Cornell University

"Cornell" redirects here. For the unaffiliated liberal arts college in Mount Vernon, Iowa, see Cornell College. For other uses, see Cornell (disambiguation).

History

Template:Main Image:Cornell Arts Quad 1879.jpg Cornell was created on April 27, 1865 by the New York State Senate when they passed a bill naming Cornell as the state's land grant institution. Senator Ezra Cornell offered his farm in Ithaca, NY 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. Over the next three years, White oversaw the construction of the initial two buildings and traveled about the country, attracting students and faculty.

After much planning, the university was inaugurated on October 7, 1868 and, through examination, admitted its first students the following day - an initial enrollment of 412 men.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> While Cornell offered coeducation since its inception, no women enrolled until 1870, many years before any of the other Ivy League schools. The initial faculty included such noteworthy academics as Louis Agassiz and James Crafts.

In recent years, Cornell has been aggressively expanding its international programs—from the establishment, in 2001, of the Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, the first American medical school outside of the United States, to the forging of partnerships and collaboration with major institutions in China<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>, India <ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and Singapore<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>—it has gone as far as claiming to be "the first transnational university."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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Organization

Academic units

Image:CornellAgQuad.jpg Cornell is a private institution, receiving most of its funding through tuition, research grants, and alumni contributions. However, three of its undergraduate colleges as well as the graduate-level College of Veterinary Medicine, called contract or statutory colleges, also receive partial funding from the state of New York to support their research and service mission in niche fields. Residents of New York enrolled in the contract colleges enjoy reduced tuition. Further, the governor of the state serves as an ex-officio member of the board of trustees. It is a common misconception that Cornell's contract colleges are public institutions. They are not—they are private institutions that Cornell operates by contract with the state government.

Cornell is highly decentralized, with its colleges and schools enjoying wide autonomy. Each defines its own academic programs, organizes 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 and take two physical education courses. Periodically, the university attempts to resolve naturally arising redundancies by creating special inter-school departments. While students may take courses offered by the division, their enrollment remains with their individual college or school. With that said, any student may take any course in any of the colleges, provided they have fulfilled the pre-requisites for enrollment.

Seven schools offer undergraduate programs. In addition, there are six units offering graduate and professional programs. Students pursuing graduate degrees in departments of these schools are enrolled in the Graduate School.

Undergraduate colleges and schools

Graduate/Professional colleges and schools

All of Cornell's graduate and professional schools are endowed, except for the statutory veterinary school.

• Graduate School
• Cornell Law School
• S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management
• Weill Cornell Medical College (New York City)
• Weill Cornell Medical College (Qatar)
• Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences (New York City)
• New York State College of Veterinary Medicine

Other

• School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions

Non-academic units

Cornell University Library

Image:Cornell Law School Library.JPG The Cornell University Library (CUL) consists of twenty units. One of the twelve largest academic research libraries in the United States by volume, it holds 7 million volumes in open stacks, 8 million microforms, and some 76,000 sound recordings in its collections, in addition to extensive digital resources and the University Archives<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>. It was the first among all U.S. colleges and universities to allow undergraduates to borrow books from its libraries.

CUL plays an active role in furthering online archiving of scientific and historical documents. The arXiv.org e-print archive, created at Los Alamos National Laboratory by Paul Ginsparg, is operated and primarily funded by Cornell as part of CUL's services. The archive has changed the way many physicists and mathematicians communicate, making the eprint a viable and popular form for announcing new research.

Other digital initiatives include Project Euclid and the Cornell Library Digital Collections.

Cornell University Press

Cornell University Press, established in 1869 but inactive from about 1890 to 1930, was the first university publishing enterprise in the United States and is one of the country's largest university presses<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>. It produces approximately 150 titles each year in various disciplines including anthropology, classics, cultural studies, history, literary criticism and theory, medieval studies, philosophy, politics and international relations, psychology and psychiatry, and women's studies. Established in the College of the Mechanic Arts (as mechanical engineering was called in the 1800s), probably because engineers knew more than literature professors did about running steam-powered printing presses, the Cornell University Press offered work-study financial aid when tuition to Cornell cost $75 a year. Students with previous training in the printing trades were paid to set the type and run the presses that printed textbooks, a weekly student journal, pamphlets and official university publications, such as the annual “Register” book. An advertisement in the 1870 “Register” said that America’s first university press “solicits the patronage of the public for two reasons: First, it attempts to do its work well. Second, its employees are all young men who are endeavoring, by means of their own labor, to defer the expenses of a University education”.

