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Cornell University
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US History Encyclopedia:
Cornell University
Cornell University had its origin in the desire of Ezra Cornell, a millionaire telegraph contractor and member of the New York state legislature, to establish an institution of higher learning where practical education could be obtained by all who sought it. When the Morrill Land Grant Act was passed in 1862, he foresaw that the 990,000 acres in the form of land scrip to which New York State was entitled might be made to provide a large endowment for a university: at the rate the public lands were passing into private ownership, especially the white pinelands of the Lake states, an investment in them would be sure to return a high capital gain in a few years. With the aid of Andrew D. White, a wealthy Syracusan and a fellow member of Cornell's in the state legislature, the state granted a charter for Cornell University in 1865. In 1868 the university opened for instruction on the hill overlooking Cayuga Lake in Ithaca. White, who was Cornell's first president, departed from the founder's ideas of a university and designed Cornell along the lines of Oxford and Yale; and Henry W. Sage, a millionaire lumberman and chairman of the board of the new institution, made a spectacular success of the investment in Wisconsin pinelands that Ezra Cornell had acquired with the scrip. The university's endowment in 1890 then surpassed the endowments of all but one or two other American universities.
Unlike Michigan State University and the University of Illinois, other land grant institutions, Cornell started as a private institution for which no public appropriations were made, with the exception of the initial granting of land scrip. In fact, the teaching of agricultural science, which the Morrill Act intended to foster, limped along at the new institution until the late 1880s, when the federal government made appropriations for research and teaching agricultural science under the Hatch Act of 1887 and the second Morrill Act of 1890. In 1893 New York State, encouraged by the remarkable success of Liberty Hyde Bailey in making agricultural science useful to the average farmer and by the shrewd lobbying of Jacob Gould Schurman, Cornell's president from 1892 to 1920, began appropriating funds to Cornell for agriculture, and in 1895 it provided for the financial basis for the Veterinary College. Later came the College of Home Economics and the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, making four state schools on the Cornell campus. The School of Nutrition is also partly state funded. The colleges of Engineering, Arts and Sciences, Medicine, and Architecture; the schools of Hotel, Business, Public Administration, and Nursing; and the Law and the graduate schools have always been entirely private, although since 1961 the federal government has made funds available for research and buildings for many of these schools. Cornell University thus developed into a hybrid institution, partly private and partly public—both a member of the Ivy League and a partner of the State University of New York.
Cornell, White, and Sage were early advocates of coeducation, and Cornell University admitted women beginning in 1872, although Sage College for Women was not completed until 1875. From the outset the university's stand in behalf of secular education, when sectarian influences were still strong in higher education, brought upon its trustees, White, and the faculty frequent attacks for their putative godlessness. Among the innovations of the university may be cited the elective system, which was in operation at Cornell from the very first, well before it was introduced at Harvard. The Hotel School and the School of Industrial and Labor Relations became the models for similar institutions elsewhere. They, like all the Cornell schools, greatly broadened the offering of courses of instruction available to students, who were encouraged to cross-register.
At the end of the twentieth century, Cornell had a total enrollment of nearly 20,000 students, including more than 13,600 undergraduates and more than 5,600 graduate students in Ithaca, along with nearly 700 students in the university's two medical graduate/professional schools in New York City. The student body balanced almost evenly between men and women, and minority students made up more than a quarter of the undergraduate population.
Bibliography
Bishop, Morris. A History of Cornell. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1962.
Gates, Paul Wallace. The Wisconsin Pine Lands of Cornell University: A Study in Land Policy and Absentee Ownership. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1943.
Parsons, Kermit Carlyle. The Cornell Campus: A History of Its Planning and Development. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1968.
—Paul W. Gates/A. R.
