law degrees...
accepted 20.6%, and the Veterinary School
Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine
The New York State College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University was founded in 1894. It was the first statutory college in New York. Before the creation of the college, instruction in veterinary medicine had been part of Cornell's curriculum since the university's founding...
accepted 10.9%. The Weill Cornell Medical School
Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Weill Cornell Medical College is the biomedical research unit and medical school of Cornell University. The medical college is currently located at 1300 York Avenue, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, along with the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences...
accepted 4.3%. In 2010, the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management
Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management
The Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management is the graduate business school of Cornell University, a private Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York. It was founded in 1946 and renamed in 1984 after Samuel Curtis Johnson, founder of S.C...
enrolled 10.1% of its applicants for its two-year MBA program.
Financial aid
Starting in the 1950s Cornell coordinated with other Ivy League schools to provide a consistent set of financial aid. However, in 1989, a consent decree to end a Justice Department antitrust investigation ended such coordination. Even after the decree, all Ivy League schools continue to award aid on financial need without offering any athletic scholarships. In December 2010, Cornell announced a policy of matching any grant component of financial aid offers from other Ivy League schools, MIT, Duke University or Stanford, if an accepted applicant is trying to decide between Cornell and those other schools.
On January 31, 2008, Cornell announced a new financial aid initiative to be phased in over the following two years. In the first year, 2008–09, Cornell replaced need-based loans with scholarships for undergraduate students from families with incomes under $60,000 and capped such loans annually at $3,000 for students from families with incomes between $60,000 and $120,000. The following year, 2009–10, the program improved by replacing loan with scholarships for students from families with incomes up to $75,000, and capped annual loans at $3,000 for students from families with income between $75,000 and $120,000. For families above $120,000, need-based loans were capped at $7,500 per year. The initiative costs an additional $14 million per year to fully implement. Although Cornell's endowment dropped 27% in the second half of 2008, its President announced that the financial aid initiative will continue by withdrawing an additional $35 million from the endowment for undergraduate financial aid in 2009–10. Cornell is seeking $125 million in gifts to support the financial aid initiative. In 2010, 1,647 of the 3,181 full-time freshmen enrolled were found to have financial need (40%). Of these, Cornell could meet the full financial aid needs of all 1,647 freshmen. Cornell's average undergraduate student's indebtedness at graduation is $21,549.
International programs
Cornell offers undergraduate curricula with international focuses, including the Africana StudiesAfrican studies
African studies is the study of Africa, especially the cultures and societies of Africa .The field includes the study of:Culture of Africa, History of Africa , Anthropology of Africa , Politics of Africa, Economy of Africa African studies is the study of Africa, especially the cultures and...
, French Studies, German Studies, Jewish Studies
Jewish studies
Jewish studies is an academic discipline centered on the study of Jews and Judaism. Jewish studies is interdisciplinary and combines aspects of history , religious studies, archeology, sociology, languages , political science, area studies, women's studies, and ethnic studies...
, Latino Studies, Near Eastern Studies, Romance Studies
Romance studies
Romance studies is an umbrella academic discipline that covers the study of the languages, literatures, and cultures of areas that speak a Romance language. Romance studies departments usually include the study of Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese...
, and Russian Literature
Russian literature
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its émigrés, and to the Russian-language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union...
majors. Cornell was the first university to teach modern Far Eastern languages. In addition to traditional academic programs, Cornell students may study abroad on any of six continents.
The Asian Studies
Asian studies
Asian studies, a term used usually in the United States for Oriental studies and is concerned with the Asian peoples, their cultures, languages, history and politics...
major, South Asia Program, South East Asia Program and China and Asia-Pacific Studies (CAPS) major provide opportunities for students and researchers in Asia. Cornell has an agreement with Peking University
Peking University
Peking University , colloquially known in Chinese as Beida , is a major research university located in Beijing, China, and a member of the C9 League. It is the first established modern national university of China. It was founded as Imperial University of Peking in 1898 as a replacement of the...
allowing students in the CAPS major to spend a semester in Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
. Similarly, the College of Engineering
Cornell University College of Engineering
The College of Engineering is a division of Cornell University that was founded in 1870 as the Sibley College of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanic Arts...
has an agreement to exchange faculty and graduate students with Tsinghua University
Tsinghua University
Tsinghua University , colloquially known in Chinese as Qinghua, is a university in Beijing, China. The school is one of the nine universities of the C9 League. It was established in 1911 under the name "Tsinghua Xuetang" or "Tsinghua College" and was renamed the "Tsinghua School" one year later...
in Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
, and the School of Hotel Administration
Cornell University School of Hotel Administration
The School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University is a specialized business school for hospitality management founded in 1922 as the first four-year intercollegiate school devoted to the field...
has a joint master's program with Nanyang Technological University
Nanyang Technological University
Nanyang Technological University is one of the two largest public universities in Singapore with the biggest campus in Singapore and the world's largest engineering college. Its lush 200-hectare Yunnan Garden campus was the Youth Olympic Village of the world's first 2010 Summer Youth Olympics in...
in Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
. The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
The New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences is a statutory college at Cornell University, a private university located in Ithaca, New York...
has signed an agreement with Japan's National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences, as well as the University of the Philippines, Los Baños
University of the Philippines, Los Baños
The University of the Philippines Los Baños is a public university located in the towns of Los Baños and Bay in the province of Laguna, some 64 kilometers southeast of Manila...
, to engage in joint research and exchange graduate students and faculty members. It also cooperates in agricultural research with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research
Indian Council of Agricultural Research
Indian Council of Agricultural Research , New Delhi, India is an autonomous organisation under the Department of Agricultural Research and Education, Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India...
.
In the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
, Cornell's efforts focus on biology and medicine. The Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar
Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar
The Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar was established on April 9, 2001, when Cornell University signed an agreement with the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development to bring a branch of its medical school to Education City, Qatar, near the capital of Doha...
trains new doctors to improve health services in the region. The university is also developing the Bridging the Rift Center, a "Library of Life" (or database
Database
A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...
of all living systems) on the border of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
and Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
, in collaboration with those two countries and Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
. Cornell has partnered with Queen's University
Queen's University
Queen's University, , is a public research university located in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Founded on 16 October 1841, the university pre-dates the founding of Canada by 26 years. Queen's holds more more than of land throughout Ontario as well as Herstmonceux Castle in East Sussex, England...
in Canada to offer a joint Executive MBA. The innovative program includes both on-campus and videoconferencing
Videoconferencing
Videoconferencing is the conduct of a videoconference by a set of telecommunication technologies which allow two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmissions simultaneously...
-based, interactive virtual classroom sessions. Graduates of the program earn both a Cornell MBA and a Queen's MBA.
Cornell University is member of the United Nations Academic Impact
United Nations Academic Impact
The United Nations Academic Impact, also known by its acronym UNAI, is a United Nations initiative to align institutions of higher education, scholarship and research with the United Nations and with each other....
aligning institutions of higher education to the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
and promoting international cooperation.
Rankings
Cornell is consistently ranked among the top twenty universities in the world in a variety of rankings. In 2011, Cornell ranked 4th in the Webometrics Ranking of World UniversitiesWebometrics Ranking of World Universities
The Webometrics Ranking of World Universities, also known as Ranking Web of World Universities, is ranking system for the world's universities based on a composite indicator that takes into account both the volume of the Web contents and the visibility and impact of these web publications...
(which ranks top 12000 universities of the world based on size, web visibility, rich files and scholar), 15th in the QS World University Rankings
QS World University Rankings
The QS World University Rankings is a ranking of the world’s top 500 universities by Quacquarelli Symonds using a method that has published annually since 2004....
and 20th in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings
Times Higher Education World University Rankings
The Times Higher Education World University Rankings is an international ranking of universities published by the British magazine Times Higher Education in partnership with Thomson Reuters, which provided citation database information...
. (in 2010 Times Higher Education World University Rankings
Times Higher Education World University Rankings
The Times Higher Education World University Rankings is an international ranking of universities published by the British magazine Times Higher Education in partnership with Thomson Reuters, which provided citation database information...
and QS World University Rankings
QS World University Rankings
The QS World University Rankings is a ranking of the world’s top 500 universities by Quacquarelli Symonds using a method that has published annually since 2004....
parted ways to produce separate rankings). The university ranked 15th in the 2011 U.S. News & World Report
U.S. News & World Report
U.S. News & World Report is an American news magazine published from Washington, D.C. Along with Time and Newsweek it was for many years a leading news weekly, focusing more than its counterparts on political, economic, health and education stories...
National Universities ranking (tied with Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
), tied for 6th with Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
and Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
in the 2011 U.S. News & World Report
U.S. News & World Report
U.S. News & World Report is an American news magazine published from Washington, D.C. Along with Time and Newsweek it was for many years a leading news weekly, focusing more than its counterparts on political, economic, health and education stories...
High School Counselor rankings, and 13th globally in an academic ranking of world universities by Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Shanghai Jiao Tong University or SJTU), sometimes referred to as Shanghai Jiaotong University , is a top public research university located in Shanghai, China. Shanghai Jiao Tong University is known as one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in China...
in 2011. Cornell was ranked 38th nationally and sixth among Ivy League
Ivy League
The Ivy League is an athletic conference comprising eight private institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States. The conference name is also commonly used to refer to those eight schools as a group...
universities in The Washington Monthly
The Washington Monthly
The Washington Monthly is a bimonthly nonprofit magazine of United States politics and government that is based in Washington, D.C.The magazine's founder is Charles Peters, who started the magazine in 1969 and continues to write the "Tilting at Windmills" column in each issue. Paul Glastris, former...
s 2010 ranking of universities' contributions to research, community service, and social mobility
Social mobility
Social mobility refers to the movement of people in a population from one social class or economic level to another. It typically refers to vertical mobility -- movement of individuals or groups up from one socio-economic level to another, often by changing jobs or marrying; but can also refer to...
. In 2006, The Princeton Review
The Princeton Review
The Princeton Review is an American-based standardized test preparation and admissions consulting company. The Princeton Review operates in 41 states and 22 countries across the globe. It offers test preparation for standardized aptitude tests such as the SAT and advice regarding college...
reported that Cornell ranked ninth as a "dream college" for high school students and their parents, however the school is not featured in the 2011 top ten list. Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
named Cornell the 'Hottest Ivy' in its 2007 listing of America's 25 Hot Schools. Instead of using the traditional school ranking methods, Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
offers a snapshot of today's most interesting colleges according to high school counselors, admissions officers, consultants, students, and parents, who noted Cornell for its emphasis on "problem-solving as well as scholarly debate" and "variety on campus" among other things. Forbes ranked Cornell 51st in 2011, based on student criteria.
