Corporate Engagement Opportunities

The Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration offers companies a wealth of opportunities to align their brand with the world’s top hospitality-management school and build awareness among the industry’s future leaders.

Join over 200 companies and foundations that engage with the Nolan School by recruiting graduates, sponsoring events, developing a long-term alliance, or naming a space or program at the school, among other gift opportunities.

Please contact the corporate relations office to discuss which engagement opportunities best suit your organization.

Collaborate with Experts

Connect with Faculty

Industry leaders can engage with the Nolan School’s esteemed faculty by:

  • Guest lecturing in the classroom or seminar
  • Participating in panels or roundtables as an industry expert
  • Connecting with faculty members at industry conferences

Events

Our premier industry events enable companies to raise their organization’s profile with the Nolan School through sponsorship while networking with Cornell’s prominent Hotelie alumni network, faculty, students, and peers:

Connect with Students

Scholarships

An endowed scholarship becomes a permanent tribute to your company or organization. Scholarships are critical in achieving need-blind admissions and need-based financial aid, making it possible to admit students solely on the basis of their potential to succeed. For more information on how your company can support the next generation of leaders through endowing a named scholarship, visit our gift opportunities page.

Academic Competitions

Academic competitions enable students to apply theory to practice, and hone analytical, critical-thinking, and presentation skills. Corporate sponsorship supports the competition and prizes, and executives may serve as judges, providing industry insights.

Travel Funds

A key element of the Nolan School’s experiential-learning-based education is the opportunity for students to attend industry conferences to directly interact and network with industry leaders. Corporate support of student travel helps to underwrite these costs.

Hotel Ezra Cornell

Hotel Ezra Cornell (HEC) is an annual weekend-long educational conference, put on by the students for hospitality industry leaders. The student leaders of HEC welcome your organization’s support.

Mentorship

Mentorship is a unique opportunity for industry professionals to share their wealth of knowledge with the next generation of hospitality leaders. Mentorship opportunities exist across all disciplines to match prospective mentors with students and to provide engagement opportunities:

Recruiting

Employers target the Nolan School in their recruiting efforts because they consistently find remarkable students who have been shaped by rigorous academics, exceptional faculty, state-of-the-art facilities, and an interdisciplinary educational system that promotes innovation across academic boundaries. To learn how your organization can make the most of recruiting at SHA, please visit Career Management in the Office of Student Services.

Host a Visit

Nolan School students benefit from seeing the industry in action. Businesses and companies can host student visits to their corporate office, project site, or industry conference, as well as underwriting student travel and accommodations.

Contribute with Purpose

Collaborations with industry are crucial to our success as a thought leader in the hospitality industry. Bringing together academics and industry allows us to make remarkable strides in the future of our industry. Companies can get involved in many ways through participation on a panel or donating to support the thought-leadership initiatives of the school.

The Nolan School presents a wide range of panels and conferences each year:

Advance the Academic Mission

Corporate connections and support bolster the Nolan School’s research, teaching, programs, and outreach initiatives:

  • Faculty research
  • Donation of data for classroom use or faculty research
  • Centers and Institutes
  • Industry guest speakers in the classroom

Other Ways to Engage

Matching Gifts

Many employers recognize the importance of philanthropy by offering to match or multiply donations made by active and retired employees and, in some cases, employees’ spouses and partners as well.

See if your company currently matches gifts, or contact the Office of University Corporate and Foundation Relations/Colleges and Units to establish your organization as a matching-gift company.