This spring's announcement of a three-year program at Cornell and Syracuse University -- the Advanced Interactive Discovery Environment (AIDE) for Engineering Education project -- to develop a virtual environment to improve undergraduate engineering education already is drawing corporate support. On May 30, the AT&T Foundation presented a check for $150,000 to one of the program's developers, Tony Ingraffea (second from right), the Dwight C. Baum Professor of Engineering at Cornell, at a luncheon in the A.D. White House. Presenting the check was AT&T sales director Peggy Wong (second from left). She noted that AT&T is very interested in supporting educational programs that experiment with advanced information and communication technologies, and she promised a further $150,000 for the second year of the three-year program. Also present at the luncheon were, far left, program developer Alan Zehnder, Cornell associate professor of theoretical and applied mechanics, and, far right, AIDE's principal investigator, Barry Davidson, Syracuse professor of mechanical, aerospace and manufacturing engineering. The $3 million program received its initial funding from NASA and the state of New York. Charles Harrington/University Photography