Promoting Cornell's Interdisciplinary Programs & Corporate Relations Wisdom

In my meeting with Susan Murphy a few weeks ago, one of the issues that I brought up on the periphery was that it seemed like Cornell wasn't doing much to promote its interdisciplinary programs (e.g. Information Science) in its promotional materials (e.g. view books, pamphlets, etc). She recommended that I contact Jason Locke, the Director of Undergraduate Admissions to discuss the point further, since it wasn't really under her purview.

So I met with him this afternoon to discuss my concerns, and he was very receptive. I learned a lot about the research and initiatives that they do to attract students, and I gave him my perspective as someone who had just gone through the process. He said that prospective students looking at Cornell often had two complaints with our materials: one, that it seemed like students here are locked into one particular college, and two, that the materials didn't focus enough on what makes Cornell unique. We agreed that both points could be ameliorated by promoting Cornell's interdisciplinary initiatives, like the Life Sciences, Computing & Information Science, and Environmental Science.

So as the next step, I plan to talk to my ISSA board about how we can craft the message toward prospective students, and possibly meet with him as a group to chat about it. I'll also probably be playing an active part in helping to redesign the Cornell view book for its next iteration, which is due in a couple of years.

After that, I had another meeting with some people from Career Services and Corporate Relations here at Cornell. I learned some really valuable information about dealing with companies and setting up information sessions when they visit the school. Thankfully, my Corporate Relations Chair, Nick, was there too, so he'll be the one to really run with this stuff under my supervision. I really have a lot of hope for the organization in the coming year.