Teaching flourishes during the summer, as well

Photos by Nicola Kountoupes/University Photography

Tom Silva, left, a lecturer in plant biology, answers pre-exam questions for Danica Anderson, a Washington University sophomore from Ithaca, during Cornell Adult University (CAU).

Lynn Reitenbach '85, Ithaca High School's varsity lacrosse coach, instructs Sports Camp students Lindsay Levin from Port Washington, N.Y., and Lindsay Rising from Malvern, Pa.

Karen Pagan '82 took natural history and her husband Joe Pagan, M.A. '82, Ph.D. '85, from Lexington, