Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) is opening a New York City institute and think tank to study the changing issues of the workplace. It's name: the Cornell Institute for Workplace Studies.

Under its auspices, the ILR School will offer an affordable, part-time, Ivy League master of professional studies (M.P.S.) program based in Manhattan. ILR School faculty will teach in the Saturday program, which is otherwise available only to full-time students on Cornell's main campus in Ithaca. The first class will begin in January 2000.

"The ILR School was founded as a place where scholars and practitioners in economics, history, sociology, psychology, law and political science could investigate the relationship between labor and management in an effort to advance the world of work," said ILR Dean Edward Lawler. "The Institute for Workplace Studies will build on this rich tradition while expanding the ILR School's role in the metropolitan New York area."

The New York City initiative is being led by workplace scholar Samuel B. Bacharach, the McKelvey-Grant Professor of Labor Management Relations at the ILR School as well as the director of another ILR initiative, the R. Brinkley Smithers Institute for Alcohol Related Workplace Studies.

"In many ways the new Workplace Studies Institute is part of a long New York tradition of a continuous dialogue and intellectual exchange," Bacharach said. "We hope that the institute will help to sustain this tradition by being an active forum for new ideas."

The new Workplace Studies Institute was developed to bridge the gap between academia and the real world of work, through research initiatives, educational programs and forums. The institute will be a vehicle for scholars to work closely with the academic, government, business and labor communities in the metropolitan New York area and to explore 21st-century workplace

practices, policies and initiatives. Professors associated with the institute study contemporary workplace issues, labor and management initiatives, the union movement and public policy through their research and interactions with labor and management leaders.

This fall, the new institute will release the findings of a five-year ILR study that Bacharach led, examining substance abuse and stress among blue collar workers. It will also launch a Workplace Colloquium Series, featuring leading Cornell professors, who will examine such major workplace issues as employees with disabilities, conflict resolution, immigration policy and the state of U.S. labor relations law and policy. Other initiatives this year include seminars for labor scholars in the metropolitan New York area. One such seminar, on income inequality and the American worker, will be moderated by Seymour Spilerman, the Julian C. Levi Professor of Social Science at Columbia University.

The new institute's part-time M.P.S. program is tailored to professionals and working adults. "It's an academic program for people who want to broaden their theoretical understanding of workplace issues," said Bacharach. "With the commitment of our faculty and a strong potential pool of graduate candidates in the metropolitan area, it should be a vibrant addition to the school"

The part-time program will enroll 20 students a year and takes two full years to complete (the full-time Ithaca-based program can be completed in a year). Classes in the part-time program will be held on Saturdays during the academic year at the institute's midtown Manhattan campus, followed by two-week summer sessions in Ithaca. Tuition is about $10,000 a year. Bacharach hopes the program will attract students from throughout the Eastern Seaboard.

The new institute is also developing international partnerships with other academic institutions and will co-host a series of conferences on the "New Social Contract in the Workplace." The first such conference will be with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheva, Israel, in March 2000.

For more information on the new Institute for Workplace Studies and the part-time M.P.S. program, call (212) 340-2886, or visit the program's web site, listed below.