Southside campers visit in CU-Ithaca Partnership

Campers from the Southside Community Center Summer Day Camp visit the Wilder Brain Collection in Uris Hall July 11 on the first day of the Cornell Connection, a weekly summer program to share Cornell's resources and attractions with children and their chaperones from the community. Nicola Kountoupes/University Photography

By Susan Lang

Youngsters from the Southside Community Center Summer Day Camp and community residents are enjoying Cornell's resources and attractions on weekly field trips, thanks to the "The Cornell Connection," the Cornell-Ithaca Partnership's first program to be up and running.

The Cornell-Ithaca Partnership (C-IP) is a federally funded program to address the concerns of neighborhoods and enhance the quality of life in the city in Ithaca. The first Cornell Connection event was July 11, when about 20 campers came up the hill to tour Cornell's clock tower and chimes, the Wilder Brain Collection in Uris Hall and the Cornell Insect Collection in Comstock Hall. Other Cornell Connection programs include trips to the Snee Hall rock collection, Cornell's Dairy Bar for participation in Milk Mustache Day and a preview in Rhodes Hall of Cornell's world championship RoboCup "soccer players" before the small artificial-intelligence creations are taken to Australia for Cornell's title defense. The campers are easily recognizable by their C-IP Southside T-shirts, designed by local fashion designer Kish Carter.

"The Cornell Connection is the first of a host of programs that will be launched in the coming year as part of the C-IP, a collaboration of university faculty, staff, students and local agencies and residents, working together with the Ithaca community," said Patricia Baron Pollak, director of C-IP and associate professor of policy analysis and management in the College of Human Ecology. "It will develop new and support existing programs in youth development, job training, neighborhood preservation and food security."

Pollak points out that almost two dozen faculty members from six colleges at Cornell are involved in C-IP, as well as several Cornell administrative offices and at least one department at Ithaca College.

C-IP, which is funded, in part, by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as a Community Outreach Partnership Center (COPC), is one of nearly 100 university partnership programs across the country.

"The C-IP strives to enrich and support ongoing collaborations between the city of Ithaca community and the Cornell campus," added Zachary Bernstein, ILR '01, a program assistant for the Cornell Connection. "By acquainting our youngest community members with the university, the Cornell Connection takes a step forward to achieve that mission."

Other projects on which C-IP is actively working are:

• Southside Computer Lab, which will offer community computer opportunities at the Southside Community Center.
• Community gardens and more access for low-income shoppers to the Ithaca Farmers' Market.
• An advisory committee that is examining indoor environmental quality in homes to be sold through Ithaca Neighborhood Housing Services.
• Neighborhood History and Preservation, a group that is working to uncover the history of the Southside community, which was home to a station of the Underground Railroad.
• A Neighborhood Inventory, which includes an inventory of neighborhood resources, conducted by Cornell Assistant Professor Ann-Margaret Esnard's class in City and Regional Planning (CRP) this past spring; this summer, Courtland Hyser, a CRP graduate student, is further developing neighborhood maps.

The C-IP office is located at 313 N. Aurora St. in Ithaca on the first floor of the United Way Building.