Students gain decision-making insight from alumna Cheryl Einhorn

Students expected a regular lecture from alumna Cheryl Strauss Einhorn ’91 during a Jan. 30-31 visit, but what they got was quite different.

First, the Robert S. Harrison College Scholar Program students were challenged to form small groups to create a completely new language. Then they speed-brainstormed their way to solve another problem – allowing pets on campus, planning a 24-hour event to raise money for charity or eliminating plastic water bottles on campus.

Einhorn’s talk, “Solving Problems You’ve Never Tackled Before,” was based on the AREA Method she’s developed to help individuals, companies and nonprofits to solve complex problems. Einhorn is an adjunct professor at the SC Johnson School of Business and founder of the leadership training and professional development company Decisive.

Einhorn’s decision-making strategies are also featured in resources offered to students by the Arts & Sciences Career Development office. Her module “What type of decision-maker are you?” helps students to understand which problem-solver profile matches their personality and how to use that information when searching for a job.

The talk took place during the spring College Scholar banquet at the A.D. White House. The College Scholar program offers students in the College of Arts & Sciences the opportunity to 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. 

“Each spring, we bring in a speaker to engage the students in activities that foster creative and critical thinking skills” said Michael Goldstein, professor pf psychology in the College of Arts & Sciences and director of the College Scholar Program.

“She brought up so many interesting points about decision-making and the preparation that goes into it,” said Sofia Spillane ’27. “The idea of brainstorming solutions before you think too deeply about the original problem addresses one of my main issues. I tend to ask so many questions about the problem before I come up with potential solutions that it prevents me from addressing the problem.”

Einhorn told students that tackling new challenges is good for them in so many ways.

“If you’re outside of your comfort zone, then you’re on the right track, you’re learning new things,” she said. “And that’s a very alive feeling, knowing that you’re doing something that gives you a challenge.”

During the talk, students spent one minute in eight brainstorming sessions, sketching their ideas to solve the pet, charity or water bottle problem in a grid, then refining and expanding their idea in each subsequent box on the grid. By the end, Einhorn challenged them to come up with a “prototype” they shared with other students in the room for feedback.

After the feedback sessions, students refined their ideas one more time before sharing with the whole group.

“One of the most important parts of problem solving is updating and iterating,” Einhorn said about the feedback process.

Resulting ideas were creative and out of the box:

• Provide all students with Stanley-type water bottles with a unique design on their first day of class
• Assign pet owners to the floor of a dorm by animal type – dog owners on the ground flood (because they need to go outside more often), cats, reptiles, rodents on floors above
• Turn the Arts Quad into a giant disco for an all-night danceathon

Einhorn said the session was particularly appropriate for College Scholars, who are addressing new interdisciplinary questions and problems through their majors and senior projects. 

“According to Mark Twain, the secret of getting ahead is getting started,“ she said.

On Jan. 31, Einhorn met with College Scholar students in small groups to learn more about their projects and answer questions.

“Some people had questions about their projects and how they could approach things differently,” Spillane said. “We also talked about people’s personal projects outside their College Scholar Project and outside Cornell and how we were approaching problems we had in those organizations.”

Spillane said the event also helped her to meet other College Scholars across campus. Students apply and enter the program in their sophomore year, when they also take a seminar on research methods with the other members of their cohort.

“We talked about one of the students being a TA for office hours and ended up talking a lot about not being afraid to ask for help,” Spillane said. “In a college setting it can be hard to ask for help and to feel like you can rely on others to help you make your decisions, but we talked about how important that is.”

Spillane is excited to work on her College Scholar research project, which will focus on the varied ways that people interpret creative works such as music, art and poetry and how those differences can be applied to the field of genomic medicine.

“I’m getting to pursue this really authentic path that includes everything I’m interested in,” Spillane said. “I can choose the disciplines and which classes I want to take. There are a lot of really cool classes at Cornell that fit into what I’m studying.”