Cornell NYC Tech, the Ivy League school’s Technion assisted expansion onto Roosevelt Island, just got a huge PR boost from three big names. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Qualcomm Founder Irwin Jacobs, and Google (GOOGL) Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt have all been tapped to be advisors to the new tech campus.
Now they’re like the super-important ultra-rich white guy Avengers of Cornell.
This is, of course, not the first time that the Mayor and Mr. Schmidt have been involved with Cornell NYC Tech. Mayor Bloomberg has participated in pretty much every major announcement about the campus, including personally revealing the appointment of Cornell NYC’s first dean at Tumblr HQ.. Although Mr. Schmidt hasn’t publicly been associated with the campus, Google has gifted the campus 22,000 square feet of office space for the next five years.
In addition to being the founder of Qualcomm, Mr. Jacobs was an Assistant Professor and Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT from 1959 to 1966 and Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at University of California, San Diego from 1966 to 1972. Besides the fact that he’s an incredible entrepreneur, it’s clear that the guy knows some stuff about tech education.
In a press release sent to Betabeat, the three titans shared their thoughts on officially becoming a part of this new venture. Some shared more thoughts than others. A little terse there, Mr. Schmidt:
“New York City’s growing tech industry is about to be infused with new talent, thanks to the historic investments made by the City and Cornell for the new campus on Roosevelt Island,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “Ensuring that the new campus is connected in the right way to the thriving entrepreneurial sector is important to delivering on the promise of economic growth that is at the center of this project. I look forward to advising the university leadership on how we can achieve these goals.”
“Throughout my career as an educator and as founder of two companies based on innovation, I have experienced great satisfaction in developing unique products and growing large markets by exploiting rapid advances in applied science and engineering,” said Irwin Jacobs. “I am excited by this opportunity to work with Mayor Bloomberg and Eric Schmidt in guiding Cornell NYC Tech and the Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute through a rapid transition from startup to major player in applied science education and the formation of impactful new companies. Both Cornell, where I received an excellent undergraduate engineering education, and Technion, which has trained many of the engineers working at Qualcomm Israel in Haifa, have the energy and experience to surpass our great expectations.”
“I am pleased to join the steering committee for Cornell NYC Tech as they build their presence in New York City,” said Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt. “This campus is an important step forward for the development of the city’s tech sector and its continued economic growth.”
The press release gives a hazy description of what the three will actually be doing for the new graduate program. It says that they “will provide advice to tech campus leadership on the educational, research, economic development and community engagement functions of the campus, helping to promote new national and international models connecting academia and industry.”
We doubt that any of these three guys will be picking up some chalk to teach a class any time soon, but at least their presence gives promise that this campus will be pretty star-studded.
