The College of Arts & Sciences, Cornell University

Josephine Wilson: Biological Sciences

'You are exactly where you need to be'

5/15/2026 A&S Communications

A home for exploration and discovery

Our research activities and academic programs are remarkably broad, but they share one characteristic: all are curiosity-driven. Exploring the unknown is central to our mission to be the nexus of discovery and impact.

Explore research and discoveries

Cultural heritage

‘Heritage Forensics’ investigates cultural heritage caught up in war

8/26/2026 A&S Communications

Psychology

Distinct neurons drive mice’s social sounds and squeaks

8/17/2026 Cornell Chronicle

glowing blue blobs against a dark blue background, including one large blog with a yellow and green center — Takumi Matsuzawa/Provided Membraneless organelles known as “condensates” form and disappear every day to help organize the biochemistry in our cells. This image captures in vitro condensates dissolving after a specific chemical is injected from the right. The color represents the concentration of the protein that makes up the condensates.

Physics

Cell biochemistry beyond membranes: The physics of condensates

8/14/2026 A&S Communications

A&S Dean to new students: ‘Ithaca isn’t the end of your journey, only the beginning’

8/21/2026 A&S Communications

>2000

Courses offered in A&S of 4000 courses at Cornell.

colorful burst of light: purple, yellow, orange — NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/CXC/Univ. of Ariz. A superdense neutron star is spewing out a blizzard of extremely high-energy particles into the expanding debris field known as the Crab Nebula.

Astronomy

Public invited to ‘Friends of Astronomy’ symposium Sept. 17

8/19/2026 A&S Communications

Majors to choose in A&S. Design your education.

person watching a film — Provided Jeffrey Palmer watches one of the films he created at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.

Performing and media arts

Professor, students produce films for Obama Presidential Center

8/25/2026 A&S Communications

~4,600

Students in A&S, each with an extraordinary journey to tell.

woman with white crown — Courtesy: Marvel Studios/Swank Motion Pictures Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022, dir. Ryan Coogler).

Cornell Cinema

From high school hijinks to film noir: Cornell Cinema unveils Fall 2026 season

8/25/2026 A&S Communications

>90K

A&S alumni in our network. Go Big Red!

Popular Destinations

Majors and Minors Admissions requirements and process Degree Requirements Advising Career Development

The College Welcomes New Faculty for 2026-27

Twenty new faculty have joined the College of Arts & Sciences this year, strengthening departments and programs with their wide-ranging expertise and filling numerous leadership roles for the College and university. And this election year, the College’s new faculty bring a breadth and depth of expertise on topics important to our democracy.

Click here to explore profiles of our new faculty members.

Uncommon academic diversity abounds here

The innovative undergraduate curriculum at A&S has distribution requirements that range from global citizenship to physical sciences to ethics and the mind. Classes build upon each other and cross the boundaries of traditional academic fields. Extensive work occurs outside of your major and minors, and there are no required core courses. Work closely with inspiring faculty to develop the hallmark skills of a liberal arts and sciences education – the ability to read critically, write persuasively and think broadly.

Moral Psychology

minor

Overview

Moral psychology is an interdisciplinary academic area that welcomes students with diverse majors and interests who share a strong curiosity and concern about humankind, and a motivation to apply both humanistic and scientific lenses to age-old questions about human behavior. The minor adds broad academic value across Cornell. It identifies and centralizes relevant coursework; assists students in curating an academic plan for their moral psychology studies that builds on their strengths and interests; and offers unique research and community engagement opportunities that bring moral psychology to life.

Details

Portuguese & Brazilian Studies

minor graduate

Overview

With a Portuguese and Brazilian studies minor, you’ll gain a linguistic and cultural understanding of Brazil, including recent cultural, political, economic and social trends, as well as familiarity with cinema, music, literature, issues of race, class, and gender, and twentieth-century Brazilian history.

