From left: freshmen Emily Winston, engineering, Ron Davidson, ILR, and Howie Goldsmith, ALS, Cornell Summer College alumni, share a meal and conversation at a reunion for the summer program at Noyes Community Center on Dec. 4. Robert Barker/University Photography
The chilly weather and twinkling holiday lights strung in a nearby residence hall window gave no indication of the celebration taking place in the warmth of Noyes Community Center Dec. 4. It was a reunion of Summer College alumni. About two dozen Cornell freshman and sophomores gathered to reacquaint themselves with other classmates who shared the common experience of the Cornell program.
Cornell's Summer College, the nation's oldest pre-college program, brings high school juniors and seniors to the Ithaca campus for six weeks of instruction during the summer. The program offers students the opportunity to take college-level courses for credit transferable at many colleges and universities and to experience what life at college is really like.
The reunion was the first organized attempt to reconnect former Summer College students now attending Cornell.
Organizer Oscar Espinoza, a freshman in the College of Human Ecology who participated in Summer College 1995, said the reunion was an opportunity to make some new acquaintances with others who shared a similar experience.
"It makes sense that those of us who shared the summer meet again to see what's up," he said. "I know there are a lot of Summer College students here that I didn't meet when I was on campus over the summer."
Freshmen Judith Cruz of the College of Arts and Sciences and H. Ron Davidson of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations also served as reunion organizers.
Espinoza, an 18-year-old from Lynwood, Calif., who attended Summer College as a high school junior said, "Not only did Summer College introduce me to Cornell, because I wouldn't have applied here if I hadn't attended the program, but Summer College showed me what level of work I could expect from college and what skills I needed to succeed. My experience here over the summer also enabled me to be a better student my senior year in high school."
A slide projector flipped through pictures of Summer College students involved in a variety of activities, from studying under the shadow of the Ezra Cornell statue on the Arts Quad to swimming in one of the Ithaca area's picturesque gorges.
Abby Eller, director of Summer College, greeted faces from the past with a warm smile and a question about how studies, especially with the onset of finals, were going. And Eller distributed Summer College book bags filled with the program's new 1997 guidebook.
"Make sure you put this book into the hands of students at your high school who might be interested in attending Summer College next year," she told the Summer College alumni. "You have to replace yourself with someone just as good as you."
Registration information for Summer College 1997 is available from B20 Day Hall, 255-6203. Eller also announced that a second session will be offered of the Summer Honors Program for High School Sophomores. The program, offered for the first time last summer, invites high school sophomores to the Cornell campus in July for three weeks of study in one of two courses: Freedom and Justice in the Western Tradition and Inventing the Information Society.