Many of Cornell's schools have been consistently ranked as some of the top schools in the United States. In its annual edition of "America's Best Architecture & Design Schools", the journal DesignIntelligence has consistently ranked Cornell's Bachelor of Architecture program as number one in the nation (2000-2002, 2005-2007, and 2009-2011). In the 2011 survey, the program ranked first and the Master of Architecture program ranked sixth. In 2011 and 2012, Design Intelligence ranked Cornell's Master of Landscape Architecture program 4th in the nation with the undergraduate program placing 8th for the same two years. In 2011, US News and World Report ranked Cornell's Sloan Program in Health Administration 14th in the nation. Among business schools in the United States, the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management
Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management
The Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management is the graduate business school of Cornell University, a private Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York. It was founded in 1946 and renamed in 1984 after Samuel Curtis Johnson, founder of S.C...
was ranked 7th by BusinessWeek
BusinessWeek
Bloomberg Businessweek, commonly and formerly known as BusinessWeek, is a weekly business magazine published by Bloomberg L.P. It is currently headquartered in New York City.- History :...
in 2004, 9th by Forbes
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...
in 2005, 14th by U.S. News in 2008, and 18th by The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
in 2005. Worldwide, the school was ranked 17th by The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
in 2005 and 36th by the Financial Times
Financial Times
The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
in 2006. U.S. News ranked the Weill Cornell Medical School as the 15th best in the United States in its 2007 edition. The College of Veterinary Medicine
Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine
The New York State College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University was founded in 1894. It was the first statutory college in New York. Before the creation of the college, instruction in veterinary medicine had been part of Cornell's curriculum since the university's founding...
was ranked first among national veterinary medicine graduate schools. The Cornell Law School
Cornell Law School
Cornell Law School, located in Ithaca, New York, is a graduate school of Cornell University and one of the five Ivy League law schools. The school confers three law degrees...
was ranked as the 12th best graduate law program among national universities. In 2005, The National Law Journal
The National Law Journal
The National Law Journal, a U.S. periodical founded in 1978, reports legal information of national importance to attorneys, including federal circuit court decisions, verdicts, practitioners' columns, coverage of legislative issues and legal news for the business and private sectors.The...
reported that Cornell Law had the sixth highest placement rate at the top 50 law firms in the U.S. among law schools with recent graduates.
Among graduate engineering programs, Cornell was ranked 9th in the United States by U.S. News in 2008. In 2006, Cornell was ranked 1st in the United States and 4th in the world in producing the most graduates who went on to receive engineering or natural science Ph.D.'s at American universities. In its 2006, 2007, and 2008 ranking of undergraduate engineering programs at universities in the United States, U.S. News placed Cornell 1st in engineering physics
Engineering physics
Engineering physics is the study of the combined disciplines of physics, engineering and mathematics in order to develop an understanding of the interrelationships of these three disciplines. Fundamental physics is combined with problem solving and engineering skills, which then has broad...
. In 1954, Conrad Hilton
Conrad Hilton
Conrad Nicholson Hilton was an American businessman and investor. He is well known for being the founder of the Hilton Hotels chain.-Early life:Hilton was born in San Antonio, New Mexico...
called the Cornell School of Hotel Administration
Cornell University School of Hotel Administration
The School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University is a specialized business school for hospitality management founded in 1922 as the first four-year intercollegiate school devoted to the field...
"the greatest hotel school in the world." According to the latest ranking of National Research Council
United States National Research Council
The National Research Council of the USA is the working arm of the United States National Academies, carrying out most of the studies done in their names.The National Academies include:* National Academy of Sciences...
in 1995, Cornell ranks sixth nationally in the number of graduate programs in the top ten in their fields. Cornell had 19 ranked in the top 10 in terms of overall academic quality. Also National Research Council
United States National Research Council
The National Research Council of the USA is the working arm of the United States National Academies, carrying out most of the studies done in their names.The National Academies include:* National Academy of Sciences...
ranked the quality of faculties as 5th in Arts and Humanities, 6th in Mathematics and Physical Sciences, and 5th in Engineering.
Library
The Cornell University Library is the 11th largest academic library in the United States, ranked by number of volumes held. Organized into 20 divisions, in 2005 it held 7.5 million printed volumes in open stacks, 8.2 million microfilms and microfiches, and a total of 440,000 maps, motion pictures, DVDs, sound recordings, and computer files in its collections, in addition to extensive digital resources and the University Archives. It was the first among all U.S. colleges and universities to allow undergraduates to borrow books from its libraries. In 2006, The Princeton Review
The Princeton Review
The Princeton Review is an American-based standardized test preparation and admissions consulting company. The Princeton Review operates in 41 states and 22 countries across the globe. It offers test preparation for standardized aptitude tests such as the SAT and advice regarding college...
ranked it as the 11th best college library,
and it climbed to 6th best in 2009. The library plays an active role in furthering online archiving of scientific and historical documents. arXiv
ArXiv
The arXiv |Chi]], χ) is an archive for electronic preprints of scientific papers in the fields of mathematics, physics, astronomy, computer science, quantitative biology, statistics, and quantitative finance which can be accessed online. In many fields of mathematics and physics, almost all...
, an e-print archive created at Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security , located in Los Alamos, New Mexico...
by Paul Ginsparg
Paul Ginsparg
Paul Ginsparg is a physicist widely known for his development of the ArXiv.org e-print archive and for contributions to theoretical physics.-Career in physics:...
, is operated and primarily funded by Cornell as part of the library's services. The archive has changed the way many physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
s and mathematician
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
s communicate, making the e-print a viable and popular means of announcing new research.
Press and scholarly publications
The Cornell University Press, established in 1869 but inactive from 1884 to 1930, was the first university publishingPublishing
Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...
enterprise in the United States. Today, the press is one of the country's largest university press
University press
A university press is an academic, nonprofit publishing house that is typically affiliated with a large research university, and publishes work that has been reviewed by scholars in the field. It produces mainly scholarly works...
es. It produces approximately 150 nonfiction titles each year in various disciplines including anthropology, Asian studies, biological sciences, classics, history, industrial relations, literary criticism and theory, natural history, philosophy, politics and international relations, veterinary science, and women's studies.
Cornell's academic units and student groups also publish a number of scholarly journals. Faculty-led publications include the Johnson School's Administrative Science Quarterly
Administrative Science Quarterly
Administrative Science Quarterly is an academic journal covering the broad field of organizational studies. The journal was founded in 1956 and is published by SAGE Publications for the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University...
, the ILR School's Industrial and Labor Relations Review
Industrial and Labor Relations Review
Industrial and Labor Relations Review is a publication of the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. It is an interdisciplinary journal publishing original research on all aspects of industrial relations...
, the Arts and Sciences Philosophy Department's The Philosophical Review
The Philosophical Review
The Philosophical Review is a quarterly journal of philosophy edited by the faculty of the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University and published by Duke University Press . The journal publishes original work in all areas of analytic philosophy, but emphasizes material that is of general...
, the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning's Journal of Architecture
Cornell Journal of Architecture
The Cornell Journal of Architecture is a critical academic journal of architecture and urbanism produced by the Department of Architecture at the Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. The journal was established in 1981 and is edited by architecture students with guidance...
, and the Law School's Journal of Empirical Legal Studies
Journal of Empirical Legal Studies
The Journal of Empirical Legal Studies is an academic journal that covers research on the law, legal procedure, and legal theory. The journal was established in 2004 and is published by Wiley-Blackwell in collaboration with the Cornell Law School. The journal has a 2010 impact factor of 1.565, and...
. Student-led scholarly publications include the Law Review
Cornell Law Review
The Cornell Law Review is the flagship legal journal of Cornell Law School. Originally published in 1915 as the Cornell Law Quarterly, the journal features scholarship in all fields of law. Notably, past issues of the Cornell Law Review have included articles by Supreme Court justices Robert H....
, the International Law Journal
Cornell International Law Journal
The Cornell International Law Journal is one of the oldest international law journals in the United States. It was founded in 1967 by members of the Cornell Society of International Law at Cornell Law School...
, the Journal of Law and Public Policy
Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy
The Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy is a law review published by students at Cornell Law School, First published in July 1992, JLPP publishes articles, commentaries, book reviews, and student notes that explore the intersections of law, government, public policy, and the social sciences,...
, the International Affairs Review
Cornell International Affairs Review
The Cornell International Affairs Review is a biannual peer-reviewed student-run academic journal published by Cornell University. It covers studies of international relations, international trade and finance, human rights, diplomacy, culture, public health and technology, geopolitics, and...
, the HR Review
Cornell HR Review
The Cornell HR Review is an online journal of human resources management scholarship published independently by graduate students at Cornell University.-History:...
, and the Business Review.
Research
Cornell, a research university, is ranked fourth in the world in producing the largest number of graduates who go on to pursue PhDs in engineeringEngineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
or the natural science
Natural science
The natural sciences are branches of science that seek to elucidate the rules that govern the natural world by using empirical and scientific methods...
s at American institutions, as well as fifth in the world in producing graduates who pursue PhDs at American institutions in any field. Research is a central element of the university's mission; in 2009 Cornell spent $
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
671 million
Million
One million or one thousand thousand, is the natural number following 999,999 and preceding 1,000,001. The word is derived from the early Italian millione , from mille, "thousand", plus the augmentative suffix -one.In scientific notation, it is written as or just 106...
on science and engineering research and development, the 16th highest in the United States.
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
that make up, respectively, 51.4% and 30.7% of all federal investment in the university. Cornell was on the top-ten list of U.S. universities receiving the most patent
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
s in 2003, and was one of the nation's top five institutions in forming start-up companies. In 2004–05, Cornell received 200 invention disclosures, filed 203 U.S. patent applications, completed 77 commercial license agreements, and distributed royalties
Royalties
Royalties are usage-based payments made by one party to another for the right to ongoing use of an asset, sometimes an intellectual property...
of more than $4.1 million to Cornell units and inventors.
Since 1962, Cornell has been involved in unmanned missions to Mars
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
. In the 21st century, Cornell had a hand in the Mars Exploration Rover Mission
Mars Exploration Rover
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Mission is an ongoing robotic space mission involving two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, exploring the planet Mars...
. Cornell's Steve Squyres
Steve Squyres
Steven W. Squyres is the Goldwin Smith Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. His research area is in planetary sciences, with a focus on large solid bodies in the solar system such as the terrestrial planets and the moons of the Jovian planets. Squyres is principal...
, Principal Investigator for the Athena Science Payload, led the selection of the landing zones and requested data collection features for the Spirit
Spirit rover
Spirit, MER-A , is a robotic rover on Mars, active from 2004 to 2010. It was one of two rovers of NASA's ongoing Mars Exploration Rover Mission. It landed successfully on Mars at 04:35 Ground UTC on January 4, 2004, three weeks before its twin, Opportunity , landed on the other side of the planet...
and Opportunity rover
Opportunity rover
Opportunity, MER-B , is a robotic rover on the planet Mars, active since 2004. It is the remaining rover in NASA's ongoing Mars Exploration Rover Mission...
s. Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center located in the San Gabriel Valley area of Los Angeles County, California, United States. The facility is headquartered in the city of Pasadena on the border of La Cañada Flintridge and Pasadena...
engineers took those requests and designed the rovers to meet them. The rovers, both of which have operated long past their original life expectancies, are responsible for the discoveries that were awarded 2004 Breakthrough of the Year honors by Science
Science (journal)
Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is one of the world's top scientific journals....
. Control of the Mars rovers has shifted between NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech
California Institute of Technology
The California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering...
and Cornell's Space Sciences Building. Further, Cornell researchers discovered the rings
Rings of Uranus
The planet Uranus has a system of rings intermediate in complexity between the more extensive set around Saturn and the simpler systems around Jupiter and Neptune. The rings of Uranus were discovered on March 10, 1977, by James L. Elliot, Edward W. Dunham, and Douglas J. Mink...
around the planet Uranus
Uranus
Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It has the third-largest planetary radius and fourth-largest planetary mass in the Solar System. It is named after the ancient Greek deity of the sky Uranus , the father of Cronus and grandfather of Zeus...