Columbia Encyclopedia:
Cornell University,
mainly at Ithaca, N.Y.; with land-grant, state, and private support; coeducational; chartered 1865, opened 1868. It was named for Ezra Cornell, who donated $500,000 and a tract of land. With the help of state senator Andrew D. White, who became Cornell's first president, it was made the state land-grant institution. The university has 13 colleges and schools throughout the state. Cornell Univ. Medical College, affiliated with New York Hospital, the Hospital for Special Surgery, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, is in New York City. The university operates the Center for Radiophysics and Space Research and the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, as well as two agricultural experiment stations and a laboratory for ornithology. It is affiliated with the Brookhaven National Laboratory (Long Island). Of note on Cornell's campus are the U.S. plant, soil, and nutrition laboratory, the school of nutrition, and the laboratory of nuclear physics, which includes a reactor and a synchotron. The schools of agriculture and life sciences, veterinary medicine, human ecology, and industrial and labor relations are divisions of the State Univ. of New York.
Bibliography
See M. G. Bishop, A History of Cornell (1962); K. C. Parsons, The Cornell Campus (1968); R. F. Howes, A Cornell Notebook (1971).
Wikipedia:
Cornell University
"Cornell" redirects here. For other uses, see Cornell
(disambiguation).
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Cornell University |
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| Motto | "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study." –Ezra Cornell, 1865[1] |
| Established | 1865 |
| Type | Private with 14 colleges and schools, including 4 contract colleges |
| Academic term | Semester |
| Endowment | US $5.1 billion as of June 30, 2007[2] |
| President | David J. Skorton |
| Faculty | 1,594 Ithaca 1,005 New York City 34 Qatar† |
| Undergraduates | 13,515 Ithaca |
| Postgraduates | 5,932 Ithaca 818 New York City 135 Qatar[3] |
| Location |  Ithaca, NY, USA |
| Campus | Small city, 745 acres (3.0 km²) |
| Colors | Carnelian and white |
| Nickname | Big Red |
| Mascot |
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| Athletics | NCAA Division I Ivy league |
| Affiliations | AAU |
| Website | www.cornell.edu |
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| †Regular full-time and part-time professorial faculty members. NYC Weill medical-division units have additional external affiliations with 867 full-time and part-time faculty members elsewhere. | |
Cornell University is a private university located in Ithaca, New York,
The youngest member of the Ivy League, Cornell was founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White as a coeducational, non-sectarian institution where admission was offered irrespective of religion or race. Inaugurated shortly after the American Civil War, its founders intended that the new university would teach and make contributions in all fields of knowledge — from the classics to the sciences and from the theoretical to the applied. These ideals, unconventional for the time, are captured in Cornell's motto, an 1865 Ezra Cornell quotation: "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study."[1]
The university is organized into seven undergraduate colleges and seven graduate divisions, each defining its own academic programs in near autonomy. Since the mid-20th century, the university has been expanding both its campus resources and influence worldwide. From a new residential college housing system to its 2001 founding of a medical college in Qatar, Cornell claims "to serve society by educating the leaders of tomorrow and extending the frontiers of knowledge."[5] Cornell counts more than 240,000 living alumni, 28 Rhodes Scholars and 40 Nobel laureates affiliated with the university as faculty or students.[3][6][7]
Research is a central element of the university's mission; Cornell spent $605 million on research and development in a diverse group of fields during the July 2005 to June 2006 fiscal year.[8]
History
Cornell University was created on April 27 1865 by a New York State Senate 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 about the globe, attracting students and faculty.[9]
The university was inaugurated on October 7, 1868, and 412 men were enrolled the next day.[10] Two years later, Cornell admitted its first women students, making it the first coeducational school among what came to be known as the Ivy League. Scientists Louis Agassiz and James Crafts were among the faculty members.[9]
Cornell expanded significantly in the 20th century, with its student population growing to its current count of about 20,000 students. The faculty expanded as well; by the century's end, the university had more than 3,400 faculty members. Along with its population growth, Cornell increased its breadth of course offerings. Today, the university has wide-ranging programs and offers more than 4,000 courses.
