The reality of a school that could transform New York City's Roosevelt Island increased dramatically this week with the announcement that Irwin and Joan Jacobs donated $133 million to Cornell NYC Tech.
The $133 million will help fund one of the centerpieces of Cornell’s plan to build a graduate school in technology for up to 5,000 students on 12 acres on the southern part of Roosevelt Island by 2037. The money will go to the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute, which was the Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute.
“The funds will help support curriculum initiatives, faculty and graduate students, and industry interactions in a two-year graduate program,” according to a Cornell press release.
Cornell’s plan for 5,000 students isn’t close to complete, but it will award master’s degrees in eight subjects to 2,000 students. Three of those subjects will be taken by about 600 students at the Jacobs Innovation Institute, which will award the students master’s degrees from Ithaca, N.Y.-based Cornell and Haifa, Israel-based Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.
The three subjects -- Connective Media, Healthier Living and The Built Environment -- have been designed to help students develop entrepreneurial skills and excel in the media, health, or urban planning industries. All three industries are crucial to New York City so the program includes regular interactions between students and the industries’ business executives.
Cornell NYC Tech is coming to New York City because it won a city-sponsored contest for a science school that would improve the city’s -- and Roosevelt Island’s -- long-term economic prospects by providing a more educated workforce. The Jacobs Innovation Institute was always part of Cornell’s plan, but it couldn’t be a reality without the necessary funding. The Jacobses’ donation will pay for everything except the $67 million building construction cost.
“Cornell’s potential to improve our city has grown even further,” said New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a news conference attended by Irwin Jacobs, who has a net worth of $1.55 billion according to Forbes magazine, and his wife Joan Klein Jacobs.
Irwin, 79, was a college engineering professor and a technology company executive before he co-founded Qualcomm Incorporated -- a San Diego-based company that designs, markets and manufactures digital wireless telecommunication products -- in 1985 and was the company’s chairman from 1985 to 2009. The Jacobses are among 105 billionaires who pledged to give away more than half their fortune, according to Forbes.
Both Jacobses graduated Cornell.
“It’s important that I give back to society and New York in particular because I was afforded this wonderful education,” Joan Jacobs said at the news conference.
The Jacobs Innovation Institute will begin offering courses in the fall of 2014 although the building won’t be complete until 2017. The students will take classes in Chelsea until then. The institute will also launch a postdoctoral fellowship program in the fall of 2013 for engineers who want to commercialize their research projects.
The $133 million donation increases the possibility that Cornell’s plan will come to fruition. The school estimates that its project will bring 800 residents and 1,300 students and employees to Roosevelt Island by 2018.
Cornell NYC Tech officials have told people that the entire school will cost $2 billion by the time it’s finished in 2037 and the Jacobses’ donation increases the amount they have raised to $500 million.
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