Details

Public History

minor

Overview

Public history is any form of historical engagement that moves beyond the traditional classroom and scholarly publication, including monuments, museums, oral history, historical preservation, walking tours, as well as historically-engaged performance and documentary film. The Public History minor provides students opportunities to think critically about diverse modes of historical learning and storytelling and the many ways historical knowledge circulates in public life: Whose histories are privileged and silenced? What strategies can we use to uncover and share knowledge of the past? How does history shape experiences of identity and community? And how can public and community-engaged history help us to better understand society and politics today? Courses in the Public History minor also emphasize applied forms of historical engagement—archival research, community-based oral history projects, and curation.

Details

Astronomy Data Science

minor

Overview

Research in astronomy is making rapidly increasing use of analysis methods that draw from developments in artificial intelligence, machine learning with a strong basis in Bayesian statistics. The overarching questions raised in astronomical science are attractive to students from a wide range of disciplines and can provide the motivation for learning the fundamentals of data science as they are applied to the astronomical domain.

Researchers in the Astronomy Department are involved with specific projects involving large empirical and simulation data sets: spacecraft imaging data from solar system missions, spacecraft survey data for exoplanets, sky surveys at radio, infrared, and optical wavelengths, data sets from gravitational wave detectors, and cosmological simulations of large scale structure in the universe. These data sets will provide attractive contexts for learning and applying modern analysis methods.

Details

Jewish Studies

major minor

Overview

The major in Jewish studies will provide students of all backgrounds the opportunity to critically analyze Jewish cultures, histories, literatures, media, thought, and religion. Students who major in Jewish studies will be exposed to the long arc of Jewish history, while learning the skills of close textual analysis and discovering the complexity behind the formation of religious, ethnic, and cultural identities. At Cornell, students can study Jewish culture, history, media, and texts from: ancient Israel; late antique Mesopotamia; medieval Iberia; the Shoah; Modern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas; and beyond.

The Jewish studies major is designed to put the study of Jewish experiences in a comparative context. The range of courses available to Jewish studies majors highlight Jewish diversity: cultural, ethnic, geographic, linguistic, and racial. Jewish studies majors can take courses in a variety of disciplines, including archaeology, film, gender studies, history, law, literature, philosophy, politics, race, and religion. Through these courses, and through the fulfillment of the related course requirement, students will gain insight into larger questions of global concern, including the problems of constructions of otherness, inequality, and colonialism—among much else. The major is constructed with a great deal of flexibility, not only to accommodate a range of student interests, but also to make it possible for Jewish studies students to double major in Jewish studies and another field.

Details

Game Design

minor

Overview

With a minor in game design, you can pursue your interest in game design as an extension of your major studies and of your future academic and professional careers. The core of the minor is Intro to Computer Game Architecture, followed by either Advanced Computer Game Architecture or Analytics-driven Game Design, with four additional courses that can range from Graphics and Art, the Psychology of Gaming, to Human-Computer Interaction.

Details

Archaeology

major minor graduate

Overview

As an archaeology major, you’ll benefit from an interdisciplinary approach to a broad range of cultures, with courses in classical archaeology and art, Near Eastern studies, and the archaeology of Eurasia, the Americas and Africa. You’ll gain hands-on experience through lab-based courses in zooarchaeology, ceramics, dendrochronology and in the material cultures of Native Americans and Euro-Americans, and will have opportunities for fieldwork both in the U.S. and abroad. The Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Material Studies (CIAMS) is one of the leading archaeology groupings in the U.S. and offers one of the few majors in archaeology in the country.

Details

South Asian Studies

minor

Overview

With a minor in Asian studies, you can focus on East Asia, South Asia or Southeast Asia. Your courses can include the study of language, literature, religion and culture in the Department of Asian Studies, as well as courses on Asian history, politics, anthropology, sociology and economics offered in other departments.

Details

Sociology

major graduate

Overview

As a sociology major, you’ll focus on basic science while diving deeply into public and educational policies, investigating topics such as gender, racial and income inequality, as well as drug use, economic development and organizational practices. You’ll develop fundamental insight and understanding of sociological issues as well as advanced research skills in quantitative and qualitative methods.

Details

Biology & Society

major

Overview

The Biology & Society major is an interdisciplinary major that allows students to combine the study of the biological sciences with courses that explore the social and ethical aspects of modern biology. In addition to gaining a foundation in biology, students in the major acquire background in the social dimensions of modern biology and in the biological dimensions of contemporary social issues. The major is open to students in two colleges: Arts & Sciences and Agriculture and Life Sciences. The major is suitable for students seeking careers in law, medicine, public health, public policy, business, research and academia.

