Cornell Tech is the new applied sciences campus of Cornell University located in New York City, currently at a temporary site in Chelsea, Manhattan. A new permanent campus is being constructed on Roosevelt Island. The new programs offered include a partnership between Cornell University and the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology and confer graduate degrees in business, computing, and engineering.
History
Planning
On December 19, 2011, then-New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that Cornell University and its partner, the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, had won a bid for a new applied sciences and technology campus to be built on Roosevelt Island in Manhattan. The competition was established by Mayor Bloomberg in order to increase entrepreneurship and job growth in the city's technology sector. The winning bid consisted of a 2.1 million square feet state-of-the-art tech campus being built on Roosevelt Island, which will have its first phase completed by 2017, with a temporary off-site campus opening in 2012. Part of the new 'School of Genius' in New York City has been named the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute.
The New York City Economic Development Corporation awarded the project to Cornell Tech rather than to Stanford University, in potential partnership with the City College of New York, after Stanford pulled out of negotiations at the last minute, in anticipation of Cornell being selected as the winning bid. Cornell Tech began classes in January 2013 in temporary classrooms supplied by Google in its office building located at 111 Eighth Avenue in the Chelsea neighborhood.
The college launched after gifts of $350 million by Duty Free Shops founder Charles Feeney through his Atlantic Philanthropies and a $133 million gift by Qualcomm founder Irwin M. Jacobs and his wife Joan.
The centerpiece program is to be the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute.
Construction
Construction of the campus will require demolition of the Coler-Goldwater Specialty Hospital's south campus, and patients will be moved elsewhere. City officials say they do not have plans to close the north campus.
Construction of the first academic building began in January 2014 with the arrival of equipment on Roosevelt Island for the building of a fence around the construction site and for the demolition of the existing structures. Demolition began in March 2014. Debris is being removed by barge.
In December 2013, it was announced that Cornell Tech would be partnering with The Hudson Companies and The Related Companies to build the first residential building on the campus. The building will have approximately 350 housing units for students, staff and faculty and will contain a mix of studios and apartments with one, two or three bedrooms. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2015.
Controversy
The campus, and in particular the collaboration with the Israeli university of Technion, has drawn opposition and protests. Opponents of Cornell's partnership with Technion, including faculty and students at Cornell as well as activists in New York City, point to Technion's implication with the Israeli occupation of Palestine as well as to an alleged lack of procedural transparency in planning the project.
New Yorkers Against the Cornell-Technion Partnership, or NYACT, was formed in February 2012 in response to the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, as well as for an academic boycott on Israel. The group criticizes Technion for its involvement in the Israeli occupation of Palestine and in the construction of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank. Technion's involvement with the Israeli military in the occupied West Bank is also cited by the group as a case for boycott. The goal of NYACT is to end Cornell Tech's partnership with Technion. As of 2014, the group is active, protesting against Google's involvement in Cornell-Technion and advocating in local community board meetings against Technion.
Others, such as author and journalist Max Blumenthal have also expressed their opposition to the partnership with Technion, saying, "we find [that] Roosevelt Island - one of the key institutions to evolve from this process of occupation and dispossession - is going to erect a leading institution...between Cornell and Technion which will only represent the sustainability of occupation and Israeli Apartheid; the profitability of Apartheid."
Design
Cornell Tech was dubbed "Silicon Island" by The New Yorker, a magazine, and "Silicon Alley East", a spin-off of the "Silicon Alley" nickname for Manhattan start-ups.
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill is designing the master plan and James Corner is doing the landscape design. Cornell Tech will eventually be located on Roosevelt Island in the East River. The university will operate from Google's offices until 2017, when the new campus's first "net-zero energy" building, to be designed by Thom Mayne of Morphosis Architects, will open. The full campus, due to be completed in 2037, will span 12 acres (5 ha). The complex, due to its location in the middle of the East River, will have views of both Manhattan Island and Queens. The construction is on the site of the Coler-Goldwater Specialty Hospital in the south end of the island where 800 patients will be relocated to other facilities. The hospital still plans to continue its operations on the north side of the island.
The first phase of construction will include four buildings:
- Academic Building
- Corporate Co-location Building
- Student Housing
- Verizon Executive Education Center
Cost
Cornell Tech will ultimately cost developers $2 billion, including $350 million in start-up costs supplied by Cornell alumnus Charles Feeney, a wealthy philanthropist, and $100 million allocated by Mayor Bloomberg. The Technion is not contributing financially to the project, whose initiators maintained a low profile on the Technion-Cornell bid until ten days before New York City's deadline for proposals. Success of the bid was widely credited to the partnership with Technion-Israel Institute of Technology--a winner of Nobel Prizes and incubator of high-tech businesses.
On April 22, 2013 it was announced that Qualcomm co-founder and former CEO Irwin M. Jacobs and his wife Joan, both graduates of Cornell University, would be contributing $133 million to the school to create the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute (JTCII).
Curriculum
The curriculum of Cornell Tech is said to be unique, dealing with modern technological issues and challenges in a multi-disciplinary context. The progress is overseen by both an academic adviser and an industry adviser.
Courses of study
- MEng in Computer Science
- MS in Information Systems, Connective Media
- MS in Information Systems, Healthier Life
- Johnson Cornell Tech MBA
Co-Curriculum
MBA and M.Eng. students share about 40 percent of their coursework. This curriculum includes:
- Conversations in the Studio -- This practicum features a weekly guest practitioner for a provocative, closed-door discussion with students. The guest practitioners are active entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, social entrepreneurs, engineers, designers, artists, VCs, lawyers, writers, ethicists, and other diverse leaders who are impacting society though their entrepreneurial efforts. Past visitors have included Yancey Strikler, CEO of Kickstarter; Jennifer Dulski, President & COO of Change.org; and Brad Short, Distinguished Technologist at HP.
- Studio/Startup Studio
- Entrepreneurial Lens/Project Management
Faculty
Academic Faculty
Practitioners
References
External links
- tech.cornell.edu
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