Undergraduate Real Estate Minor Continues to Grow

The undergraduate real estate minor has become a part of the intellectual fabric of Cornell University, especially given the fact that 340 students from all seven of Cornell’s undergraduate colleges and schools have declared the minor. We anticipate that 150 students will graduate from the program in June 2014, according to minor coordinator Jan deRoos, the HVS Valuation Professor of Hotel Finance and Real Estate. The success and maturity of the program are measured in many ways including:

• Growth in course offerings and faculty. This academic year we are offering a new development course taught by professor Crocker Liu, and two sections of real estate securitization. We also brought in Lecturer Daniel Lebret to add to the real estate faculty, which is already the largest group of its kind on campus.
• The quality and quantity of co-curricular activities. As you see in this newsletter, the Real Estate Case Competition attracted fourteen international university teams. CREF also offers the following on-campus events for students that enrich their education and connections to real estate:
  • the Hotel Valuation Seminar held by Stephen Rushmore of HVS,
  • ARGUS training twice per year, and
  • the Real Estate Club. The club has coordinated student roundtables with such visitors as: Roger Ferguson, CEO of TIAA–CREF, Michael Lehrman, Vice Chairman and Global Head of Real Estate at Cantor Fitzgerald, Spencer Levy, EMD-Capital Markets at CBRE, Lee Pillsbury, Co-Chairman and CEO of Thayer Lodging, and Richard Baker, Governor and CEO of Hudson’s Bay Company.
• The composition of the minor is becoming decidedly more diverse; over 35 percent of minors are women. In addition, increasing numbers of traditionally underrepresented minorities are enrolled in the minor.