In the 2000s, Cornell has been expanding its international programs. In 2001, the university founded the Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, the first American medical school outside of the United States.[11] It continues to forge partnerships with major institutions in India, Singapore, and the People's Republic of China.[12][13][14] The university, with its high international profile, claims to be "the first transnational university".[5]
Organization
Cornell is a non-profit institution, receiving most of its funding through tuition, research grants, state appropriations, and alumni contributions. Three of its undergraduate schools/colleges and the graduate-level New York State College of Veterinary Medicine are called "statutory colleges" or "contract colleges". These colleges receive significant partial, ongoing funding from the state of New York to support their teaching, research, and service missions. For 2007-08, these colleges will receive $167.7 million in SUNY appropriations.[15] Residents of New York enrolled in the statutory colleges pay reduced tuition. Furthermore, the New York State Governor, the Speaker of the New York State Assembly, and the President Pro Tem of the New York State Senate all serve as ex-officio members of Cornell's Board of Trustees. The statutory colleges are an integral part of the State University of New York.[16] Despite some similarities, Cornell's contract colleges are not public or state schools — they are private institutions that Cornell operates under statutes, appropriations and contracts with New York State.
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. Although students are affiliated with their individual college or school, they may take courses in any of the colleges, provided they have fulfilled the course prerequisites. A handful of inter-school academic departments offer courses in more than one college.
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.[17]
Several other universities have used Cornell as their model, including 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.[18]
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Undergraduate
Statutory or Contract |
Graduate and professional
Statutory or Contract |
Campuses
Main campus
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.[19]
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.[19] Central Campus has laboratories, administrative buildings, and almost all of the university's academic buildings, athletic facilities, auditoriums, and museums. The only residential facility on Central Campus is the Law School's residential college, 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.[20] Collegetown contains the Schwartz Performing Arts Center and two upperclass residence halls, amid a neighborhood of apartments, restaurants, and businesses.
The main campus is marked by an irregular layout and eclectic architectural styles, including ornate 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.[21] 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.[22] Because the terrace plan was dropped, McGraw Hall appears to face the wrong direction, facing the Slope rather than the Arts Quad.
The Ithaca Campus is among the rolling valleys of the Finger Lakes region and, atop the Hill, commands a panoramic view of the surrounding area. Two gorges bound Central Campus, which become popular swimming holes during the warmer months (although the university discourages their use). Adjacent to the main campus, Cornell owns the 2,900-acre (11.7 km²) Cornell Plantations, a botanical garden containing flowers, trees, and ponds along manicured trails.[23]
New York City campus
Weill Cornell Medical College, often called Weill Cornell, is on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. It is home to two Cornell divisions, Weill Medical College and Weill Graduate School of Medical Sciences, and has been affiliated with the New York-Presbyterian Hospital since 1927.[24] Although their faculty and academic divisions are separate, the Medical Center shares its administrative functions with the Columbia University Medical Center. Weill 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.
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.[25] The College of Human Ecology and the 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.[26] Students with the School of Industrial and Labor Relations' Extension & Outreach Program make workplace expertise available to organizations, union members, policy makers, and working adults.[27] The College of Engineering's Operations Research Manhattan, in the city's financial district, brings together business optimization research and decision support services aimed at strengthening industry and public sector collaboration.[28] 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.[29]
Qatar campus
Weill 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.[11] 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.[30] 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 coeducational institute of higher education in Qatar.[31]
The college is partially funded by the Qatar government through the Qatar Foundation, which contributed $750 million for its construction.[32] The medical center is housed in a large two-story structure designed by Arata Isozaki.[33] In 2004, the Qatar Foundation announced the construction of a 350–bed Specialty Teaching Hospital near the medical college in Education City. The hospital will be completed in 2009 and is supported by an $8 billion endowment.[11]
Other facilities
Cornell University owns and operates many facilities around the world.[34] The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, site of the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, is operated by Cornell under a contract with the National Science Foundation.[35] The Shoals Marine Laboratory, operated in conjunction with the University of New Hampshire,[36] 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.[37] 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 Laboratory of Ornithology in Sapsucker Woods in Ithaca, New York, performs research on biological diversity, primarily in birds. In 2005, the lab announced that it had rediscovered the Ivory-billed woodpecker, long thought to be extinct.[38] 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.[39][40] 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.[41] 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."[42] In addition, the university operates biodiversity laboratories in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, and in the Amazon rainforest in Peru[43][44] named the Cornell University Esbaran Amazon Field Laboratory.