Campuses

Main Campus

Image:Mcgraw.jpgCornell's main campus is located on East Hill in Ithaca, New York, overlooking the town and Cayuga Lake. When the University began in 1865, the campus consisted of 209.5 acres of Ezra Cornell's roughly 300 acre farm. Since then, it has swelled to about 745 acres<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> encompassing both the Hill and much of the surrounding areas.

The university's roughly 260 buildings<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> are primarily divided among Central and North Campuses on the plateau, West Campus on the slope of the Hill, and Collegetown, adjacent to Central Campus. Central Campus contains laboratories, administrative buildings, almost all academic buildings, athletic facilities, auditoriums, and museums. The only residential facility currently operating on Central Campus is the Law School's residential college, Hughes Hall. North Campus, a 1911 donation, contains freshman and graduate student housing and themed "program houses." West Campus contains upperclass residential colleges. Collegetown contains a performing arts center and two upperclass dormitories.

Image:West Campus Gothic Plan.jpgThe Main Campus is well known for its eclectic architectural styles and irregular layout. While many buildings are Gothic, Victorian, and Neoclassical, there are also many in the International, and Modernist styles. The more ornate buildings were generally built during the pre-World War II period according to the wishes of Andrew Dickson White. However, as the student population doubled from 7,000 in 1950 to 15,000 by 1970, grandiosity was neglected in favor of more affordable, more rapidly constructed styles in order to meet the needs of the expanding population.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Also, while some buildings are neatly arranged into quadrangles, others are densely and haphazardly packed. In a large way, these eccentricities arose from the Campus's numerous, ever changing master plans. For example, in one of the earliest plans, Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of Central Park, outlined a "grand terrance" overlooking Cayuga.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> As the terrace plan was later dropped, McGraw Hall appears to face the wrong direction, facing The Slope rather than the Arts Quad.

Image:Beebe Lake.jpg The Main Campus is also well regarded for its scenic beauty. Cornell is located amongst the rolling valleys of the Finger Lakes region and, atop the Hill, it possesses a glorious panorama of these sights below. Two gorges bound Central Campus, which become popular swimming holes during the warmer months. Students also enjoy many miles of manicured nature trails. Near the Main Campus, Cornell owns the 2900 acre <ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Cornell Plantations, a botanical garden containing many flowers, trees, and ponds.

See Cornell's collection of photos and Quicktime VR views of campus

New York City campus

The New York Weill Cornell Medical Center is located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. It is home both to the Weill Cornell Medical College and Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, and has a long affiliation with the New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Although their faculty and academic divisions remain separate, the Medical Center shares its administrative functions with the Columbia University Medical Center. 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 have joint appointments at these institutions, and Weill Cornell, Rockefeller, and MSKCC offer a Tri-Institutional MD-PhD program to selected entering Cornell medical students.

New York City is also home to local offices of the Cornell Cooperative Extension, to an office of the ILR (Industrial and Labor Relations) Extension, to an office of the College of Architecture, Art & Planning, and to Cornell's Operations Research Manhattan Center. These facilities are all separate from and operated independently of the medical center.

Other campuses

Image:Arecibo.arp.750pix.jpg The Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, located in Education City, near Doha, is housed in a large two-story structure designed by Arata Isozaki.

The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, site of the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, is operated by Cornell.

The Shoals Marine Laboratory, a seasonal marine field station dedicated to undergraduate education and research operated in conjunction with the University of New Hampshire, is located on the 95 acre (0.4 km²) Appledore Island off the Maine–New Hampshire coast.

The New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, operated by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, is located in Geneva, New York, 50 miles (80 km) northwest of the main campus. The facility now comprises 20 major buildings on 130 acres (0.5 km²) of land, as well as over 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.

Cornell University maintains facilities in Washington, D.C. and New York City for its Cornell in Washington, Urban Semester, and Urban Scholars Programs.