, and Cornell built and operates the world's largest and most sensitive radiotelescope
Arecibo Observatory
The Arecibo Observatory is a radio telescope near the city of Arecibo in Puerto Rico. It is operated by SRI International under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation...
located in Arecibo, Puerto Rico
Arecibo, Puerto Rico
Arecibo is a municipality in the northern midwest coast of Puerto Rico and located by the Atlantic Ocean, north of Utuado and Ciales; east of Hatillo; and west of Barceloneta, and Florida. Arecibo is spread over 18 wards and Arecibo Pueblo...
.
The Automotive Crash Injury Research project was begun in 1952 by John O. Moore at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory
Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory
Calspan Corporation is a science and technology company originally founded in 1943 as part of the Research Laboratory of the Curtiss-Wright Airplane Division at Buffalo, New York. Calspan consists of 5 divisions: Flight Research, Transonic Wind Tunnel, Systems Engineering, Transportation Sciences...
, which spun off in 1972 as Calspan Corporation. It pioneered the use of crash test
Crash test
A crash test is a form of destructive testing usually performed in order to ensure safe design standards in crashworthiness and crash compatibility for various modes of transportation or related systems and components.- Types :...
ing, originally using corpses rather than dummies
Crash test dummy
Crash test dummies are full-scale anthropomorphic test devices that simulate the dimensions, weight proportions and articulation of the human body, and are usually instrumented to record data about the dynamic behavior of the ATD in simulated vehicle impacts...
. The project discovered that improved door locks, energy-absorbing steering wheels, padded dashboards, and seat belts could prevent an extraordinary percentage of injuries. The project led Liberty Mutual
Liberty Mutual
Liberty Mutual Group, more commonly known by the name of its primary line of business Liberty Mutual, is a diversified global insurer and the third largest property and casualty insurer in the United States based on 2010 net written premium. It is the 82nd company on the Fortune 500 list for 2011...
to fund the building of a demonstration Cornell Safety Car
Cornell Safety Car
The Cornell Safety Car was produced by the Automotive Crash Injury Research project, begun in 1952 by John O. Moore at the Cornell Aeronautical Research Laboratories at Cornell University. It pioneered the first-ever use of crash testing...
in 1956, which received national publicity and influenced carmakers. Carmakers soon started their own crash-test laboratories and gradually adopted many of the Cornell innovations. Other ideas, such as rear-facing passenger seats, never found favor with carmakers or the public.
In 1984, the National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
began work on establishing five new supercomputer
Supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling A supercomputer is a...
centers, including the Cornell Center for Advanced Computing
Cornell Theory Center
The Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing , housed at Franklin H.T. Rhodes Hall on the campus of Cornell University, is one of five original centers in the National Science Foundation's Supercomputer Centers Program...
, to provide high-speed computing resources for research within the United States. In 1985, a team from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications is an American state-federal partnership to develop and deploy national-scale cyberinfrastructure that advances science and engineering. NCSA operates as a unit of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign but it provides high-performance...
began the development of NSFNet
NSFNet
The National Science Foundation Network was a program of coordinated, evolving projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation beginning in 1985 to promote advanced research and education networking in the United States...
, a TCP/IP-based computer network that could connect to the ARPANET
ARPANET
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network , was the world's first operational packet switching network and the core network of a set that came to compose the global Internet...
, at the Cornell Center for Advanced Computing and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...
. This high-speed network, unrestricted to academic users, became a backbone to which regional networks would be connected. Initially a 56-kbit/s network, traffic on the network grew exponentially; the links were upgraded to 1.5 Mbit/s T1s
Digital Signal 1
Digital signal 1 is a T-carrier signaling scheme devised by Bell Labs. DS1 is a widely used standard in telecommunications in North America and Japan to transmit voice and data between devices. E1 is used in place of T1 outside North America, Japan, and South Korea...
in 1988 and to 45 Mbit/s in 1991. The NSFNet was a major milestone in the development of the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
and its rapid growth coincided with the development of the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
.
Cornell scientists have researched the fundamental particles of nature for more than 70 years. Cornell physicists, such as Hans Bethe
Hans Bethe
Hans Albrecht Bethe was a German-American nuclear physicist, and Nobel laureate in physics for his work on the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis. A versatile theoretical physicist, Bethe also made important contributions to quantum electrodynamics, nuclear physics, solid-state physics and...
, contributed not only to the foundations of nuclear physics but also participated in the Manhattan Project
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...
(see also: List of Cornell Manhattan Project people). In the 1930s, Cornell built the second cyclotron
Cyclotron
In technology, a cyclotron is a type of particle accelerator. In physics, the cyclotron frequency or gyrofrequency is the frequency of a charged particle moving perpendicularly to the direction of a uniform magnetic field, i.e. a magnetic field of constant magnitude and direction...
in the United States. In the 1950s, Cornell physicists became the first to study synchrotron radiation
Synchrotron radiation
The electromagnetic radiation emitted when charged particles are accelerated radially is called synchrotron radiation. It is produced in synchrotrons using bending magnets, undulators and/or wigglers...
. During the 1990s, the Cornell Electron Storage Ring
Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source
The Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-based Sciences and Education is a particle accelerator facility located in Wilson Laboratory on the Cornell University campus in Ithaca, NY. CLASSE formed from the merger of the Cornell High-Energy Synchrotron Source and the Laboratory for...
, located beneath Alumni Field, was the world's highest-luminosity electron-positron collider. After building the synchrotron at Cornell, Robert R. Wilson
Robert R. Wilson
Robert Rathbun Wilson was an American physicist who was a group leader of the Manhattan Project, a sculptor, and an architect of Fermi National Laboratory , where he was also the director from 1967–1978....
took a leave of absence to become the founding director of Fermilab
Fermilab
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory , located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a US Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics...
, which involved designing and building the largest accelerator in the United States. Cornell's accelerator and high-energy physics groups are involved in the design of the proposed International Linear Collider
International Linear Collider
The International Linear Collider is a proposed linear particle accelerator. It is planned to have a collision energy of 500 GeV initially, and, if approved after the project has published its Technical Design Report, planned for 2012, could be completed in the late 2010s. A later upgrade to 1000...
and plan to participate in its construction and operation. The International Linear Collider, to be completed in the late 2010s, will complement the Large Hadron Collider
Large Hadron Collider
The Large Hadron Collider is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It is expected to address some of the most fundamental questions of physics, advancing the understanding of the deepest laws of nature....
and shed light on questions such as the identity of dark matter
Dark matter
In astronomy and cosmology, dark matter is matter that neither emits nor scatters light or other electromagnetic radiation, and so cannot be directly detected via optical or radio astronomy...
and the existence of extra dimensions.
In the area of humanities and social sciences, Cornell is best known for being one of the world's greatest centers for the study of Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...
. The Southeast Asia Program (SEAP) at Cornell is designated as a National Resource Center
National Resource Center
The National Resource Center Program of the U.S. Department of Education provides funding grants to American universities to establish, strengthen, and operate language and area or international studies centers that will be national resources for teaching any modern foreign language.Also known as...
(NRC) by the United States Department of Education 2010–2014. Therefore, the SEAP is nationally prominent in promoting advanced foreign language training, area and international knowledge in the liberal arts and applied discipline focused on Southeast Asia. The George McTurnan Kahin Center for Advanced Research on Southeast Asia is located in the historic "Treman House." The house was built by Robert Henry Treman, the son of an enterprising local family and the first member of that family to attend Cornell University and be elected to its board of trustees. The George McTurnan Kahin
George McTurnan Kahin
George McTurnan KahinSometimes referred to as George Kahin or George McT. Kahin. Some, but fewer, sources may also cite him as George M. Kahin. was an American historian and political scientist. He was one of the leading experts on Southeast Asia and a critic of United States involvement in the...
Center is home to SEAP graduate students, visiting fellows and scholars, faculty members, and SEAP's Publication and Outreach offices.
Activities
Cornell Catholic Community
The Cornell Catholic Community is the Catholic organization and parish at Cornell University, providing worship services and community for Catholic students...
is the largest Catholic student organization on campus. Student organizations also include a myriad of musical groups that play everything from classical, jazz, to ethnic styles in addition to the Big Red Marching Band, which performs regularly at football games and other campus events. Organized in 1868, the oldest Cornell student organization is the Cornell University Glee Club
Cornell University Glee Club
The Cornell University Glee Club is the oldest student organization at Cornell University, having been organized shortly after the first students arrived on campus in 1868. The CUGC is a sixty-member chorus for male voices, with repertoire including classical, folk, 20th century music, and...
. The university is home to two secret honor societies called Sphinx Head
Sphinx Head
The Sphinx Head Society is the oldest senior honor society at Cornell University. Sphinx Head recognizes Cornell senior men and women who have demonstrated respectable strength of character on top of a dedication to leadership and service at Cornell University...
and Quill and Dagger
Quill and Dagger
Quill and Dagger is a senior honor society at Cornell University. It is often recognized as one of the most prominent collegiate societies of its type, along with Skull and Bones of Yale University...
that have maintained a presence on campus for well over 120 years. It also has a Student Innovation Group, a think-tank dedicated to improving student life on campus.
Cornell hosts a large fraternity and sorority system, with 70 chapters involving 33% of male and 24% of female undergraduates. Alpha Phi Alpha
Alpha Phi Alpha
Alpha Phi Alpha is the first Inter-Collegiate Black Greek Letter fraternity. It was founded on December 4, 1906 at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Its founders are known as the "Seven Jewels". Alpha Phi Alpha developed a model that was used by the many Black Greek Letter Organizations ...
, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter
Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write the Greek language since at least 730 BC . The alphabet in its classical and modern form consists of 24 letters ordered in sequence from alpha to omega...
organization established for African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
s, was founded at Cornell in 1906.
Community service
Community service is donated service or activity that is performed by someone or a group of people for the benefit of the public or its institutions....
and advocacy
Advocacy
Advocacy is a political process by an individual or a large group which normally aims to influence public-policy and resource allocation decisions within political, economic, and social systems and institutions; it may be motivated from moral, ethical or faith principles or simply to protect an...
hours and raised $176,547 in philanthropic efforts. However, the administration has expressed concerns over student misconduct in the system. In 2004–05, of the 251 social events registered with the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs, 37 (15%) resulted in a complaint. In that same year, there were five reported instances of property destruction, five reports of bias
Bias
Bias is an inclination to present or hold a partial perspective at the expense of alternatives. Bias can come in many forms.-In judgement and decision making:...
, three hazing
Hazing
Hazing is a term used to describe various ritual and other activities involving harassment, abuse or humiliation used as a way of initiating a person into a group....
incidents, and various other allegations. Misconduct by students, faculty or staff is reviewed by the Judicial Administrator, who administers Cornell's justice system. However, students accused of academic and conduct code violations at Cornell are entitled to representation in the Cornell justice system by the Office of the Judicial Codes Counselor. Judicial Codes Counselors are usually Cornell Law students appointed by the University president to advocate for students accused of academic and conduct code violations. In addition to the right to representation, Cornell students have the right to not self-incriminate during Judicial Administrator investigations, which is an unusual (though very important) right in college justice systems.
Press and radio
The Cornell student body produces several works by way of print and radio. Student-run press outlets include The Cornell Daily SunThe Cornell Daily Sun
The Cornell Daily Sun is an independent daily newspaper published in Ithaca, New York by students at Cornell University. It is the oldest independent college daily in the United States....
, the oldest continuously independent college daily newspaper in the United States; The Cornell International Affairs Review
Cornell International Affairs Review
The Cornell International Affairs Review is a biannual peer-reviewed student-run academic journal published by Cornell University. It covers studies of international relations, international trade and finance, human rights, diplomacy, culture, public health and technology, geopolitics, and...
