Running from Monday through Thursday, students cultivate a broad set of interests and skills through several core classes and group projects:
Participatory Design and Fabrication
Cornell Tech’s new MakerLAB is stocked with state-of-the-art digital making tools, allowing Milstein students to enhance their creativity, and receive hands-on training in digital fabrication techniques (e.g., 3D printing and laser machines). The core objective is to expose students to conceptions of ideation and participatory ‘making’, which are crucial for the development of tangible products. No prior experience in fabrication or technical expertise is needed.
Emergent Digital Technologies
From designing and building web servers to creating AI APIs, Milstein students explore unique ways to capture, modify, and display information using open-source systems. Paired with the group social excursions taking place off-campus each Friday during the summer, the students critique current tech applications in ‘the wild’, and then replicate them within the Cornell Tech studios. Students also have a deep dive into systems-thinking, and discuss the real human impact of technology on our society. No coding or prior technical expertise are required.
Innovation for Public Service
Students are armed with practical and analytical tools to identify how information and communications technologies can support social and economic development programs. Through tech-agnostic and problem-driven frameworks, Milstein students work in multidisciplinary teams in short consultancies with nonprofits and civic tech entrepreneurs in NYC. The class emphasizes the geopolitics of infrastructure deployment and the implications in terms of inequality.
Digital Ethics in Society
Students will attend several presentations by scholars from the Digital Life Initiative at Cornell Tech, focusing on the societal tensions arising from existing and emergent digital technologies. Inspired by the core values of justice, democracy, privacy, responsibility, security, and freedom, students will be exposed to collaborative research projects that explore ethics, policy, politics and quality of life issues within prevailing socio-technical systems.
Professional Development
A series of workshops will focus on resume writing, effective networking, group dynamics, collaborative strategies, and how to pursue entrepreneurial pathways. Students will also attend curated ‘fireside chats’ with startup founders and practitioners at Company Ventures in Manhattan.