Other facilities include

• Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Sapsucker Woods in Ithaca, New York
• Cornell Biological Field Station at Shackelton Point in Bridgeport, New York
• Punta Cana and EsBaran biodiversity field stations in the Dominican Republic and Peru
• Arnot Teaching and Research Forest natural resources center in Tompkins and Schuyler Counties.
• Animal Science Teaching and Research Center in Harford, New York, and Duck Research Laboratory in Eastport, New York
• Offices of the New York Sea Grant, Cornell Cooperative Extension, and School of Industrial and Labor Relations Extension Service throughout New York State
• Offices for Cornell-administered study abroad programs such as the Cornell-Nepal Study Program and Cornell-in-Rome

Admissions

Cornell's overall undergraduate acceptance rate for 2006 was 24.7%.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Cornell's enrollment includes students from over 120 countries and all fifty U.S. states.

Academics

International programs

Cornell offers a wide array of programs and undergraduate majors with an international focus, including Africana Studies, Asian Studies, French Studies, German Studies, Jewish Studies, Latino Studies, Near Eastern Studies, Romance Studies, Russian Literature, the South Asia Program, the Southeast Asia Program, and the newly-launched China and Asia-Pacific Studies (CAPS). In addition to these academic programs, to the Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar and to its study abroad programs on six continents<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>, Cornell has undertaken a number of major initiatives overseas:

• In Asia, Cornell has an agreement with Peking University in which students in the CAPS major will spend a semester in Beijing.
• The College of Engineering has an agreement to exchange faculty and graduate students with Tsinghua University in Beijing<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>.
• The School of Hotel Administration has a joint master's program with Nanyang Technological University in Singapore<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>.
• The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences has signed an agreement with Japan's National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences to engage in joint research, and to exchange graduate students and faculty members.
• The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences has agreed to cooperate in agricultural research with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>.
• In the Middle East, Cornell is developing the Bridging the Rift Center<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>, a "Library of Life" (or databank about all living systems) on the border of Israel and Jordan, in collaboration with those two countries and Stanford University.

Reputation

Cornell ranked 13th in the 2006 U.S. News and World Report "National Universities" ranking<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>, and 12th globally in an academic ranking of world universities by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2005<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>.

In its 2005 ranking of engineering programs at universities in the United States, U.S. News and World Report has placed Cornell first in engineering science and engineering physics. That same magazine rated the medical school's departments of psychiatry and orthopedic surgery as second best in the country, while rheumatology was rated third.

Student life

Activities

Image:Sun-first.jpg Cornell has more than 850 registered student organizations, running 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Many groups are subsidized financially by the Student Assembly Finance Commission, a student-run organization that gives nearly $1,000,000 a year to clubs and organizations. Organized in 1868, the oldest student organization is the Cornell University Glee Club.

The Cornell Daily Sun is the oldest continuously independent college daily in the United States, having published since September 1880, and the first collegiate member of the Associated Press. Other campus publications include The Cornell Review, Turn Left and The Cornell American.

WVBR is an independent radio station owned and operated by Cornell students. During the 1970s, it was noted for its progressive rock radio format. It is also known for its coverage of both Cornell and national sports.

Cornell also hosts one of the largest fraternity and sorority systems in North America, with over 60 chapters involving approximately one third of undergraduate students.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African Americans was founded at Cornell in 1906.

Housing

Image:Balch Halls Exterior.jpg University housing is broadly divided into three sections: West Campus, Collegetown and North Campus. As a result of President Hunter R. Rawlings III's 1997 Residential Initiative<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>, West Campus houses mostly 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 (JAM), the Ecology House, Holland International Living Center (HILC), the Multicultural Living Learning Unit (McLLU), the Latino Living Center (LLC), Akwe:kon, and Ujaama.