; The Cornell Lunatic
The Cornell Lunatic
The Cornell Lunatic, the college humor magazine at Cornell University, was founded on April 1, 1978, by Joey Green. During Green’s tenure as editor, the Lunatic was a 72 page glossy magazine of satire and parody published once a semester...
, a campus humor magazine; the Cornell Chronicle
Cornell Chronicle
The Cornell Chronicle is the in-house weekly newspaper published by Cornell University.Prior to the founding of the Chronicle in 1969, campus news was reported by the Cornell Era and then by The Cornell Daily Sun...
, the university's newspaper of record; The Cornell Review
The Cornell Review
The Cornell Review is an independent, conservative newspaper published by students of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. It usually adheres to a fortnightly tabloid format, publishing six issues a semester...
, a conservative
American conservatism
Conservatism in the United States has played an important role in American politics since the 1950s. Historian Gregory Schneider identifies several constants in American conservatism: respect for tradition, support of republicanism, preservation of "the rule of law and the Christian religion", and...
newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
; and Kitsch Magazine
Kitsch (magazine)
Kitsch is a magazine jointly produced by students of Cornell University and Ithaca College. It prints feature journalism, fiction, opinions, art, and miscellaneous shorter pieces; one of its taglines reads "Where fact and fiction meet." The relatively unrestricted scope of the publication ensures...
, a feature magazine
Feature story
- Published Features & news :While the distinction between published features and news is often clear, when approached conceptually there are few hard boundaries between the two. It is quite possible to write a feature in the style of a news story, for instance...
published in cooperation with Ithaca College
Ithaca College
Ithaca College is a private college located on the South Hill of Ithaca, New York. The school was founded by William Egbert in 1892 as a conservatory of music. The college has a strong liberal arts core, but also offers several pre-professional programs and some graduate programs. The college is...
. The Cornellian is an independent student organization that organizes, arranges, produces, edits, and publishes the yearbook of the same name; it is composed of artistic photos of the campus, student life, and athletics, as well as the standard senior portraits. It carries the Silver Crown Award for Journalism as well as a Benjamin Franklin Award for Print Design – the only Ivy League Yearbook with such a distinction. Cornellians are represented over the radio waves on WVBR
WVBR
WVBR-FM is a college radio station that broadcasts to Ithaca, New York, and surrounding areas. It operates at 3 kilowatts from a transmitter on Hungerford Hill, in Ithaca. A translator on 105.5 FM provides a cleaner signal to certain areas of Ithaca...
, an independent commercial FM radio station owned and operated by Cornell students. Other student groups also operate internet streaming audio sites.
Housing
University housing is broadly divided into three sections: North CampusCornell North Campus
North Campus is a residential section of Cornell University's Ithaca, New York campus. It primarily houses freshmen. North Campus offers programs which ease the transition into college life for incoming freshman. The campus offers interactions with faculty and other programs which are designed to...
, West Campus
Cornell West Campus
West Campus is a residential section of Cornell University's Ithaca, New York campus located west of Libe Slope and between the Fall Creek gorge and the Cascadilla gorge. It now primarily houses transfer students, second year, and upperclassmen. West Campus is currently part of a residential...
, and Collegetown. Since a 1997 residential initiative, West Campus houses transfer and returning students, whereas North Campus is almost entirely populated by freshmen.
The only options for living on North Campus for upperclassmen are the program houses: Risley Residential College
Risley Residential College
Prudence Risley Residential College for the Creative and Performing Arts, commonly known as Risley Residential College, Risley Hall, or just Risley, is a program house at Cornell University...
, Just About Music, the Ecology House, Holland International Living Center, the Multicultural Living Learning Unit, the Latino Living Center, Akwe:kon, and Ujamaa. Of these, only Ujamaa, Akwe:kon, and the Latino Living Center have been controversial, due to their dedicated racial or ethnic themes. In an attempt to create a sense of community and an atmosphere of education outside the classroom and continue Andrew Dickson White's vision, a $250 million reconstruction of West Campus created residential colleges there for undergraduates. The idea of building a house system can be attributed in part to the success of Risley Residential College, the oldest continually operating residential college at Cornell.
Additionally, Cornell has several housing areas for graduate and professional students. Of these, Schuyler House (which was formerly a part of Sage Infirmary) and Hughes Hall (which is the domitory wing of the law school complex) have a dorm layout, while Maplewood Apartments, Hasbrouck Apartments, and Thurston Court Apartments are apartment-style, some even allowing for family living. Off campus, many single family houses in the East Hill neighborhoods adjacent to the university have been converted to apartments. Private developers have also built several multi-story apartment complexes in the Collegetown neighborhood. Nine percent of undergraduate students reside in fraternity and sorority houses, although first semester freshmen are not permitted to join them. Cornell’s Greek system has 67 chapters and over 54 Greek residences that house approximately 1,500 students. About 42% of Greek members live in their houses. Housing cooperative
Housing cooperative
A housing cooperative is a legal entity—usually a corporation—that owns real estate, consisting of one or more residential buildings. Each shareholder in the legal entity is granted the right to occupy one housing unit, sometimes subject to an occupancy agreement, which is similar to a lease. ...
s or other independent living units exist, including Watermargin, Telluride House
Telluride Association
The Telluride Association is a non-profit organization in the United States that provides young people with free educational programs emphasizing intellectual curiosity, democratic self-governance, and social responsibility. Students are invited to apply based on academic criteria, such as high...
, Triphammer Cooperative, the Center for Jewish Living, and the Wait Cooperative.
As of 2008, Cornell's dining system was ranked 11th in the nation by the Princeton Review. The university has 30 on-campus dining locations, and a program called the Cross Country Gourmet Guest Restaurant Series periodically brings chefs, menus, and atmosphere from restaurants to Cornell's ten cafeterias.
Athletics
Cornell has 36 varsity intercollegiate teams that have the nickname of the Big Red. An NCAANational Collegiate Athletic Association
The National Collegiate Athletic Association is a semi-voluntary association of 1,281 institutions, conferences, organizations and individuals that organizes the athletic programs of many colleges and universities in the United States...
Division I institution, Cornell is a member of the Ivy League and ECAC Hockey and competes in the Eastern College Athletic Conference
Eastern College Athletic Conference
The Eastern College Athletic Conference is a college athletic conference comprising schools that compete in 21 sports . It has 317 member institutions in NCAA Divisions I, II, and III, ranging in location from Maine to North Carolina and west to Illinois...
(ECAC), the largest athletic conference in North America. (Note that ECAC Hockey is no longer affiliated with the ECAC.) Cornell's varsity athletic teams currently are highly successful within the Ivy League and consistently challenge for NCAA Division I titles in a number of sports, including men's lacrosse
Cornell Big Red men's lacrosse
The Cornell Big Red Men's Lacrosse team represents Cornell University in National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I men's lacrosse. Cornell competes as a member of the Ivy League, of which they have won 23 conference championships. The Big Red have appeared in the NCAA tournament 22...
and men's ice hockey
Cornell Big Red men's ice hockey
The Cornell Big Red men's ice hockey team represents Cornell University, located in Ithaca, New York, in NCAA Division I men's competition. Cornell is one of eight members of the academically prestigious Ivy League conference and the hockey team plays in the ECAC Hockey conference.The 1970 Cornell...
. Under the Ivy League athletic agreement, the university does not offer athletic scholarship
Athletic scholarship
An athletic scholarship is a form of scholarship to attend a college or university awarded to an individual based predominantly on his or her ability to play in a sport...
s for athletic recruiting.
American football
American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
team had at least a share of the national championship four times before 1940 and has won the Ivy League championship three times, last in 1990.
In addition to the school's varsity athletics, club sports teams have been organized as student organizations under the auspices of the Dean of Students. Cornell's intramural program includes 30 sports. Beside such familiar sports such as flag football
Flag football
Flag football is a version of Canadian football or American football that is popular worldwide. The basic rules of the game are similar to those of the mainstream game , but instead of tackling players to the ground, the defensive team must remove a flag or flag belt from the ball carrier to end...
, squash
Squash (sport)
Squash is a high-speed racquet sport played by two players in a four-walled court with a small, hollow rubber ball...
, or water polo
Water polo
Water polo is a team water sport. The playing team consists of six field players and one goalkeeper. The winner of the game is the team that scores more goals. Game play involves swimming, treading water , players passing the ball while being defended by opponents, and scoring by throwing into a...
, such unusual offerings as "inner tube water polo" and formerly "broomstick polo" have been offered, as well as a sports trivia competition. Cornell students also often participate in the International Rutabaga Curling Championship
International Rutabaga Curling Championship
The International Rutabaga Curling Championship takes place annually at the Ithaca Farmers' Market, New York state, on the last day of the market season.- History :The International Rutabaga Curling Championship started spontaneously in December 1997...
, held annually at the Ithaca Farmers' Market. Cornell also has a rich history of martial arts on campus, particularly Sport Taekwondo. Since 1987, Cornell Sport Taekwondo has competed in the Ivy-Northeast Collegiate Taekwondo League (INCTL). In 2007 after a 4 year slump, Cornell Sport Taekwondo defeated MIT Sport Taekwondo to take the INCTL Cup.
Cornelliana
Cornelliana is a term for Cornell's traditions, legends, and lore. Cornellian traditions include Slope DaySlope Day
Slope Day is an annual day of celebration held at Cornell University during the last day of regular undergraduate classes. It usually falls on the first Friday of May and the official site of Slope Day is the Libe Slope, on the university campus. Though Slope Day has gone through many phases, in...
, a celebration held on the last day of classes of the spring semester, and Dragon Day
Dragon Day
Dragon Day is an annual event at Cornell University. It occurs on the Friday before the university's Spring Break, in mid-March. The center of the event is the procession of a dragon, created by first-year architecture students at the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, past the College of...
, which includes the burning of a dragon built by architecture students. Dragon Day is one of the school's oldest traditions and has been celebrated annually since 1901, typically on or near St. Patrick's Day. The dragon is built secretly by the architecture students, and taunting messages are left for the engineering students for the week before Dragon Day. On Dragon Day, the dragon is paraded across the Arts Quad and then set afire.
According to legend, if a virgin crosses the Arts Quad at midnight, the statues of Ezra Cornell
Ezra Cornell
Ezra Cornell was an American businessman and education administrator. He was a founder of Western Union and a co-founder of Cornell University...
and Andrew Dickson White
Andrew Dickson White
Andrew Dickson White was a U.S. diplomat, historian, and educator, who was the co-founder of Cornell University.-Family and personal life:...
will walk off their pedestals, meet in the center of the Quad, and shake hands, congratulating themselves on the chastity of students. There is also another myth that if a couple crosses the suspension bridge on North Campus, and the young woman does not accept a kiss from her partner, the bridge will fall. If the kiss is accepted, the couple is assured a long future together.
The university is also host to various student pranks. For example, on at least two different occasions the university has awoken to find something odd atop the 173-foot (52.7 m) tall McGraw clock tower—once a 60-pound (27 kg) pumpkin and another time a disco ball. Because there is no access to the spire atop the tower, how the items were put in place remains a mystery. The colors of the lights on McGraw tower change to orange for Halloween and green for St. Patrick's Day. The clock tower also plays music.
The school colors are carnelian
Carnelian (color)
Carnelian is a color named after the carnelian variety of the mineral chalcedony. This semi-precious gemstone is noted for its rich shade of reddish-brown.It is similar to Cornell red.-Uses of the color:Buildings...
