<p>Steve Squyres</p>
<p>Professor of Astronomy
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York
United States Of America </p>
<p>Steven W. Squyres is a Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University, and is the Principal Investigator for the science payload on the Mars Exploration Rover Project.
My daughter has seen photos of Mars taken by her professor the same day as class. She has also had a lecture from Bill Nye the Science guy. You can’t get this kind of education everywhere.</p>
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<p>This depends on major. I was a bio major, as big as it gets. Even most of my upper div courses were 75-100+ people. However, most of my humanities courses were small and all had class discussions. No matter how big the class was, I always felt the professor was accessible. The difference b/w Cornell and a LAC is that no one’s going to hold your hand or pat you on the head at Cornell. If you want/need help, it’s there. But, you need to motivated enough to seek it out.</p>
<p>For AnbuItachi–
Why do you suppose employers expect you to have a bachelors in order to give you a job? Wouldn’t they be better off if they just gave high school grads (or why not dropouts?) the jobs instead? They could sure pay dropouts a lot less.
If you think you’re on to something, you might as well become an entrepreneur who hires a bunch of high school dropouts to perform work that’s normally done by highly-paid college grads. Since the latter are still around, I think it’s fair to say that education, and the price employers pay for it, matters.
Now, on that note, I would echo what has been said. Cornell uses its available faculty resources to provide classes in seminar-format for advanced topics, particularly when the subject matter lends itself to discussion. Also, I think Cornell won’t hold your hand, but the resources are there to help you if ask for it, and take you far if you want it.</p>
<p>anbuitachi- are you serious? or was that a post just to be funny in reponse to the thread name?</p>
<p>lol i think there are some misunderstandings to what i posted >.> </p>
<p>@rendeli -
well thats obvious, and i didn’t say anything about high school grads should get more than Bachelors. im just saying that it’s difficult to get a good job without a good bachelor. so its more like a process that you have to go through almost of course like you said unless you are unto something big. im saying like for example you can study all the bio, chem, physics etc (w/e you normally take in college) you want at home, and be better than someone who went to college and graduated. but if you apply to a job with that on your resume without an actual degree from an actual college. its not going to look as good. </p>
<p>and also there ARE plenty of good sources on the web. MIT posts most of their lectures online in video format. there are textbooks online, solutions online etc. </p>
<p>but college is a good experience though. =)</p>
<p>FredFred: It is not possible to double major across colleges but you can pursue a minor.</p>
<p>The career advising offices help students search for internships and summer job opportunities…I’d say Cornell kids do a good job of getting great summer internships/jobs</p>
<p><em>raises ihand</em></p>
<p>so all upper level lit, history, philosophy courses have fewer than 20 students?</p>
<p>Do many have fewer than 15?</p>
<p>Actually, it is possible to “double major” across some colleges, but only if you stay an extra year and pursue two different degrees. Arts and Sciences can be paired with AAP or Engineering.</p>
<p>I would say half of all upper level courses in history and philosophy at Cornell have less than 20 students, most of these have somewhere between 10 and 15 students. On top of the freshman seminars offered in these departments (which feature 15 students), there are a lot of sophomore and senior seminars offered as well, all with less than 15 students.</p>
<p>The rest probably average between 25 - 35 students per class, but some are pretty popular and may have upwards of 50, but for good reason. Hunter Rawlings, former President of the University, teaches a very popular course on the Greek and Roman history. And Walter LeFeber (who actually recently retired, but is considered to be a God in foreign policy circles) would typically draw 40-50 students as well for his marquee upper level course. Michael Kammen is a big draw as well. </p>
<p>I know more about the history department than the philosophy department, but I think the same rules apply. </p>
<p>If you peruse through the median grade reports, you will get a pretty good sense of the class sizes in the departments. </p>
<p><a href=“http://registrar.sas.cornell.edu/Grades/MedianGradeFA07.pdf[/url]”>http://registrar.sas.cornell.edu/Grades/MedianGradeFA07.pdf</a></p>
