Cornell University School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions

[1] In 1876, eight years after its founding, Cornell University offered its first summer programs in botany, chemistry, drawing, entomology, geology, and zoology.

[5] Later that year, Anna Botsford Comstock became the first woman to hold a professorial rank at Cornell when she was named assistant professor of nature study in the Summer School.

[14] In 1973, CAU initiated a program of off-campus study tours with "a weekend of inquiry and escape" at Split Rock Lodge in the Poconos.

[18] An award-winning professor, former vice president for university relations (2009–2013), and author of numerous books (including, with Isaac Kramnick, Cornell: A History, 1940–2015), Altschuler continues to serve as SCE dean.

Cornell University’s Summer College Programs for High School Students provides precollege programs for hundreds of high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors in subjects such as architecture, art, business, engineering, environmental studies, history and politics, hotel management, law and government, medicine, psychology, science and research, and veterinary medicine.

A free summer events series, open to the public, brings notable speakers and performers to the Cornell campus, such as Joyce Carol Oates, A. R. Ammons, M. H. Abrams, Vanaver Caravan, Jay Ungar and Molly Mason, John McCutcheon, and Joe Crookston.