Last week, Professor Adam Schwartz gave a talk about the Cornell Tech Program in NYC.  Being the director of the program, Professor Schwartz was able to tell us about the program’s current state of development on Roosevelt Island.  Cornell Tech focuses on building and integrating the entrepreneurial environment in an education system.  This could be seen in his descriptions and images of open work environments for classes and offices to promote communication among students and professors.  Cornell Tech offers graduate degrees in business and ORIE, but Professor Schwartz emphasizes that the program is open to any major and strives to connect business and technology through their integrated curricula.  Professor Schwartz showed the importance of project managers, people who are able to communicate what the technology does and find ways to promote and grow the technology.  The program is also very big on team-based assignments.  I was interested to learn how Cornell Tech focuses on a more project-based curriculum to simulate real-life issues confronted by startup and tech businesses.  The incentives for an academic group project are completely different from the incentives for a real life group project.

The talk provided insights into how Cornell is becoming an important player in promoting tech startups in NYC.  I am actually considering pursuing a graduate degree at Cornell Tech so this presentation gave me more knowledge about my future options.