The Statler Hotel is a real, operating luxury hotel in the middle of Cornell’s Ithaca campus — and simultaneously a teaching laboratory for Cornell’s Nolan School of Hotel Administration. Cornell calls it the Ivy League’s only “teaching hotel.” Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
It is substantial: 153 guest rooms, restaurants, banquet and meeting facilities and the J. Willard Marriott Executive Education Center. Guests are ordinary paying hotel guests—alumni, parents, visiting scholars, conference attendees and others—but Cornell hospitality students work alongside professional hotel staff in actual hotel and restaurant operations. More than 200 Nolan students participate annually according to the school. Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
The history is particularly good for your hospitality thread. Cornell established its hotel program in 1922. Hotelier E. M. Statler became a major benefactor, and the original 36-room Statler Inn opened with Statler Hall in 1950. The present hotel opened in 1989 as a much larger successor. Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
And there is an especially interesting SES feature: Cornell students also operate Establishment at Statler, a public restaurant where students in the restaurant-management course apply food-service and hospitality theory in a functioning dining room. Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
For STDMi, Statler may be the ideal American example of what we were discussing this morning. The university hasn’t merely created a degree in hospitality; it has built an actual hotel into the educational settlement so that lodging, food, architecture, service, events and beauty become part of the laboratory.