(a shade of red) and white, a play on "Cornellian" and Andrew Dickson White. A bear is commonly used as the unofficial mascot, which dates back to the introduction of the mascot "Touchdown" in 1915, a live bear who was brought onto the field during football games. The university's alma mater
Alma mater
Alma mater , pronounced ), was used in ancient Rome as a title for various mother goddesses, especially Ceres or Cybele, and in Christianity for the Virgin Mary.-General term:...
is "Far Above Cayuga's Waters
Far Above Cayuga's Waters
"Far Above Cayuga's Waters" is Cornell University's alma mater. The lyrics were composed circa 1870 by roommates Archibald Croswell Weeks, 1872, and Wilmot Moses Smith, 1874, and set to the tune of "Annie Lisle", a popular 1857 ballad by H. S. Thompson about a heroine dying of...
", and its fight song
Fight song
A fight song is primarily an American and Canadian sports term, referring to a song associated with a team. In both professional and amateur sports, fight songs are a popular way for fans to cheer for their team...
is "Give My Regards to Davy
Give My Regards to Davy
"Give My Regards to Davy" is Cornell University's primary fight song. The song's lyrics were written in 1905 by Charles E. Tourison 1905, W. L. Umstad 1906, and Bill Forbes 1906, a trio of roommates at Beta Theta Pi, and set to the tune of George M. Cohan's "Give My Regards to Broadway"...
". People associated with the university are called "Cornellians".
Health
Cornell offers a variety of professional and peer counseling services to students. Gannett Clinic offers on-campus outpatient health services with emergency services and residential treatment provided by Cayuga Medical Center. For most of its history, Cornell provided residential medical care for sick students, including at the historic Sage Infirmary. Cornell offers specialized reproductive health and family planning services.The university received worldwide attention for a series of six student suicides that occurred during the 2009–10 school year, and they have since added temporary fences to its bridges while more permanent measures are in process. Before this abnormal cluster of suicides, the suicide rate at Cornell had been similar to or below the suicide rates of other American universities, including a period between 2005 and 2008 in which no suicides occurred.
Faculty
Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books...
, Thomas Gold
Thomas Gold
Thomas Gold was an Austrian-born astrophysicist, a professor of astronomy at Cornell University, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the Royal Society . Gold was one of three young Cambridge scientists who in the 1950s proposed the now mostly abandoned 'steady...
, Charles Evans Hughes
Charles Evans Hughes
Charles Evans Hughes, Sr. was an American statesman, lawyer and Republican politician from New York. He served as the 36th Governor of New York , Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States , United States Secretary of State , a judge on the Court of International Justice , and...
, Norman Malcolm
Norman Malcolm
Norman Malcolm was an American philosopher, born in Selden, Kansas. He studied philosophy with O.K. Bouwsma at the University of Nebraska, then enrolled as a graduate student at Harvard University in 1933....
, Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
, M.H. Abrams, Hans Bethe
Hans Bethe
Hans Albrecht Bethe was a German-American nuclear physicist, and Nobel laureate in physics for his work on the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis. A versatile theoretical physicist, Bethe also made important contributions to quantum electrodynamics, nuclear physics, solid-state physics and...
, Richard Feynman
Richard Feynman
Richard Phillips Feynman was an American physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics...
, Kip Thorne
Kip Thorne
Kip Stephen Thorne is an American theoretical physicist, known for his prolific contributions in gravitation physics and astrophysics and for having trained a generation of scientists...
, Archie Randolph Ammons
Archie Randolph Ammons
Archie Randolph Ammons was an American poet. He wrote about humanity's relationship to nature in alternately comic and solemn tones.-Life:...
, Peter Debye
Peter Debye
Peter Joseph William Debye FRS was a Dutch physicist and physical chemist, and Nobel laureate in Chemistry.-Early life:...
, Allan Bloom
Allan Bloom
Allan David Bloom was an American philosopher, classicist, and academic. He studied under David Grene, Leo Strauss, Richard McKeon and Alexandre Kojève. He subsequently taught at Cornell University, the University of Toronto, Yale University, École Normale Supérieure of Paris, and the University...
, Henry Louis Gates, Wole Soyinka
Wole Soyinka
Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka is a Nigerian writer, poet and playwright. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, where he was recognised as a man "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence", and became the first African in Africa and...
, and Anthony Appiah.
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
, a Crafoord Prize
Crafoord Prize
The Crafoord Prize is an annual science prize established in 1980 by Holger Crafoord, a Swedish industrialist, and his wife Anna-Greta Crafoord...
winner, two Turing Award
Turing Award
The Turing Award, in full The ACM A.M. Turing Award, is an annual award given by the Association for Computing Machinery to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. The contributions should be of lasting and major technical importance to the...
winners, a Fields Medal
Fields Medal
The Fields Medal, officially known as International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics, is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians not over 40 years of age at each International Congress of the International Mathematical Union , a meeting that takes place every four...
winner, two Legion of Honor recipients, a World Food Prize
World Food Prize
The World Food Prize is an international award recognizing the achievements of individuals who have advanced human development by improving the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world.-The Prize:...
winner, an Andrei Sakharov Prize winner, three National Medal of Science
National Medal of Science
The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social sciences, biology, chemistry, engineering, mathematics and...
winners, two Wolf Prize winners, five MacArthur award winners, four Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
winners, two Eminent Ecologist Award recipients, a Carter G. Woodson
Carter G. Woodson
Carter Godwin Woodson was an African-American historian, author, journalist and the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Woodson was one of the first scholars to study African American history. A founder of Journal of Negro History , Dr...
Scholars Medallion recipient, four Presidential Early Career Award winners, 20 National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
CAREER grant holders, a recipient of the National Academy of Sciences
United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...
Award for Initiatives in Research, a recipient of the American Mathematical Society
American Mathematical Society
The American Mathematical Society is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, which it does with various publications and conferences as well as annual monetary awards and prizes to mathematicians.The society is one of the...
's Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement, a recipient of the Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics, three Packard Foundation grant holders, a Keck Distinguished Young Scholar, two Beckman Foundation Young Investigator grant holders, and two NYSTAR (New York State Office of Science, Technology, and Academic Research) early career award winners.
In 2008 and 2009, Cornell was named a "Great College to Work For" by The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is a newspaper and website that presents news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty, staff members and administrators....
. This recognition was based upon Cornell's excellent ratings in several factors such as compensation and benefits, connection to institution and pride, faculty-administration relations, job satisfaction, and post-retirement benefits, as determined by a survey of the faculty, staff, and administration of the university.
Alumni
As of August 2008, the university counted 245,027 living alumni. Many are active through organizations and events including the annual Reunion Weekend and HomecomingHomecoming
Homecoming is the tradition of welcoming back alumni of a school. It most commonly refers to a tradition in many universities, colleges and high schools in North America...
, weekend festivities in Ithaca, and the International Spirit of Zinck's Night. For the 2004–05 fiscal year, Cornell ranked third for gifts and bequests from alumni, and fourth for total support from all sources (alumni, friends, corporations, and foundations) among U.S. colleges and universities reporting voluntary gift support. In October 2006, Cornell made public a 10 year capital campaign "Far Above...
Far Above Cayuga's Waters
"Far Above Cayuga's Waters" is Cornell University's alma mater. The lyrics were composed circa 1870 by roommates Archibald Croswell Weeks, 1872, and Wilmot Moses Smith, 1874, and set to the tune of "Annie Lisle", a popular 1857 ballad by H. S. Thompson about a heroine dying of...
" to solicit alumni and raise $4 billion to improve the undergraduate experience, attract and retain faculty, and expand the physical plant. Information about Cornell graduates, most of which is submitted by the graduates themselves, is available in Cornell Magazine. The magazine is currently published 6 times a year.
Cornellians are noted for their accomplishments in public, professional, and corporate life. Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
's former President Lee Teng-hui
Lee Teng-hui
Lee Teng-hui is a politician of the Republic of China . He was the 7th, 8th, and 9th-term President of the Republic of China and Chairman of the Kuomintang from 1988 to 2000. He presided over major advancements in democratic reforms including his own re-election which marked the first direct...
, former President of Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
Mario García Menocal
Mario García Menocal
Aurelio Mario García Menocal y Deop was President of Cuba, from 1913 to 1921...
, and former Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
ian Prime Minister Jamshid Amuzegar
Jamshid Amuzegar
Dr. Jamshid Amouzegar is an Iranian economist, artist and politician who was Prime Minister of Iran from 7 August 1977 to 27 August 1978 when he resigned. Prior to that, he was Minister of Interior and Minister of Finance in the cabinet of Amir-Abbas Hoveida...
('50) all graduated from Cornell. Hu Shih
Hu Shih
Hu Shih , born Hu Hung-hsing , was a Chinese philosopher, essayist and diplomat. His courtesy name was Shih-chih . Hu is widely recognized today as a key contributor to Chinese liberalism and language reform in his advocacy for the use of written vernacular Chinese...
('14) was the ambassador to the United States during World War II and later China's representative to the United Nations. He is widely recognized today as a key contributor to Chinese liberalism and language reform in his advocacy for the use of written vernacular Chinese. In the United States, numerous Congressmen
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
and Cabinet members
United States Cabinet
The Cabinet of the United States is composed of the most senior appointed officers of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States, which are generally the heads of the federal executive departments...
, including Paul Wolfowitz
Paul Wolfowitz
Paul Dundes Wolfowitz is a former United States Ambassador to Indonesia, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, President of the World Bank, and former dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University...
('65) and Janet Reno
Janet Reno
Janet Wood Reno is a former Attorney General of the United States . She was nominated by President Bill Clinton on February 11, 1993, and confirmed on March 11...
('60), and one Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Ginsburg was appointed by President Bill Clinton and took the oath of office on August 10, 1993. She is the second female justice and the first Jewish female justice.She is generally viewed as belonging to...
('54), have been Cornellians. After his Cornell education, David Starr Jordan
David Starr Jordan
David Starr Jordan, Ph.D., LL.D. was a leading eugenicist, ichthyologist, educator and peace activist. He was president of Indiana University and Stanford University.-Early life and education:...
(1872) went on to become the president of Indiana University
Indiana University Bloomington
Indiana University Bloomington is a public research university located in Bloomington, Indiana, in the United States. IU Bloomington is the flagship campus of the Indiana University system. Being the flagship campus, IU Bloomington is often referred to simply as IU or Indiana...
and subsequently founding president of Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
after former Cornell president Andrew Dickson White
Andrew Dickson White
Andrew Dickson White was a U.S. diplomat, historian, and educator, who was the co-founder of Cornell University.-Family and personal life:...
turned down the position. M. Carey Thomas
M. Carey Thomas
Martha Carey Thomas was an American educator, suffragist, and second President of Bryn Mawr College.-Early life:...
(1877) founded Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College is a women's liberal arts college located in Bryn Mawr, a community in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania, ten miles west of Philadelphia. The name "Bryn Mawr" means "big hill" in Welsh....
and was its second president. Lieutenant Colonel
Lieutenant colonel
Lieutenant colonel is a rank of commissioned officer in the armies and most marine forces and some air forces of the world, typically ranking above a major and below a colonel. The rank of lieutenant colonel is often shortened to simply "colonel" in conversation and in unofficial correspondence...
Matt Urban
Matt Urban
Lieutenant Colonel Matt Louis Urban was a United States Army infantry officer who served with distinction in the African and European Theater of Operations in World War II. He scouted, led charges upfront, and performed heroically in combat on several occasions even after being wounded. He was...