The university also maintains offices for study abroad and scholarship programs. Cornell in Washington is a program that allows students to study for a semester in Washington, D.C., in research and internship positions while earning credit toward a degree.[45] 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.[46] 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.[47]
Academics
Profile
For the undergraduate class of 2011, the admission rate was 20.5%, the most selective in the university's history, though the highest in the Ivy League.[48] Of those admitted, the average SAT 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.[49] In 2006, the most selective undergraduate college was the College of Arts and Sciences, which admitted only 14.6% of applicants. For the class of 2009, 33.8% enrolled through early decision.[50] Of enrolling students, 67% scored above 650 on the SAT Verbal exam and 82% scored above 650 on the SAT Math exam. Sixty-eight percent of new undergraduate students hailed from public high schools.[50] Cornell enrolls students from all 50 U.S. states and more than 120 countries. The Class of 2010 has representatives from all states except for Arkansas. As of Fall 2005, 28% of undergraduate student identified themselves as members of ethnic minority groups.[3] Ninety-six percent of first-year students return for their second year.[50] Of 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.[3]
In 2005, the Graduate School accepted 21.6% of applicants, the Johnson School of Management accepted 34.4%, the Law School accepted 20.6%, and the Veterinary School accepted 10.9%.[51][52][53][54] The Weill Cornell Medical School accepted 4.3%.[55]
Faculty
For the August 2005 to May 2006 academic year, Cornell University had 1,594 full-time and part-time academic faculty members affiliated with its main campus.[3] The New York City medical divisions count 1,005 faculty members and Qatar has 34.[3] In total, 40 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with Cornell as faculty or students.[6] Notable former professors include Carl Sagan, Charles Evans Hughes, Norman Malcolm, Vladimir Nabokov, Hans Bethe, Richard Feynman, Kip Thorne, Archie Randolph Ammons, and Allan Bloom.
Cornell's faculty for the 2005–06 academic year included three Nobel laureates, a
On June 11, 2005, Jeffrey S. Lehman announced that he would resign from the position of Cornell President effective June 30, 2005, citing "differences with the board regarding the strategy for realizing Cornell's long-term vision."[56] Former Cornell President Hunter R. Rawlings III served as interim president for the 2005–06 academic year. David J. Skorton, former president of the University of Iowa, assumed office on July 8, 2006.
International programs
Cornell offers undergraduate curricula with international focuses, including the Africana Studies, 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.[3] In addition to traditional academic programs, Cornell students may study abroad on any of six continents.[57]
The Asian Studies major, South Asia Program, Southeast Asia Program, and the newly launched 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.[58] 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,[59] as well as the University of the Philippines, Los Baños,[60] 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.[61]
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.[62]
Cornell has partnered with Queen's University in Canada to offer a joint Executive MBA. The only program of its kind in the world, graduates of the program earn both a Cornell MBA and a Queen's MBA.[63] This program is made possible through videoconferencing, and so students in Canada and the United States share an interactive virtual classroom.
Rankings
The university ranked 12th in the 2007 and 2008 U.S. News & World Report National Universities ranking (tied with Washington University in St. Louis both years) and 12th globally in an academic ranking of world universities by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2006.[64][65] Britain's THES - QS World University Rankings ranked Cornell 14th in the world in 2005[66] and 15th in 2006.[67] Cornell was ranked seventh nationally and first among Ivy League universities in The Washington Monthly's 2007 ranking of universities' contributions to research, community service, and social mobility.[68] In 2006, The Princeton Review reported that Cornell ranked ninth as a "dream college" for high school students and their parents.[69] Newsweek named Cornell the 'Hottest Ivy' in its 2007 listing of America's 25 Hot Schools. [70] Instead of using the traditional school ranking methods, Newsweek offers a snapshot of todays 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. [71]
The Almanac of Architecture and Design along with Design Intelligence has consistently ranked Cornell's Bachelor of Architecture program as number one in the nation, most recently in 2007; the Master of Architecture program ranks 6th as of 2007.[72]
Among business schools in the United States, the Johnson Graduate School of Management was ranked 7th by BusinessWeek in 2004,[73] 9th by Forbes in 2005,[74] 16th by U.S. News in 2007,[75] and 18th by The Wall Street Journal in 2005.[76] Worldwide, the school was ranked 17th by The Economist in 2005 and 36th by the Financial Times in 2006.[77][78]
The Undergraduate Business Program at Cornell University ranked 12th Nationally in US News & World Report's Best Undergraduate Business Programs for 2008.
