Redesign Cornell's Academics...What Would You Do?

<p>I have spent a great deal of time considering the structure of Cornell’s academic programs, assessing the extent to which they are logical. Here is how I would restructure Cornell’s programs and colleges.</p>

<li><p>College of Arts and Sciences- no change; would still house the Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Humanities and Foreign Studies/Languages.</p></li>
<li><p>College of Engineering- same deal; no revision is needed.</p></li>
<li><p>School of Hotel Administration- Cornell’s bread and butter; same deal. </p></li>
<li><p>College of Architecture, Art, and Planning- would still contain traditional majors in Architecture, Art and City Planning, but would also take Fiber Science and Apparel Design, Environmental Analysis (From Human Ecology) and Landscape Architecture (From CALS) because these majors are better suited in a college that focuses on art.</p></li>
<li><p>College of Agriculture and Life Sciences- would be cut down a lot. The only programs that it would contain would be those actually associated with Agriculture and Life Sciences, those being departments such as Animal/Food Science, Crop/Soil Science, Plant Genetics, etc. </p></li>
<li><p>College of Management- the Applied Economics and Management (AEM) program should be placed with other business programs, not arbitrarily thrown in with CALS. This new college would contain both the AEM program as well as multiple programs currently offered by ILR, those being Social Statistics, Human Resources, Labor Economics. ILR is essentially split between “policy” departments and “business” departments, so the business departments would fit well in the College of Management. </p></li>
<li><p>College of People and Policy- this is my main project. I would establish a college that combines the study of public policy and human interaction, which, to me, seems to be randomly scattered across Cornell. CPP would have several components, the first being Human Ecology’s Policy Analysis and Management (PAM). There is little justification for its current position. I would also add ILR’s policy based programs, such as Organizational Behavior, International Labor and Collective Bargaining and Labor Law. Finally, the “people” part would come with the inclusion of CALS’ Education, Human Development, Communication, Development Sociology and Information Science departments. These programs are all well suited with each other.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Feel free to provide feedback and/or post your own ideas.</p>

<p>I brought something like this up once and everyone got mad at me. I agree with yours though, the current structure is chaotic</p>

<p>There was an opinion piece in the Sun in April exactly to this effect.</p>

<p>[Re-imagining</a> the Division of Cornell’s Seven Schools | The Cornell Daily Sun](<a href=“http://cornellsun.com/section/opinion/content/2009/04/10/re-imagining-division-cornells-seven-schools]Re-imagining”>http://cornellsun.com/section/opinion/content/2009/04/10/re-imagining-division-cornells-seven-schools)</p>

<p>actually, not a bad idea. There are way too many political games going on to actually make any noise, but interesting idea.</p>