('41) is the most decorated serviceman in United States history. Arnold Tremere
Arnold Tremere
Arnold Tremere, Ph.D. was appointed as the Canadian International Grains Institute first director of Feed and Technology from May 1982 to October 1989, and subsequently was promoted to the position of Executive Director, the highest non-partisan position within the field of Agriculture in the...
('68) was appointed as the Canadian International Grains Institute Executive Director.
Cornellian-headed businesses include: Alamo Rent-A-Car (Michael Egan), Carrier
Carrier Corporation
The Carrier Corporation is one of the world’s largest manufacturers and distributors of heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems, and a global leader in the commercial refrigeration and food service equipment industry...
(Willis Carrier
Willis Carrier
Willis Haviland Carrier was an American engineer and inventor, and is known as the man who invented modern air conditioning....
, 1901), Citigroup
Citigroup
Citigroup Inc. or Citi is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States. Citigroup was formed from one of the world's largest mergers in history by combining the banking giant Citicorp and financial conglomerate...
(Sanford Weill '55), Coors Brewing Company
Coors Brewing Company
The Coors Brewing Company is a regional division of the world's fifth-largest brewing company, the Canadian Molson Coors Brewing Company and is the third-largest brewer in the United States...
(Adolph Coors
Adolph Coors
Adolph Herman Joseph Coors, Sr. was a brewman who started the Adolph Coors Company in Golden, Colorado in 1873.-Early years:...
'37), and Burger King
Burger King
Burger King, often abbreviated as BK, is a global chain of hamburger fast food restaurants headquartered in unincorporated Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. The company began in 1953 as Insta-Burger King, a Jacksonville, Florida-based restaurant chain...
(James McLamore
James McLamore
James Whitman McLamore was co-founder of the Burger King fast food franchise with David Edgerton. McLamore attended Northfield Mount Hermon School before matriculating at Cornell University....
'47). Cornellian-founded businesses include: Gannett by Frank Gannett
Frank Gannett
Frank Ernest Gannett is the founder of Gannett media corporation.-Biography:Gannett was born in South Bristol, New York, United States, graduated from Bolivar High School , Bolivar, NY in 1893, and graduated from Cornell University. At the age of 30, he purchased his first newspaper, the Elmira...
(1898), Grumman Aerospace Corporation by Leroy Grumman
Leroy Grumman
Leroy Randle "Roy" Grumman was an American aeronautical engineer, test pilot, and industrialist. In 1929, he co-founded Grumman Aeronautical Engineering Co. later to become Grumman Aerospace Corporation, now part of Northrop Grumman.-Early life:Born in Huntington, New York, Grumman's forebears had...
('16), Hotels.com
Hotels.com
Hotels.com is an operating company of Expedia, Inc. that provides reservation services for hotel rooms and other places to stay.The company was founded in Dallas, TX in 1991 as Hotel Reservations Network by Dave Litman and Bob Diener as a toll-free telephone service, offering consumers a one-stop...
by David Litman
David Litman
David Litman was born in New York in 1957. He lived in the UK from 1967-1975. He attended Sussex House School from 1968-1971 and City of London School from 1971-1975. He is a graduate of Cornell University and Cornell Law School ....
('79) and Bob Diener, Palm
Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc., was a smartphone manufacturer headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, that was responsible for products such as the Pre and Pixi as well as the Treo and Centro smartphones. Previous product lines include the PalmPilot, Palm III, Palm V, Palm VII, Zire and Tungsten. While their older...
by Jeff Hawkins
Jeff Hawkins
Jeffrey Hawkins is the founder of Palm Computing and Handspring...
('79), PeopleSoft
PeopleSoft
PeopleSoft, Inc. was a company that provided Human Resource Management Systems , Financial Management Solutions , Supply Chain and customer relationship management software, as well as software solutions for manufacturing, enterprise performance management, and student administration to large...
and Workday, Inc. by David Duffield
David Duffield
David Duffield is an American businessman in the software industry. He is the co-founder and former chairman of PeopleSoft, the co-founder and co-CEO at Workday, Inc., and has been on the Forbes World's Richest People list...
('62), Priceline.com
Priceline.com
Priceline.com is a company and a commercial website that helps users obtain discount rates for travel-related purchases such as airline tickets and hotel stays. The company is not a direct supplier of these services; instead it facilitates the provision of travel services by its suppliers to its...
by Jay Walker ('77), Qualcomm
Qualcomm
Qualcomm is an American global telecommunication corporation that designs, manufactures and markets digital wireless telecommunications products and services based on its code division multiple access technology and other technologies. Headquartered in San Diego, CA, USA...
by Dr. Irwin M. Jacobs
Irwin M. Jacobs
Irwin Mark Jacobs , is an electrical engineer and the co-founder and former chairman of Qualcomm, and chair of the board of trustees of the Salk Institute. In 2010, Jacobs was listed as number 828 on Forbes's annual list of the World's Top Billionaires.-Education:Jacobs earned his B.S...
('54), and Staples
Staples, Inc.
Staples Inc. is a large office supply chain store, with over 2,000 stores worldwide in 26 countries. Based in Framingham, Massachusetts, United States, the company has retail stores, serving customers under its original name in Austria, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Norway,...
by Myra Hart
Myra Hart
Myra M. Hart is a founder of Staples, Inc. She graduated from Cornell University with a B.A. in 1962 and a Harvard M.B.A. 1981. She obtained a DBA from Harvard University in 1995. She was a founding member of Staples, the office superstore. She served as a Professor of Management Practice at...
('62). Businesses currently headed by Cornellians include: Tata Group
Tata Group
Tata Group is an Indian multinational conglomerate company headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. Tata Group is one of the largest companies in India by market capitalization and revenue. It has interests in communications and information technology, engineering, materials, services, energy,...
headed by Ratan Tata
Ratan Tata
Ratan Naval Tata is the present chairman of Tata Sons and therefore, Tata Group. Also, he is one among the few in the world...
('62)., Nintendo
Nintendo
is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....
of America headed by Reginald Fils-Aime ('83), and Sprint Nextel
Sprint Nextel
Sprint Nextel Corporation is an American telecommunications company based in Overland Park, Kansas. The company owns and operates Sprint, the third largest wireless telecommunications network in the United States, with 53.4 million customers, behind Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility...
headed by Dan Hesse ('77).
In medicine, Dr. C. Everett Koop
C. Everett Koop
Charles Everett Koop, MD is an American pediatric surgeon and public health administrator. He was a vice admiral in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, and served as thirteenth Surgeon General of the United States under President Ronald Reagan from 1982 to 1989.-Early years:Koop was born...
('41) was the Surgeon General under Ronald Reagan, Dr. Robert Atkins
Robert Atkins (nutritionist)
Robert Coleman Atkins, MD was an American physician and cardiologist, best known for the Atkins Nutritional Approach , a popular but controversial way of dieting that entails close control of carbohydrate consumption, emphasizing protein and fat intake, including saturated fat in addition to...
('55) developed the Atkins Diet, Dr. Henry Heimlich
Henry Heimlich
Dr. Henry Jay Heimlich , an American physician, has received credit as the inventor of abdominal thrusts, more commonly known as the Heimlich maneuver, though debate continues over his role in the development of the procedure...
('47) developed the Heimlich maneuver, and Wilson Greatbatch
Wilson Greatbatch
Wilson Greatbatch was an American engineer and inventor whois most widely known as the inventor of the implantable cardiac pacemaker...
('50) invented the first successful pacemaker
Artificial pacemaker
A pacemaker is a medical device that uses electrical impulses, delivered by electrodes contacting the heart muscles, to regulate the beating of the heart...
. Dr. James Maas
James Maas
James Maas is an American social psychologist, professor at Cornell University, and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow. He is best known for his work in the field of sleep research, specifically the relationship between sleep and performance. He coined the term "power nap" and wrote the...
('66), both an alumnus and current faculty member, coined the term "power nap
Power nap
A power nap is a short sleep which terminates before the occurrence of deep sleep or slow-wave sleep , intended to quickly revitalize the subject. The expression was coined by Cornell University social psychologist James Maas.-Characteristics:...
". Dr. Gregory Pincus ('24), the co-inventor of the combined oral contraceptive (i.e. birth control pill) was an undergraduate at Cornell. Cornellians also include medical personalities Dr. Benjamin Spock
Benjamin Spock
Benjamin McLane Spock was an American pediatrician whose book Baby and Child Care, published in 1946, is one of the biggest best-sellers of all time. Its message to mothers is that "you know more than you think you do."Spock was the first pediatrician to study psychoanalysis to try to understand...
and Joyce Brothers
Joyce Brothers
Joyce Brothers is an American psychologist, television personality and advice columnist, publishing a daily syndicated newspaper column since 1960.-Personal life:...
('47), as well as the Nobel laureate
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
maize
Maize
Maize known in many English-speaking countries as corn or mielie/mealie, is a grain domesticated by indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica in prehistoric times. The leafy stalk produces ears which contain seeds called kernels. Though technically a grain, maize kernels are used in cooking as a vegetable...
geneticist
Genetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
Barbara McClintock
Barbara McClintock
Barbara McClintock , the 1983 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, was an American scientist and one of the world's most distinguished cytogeneticists. McClintock received her PhD in botany from Cornell University in 1927, where she was a leader in the development of maize cytogenetics...
('23). Dr. Jack Szostak ('77), professor of genetics at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in medicine for discovering a key mechanism in the genetic operations of cells, an insight that has inspired new lines of research into cancer.
A number of Cornellians have been prominent innovators, starting with Thomas Midgley, Jr.
Thomas Midgley, Jr.
Thomas Midgley, Jr. was an American mechanical engineer and chemist. Midgley was a key figure in a team of chemists, led by Charles F. Kettering, that developed the tetraethyllead additive to gasoline as well as some of the first chlorofluorocarbons . Over the course of his career, Midgley was...
('11), the inventor of Freon. Jeff Hawkins
Jeff Hawkins
Jeffrey Hawkins is the founder of Palm Computing and Handspring...
('79) invented the Palm Pilot
Palm (PDA)
Palm handhelds were Personal Digital Assistants which ran the Palm OS. Palm devices have evolved from handhelds to smartphones which run Palm OS, WebOS, and Windows Mobile...
and subsequently founded Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc., was a smartphone manufacturer headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, that was responsible for products such as the Pre and Pixi as well as the Treo and Centro smartphones. Previous product lines include the PalmPilot, Palm III, Palm V, Palm VII, Zire and Tungsten. While their older...
Graduate Jon Rubinstein
Jon Rubinstein
Jonathan J. Rubinstein is an American computer scientist and electrical engineer who helped create the iPod, the portable music and video device first sold by Apple Computer Inc. in 2001...
('78) is credited with the development of the iPod
IPod
iPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...
. William Higinbotham
William Higinbotham
William A. Higginbotham , an American physicist, is credited with creating one of the first computer games, Tennis for Two. Like Pong, it is a portrait of a game of tennis or ping-pong, but featured very different game mechanics that have no resemblance to the later game...
developed Tennis for Two
Tennis for Two
Tennis for Two was a game developed in 1958 on an analog computer, which simulates a game of tennis or ping pong on an oscilloscope. Created by American physicist William Higinbotham, it is important in the history of video games as one of the first electronic games to use a graphical...
in 1958, one of the earliest computer games and the predecessor to Pong
Pong
Pong is one of the earliest arcade video games, and is a tennis sports game featuring simple two-dimensional graphics. While other arcade video games such as Computer Space came before it, Pong was one of the first video games to reach mainstream popularity...
