Dean of Students John Ford, second from left, has dinner on Sept. 10 at Risley Dining Hall with his Cornell 101 group, from left, Gwen Chrisitini '01, Mark A. Feliciano '01, Salumeh Ramsey '00 and Nicohl Merrill '01. Charles Harrington/University Photography
Freshman Anna Chung feels less homesick than she otherwise would. Mark Feliciano, also a freshman, has found a good group of people to speak with about anything people who make him feel comfortable in this new, potentially intimidating setting.
Those comments are the result of design, not happenstance. For both Chung and Feliciano are participating in the second year of the three-year pilot program called Cornell 101, designed to introduce new students to the university and ease the transition between home and university life.
The program is billed as an "insider's guide" to Cornell. Its 162 participants are meeting in groups of 12 or 14 weekly for six weeks. In the roughly 1 1/2-hour sessions, they discuss everything from time management and exam preparation to community service and Cornell history and tradition. Optional social events are included and help forge the friendships and comfort level that as Chung and Feliciano's comments suggest make the noncredit program much more than a dry, introductory course.
Those comments, and other similar ones they are hearing, are music to the ears of John Ford, the Robert W. and Elizabeth C. Staley Dean of Students, and Rebecca Sparrow, assistant dean of students for New Student Programs. That's because, despite best intentions, the program got off to a rocky start its first year, with at least half of the 225 students who started the program dropping out.
But Ford and Sparrow were determined to meet what they knew from upper-class students over the years was a real transition need for many, so they overhauled the program this year in response to a survey of last year's participants.
There are several key differences, Ford said. First, the sessions this year meet weekly instead of biweekly so will end by mid-semester. Last year's schedule extended too far into the semester, conflicting with course work, prelims and bad weather. Also, there's more effort this year to make the sessions and optional social events just plain fun and less like school work.
"We want it to be substantive in content, providing worthwhile information, but we don't want it to feel like a course with too much stuff to memorize," Ford said. "We're trying to better balance the fun with the substance."
Perhaps the biggest change, however, is the new emphasis on greater flexibility. Based on the survey, it was determined that students wanted more control over the course content and over specific activities. So while the topics to be covered in each session are set, each group this year can choose from a menu of options in how they cover a given topic.
For example, the topic for session three is "History and Traditions of Cornell." This year, groups can choose one of three ways to cover the topic: President Emeritus Dale Corson will share his experiences as president in a discussion titled "Cornell During Tumultuous Times" during the late 1960s and early '70s; Peter Trowbridge, a practicing landscape architect and Cornell professor, will lead a tour and discussion of the history of the building of Cornell; and University Archivist Elaine Engst will discuss the resources on university history available in the University Archives.
This year, too, the three facilitators for each group a sophomore student, a faculty member and a staff member had better advance training, so their leadership dynamics could be worked out before the groups met, Ford said.
"This is breaking new territory. There's so little communication here between faculty and nonacademic staff. It proved difficult the first year to figure out the role relationships between those two, and then how the sophomore fits as an expert witness," he explained.
The facilitator training helped them work out how they would work together, Sparrow said. "How seamless that teamwork is comes across to students," she added.
Mike Fietz is a sophomore facilitator who stuck with the program last year and opted to come back. He said that when he signed up he really wasn't sure what he was getting into. But, he said, "Once I'd attended the first meeting, the goals of the program became a bit clearer, and I saw it as an opportunity to get involved on more intimate terms with a huge and sometimes intimidating school."
And just why did he opt to come back?
"Knowing what made Cornell 101 work for me, I thought I'd be able to bring the same sort of experience to a new group of freshmen," Fietz said. "Thinking more long term, Cornell 101 is the sort of program that has the potential to really become a strong part of Cornell tradition. It's extremely unique and innovative and may very well serve as a model for other schools. Being a freshman during its first year placed me right at its origin, and becoming a facilitator offered an important role in its foundation the rare opportunity to help build a tradition that will continue long after I graduate."
Ford, too, hopes Cornell 101 "will become a permanent part of the university landscape." That decision won't be made for another year and a half. But for now, he said, Cornell 101 seems to meet a long-perceived need, at least for some.
It's partly about promoting academic and personal self-confidence. "Coming to Cornell University can be very daunting for an 18-year-old," Ford said.
It's also about making the Cornell experience richer for everyone, he added. Over the years, he explained, many graduating seniors have told him their Cornell experience would have been very different had they known more about what Cornell offers and what Cornell is, as freshmen.
"We want to promote a sense of intellectual passion as well as a sense of community. We want them to feel that there is someone in this environment who will remember them, and also to begin to discuss with them their rights and obligations as members of the community," Ford said.
Right now the program, with its changes, seems to be working. In Chung's words, "Cornell 101 is an awesome program, and I am glad that I am part of it."