Details

Explore all the majors and minors

Beyond Majors & Minors

Two people sit facing each other — Michael Goldstein/Provided College Scholars Program students from the College of Arts & Sciences visit the Johnson Museum.

The pinnacle of the liberal arts experience

Robert S. Harrison College Scholar Program

Students design their own interdisciplinary major, organized around a question or issue of interest, and pursue a course of study that cannot be found in an established major. Harrison College Scholars explore subjects with a broader integration of related disciplines than most students would attempt.

More details about the College Scholar Program

woman outside courthouse — Jesse Winter Louise Wang outside the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse, where she worked this summer, in New York City.

A deep dive into the humanities

Humanities Scholars Program

This program offers a signature learning, research and collaboration opportunity for undergraduate students across the university who are interested in the humanities.

Learn more about the program

Shaping the future

Milstein Program

Students in the Milstein Program in Technology & Humanity combine Cornell’s renowned liberal arts and sciences classes in Ithaca with the 21st century tech curriculum at Cornell Tech in NYC.

See the Milstein Program at work

student in front of building — Amina Kilpatrick

Funding your summer experience

Summer Experience Grants

Summer opportunities are crucial to student career success, but these life-changing experiences frequently offer little to no funding. That’s a critical barrier for many of our students – and one that the College of Arts and Sciences feels is vital to overcome.

The Summer Experiences Grants (SEG) do just that. They support students with living expenses, transportation, and travel so that these essential experiences are available to all of our students, who may otherwise not be able to afford them.

Discover life-changing summer experiences

Research, scholarship and creative works to understand humanity and the cosmos

Curiosity is the driver for research in A&S. From the dendrochronology lab where archaeologists analyze tree-ring growth to understand climate change to the linguistics department where students created a new language for a Captain Marvel movie, our students and faculty take full advantage of all that our world-class research university encompasses.

With opportunities spanning the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities, research here takes place in laboratories, museums, field sites, libraries, hospitals, greenhouses, performance spaces and archives.

Explore our research, scholarship and creative works

Person in blue lab coat, standing at a counter full of instruments and bottles — Chris Kitchen Alexa Easley is working to develop materials for low-energy carbon capture that are organic and easy to make on large scales and in realistic conditions.

Premier postdocs

Klarman Fellowships

This premier postdoctoral fellowship program offers opportunities for early-career scholars of outstanding talent, initiative and promise to devote themselves to frontline, innovative research without being tied to specific outcomes.

Learn more about the Klarman Fellowships.

two people working behind a computer — Chris Kitchen Students Sneah Singhi ’26, left, and David Behdad ’25 work in the observation room at the B.A.B.Y Lab, which studies infant language acquisition.

Undergraduate research opportunities

Nexus Scholars Program

The Nexus Scholars Program in the College of Arts & Sciences provides undergraduate students with summer opportunities to work side by side with faculty from all across the college (humanities, social sciences, and STEM) on their research projects.

Explore more details about Nexus Scholars

Engaging our community and our world

two women sitting on stage — Chris Kitchen Anderson, left, and Peraino, right traced the arc of Anderson's multi-decade career.

Open your mind

Arts Unplugged series

The College of Arts & Sciences’ Arts Unplugged series brings research and creative works into the public sphere for discussion and inspiration. These outreach events invite a broad audience to explore the work of scholars and faculty from all disciplines, all backgrounds and all time periods and to celebrate the impact that work continues to have on our daily lives.

Explore recent and upcoming Arts Unplugged events.

Person speaking at the front of a room — Noël Heaney/Cornell University Natalie Wolchover speaks March 15 in Lewis Auditorium.

Engagement for an informed society

Distinguished Visiting Journalist Program

The College of Arts & Sciences' Distinguished Visiting Journalist Program brings accomplished journalists to Cornell for extended visits. The program aims to recognize excellence in journalism and to provide opportunities for select journalists and the university community to engage with each other.

Learn more about the program.

Explore public engagement at A&S