, and Robert Tappan Morris
Robert Tappan Morris
Robert Tappan Morris, , is an American computer scientist, best known for creating the Morris Worm in 1988, considered the first computer worm on the Internet - and subsequently becoming the first person convicted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.He went on to co-found the online store...
developed the first computer worm
Morris (computer worm)
The Morris worm or Internet worm of November 2, 1988 was one of the first computer worms distributed via the Internet. It is considered the first worm and was certainly the first to gain significant mainstream media attention. It also resulted in the first conviction in the US under the 1986...
on the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
. The most direct evidence of dark matter
Dark matter
In astronomy and cosmology, dark matter is matter that neither emits nor scatters light or other electromagnetic radiation, and so cannot be directly detected via optical or radio astronomy...
was provided by Vera Rubin
Vera Rubin
Vera Rubin is an American astronomer who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates. She is famous for uncovering the discrepancy between the predicted angular motion of galaxies and the observed motion, by studying galactic rotation curves...
('51). Jill Tarter
Jill Tarter
Jill Cornell Tarter is an American astronomer and the current director of the Center for SETI Research, holding the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI at the SETI Institute.-Education:...
('66) is the current director of the SETI Institute
SETI Institute
The SETI Institute is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to “explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe”. SETI stands for the "search for extraterrestrial intelligence". One program is the use of both radio and optical telescopes to search...
and Steve Squyres
Steve Squyres
Steven W. Squyres is the Goldwin Smith Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. His research area is in planetary sciences, with a focus on large solid bodies in the solar system such as the terrestrial planets and the moons of the Jovian planets. Squyres is principal...
('81) is the principal investigator on the Mars Exploration Rover
Mars Exploration Rover
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Mission is an ongoing robotic space mission involving two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, exploring the planet Mars...
Mission. Eight Cornellians have served as NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
astronaut
Astronaut
An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....
s. Bill Nye
Bill Nye
William Sanford "Bill" Nye , popularly known as Bill Nye the Science Guy, is an American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, mechanical engineer, and scientist...
('77) is best known as "The Science Guy
Bill Nye the Science Guy
Bill Nye the Science Guy is an educational television program that originally aired from September 10, 1993 to June 20, 1998, hosted by Bill Nye and produced by Buena Vista Television. The show aired on PBS Kids and was also syndicated to local stations, making it the second first-run television...
".
Cornell is the only university with three female winners of unshared Nobel Prizes among its alumni (Pearl S. Buck
Pearl S. Buck
Pearl Sydenstricker Buck also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu , was an American writer who spent most of her time until 1934 in China. Her novel The Good Earth was the best-selling fiction book in the U.S. in 1931 and 1932, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932...
, Barbara McClintock
Barbara McClintock
Barbara McClintock , the 1983 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, was an American scientist and one of the world's most distinguished cytogeneticists. McClintock received her PhD in botany from Cornell University in 1927, where she was a leader in the development of maize cytogenetics...
, and Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved...
'55). The latter won a Nobel Prize in Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
for Song of Solomon
Song of Solomon (novel)
Song of Solomon is a 1977 novel by American author Toni Morrison. It follows the life of Macon "Milkman" Dead III, an African-American male living in Michigan, from birth to adulthood....
, as well as a Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
for her novel, Beloved
Beloved (novel)
Beloved is a novel by the American writer Toni Morrison, published in 1987. Set in 1873 just after the American Civil War , it is based on the story of the African-American slave, Margaret Garner, who escaped slavery in 1856 in Kentucky by fleeing to Ohio, a free state...
. The Nobel Prize in Literature was also awarded to Pearl S. Buck
Pearl S. Buck
Pearl Sydenstricker Buck also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu , was an American writer who spent most of her time until 1934 in China. Her novel The Good Earth was the best-selling fiction book in the U.S. in 1931 and 1932, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932...
('25), author of The Good Earth
The Good Earth
The Good Earth is a novel by Pearl S. Buck published in 1931 and awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1932. The best selling novel in the United States in both 1931 and 1932, it was an influential factor in Buck winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938...
. E. B. White
E. B. White
Elwyn Brooks White , usually known as E. B. White, was an American writer. A long-time contributor to The New Yorker magazine, he also wrote many famous books for both adults and children, such as the popular Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little, and co-authored a widely used writing guide, The...
('21), author of Charlotte's Web
Charlotte's Web
Charlotte's Web is an award-winning children's novel by acclaimed American author E. B. White, about a pig named Wilbur who is saved from being slaughtered by an intelligent spider named Charlotte. The book was first published in 1952, with illustrations by Garth Williams.The novel tells the story...
and Stuart Little
Stuart Little
Stuart Little is a 1945 children's novel by E. B. White, his first book for children, and is widely recognized as a classic in children's literature. Stuart Little was illustrated by the subsequently award-winning artist Garth Williams, also his first work for children...
, co-wrote the influential writing guide The Elements of Style
The Elements of Style
The Elements of Style , also known as Strunk & White, by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White, is a prescriptive American English writing style guide comprising eight "elementary rules of usage", ten "elementary principles of composition", "a few matters of form", a list of forty-nine "words and...
with fellow Cornellian William Strunk Jr.
William Strunk Jr.
William Strunk Jr. was a professor of English at Cornell University and author of the The Elements of Style , which, after being revised and enlarged by his former student E. B...
Other Cornellian writers include Junot Diaz
Junot Díaz
Junot Díaz is a Dominican-American writer and creative writing professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology . Central to Díaz's work is the immigrant experience...
('95), Laura Z. Hobson
Laura Z. Hobson
Laura Z. Hobson was an American novelist best known for her novel, Gentleman's Agreement.Born Laura Kean Zametkin in New York City, the daughter of Jewish socialist immigrants, she graduated from Cornell University. On July 23, 1930, she married Francis Thayer Hobson, owner of William Morrow and...
, Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...
('59), William Irwin Thompson
William Irwin Thompson
William Irwin Thompson is known primarily as a social philosopher and cultural critic, but he has also been writing and publishing poetry throughout his career and received the Oslo International Poetry Festival Award in 1986. He describes his writing and speaking style as "mind-jazz on ancient...
('66), Richard Farina
Richard Fariña
Richard George Fariña was an American writer and folksinger.-Early years and education:Richard Fariña was born in Brooklyn, New York, of Cuban and Irish descent. He grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn and attended Brooklyn Technical High School...
, Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.-Early...
and Lauren Weisberger
Lauren Weisberger
Lauren Weisberger is an American novelist and author of the 2003 bestseller The Devil Wears Prada, a speculated roman à clef of her real life experience as a put-upon assistant to Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour....
('99). Cornellian journalists include Margaret Bourke-White
Margaret Bourke-White
Margaret Bourke-White was an American photographer and documentary photographer. She is best known as the first foreign photographer permitted to take pictures of Soviet Industry, the first female war correspondent and the first female photographer for Henry Luce's Life magazine, where her...
('27), Allison Danzig
Allison Danzig
Allison "Al" Danzig was an American sportswriter who specialized in writing about tennis, but also covered college football, squash, many Olympic Games, and rowing. Danzig was the only American sportwriter to extensively cover real tennis, the precursor to modern lawn tennis.Danzig covered every...
, Dick Schaap
Dick Schaap
Richard Jay Schaap was an American sportswriter, broadcaster, and author.-Early life and education:...
('55), Kate Snow
Kate Snow
Kate Snow is an American television journalist and correspondent for NBC's newsmagazine Dateline. In addition, she has also filled in as anchor for Nightly News. Prior to joining NBC, she was a co-anchor for the weekend edition of Good Morning America on ABC from 2004 to 2010...
, and radio personality Dave Ross
Dave Ross
Dave Ross is a talk show host on Seattle's KIRO-FM radio station, with whom he had been a news anchor from 1978 until his talk show started nine years later in 1987. He has sometimes broadcast his show while on assignment in other locations, including overseas, such as Baghdad, Iraq in April...
.
Christopher Reeve
Christopher D'Olier Reeve was an American actor, film director, producer, screenwriter, author and activist...
('74) is best known for his role as Superman, while comedian
Comedian
A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience, primarily by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting a fool, as in slapstick, or employing prop comedy...
Frank Morgan
Frank Morgan
Frank Morgan was an American actor. He was best known for his portrayal of the title character in the film The Wizard of Oz.-Early life:...
is best known to older generations as The Wizard of Oz
Wizard (Oz)
The Wizard of Oz, known during his reign as The Great and Powerful Oz, is the epithet of Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkel Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs, a fictional character in the Land of Oz, created by American author L...
. Howard Hawks
Howard Hawks
Howard Winchester Hawks was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era...
('18) is widely regarded as one of the most prominent directors of the classic Hollywood era, directing His Girl Friday
His Girl Friday
His Girl Friday is a 1940 American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks, an adaptation by Charles Lederer, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur of the play The Front Page by Hecht and MacArthur...
and The Big Sleep
The Big Sleep (1946 film)
The Big Sleep is a 1946 film noir directed by Howard Hawks, the first film version of Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel of the same name. The movie stars Humphrey Bogart as detective Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall as the female lead in a film about the "process of a criminal investigation, not its...
among many other films. Stand-up comedian Bill Maher
Bill Maher
William "Bill" Maher, Jr. is an American stand-up comedian, television host, political commentator, author and actor. Before his current role as the host of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, Maher hosted a similar late-night talk show called Politically Incorrect originally on Comedy Central and...
('78), is host of the HBO series Real Time with Bill Maher
Real Time with Bill Maher
Real Time with Bill Maher is a talk show that airs weekly on HBO, hosted by comedian and political satirist Bill Maher. Much like his previous show, Politically Incorrect on ABC , Real Time features a panel of guests that discuss current events in politics and the media...
. John Kerwin, hosts The John Kerwin Show
The John Kerwin Show
The John Kerwin Show is an American monthly late-night talk show filmed in Santa Monica, California and is broadcast in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, carried nationally on JLTV, and featured on YouTube....
, a talk show featuring celebrity interviews, based in Los Angeles. Jimmy Smits
Jimmy Smits
Jimmy Smits is an American actor. Smits is perhaps best known for his roles as attorney Victor Sifuentes on the 1980s legal drama L.A. Law, as NYPD Detective Bobby Simone on the 1990s police drama NYPD Blue, and as Congressman Matt Santos on The West Wing...
('82), best known for his roles on L.A. Law
L.A. Law
L.A. Law is a US television legal drama that ran on NBC from September 15, 1986 to May 19, 1994. L.A. Law reflected the social and cultural ideologies of the 1980s and early 1990s and many of the cases featured on the show dealt with hot topic issues such as abortion, racism, gay rights,...
, The West Wing, and in the Star Wars films Episode II: Attack of the Clones and Episode III: Revenge of the Sith earned his MFA from Cornell. Greg Graffin
Greg Graffin
Gregory Walter Graffin, Ph.D. is an American punk rock musician, college professor, and author. He is most recognized as the lead vocalist and songwriter of the noted Los Angeles band Bad Religion, which he co-founded in 1979 and is the band's only constant member, even though it now features two...
(2003) of the band Bad Religion
Bad Religion
Bad Religion is a punk rock band that formed in Los Angeles in 1979. Their current line-up consists of Greg Graffin , Brett Gurewitz , Jay Bentley , Greg Hetson , Brian Baker and Brooks Wackerman . Gurewitz is also the founder of the label Epitaph Records, which has released almost all of the...
, Peter Yarrow
Peter Yarrow
Peter Yarrow is an American singer who found fame with the 1960s folk music trio Peter, Paul and Mary. Yarrow co-wrote one of the group's most famous songs, "Puff, the Magic Dragon"...