Image:Risley hall, backyard.gif In an attempt to create a sense of community and an atmosphere of education outside the classroom, the university has undertaken the $250 million residential college project on West Campus. In line with Andrew Dickson White's vision of the university, the West Campus Class Halls will be demolished and rebuilt as five residential colleges. The first House, the Alice Cook House, was opened to students in 2004, followed by the Carl Becker House in 2005. The next house will be the Hans Bethe House. The names of the Houses come from notable Cornell professors. 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. Like Risley, the new houses will have their own dining halls, student governments, in-house lectures, House trips, and crests. The completion of the five-House "residential college" campus will occur in 2010.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

A variety of off-campus housing options exist. Many homes in the East Hill neighborhoods adjacent to the university have been converted to apartments, and several high-rise apartment complexes have been constructed in the Collegetown neighborhood. A significant number of undergraduate students live in fraternity and sorority houses. Many "co-op" or other independent living units such as Watermargin, Telluride House, the Center for Jewish Living (formerly the Young Israel House), and the Wait Cooperative also exist.

The campus dining services have been rated as one of the top college dining services many times in recent years.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Cornell has a program called Cross Country Gourmet Guest Restaurant Series which periodically brings chefs, menus, and atmosphere from America’s most influential restaurants to Cornell’s dining rooms.

Athletics

Template:Main Cornell, with 36 varsity teams, has one of the most diverse varsity athletic programs in the country. Image:Schoellkopfcrecent.jpg An NCAA Division I institution, Cornell is a member of the Ivy League and also competes in Eastern College Athletic Conference, the largest athletic conference in North America. Cornell's traditional football rival is the University of Pennsylvania; in 1993, the two institutions celebrated the 100th anniversary of their first game. More keenly followed in the present day are the men's ice hockey contests with Harvard University, although the rivalry has been somewhat one-sided in recent years, with Cornell leading 22-5-2 since the 95-96 seasonTemplate:Citation needed, including ECAC Championship Game wins in 1996, 2003, and 2005.

In addition to the school's varsity athletics, a wide variety of club sports teams have been organized as student organizations under the auspices of the Dean of Students.

Cornell's intramural program includes 30 sports. In addition to such familiar sports such as flag football, squash, or horseshoes, such unusual offerings as "inner tube water polo" and formerly "broomstick polo" have been offered, as well as a sports trivia competition.

Research

The Automotive Crash Injury Research project was begun in 1952 by John O. Moore at the Cornell Aeronautical Research Laboratories (spun off in 1972 as Calspan Corporation). It pioneered the first-ever use of crash testing (originally using corpses rather than dummies). The project discovered that an extraordinary percentage of injuries could be prevented by improved door locks, energy-absorbing steering wheels, padded dashboards, and seat belts. The project led to Liberty Mutual's funding the building of a demonstration Cornell Safety Car in 1956, which received national publicity, and influenced carmakers. Carmakers started their own crash-test laboratories and gradually adopted the main Cornell innovations, all now taken for granted (although others, 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 Theory Center, to provide high-speed computing resources for research within the United States. In 1985, development of NSFNet, a TCP/IP-based computer network that could connect to the ARPANET, was undertaken by a team from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Cornell Theory Center. 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Image:NASA Mars Exploration Rover.jpg For more than 40 years, Cornell has been involved in unmanned missions to Mars.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Recently, Cornell had a hand in the Mars Exploration Rover Mission. Cornell's own Steve Squyres<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>, Principal investigator for the Athena Science Payload, led the selection of the landing zones and requested data collection features for the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers took those requests and designed the rovers to meet them. JPL is also responsible for all of the designs relating to space travel, Mars terrain travel, and the software-control system. The rovers, which have both operated long past their original life expectancy, are responsible for the discoveries that were awarded 2004 Breakthrough of the Year honors<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> by Science. Photos taken by Opportunity, near its landing site at Meridiani Planum, showed a stratification pattern and cross bedding within the rocks that suggest a history of water flowing in the region. Control of the Mars rovers has shifted between NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech and Cornell's Space Sciences Building<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>.

