Grad outreach programs meet during open house

Thursday afternoon Sept. 28 brought a distinctive crowd to Cornell's Public Service Center in Barnes Hall: graduate outreach program leaders.

The participants all run programs using the same resource at Cornell, yet most of them had never met. They came to attend the first-ever Graduate Outreach Open House, designed to bring together some of the disparate projects and departments that offer service opportunities to graduate students. For years, such programs have operated with similar interests but without benefit of each other's support; the open house was designed by the Public Service Center to provide the groundwork for future cooperation.

Preeti Chalsani, left, doctoral student in physics, talks with Julio Joseph, field director of the ARCH (Action, Responsibility, Creativity, Home), about that organization during the graduate outreach open house in Barnes Hall Sept. 28. The ARCH is a nonprofit organization offering training programs and projects promoting diversity, social justice and harmony. Robert Barker/University Photography

The event, which drew about 15 program leaders and a similar number of graduate students, was sponsored by the Public Service Center and by its Graduate Student School Outreach Project. Anticipated results of the event include a centralized listing or database of graduate opportunities, greater cross-communication among programs, a speaker series around graduate outreach and public service issues and heightened awareness among the Cornell community of the interrelations among research, teaching and outreach.

Many graduate students complain of feeling isolated from their communities and restricted to research- or teaching-related activities, but outreach can broaden their horizons even as it puts their academic work to another kind of use. Some students engage in outreach on a regular basis or as part of their research; others pitch in once a semester or so with a toy drive at the winter holidays or a food drive at Thanksgiving; all of them enjoy the chance to meet members of other departments, other schools and other ways of life entirely.

Many of the programs taking part in the open house are interested in having multidisciplinary volunteers, so expertise is not an issue for those who want to try something new. Participation from all sectors of the Cornell community is welcome. Contact the Public Service Center's Anna Sims Bartel or Lora Levy Cover with general questions about the open house or efforts to expand graduate outreach at Cornell.

The programs and their representatives at the open house included:

• Graduate Student School Outreach Project, Anna Sims Bartel, aws4@cornell.edu ;
• Cornell Environmental Inquiry Research Partnerships, Lori Bushway, Ceirp@cornell.edu ;
• Cornell Participatory Action Research Network, Pat Haines, ph24;
• Community Impact (Johnson Graduate School of Management), Drea Lewis, akl7;
• Cornell Institute for Biology Teachers, Elena DiMuzio, emd15;
• Nanobiotechnology Center, Anna Waldron, amw37 ;
• Pet Loss Support Hotline, Tabitha Shanies, tas21;
• Cornell Companions, Leslie Appel, lda3;
• Committee on U.S.-Latin American Relations, Marcie Ley, CUSLAR ;
• Cornell Center for Materials Research, Nev Singhata, Nev@ccmr.cornell.edu ;
• The ARCH, Julio Joseph, jfj2; and
• Cornell Public Service Center, Lora Levy Cover, LLL4.