For me, the trip to Cornell’s Botanic Gardens opened my eyes to the prominence of Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. It’s easy for engineers to get trapped inside of our own engineering bubble and ignore the rest of the university. It’s my third year at Cornell, and I’ve only ever had to take three classes not in the engineering school – and all of them were in the College of Arts & Sciences. I had never even set foot upon Cornell’s Botanic Gardens before this trip. The I’ve really only ever gone to the agriculture quad to study at Mann during my freshman year.

Seeing the Botanic Gardens, the building where Barbara McClintock stored her tools, the foreign flora planted for education purposes, the greenhouses where professors perform research, and the LEED-certified administrative center reminded me of the prominence of Cornell’s life sciences departments. hearing our tour guide go into detail about the scope of the gardens, the specific purposes of each section, the research performed there, the classes studying there, and the history made on Cornell’s grounds added weight to my image of the agricultural school.

I’ve gone to talks by life sciences professors and have many friends in the college, but it can easy to forget how prestigious the school is when you only ever hear people talk about it. Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences is consistently ranked as the best agriculture/life science college in the country, and it contains many other #1 national programs, such as the Food Science major. Many famous life science researchers, such as Barbara McClintock, have performed revolutionary work at Cornell. Cornell’s practical agricultural roots are part of what makes the university unique and sets it apart from many other prestigious institutions. The Botanic Gardens, a physical manifestation of the work done by Cornell’s life science departments, solidified my own image of the school and its importance at Cornell.