<p>Looking through the philosophy department, it seems like every other course has less than 15 students.</p>
<p>The class size thing really mystifies me, because you aren’t going to
learn any better in a 15 person class than a 20 person class. And all of the statistics fail to take into consideration honors and independent study tutorials, which is a one on one setting with a professor once a week. I had three such courses!</p>
<p>More importantly, most everybody I know never had a problem getting the attention of a professor – especially in the humanities – when they needed it. It’s actually amazing how many students never take advantage of office hours. From my own experience, when I was writing my thesis in the ILR school, I had absolutely no trouble getting a history professor to sit on my committee and meet with me every other week.</p>
<p>thejoker0909 – Are you the one considering between Cornell and Wesleyan? Unfortunately there’s not too many humanities majors on these boards. It’s mostly ILRies, engineers, and pre-meds. Send me an email outlining your thoughts and I’ll do my best to offer my most unbiased opinion about the two places.</p>
<p><em>also raises ihand</em></p>
<p>How are the lectures/seminars? Any memorable ones?</p>
<p>Who are some of the great speakers Cornell has brought to campus recently?</p>
<p>Are there any required canon texts? Homer, Plato, Marx, Weber, Freud?</p>
<p>What are some of the better humanities classes?</p>
<p>Is there a lot of light pollution in Ithaca?</p>
<p>ithaca has light everywhere. unless if u go into the forests i guess. i can see maybe 20 stars at night if i look up</p>
<p>Speakers in the past year have included the Dalai Lama, Stephen Colbert, Sandra Day O’Connor, Jerry Stiller, Kevin Smith (director/actor from Clerks and Clerks II), and BJ Novak (writer/actor from The Office). There are more, but those are the ones I remember. John Cleese and Bill Nye have also come to campus in the past month. Mike Huckabee will be coming to speak next Tuesday.</p>
<p>This was a good thread back in the day…</p>
<p>Anyone know of resources available to help juniors (I’m an ILR transfer) choose classes? I’m looking for guidance not only for the core, but for electives as well. </p>
<p>I’m a hard believer in the “take professors, not courses” mantra and would really like to take professors who excel above and beyond in their profession, in any field (although courses like art hist, philosophy, history, etc. would be ideal.) Any thoughts?</p>
<p>Here’s a summary of what I’ve found on the ILR core: </p>
<p>Introduction to Organizational Behavior and Analysis (ILROB 122)
<p>Human Resource Management (ILRHR 260)
<p>Collective Bargaining (ILRCB 205)
<p>History of American Labor (ILRCB 100)
<p>Labor and Employment Law (ILRCB 201)
<p>Economics of Wages and Employment (ILRLE 240)
<p>I still haven’t found really much of anything on profs outside of engineering/pre-med/ilr req classes.</p>
<p>Key professors to take in ILR. You are paying for an education. Why not take the best?</p>
<p>Hutchens
Boyer
Ehrenberg
Blau
Gold
Lieberwitz
Salvatore
DiCiccio
Cowie
Cowie
Cowie</p>
<p>DeVaro is sadly, gone. I have heard good thinks about Cook, Compa, and Hallock.</p>
<p>Stay away from:</p>
<p>Gross
Kahn
Lawler
Turner
Jakubson (Brilliant guy, but doesn’t quite understand teaching.)
The entire HR department. You brain will rot in these courses.</p>
<p>Big thank you. You must be a cowie fan? Oh, annd sorry if you’ve had to regurgitate any of that information. I’ve been exhausting the cc search. Anything on profs to take outside ILR for elective credit?</p>
<p>Also, I thought Katz was decent?</p>
<p>Cowie’s not for everyone, as some find him to have too big of an ego, but I couldn’t get enough. Salvatore deserves equal praise.</p>
<p>Katz is the Dean. So if you get a chance to take a course with him, sure.</p>
<p>Outside of ILR, it depends on your interest. And the problem is that there are just too many wonderful classes to take. The history and humanities courses in Arts are absolutely wonderful. So are a lot of the upper level bio courses in Ag (I took a couple of behavior courses.) </p>
<p>Morgan in the Sociology department is a gem. He was a Rhodes Scholar. Basu is great in the economics department. I’m also a big fan of Cowley in PAM and Jeff Hancock in Communications.</p>
<p>Thanks for that. I’ll def. try out Cowie. I may just be placed in Keeton where he’ll be the house dean. Goood times. As for the others, I’m going to check them out tomorrow. It’s nearly 3AM…blah. Are you nocturnal? lol. Goodnight CC</p>
<p>As you might be able to tell, Cayuga and I are a fan of the Labor Econ dept ;)</p>
<p>I would also recommend looking for good advanced stats courses, though it doesn’t have to be through ILR.</p>