('58) of Peter, Paul and Mary
Peter, Paul and Mary
Peter, Paul and Mary were an American folk-singing trio whose nearly 50-year career began with their rise to become a paradigm for 1960s folk music. The trio was composed of Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey and Mary Travers...
, singer-songwriter Harry Chapin
Harry Chapin
Harry Forster Chapin was an American singer-songwriter best known in particular for his folk rock songs including "Taxi", "W*O*L*D", and the number-one hit "Cat's in the Cradle". Chapin was also a dedicated humanitarian who fought to end world hunger; he was a key player in the creation of the...
, pop star Huey Lewis
Huey Lewis
Huey Lewis is an American musician, songwriter and occasional actor.Lewis sings lead and plays harmonica for his band Huey Lewis and the News, in addition to writing or co-writing many of the band's songs...
, and modern composers Steve Reich
Steve Reich
Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...
, Christopher Rouse, and Steven Stucky
Steven Stucky
Steven Stucky is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer.Stucky was born in Hutchinson, Kansas. At age 9, he moved with his family to Abilene, Texas, where, as a teenager, he studied music in the public schools and, privately, viola with Herbert Preston, conducting with Leo Scheer, and...
, all attended Cornell. Ronald D. Moore
Ronald D. Moore
Ronald Dowl Moore is an American screenwriter and television producer best known for his work on Star Trek and the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica miniseries and television series, for which he won a Peabody Award for creative excellence in 2005 and an Emmy Award in 2008.-Early life and...
created the Battlestar Galactica
Battlestar Galactica
Battlestar Galactica is an American science fiction franchise created by Glen A. Larson. The franchise began with the Battlestar Galactica TV series in 1978, and was followed by a brief sequel TV series in 1980, a line of book adaptations, original novels, comic books, a board game, and video games...
remake that debuted in 2004. Carla Gallo
Carla Gallo
Carla Gallo is an American actress notable for roles in the television series Undeclared, Carnivàle, and Bones, and in the indie film Spanking the Monkey.-Filmography:-External links:...
played Lizzie in Undeclared
Undeclared
Undeclared is an American sitcom that aired on Fox during the 2001–02 season.- Premise :The half-hour comedy was Judd Apatow's follow-up to his earlier television series Freaks and Geeks, which also lasted for one season...
. Media personalities and Cornell graduates Ann Coulter
Ann Coulter
Ann Hart Coulter is an American lawyer, conservative social and political commentator, author, and syndicated columnist. She frequently appears on television, radio, and as a speaker at public events and private events...
('84) and Keith Olbermann
Keith Olbermann
Keith Theodore Olbermann is an American political commentator and writer. He has been the chief news officer of the Current TV network and the host of Current TV's weeknight political commentary program, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, since June 20, 2011...
('79) engaged in a dispute, played out on television, over the value of Olbermann's degree from the school's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
The Empire State Building
Empire State Building
The Empire State Building is a 102-story landmark skyscraper and American cultural icon in New York City at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street. It has a roof height of 1,250 feet , and with its antenna spire included, it stands a total of 1,454 ft high. Its name is derived...
and Grauman's Chinese Theatre
Grauman's Chinese Theatre
Grauman's Chinese Theatre is a movie theater at 6925 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. It is on the historic Hollywood Walk of Fame.The Chinese Theatre was commissioned following the success of the nearby Grauman's Egyptian Theatre which opened in 1922...
were designed by Cornell architects Richmond Shreve
Richmond Shreve
Richmond Harold Shreve was a renowned Canadian architect....
(1902) and Raymond M. Kennedy
Raymond M. Kennedy
Raymond McCormick Kennedy was the guiding light and architect of the Grauman's Chinese Theater that opened in May 1927.-Early life:Raymond McCormick Kennedy was born in New Brighton, Pennsylvania in 1891...
('15), respectively. Edmund Bacon ('32) is best known for reshaping Philadelphia
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
in the mid 20th century. Contemporary architects Richard Meier
Richard Meier
Richard Meier is an American architect, whose rationalist buildings make prominent use of the color white.- Biography :Meier is Jewish and was born in Newark, New Jersey...
('57), designer of the Getty Center
Getty Center
The Getty Center, in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, is a campus for cultural institutions founded by oilman J. Paul Getty. The $1.3 billion center, which opened on December 16, 1997, is also well known for its architecture, gardens, and views overlooking Los Angeles...
, and Peter Eisenman
Peter Eisenman
Peter Eisenman is an American architect. Eisenman's professional work is often referred to as formalist, deconstructive, late avant-garde, late or high modernist, etc...
('55), designer of the Wexner Center for the Arts
Wexner Center for the Arts
The Wexner Center for the Arts is The Ohio State University’s multidisciplinary, international laboratory for the exploration and advancement of contemporary art...
, are also Cornellians.
In athletics, Cornellians have won Olympic
Olympic Games
The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...
and World Championship
World championship
A world championship is the top achievement for any sport or contest. The title is usually awarded by contests, ranking systems, stature, ability, etc. This determines the best nation, team, individual in the world in a particular field. Certain sports do not have a world championship, instead...
medals, been inducted into sports halls of fame
Hall of Fame
A hall of fame, wall of fame, walk of fame, walk of stars or avenue of stars is a type of attraction established for any field of endeavor to honor individuals of noteworthy achievement in that field...
, and led numerous teams as general manager
General manager
General manager is a descriptive term for certain executives in a business operation. It is also a formal title held by some business executives, most commonly in the hospitality industry.-Generic usage:...
s and coaches including Glenn "Pop" Warner
Glenn Scobey Warner
Glenn Scobey Warner , most commonly known as Pop Warner, was an American football player and coach...
(1894) and Bruce Arena
Bruce Arena
Bruce Arena is a former coach of the United States men's national soccer team as well as a former professional soccer and lacrosse player...
('73), former head coach of the United States men's national soccer team
United States men's national soccer team
The United States men's national soccer team represents the United States in international association football competitions. It is controlled by the United States Soccer Federation and competes in CONCACAF...
. Cornellian Gary Bettman
Gary Bettman
Gary Bruce Bettman is the commissioner of the National Hockey League , a post he has held since February 1, 1993. Previously, Bettman was a senior vice-president and general counsel to the National Basketball Association...
('74) is current commissioner of the National Hockey League
National Hockey League
The National Hockey League is an unincorporated not-for-profit association which operates a major professional ice hockey league of 30 franchised member clubs, of which 7 are currently located in Canada and 23 in the United States...
. Kevin Boothe
Kevin Boothe
Kevin Mark Boothe is an American football guard and offensive tackle for the New York Giants of the National Football League. He played college football at Cornell University, and was selected in the sixth round by the Oakland Raiders in the 2006 NFL Draft. He was the first player drafted from...
played offensive guard
Guard (American football)
In American and Canadian football, a guard is a player that lines up between the center and the tackles on the offensive line of a football team....
for Cornell and the Super Bowl XLII
Super Bowl XLII
Super Bowl XLII was an American football game on February 3, 2008 that featured the National Football Conference champion New York Giants and the American Football Conference champion New England Patriots to decide the National Football League champion for the 2007 season...
champion New York Giants
New York Giants
The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in East Rutherford, New Jersey, representing the New York City metropolitan area. The Giants are currently members of the Eastern Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League...
. In addition to playing a regular on Hill Street Blues
Hill Street Blues
Hill Street Blues is an American serial police drama that was first aired on NBC in 1981 and ran for 146 episodes on primetime into 1987. Chronicling the lives of the staff of a single police precinct in an unnamed American city, the show received critical acclaim and its production innovations ...
, Ed Marinaro
Ed Marinaro
Ed Marinaro is an American former football player turned actor.-Football career:Marinaro played high school football in New Milford, New Jersey, for the New Milford High School Knights....
('71) was the runner up for the Heisman Trophy, played in two Super Bowls (VIII and IX) and was named to the College Football Hall of Fame
College Football Hall of Fame
The College Football Hall of Fame is a hall of fame and museum devoted to college football. Located in South Bend, Indiana, it is connected to a convention center and situated in the city's renovated downtown district, two miles south of the University of Notre Dame campus. It is slated to move...
. Ken Dryden
Ken Dryden
Kenneth Wayne Dryden, PC, is a Canadian politician, lawyer, businessman, author, and former NHL goaltender. Dryden is married with two children and four grandchildren and is a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame...
('69) was a six-time Stanley Cup
Stanley Cup
The Stanley Cup is an ice hockey club trophy, awarded annually to the National Hockey League playoffs champion after the conclusion of the Stanley Cup Finals. It has been referred to as The Cup, Lord Stanley's Cup, The Holy Grail, or facetiously as Lord Stanley's Mug...
winning hockey
Hockey
Hockey is a family of sports in which two teams play against each other by trying to maneuver a ball or a puck into the opponent's goal using a hockey stick.-Etymology:...
goalie
Goalkeeper
In many team sports which involve scoring goals, a goalkeeper is a designated player charged with directly preventing the opposing team from scoring by intercepting shots at goal...
. Joe Nieuwendyk
Joe Nieuwendyk
Joseph Nieuwendyk is the general manager of the Dallas Stars of the National Hockey League and a retired Canadian ice hockey player...
was a Conn Smythe Trophy
Conn Smythe Trophy
The Conn Smythe Trophy is awarded annually to the player judged most valuable to his team during the National Hockey League's Stanley Cup playoffs. The Conn Smythe Trophy has been awarded 46 times to 40 players since the 1964–65 NHL season...
winner with the Dallas Stars
Dallas Stars
The Dallas Stars are a professional ice hockey team based in Dallas, Texas. They are members of the Pacific Division of the Western Conference of the National Hockey League . The team was founded during the 1967 NHL expansion as the Minnesota North Stars, based in Bloomington, Minnesota. The...
in the 1999 Stanley Cup playoffs
1999 Stanley Cup Playoffs
The 1999 Stanley Cup playoffs, the championship of the National Hockey League , began in April, 1999, following the 1998–99 NHL season. The sixteen teams that qualified, eight from each conference, played best-of-7 series for conference quarterfinals, semifinals and championships, and then the...
. Bryan Colangelo
Bryan Colangelo
Bryan Colangelo is the President and General Manager of the Toronto Raptors of the NBA. He is the son of Phoenix sports mogul, Jerry Colangelo. He attended Cornell University. He was the 2005 and 2007 recipient of the NBA Executive of the Year Award.-Phoenix:Bryan began his NBA front-office career...
('87) is now the President and General Manager of the NBA's Toronto Raptors
Toronto Raptors
The Toronto Raptors are a professional basketball team based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. They are part of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference in the National Basketball Association . The team was established in 1995, along with the Vancouver Grizzlies, as part of the NBA's re-expansion...
.
Fictional alumni have been portrayed in several films, television shows, and books. Characters include Andy Bernard
Andy Bernard
Andrew "Andy" Baines Bernard is a fictional character from the U.S. television series The Office. The character is highly insecure, yet egotistical, constantly mentioning his education at Cornell University...
of The Office and Natalie Keener of Up in the Air
Up in the Air (film)
Up in the Air is a 2009 American comedy-drama film directed by Jason Reitman and co-written by Reitman and Sheldon Turner. It is a film adaptation of the 2001 novel of the same name, written by Walter Kirn. The story is about a corporate downsizer Ryan Bingham and his travels...
.
External links
- Cornell University—Official website
- Cornell Big Red—Official athletics site