Message from the dean
This message appears in the winter 2022 edition of Cornell Engineering Magazine.
Our world is more connected now than at any time in history. Technology, ideas, information and cultures are colliding in new ways and at an unprecedented scale and complexity.
How do we educate students who are able to thrive in this environment? What investments are needed to innovate impactful solutions to the most difficult problems of our time, such as those relating to climate and energy systems, precision medicine and human health, and inequitable access to STEM education? How do we go about un-siloing engineering disciplines to catalyze convergent approaches that transcend disciplinary boundaries and contribute to positive change?
There is more at stake now in finding actionable answers to these questions than ever before.
Cornell Engineering is uniquely positioned to develop and implement meaningful solutions that make a sustained impact. Our 150-year-old college’s well-earned reputation for rigor and excellence in teaching and research, Cornell’s deeply ingrained culture of collaborating across disciplines, and our demonstrated commitment to diversity and inclusion provide pillars upon which we’ll build new paradigms for engineering education, research, and technology translation.
This is our time!
To seize the moment, we’ve developed a strategic plan termed Cornell Engineering 2030. I invite you to read more about it on our website.
The plan specifically calls for focused investments in people, programs, and infrastructure that will position Cornell Engineering for national and international leadership.
In education, we will invest in faculty and staff committed to innovating in the classroom to enhance learning. We will integrate leadership, ethics, and professional development education throughout our undergraduate and professional master’s degree programs. We will develop distance learning options that improve flexibility for traditional residential students, as well as to increase the college’s reach to non- traditional students where they work and live.
In research, we will create mechanisms for rewarding, promoting, and celebrating excellence. To un-silo engineering, we will prioritize recruitment of faculty leaders whose scholarly work lies at the intersection of traditional disciplinary domains in the college. We will also invest in One Cornell Engineering initiatives that build new bridges to Cornell Tech and Weill Cornell Medicine. Finally, we will modernize the college’s aging infrastructure — building by building — to create state-of-the art facilities that support new exploration in old and new domains of scholarship.
Our goals are ambitious, and I look forward to keeping you updated as we approach them.
Lynden A. Archer
Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering
James A. Friend Family Distinguished Professor of Engineering