Park fellows are creating new programs of lasting value in the community

By Linda Myers

Ithaca, Tompkins and Cortland counties and Cornell are the immediate beneficiaries of a strategy by the Park Foundation to make community service a lifelong habit among business leaders in training at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management.

This May 11, a group of students who are Park Fellows at the Johnson School presented the results of 16 Service Leadership Projects to involved community members and classmates in Sage Hall on campus. The "do-good" projects they completed this past year range from a plan to help disadvantaged teens get into college (see story above) to a venture capital fund to help local socially responsible business start-ups to a first-aid training program for owners of injured dogs who assist in law enforcement.

The Park Foundation underwrites the Park Leadership Fellows Program at the Johnson School, which covers tuition and fees for 60 exemplary MBA students. In return Park fellows must undertake a Service Leadership Project that will leave something "of lasting value in the community" and participate in the school's "leadership" curriculum. A $5.9 million gift from the foundation helped inaugurate the program in 1997.

"Community service is something my family has always believed in and is fortunate enough to continue through the foundation," said Roy H. Park Jr., Cornell trustee and first vice president of the Park Foundation. "The fellows' extensive accomplishments in the community set the kind of leadership examples the business world needs."

Park, along with his mother, Dorothy Park, sister, Adelaide Gomer, and daughter, Elizabeth Fowler, are the four family trustees of the Park Foundation, named for Roy H. Park, the late media entrepreneur.

"We are particularly pleased with the breadth and quality of the Service Leadership Projects and the impact they are having," wrote Clint Sidle, director of the Park Fellows program.

A list of this year's projects and the students who undertook them follows.

In the local community:

• The College Connection, a college preparatory plan and resource guides to help Ithaca urban teens succeed at getting into the right college (Stacy Lalin, Jennifer McNamara and Angela Ailloni-Charas). (See story.)
• a study on what makes people adopt pets at the Tompkins County SPCA and how those numbers might be boosted even further (Megan Nightengale).
• a program to train law enforcement officers in how to give emergency care to police dogs injured in the line of duty (Adam Unger).
• a plan to keep WVBR economically viable; the Collegetown-based nonprofit radio station is a training ground for area students interested in radio careers (Austin Rothbart and Brian Thompson).
• Air Ithaca, a project to find an additional air service provider for Tompkins County (Michael Edson and Joel Mussat).
• a plan to help Tompkins County nonprofit groups produce better reports (Peter Bright, Chris Floyd and Glen Lindgren).
• programming, funding and organizational structure for Ithaca's Southside Community Center (Jonathan Alford, Jack Higgins and Dave Shultz).
• a feasibility study for a Finger Lakes wine center to attract tourism (Don Douglas, Erik Jepson and Terri Reilly).
• three projects involving the Alternatives Federal Credit Union:
• a project to expand the credit union's lending programs and resources to low-income residents in outlying counties (Kwadwo Asare, Matthew Flippen).
• a plan to grow a venture capital fund for socially responsible local businesses (Charles Ribaudo and Scott Docie).
• a proposal to link low-income rural residents with affordable mortgages and loans (Barbara Sullivan and Margaret Hamm).

At Cornell:

• a proposal for an e-business mini-intensive course and curriculum for Johnson School and Cornell students (Caitlin Krier and David Reich).
• a student-run venture capital fund and idea incubator for new businesses (John Kyles and Alex Ivanov).
• Center for Democracy, a plan to create at Cornell an annual symposium on the development of democracy in Africa (Kwadwo Asare and Barbara Sullivan).
• a commercial business plan for the Agricultural, Resource and Managerial Economics program in Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (Steven Case).
• a strategy to make Cornell Outdoor Education financially self-sufficient (Sandy Draper and Jim Dawson).