Cornell University: Encyclopedia II - Cornell University - The campuses

Cornell University - The campuses

Cornell University - Main campus

Cornell's main campus is located on the eastern hill of Ithaca, New York, overlooking the city. Day Hall, the administration building, is located on East Avenue. The campus itself is situated on a rolling site of 745 acres (3 km²) on East Hill, overlooking Cayuga Lake and downtown Ithaca two miles (3 km) to the west. The 260 or so major buildings are mostly divided into quads for the Arts, Engineering, and Agriculture, a science lab complex, and the athletic complex.

Central campus is bounded to its north and south by picturesque limestone gorges and waterfalls. Dormitories, fraternity and sorority houses, and student centers are located on North Campus, north of Fall Creek Gorge, and on West Campus, at the bottom of the Library Slope ("Libe Slope"); after snowfalls, students are known to sled down the Slope on trays from the dining halls. East of the main campus lie the Cornell Plantations, approximately 3,600 acres (15 km²) encompassing an arboretum and botanical gardens as well as natural woodlands, trails, streams, and gorges. South of Cascadilla Gorge lies the student-oriented Collegetown business and residential district.

The first building, Morrill Hall, was erected in 1868, although Cascadilla Hall, a dormitory in Collegetown, predates the university (it was originally used as a water-cure sanitarium and school for the education of women physicians and nurses when it was built in 1864^[17]). Cornell's signature landmark is McGraw Tower, which rises 173 feet and 161 steps from the ground. Constructed in 1891 adjoining Uris Library, it features the Cornell Chimes, 21 bells on which the Cornell chimesmasters play three daily concerts. The clock tower has been the target of a number of pranks. In 1997, a large pumpkin^[18] was placed on spire of the clocktower and a discoball^[19] in 2005. How either prank was engineered has not been discovered.

Contrasting with the Gothic, Victorian, and Neoclassical buildings on the Arts Quad is the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, designed by I. M. Pei. Other notable buildings: Willard Straight Hall, one of the earliest student unions^[20]; Martha Van Rensselaer Hall, the largest academic building in the eastern United States; Duffield Hall, one of the world's most advanced nanotechnology facilities; and the Statler Hotel, adjacent to and associated with the School of Hotel Administration.

Cornell University - New York City campus

The New York Weill Cornell Medical Center is located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. It is home both to the Weill Cornell Medical College and Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, and has a long affiliation with the New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Although their faculty and academic divisions remain separate, the Medical Center shares its administrative functions with the Columbia University Medical Center. Weill Cornell Medical College is also affiliated with the neighboring Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Rockefeller University, and the Hospital for Special Surgery. Many faculty have joint appointments at these instiututions, and Weill Cornell, Rockefeller, and KSKCC offer a Tri-Institutional MD-PhD program to selected entering Cornell medical students.

New York City is also home to local offices of the Cornell Cooperative Extension; to an office of the ILR Extension of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations; and to Cornell's Operations Research Manhattan Center. These facilities are all separate from and operated independently of the medical center.

Cornell University - Other campuses

The New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, operated by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, is located in Geneva, New York, 50 miles (80 km) northwest of the main campus. The facility now comprises 20 major buildings on 130 acres (0.5 km²) of land, as well as over 700 acres (2.8 km²) of test plots and other lands devoted to horticultural research. 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 Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, located in Education City, near Doha, is housed in a large two-story structure designed by Arata Isozaki.

The Shoals Marine Laboratory, a seasonal marine field station dedicated to undergraduate education and research operated in conjunction with the University of New Hampshire, is located on the 95 acre (0.4 km²) Appledore Island off the Maine–New Hampshire coast.

The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, site of the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, is operated by Cornell.

The current and upcoming missions to Mars are managed by Steven Squyres and the Cornell Astronomy Department.

Cornell University maintains facilities in Washington, D.C. and New York City for its Cornell in Washington, Urban Semester, and Urban Scholars Programs.

Other facilities include

• Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Sapsucker Woods in Ithaca, New York
• Cornell Biological Field Station at Shackelton Point in Bridgeport
• Punta Cana and EsBaran biodiversity field stations in the Dominican Republic and Peru
• Arnot Teaching and Research Forest natural resources center in Tompkins and Schuyler Counties.
• Animal Science Teaching and Research Center in Harford, and Duck Research Laboratory in Eastport, New York
• Offices of the New York Sea Grant, Cornell Cooperative Extension, and School of Industrial and Labor Relations Extension Service throughout New York State
• Offices for Cornell-administered study abroad programs such as the Cornell-Nepal Study Program and Cornell-in-Rome

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The campuses", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki