Interview with Cornell Tech's Dean Matthew D'Amore and Admissions Director Dr. Raymond Lutzky [Show Summary]

The Cornell Tech campus and programs on Roosevelt Island in New York City have INNOVATIVE stamped on them. Hear from Dean Matt D’Amore and Admissions Director Dr. Ray Lutzky about the inception of the program, the innovative degrees currently being offered, how to get in, and what the future holds for Cornell Tech’s lucky students and graduates.

Get to Know Cornell Tech [Show Notes]

Our guests today are Dean Matt D’Amore, Associate Dean at Cornell Tech and Professor of Practice, Cornell Tech and Cornell Law; and Dr. Ray Lutzky, Senior Director of Enrollment and Admissions at Cornell Tech. Since they both have bios and resumes longer than my arm, I’m going to do away with the details and simply welcome them.

Dean D’Amore: Can you give a little background or brief history about Cornell Tech? [2:10]

Cornell Tech grew out of a 2011 competition from Mayor Bloomberg, who wanted to incentivize a first-class technical campus in NYC, and solicited bids from major academic institutions. Seven or eight schools ultimately submitted bids, including Columbia, NYU, MIT and Stanford, and Cornell won out in a joint bid with Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. We were awarded land to build a campus and started from there. The academic curriculum is a combination of seven masters programs and a small PhD program with applied sciences in technical areas.

Normally I ask for an overview of the one or two programs my podcast guest represents. However, you both work with seven masters programs and several PhD programs. We’re going to focus this episode on the master’s options: Johnson Cornell Tech MBA, MS of Engineering in Computer Science, MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Master’s In Operations Research and Info Engineering, LLM in Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship, Technion-Cornell Dual Master’s Degrees in Connective Media, and the Technion-Cornell dual Master’s Degrees in Health Tech. I’m going to suggest that we not get an overview of each program and I’m going to ask what these very different programs have in common. What makes them Cornell Tech programs? [4:06]

Studio is what ties all the programs together. The Studio curriculum is 1/3 of all our one-year programs. It is a cohesive interdisciplinary program based around product development and the basics of figuring out whether to launch a company, how to launch a company, and provides students with the basic skills and insights to help them decide if they want to found a startup when they graduate as well as the tools to do so.

It sounds like Cornell Tech is very entrepreneurially-focused. Do established companies want graduates from Cornell Tech? Or is it a mix? [6:01]

We’ve been experimenting and looking at ways of working with established companies in addition to startups. With the studio program, part of our mission is to inspire and help students to spin out companies, and we have done 40-50 companies in the past five years. We also have curriculum that’s built around established companies, where practitioners come to campus and ask questions like, “How might we bring banking services to rural areas?” “How might we better educate people about retirement options?