sashimi46

for those planning on or thinking about applying to cornell architecture...


cornell architecture seems to be imploding on itself so suddenly. as an architecture student at cornell, i am so upset at the administration...


first with an email sent out last week to all of the students saying that cornell will move 50-60 4th, 5th, and m.arch students to a studio at downtown ithaca with no shop or laser cutter TWO WEEKS prior to the start of school. they're moving students out of rand hall in order to accomodate construction of the new milstein hall...however, i find it so hard to believe that it'd be so hard to find extra space somewhere on the cornell campus. the new studio is very far from campus and shuttles set up only run during the day. thesis year is probably the hardest and most intense year of the b.arch program...and for them to be moved away from campus away from all the important resources is a heavy blow. there are huge protests being planned...along with petitions signed


second, our dean mohsen mostafavi recently announced that he will be stepping down as dean and become the dean at harvard GSD. this is a big blow because he is one of the very few people on the administration who actually helped improve the school. in my opinion, the previous administration did a horrible job until mohsen came. he was also very strong advocate in getting milstein hall built and attracting top visiting faculty and lecturers to the school so now without him, milstein hall will never get built (considering that we've had 4 other proposals that were never built)


http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/...Chron.deb.html

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/...99-gsdean.html

sorry i had to rant...

soozievt

That is too bad, sashimi. Can I ask you how long they are talking about having the fourth and fifth year BArch and the MArch students having their studio downtown and not on campus? Just curious how temporary this will be. I think my D has Cornell on her graduate school list (applicant this fall).

I hope there is power in numbers and you can work something out and if you can't prevent this unfortunate move, that you work out something to make it more temporary until another solution is found and that also in the meantime, ther are shuttles more often and at night.

sashimi46

i think they will be moving the 4th, 5th, and m.arch students years into esty for 3 years...or however long milstein hall will take to get built. without mohsen, i doubt milstein hall will be built in three years, but maybe i'm just cynical


there are protests and petitions being planned. i know many 4th years who absolutely refuse to move or are threatening to transfer out if this happens. it's getting really heated

i am hoping that they find a very good dean soon. prior to mohsen, it took them 4-5 years to find mohsen and the interim dean was very unpopular

cheers

Actually, the students who will suffer most will be the 1st, 2nd and 3rd year students who don't get the advantage of exposure to upper class work. It could be an advantage to MArch students to be sequestered with the upper class BArch students. Cornell will make sure the new studios have decent supplies. The best faculty will want to be down there with the top talent--hampering the younger students even more.

Tzar, looks like your decision to roll with Cooper was a fortuitous one...

rick12

When my D was accepted at Cornell she mentioned it to the Dean at one of the other schools she was visiting and he said told her that Cornell was losing its Dean and that the faculty was in a state of upheaval. It was hard to know at the time if the Dean was being catty about another program or if there was truth to what he was saying. It seems that there was at least some truth to the rumors. I suspect he was getting this information from potential faculty members at Cornell he might have been interviewing.

In the long term I am sure the program will be fine, in the short term I hope it doesn't affect your education.

rick

soozievt

sashimi,

You are a good resource and I had passed on the information and articles you had shared recently about Cornell Arch to my daughter, who at the time was overseas doing an arch internship. She is home for five days and will now be leaving for college. We have been talking about her graduate school process and she is finalizing her list. I told her I "knew" someone at Cornell and she asked me to ask you if the MArchI students take classes the first year with BArch students or if they are totally separate. Thanks if you can answer.

Hope the year gets off to a good start for you, even with the upheaval.

sashimi46

while we are near each other, most of the classes are separate. there are some classes that the m.arch and b.archs share (like history or structures) but for the studios, they're completely separate. as the program solidifies and more professors come to teach, there will be more classes for graduate students alone. however, i also do feel that interaction between the undergrad and grad is important...they're two somewhat different programs and can benefit off from each other

actually the situation is not as bad as we thought it would've been. there was a lot that the administration did not tell us so we were pretty shocked to find out things so suddenly. if all goes well, we will have a new dean by June.

soozievt

Sashimi...thanks for your very prompt reply. I am going to share that information with my daughter. She wasn't sure about that aspect of Cornell's porgram. Many MArch programs do not have BArch ones as well, and this issue is irrelevant to those situations. My D has mentioned that at RISD, which has both a BArch and March program, the first year MArch's take a bunch of classes with the BArchs, which sounds different than at Cornell. Even the courses she has taken at RISD as a Brown undergrad, have been with MArch students mixed in (these were not history type courses but studio oriented ones - though not design).

I'm glad the situation with the studio space and administration is not as bad you you assumed a couple of weeks ago. I hope you have an exciting year at Cornell. I appreciate your sharing your experiences on this site. Your posts are helpful. Best wishes.

sashimi46

thanks! feel free to ask any questions anytime..best of luck to you and your D