U.S. News ranked the Weill Cornell Medical School as the 15th best in the United States in its 2007 edition.[79] The College of Veterinary Medicine was ranked first among national veterinary medicine graduate schools.[80] The Cornell Law School was ranked as the 13th best graduate law program among national universities.[81] 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.[82]
In its 2006 ranking[83] and 2007 ranking[84] of undergraduate engineering programs at universities in the United States, U.S. News placed Cornell first in engineering physics. In 1954, Conrad Hilton called the Cornell School of Hotel Administration "the greatest hotel school in the world."[85]
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.[86] 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.
Library
The Cornell University Library is the eleventh largest academic library in the United States, ranked by number of volumes held.[87] Organized into twenty 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.[88] It was the first among all U.S. colleges and universities to allow undergraduates to borrow books from its libraries.[3] In 2006, The Princeton Review ranked it as the 11th best college library.[89]
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 physicists and mathematicians communicate, making the e-print a viable and popular means of announcing new research.
Press
The Cornell University Press, established in 1869 but inactive from 1884 to 1930, was the first university publishing enterprise in the United States.[90] It was established in the College of the Mechanic Arts (as mechanical engineering was called in the 19th century) because engineers knew more than literature professors did about running steam-powered printing presses. From its inception, the press has offered work-study financial aid: students with previous training in the printing trades were paid for typesetting and running the presses that printed textbooks, pamphlets, a weekly student journal, and official university publications.
Today, the press is one of the country's largest university presses.[3] 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.[90][91] The press's acquisitions, editorial, production, and marketing departments have been located in Sage House since 1993, and the financial department is on Cascadilla Street in downtown Ithaca.[90]
Student life
Activities
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.[92] 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.[93][94] The assemblies also finance other student life programs including a concert commission and an on-campus movie theater. 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.[95] Organized in 1868, the oldest student organization is the Cornell University Glee Club.
Cornell hosts the second largest fraternity and sorority system in North America, with 66 chapters involving 28% of male and 22% of female undergraduates.[96][97] Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter organization established for African Americans, 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.[97] However, the administration has expressed concerns over student misconduct in the system. In 2004–05, of 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.[97] Student misconduct is reviewed by the Judicial Administrator, Cornell's justice system.
Press and Radio
- The Cornell Daily Sun is the oldest continuously independent college daily newspaper in the United States, having published since September 1880. In 1912, it became the first collegiate member of the Associated Press. The Sun currently publishes print and online editions five days a week while classes are in session and publishes content online during all school breaks. The Sun is distributed on Cornell's campus, around Ithaca and can be subscribed to outside of Ithaca.[98]
- The Cornell Chronicle, published Thursdays during the academic year by the Division of University Communications, is the university's newspaper of record, containing news, research and features about university programs, students, faculty and the administration, and a calendar of events.
- The Cornell Review is a fortnightly conservative tabloid newspaper published by students. The Review incorporated in 1986 as The Ithaca Review, Inc. While the ideological makeup of its staff shifts over the years, the paper has maintained strident criticism of Cornell's perceived left-wing politics and political correctness. The Review has received national attention for its articles including one that discussed a proposal to sell vibrators at Gannett Health Center on campus. [2]
- Turn Left is an independent student-run publication. This publication was founded in 2000 by three engineering students to counter the domination by the conservative Cornell Review. Calling itself "Cornell's Liberal Voice," it focuses on political and humanitarian issues that it believes are underreported by other media outlets.[99]
- The Cornell Centrist was founded in