Dive Summary:
- Cornell NYC Tech's "beta class," a one-year master's program in computer science, is up and running in a third-floor loft in Chelsea with eight students who enrolled in January.
- A business course is required in the program, weekly practicums with guests like ousted Groupon co-founder Andrew Mason take place in an informal setting every Friday, and students are required each semester to work with private sector mentors in the design and creation of new products.
- The school won Mayor Michael Bloomberg's contest to create a new science school 13 months ago, and a sprawling, hi-tech campus on Roosevelt Island and integration with the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology are still in the works for the future.
From the article:
... Scenes like this play out each week at Cornell Tech, part of an unorthodox curriculum designed to eschew the traditional detached, highly academic approach to learning. Instead, business, technology and real-world experience is baked into the coursework.
“There’s no parallel to that in any traditional computer science program I’m aware of,” said Dan Huttenlocher, dean of Cornell Tech. “We’re taking a page from business schools.” ...