Connecting with Cornell volume 16, issue 2 (Winter 2002-3): Seeking to Understand, Explain, and Improve Human Society, the Social Sciences at Cornell Are a Work in Progress

Heirs to a distinguished tradition of research, Cornell's social scientists today are presented with exciting opportunities and challenges as they seek to understand, explain, and, where possible, improve human society. These opportunities and challenges arise from a common source. Located in eight of Cornell's eleven colleges on the Ithaca campus, the faculty in the social sciences number between 400 and 500 at the professorial level alone. Faculty are found in the endowed, the state-assisted, and the professional schools. They engage not only in basic and applied research but also in a broad range of extension activities. Their interests are disciplinary and interdisciplinary, domestic and international. Their approaches are quantitative and qualitative: they overlap at one end with the natural and computational sciences and at the other with the arts and humanities. They are fully engaged with both of Cornell's dual, and occasionally dueling, personalities "elite" Ivy League institution and "Land-Grant" university of the State of New York