Faculty

Template:Seealso Cornell University has over 1,550 full-time and part-time academic faculty members, and an additional 1,600 affiliated with its medical divisions. The 2004-05 Cornell faculty included three Nobel laureates, a Crawford Prize winner, two Turing Award winners, a Fields Medal winner, two Legion of Honor recipients, a World Food Prize winner, four National Medal of Science winners, two Wolf Prize winners, four MacArthur Award winners, four Pulitzer Prize winners, 14 Alexander von Humboldt Award winners, two Eminent Ecologist Award recipients, a Carter G. Woodson Scholars Medallion recipient, 20 National Science Foundation CAREER grant holders, a recipient of the National Academy of Sciences Award for Initiatives in Research, a winner of the American Mathematical Society's Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement, a recipient of the Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics, two 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 total, Cornell is affiliated to 32 Nobel laureates.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Among Cornell's notable former professors are Carl Sagan, Norman Malcolm, Vladimir Nabokov, Hans Bethe, Richard Feynman, Kip S. Thorne, and Allan Bloom.

Alumni

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Graduates of Cornell are known as "Cornellians". As of 2005, Cornell University counted over 230,000 living Cornellians<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>. Many continue to remain active through organizations and events including the annual Reunion Weekend and Homecoming, weekend festivities in Ithaca, and the International Spirit of Zinck's Night. Continued interest in the university shows in its alumni donations. In the 2003-4 fiscal year, Cornell ranked second in gifts and bequests from alumni and third in total support from all sources (alumni, friends, corporations, and foundations) among U.S. colleges and universities reporting voluntary gift support.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>.

Additionally, Cornellians are noted for their many accomplishments in a variety of fields. Though no Cornellian has been an American president, they have been the heads of state for Iran, the Republic of China, and Cuba. Also in government have been numerous Cabinet members, Congressmen, and even one Supreme Court justice. After their Cornell education, they have gone on to help found other institutions such as Stanford and Bryn Mawr. They have created numerous businesses such as Burger King, Carrier, Citigroup, Coors, Gannett, Grumman Aerospace Corporation, PeopleSoft, Priceline.com, Qualcomm, S. C. Johnson & Son, and Staples, and played influential roles in the growth of Black & Decker and Oscar Mayer.

In medicine, Cornell alumni have invented the Atkins diet, Heimlich maneuver, and pacemaker, coined the term power nap, and include such personalities as Dr Spock, and Joyce Brothers. Cornell scientists and engineers have invented Freon, the PalmPilot, some of the earliest computer games and computer viruses, landed the Mars rovers, served as astronauts, and been affectionately referred to as "The Science Guy."

Cornell authors have won Pulitzer Prizes and Nobel Prizes and have written such famous works as Beloved, Charlotte's Web, The Elements of Style, Gentleman's Agreement, The Good Earth, Gravity's Rainbow, and Slaughterhouse-Five. Cornell actors have played such memorable characters as Charlie Bucket, Superman, Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog, The Wizard of Oz, won Academy Awards, and been enshrined on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Cornell musicians have written such songs as Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo and Mele Kalikimaka, and frontlined bands such as Bad Religion, Huey Lewis and the News, and Peter, Paul and Mary. In athletics, Cornellians have won Olympic gold medals, led numerous teams as GMs, and coaches, and been inducted into sports halls of fame. Cornell architects have designed such buildings as the Empire State Building, and Grauman's Chinese Theatre.

Cornelliana

Image:Dragon Day 1901.JPG

See main article: Cornelliana

Cornelliana is a term for Cornell's unique traditions, legends and lore. Cornellian traditions include Slope Day, a celebration held on the last day of classes, and Dragon Day, which includes the burning of a dragon built by architecture students.

The school colors are carnelian (a shade of red) and white, a play on "Cornellian" and Andrew Dickson White. Cornell's athletic teams are referred to as the "Big Red"; 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 sports teams participate in the Ivy League and the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC). At sporting events, Cornellians sing the university's alma mater "Far Above Cayuga's Waters" and fight song "Give My Regards to Davy". People associated with the university are called "Cornellians"; "Cornellian" may also be used as an adjective and is the name of the university's yearbook.

Notes and References

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External links

• Cornell University, official website
• Cornell Undergraduate Admissions
• CUinfo, campus information portal
• alumni.cornell, portal for the alumni, parents, and friends of Cornell University, offering services, organizations, and ways to become involved and support the university's mission.
• Cornell Big Red, official athletics site
• The Cornell Daily Sun, student newspaper (independent)
• Cornell Cybertower, collection of Cornell lectures available online
• Legal Information Institute, public information service of Cornell Law School
• A Virtual Tour of Cornell