Students in the Urban Semester Program sit in the conference room of the Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association during a group site visit to the South Bronx grassroots community organization. They are, from left: Liz Shultz, Sherine Arafat, Gwen Bernacki, Jacqueline Cohen and Monique Sellas. Photographs by Frank DiMeo/University Photography
Sometimes the true value of diversity can be realized only when you jump into it, or it is thrust upon you.
This is one of the guiding principles behind the College of Human Ecology's New York City Urban Semester Program.
During the semester-long, 12-credit academic field-study course, undergraduates live in the Cornell Medical College dormitory in New York City's upper East Side, take the course Multicultural Issues in Urban Affairs (H.E. 408) and work as interns with community organizations and businesses in their fields of study.
"We are living in an increasingly diverse world, and there is only so much we can learn from books and theory," said Sam Beck, the Urban Semester Program's director. "Book learning and theory building from the research of others is important. However, some things are best learned when they are experienced viscerally, by being involved in an actual social process. One important area of knowledge production that we do not fully recognize and legitimize takes place when people interact to get work done. Learning about difference, especially multicultural issues, by engaging difference in the process of living and working with others is one of the most powerful ways of knowing."
When Beck became the program's director in 1990, he brought with him the theme of multiculturalism. This theme is realized through the focus of the program's internships, lecture tours, readings, site visits and dialogues with community leaders in the city.
One of the Urban Semester Program's most significant activities is its community learning and outreach component. Next session, the program will be increased to 15 credits. In addition to the internship and the Multicultural Issues course, a new community service piece called Communities in Multicultural Practice will become a requirement.
Working with community-based programs in the Bronx one day each week, students will learn the importance of community service and witness first-hand the problems in the inner city and participate in activities that focus on mutual learning and better communication across differences.
One of the community groups students have worked with, and will continue to have the option to work with, is the Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association, which recently agreed to develop a long-term partnership with the Cornell program. This South Bronx organization coordinates a wide range of activities in its community, including academic and vocational programs for youth; an alternative high school; drug and substance abuse outreach; a Community Learning Institute; and health care programs, such as immunization and lead screening.
"Through my internship in the field of community development, I'm constantly meeting new people and learning about them in the context of the community," said Lauren Grover, a Banana Kelly intern this past semester.
The Urban Semester Program's internships are three-day-a-week, "real-world" experience "courses" that set the program apart from most other field-based programs around the nation. Internship options cover a wide range of fields, from Wall Street brokerage firms and other businesses such as Prudential Securities and The Village Voice to hospitals, day-care programs and public schools.
"It enriches the students and makes them more prepared to go on to a career," said Robyn Altman, a former Urban Semester student and now one of the program's three student coordinators. "They will learn how to look at the workplace and assess the things that go on."
"I'm gaining a greater sense of purpose," said Jacqueline Cohen, who is an aspiring orthodontist and interned at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center dental clinic in one of the many internships offered at the hospital to Urban Semester students. "When I go back to Cornell, I'll be more focused, rather than just going from semester to semester," she said.
Aliza Aber is one of many students who participated in two internships. She worked at the FEBS Day Treatment Center and the City Lights Youth Theatre. At City Lights, she held after-school drama workshops for children, mostly from Harlem.
"I got to see how drama is a vehicle for expressing conflicts in children's lives," she said.
Students in the program also have weekly site visits in the city to areas such as Ellis Island and the Lower East side, and they participate in group discussion sections.
The discussion sections provide an opportunity for students to talk with each other about the assigned readings and explore issues that result from, and impact on, multiculturalism and diversity.
Students say achieving an effective conversation on serious issues depends on the level of openness they bring to the table or that is created by the group as a whole.
"In order for the fullest potential to be reached [in discussion section], there needs to be a safe environment where we create and voice our opinions, whatever they may be," said Xiomara Padamsee '97.
"A crucial skill is learning how to assert yourself on an issue, or you and everything you stand for will be thrown by the wayside," said Miessha Thomas '97. "You cannot be soft spoken when it comes to serious issues like racism. People have to know where they are on a particular issue and make a stand."
The students in the program represent a variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds, beliefs and values. Sometimes this diversity manifests itself in disagreements in the group discussion sessions. It has been through these conflicts, however, that crystallizing experiences have occurred, students say.
"I've been exposed to cultures and perspectives I wouldn't have otherwise," said Edwin Huh '98. "I'm learning how to communicate with people around controversial issues. At times there is tension in the discussions, but I try to observe and react in a constructive way."
Urban Semester Program participants also have to adapt to life in New York City, and in this way the program introduces students to a unique multicultural experience that can't be found on campus in Ithaca.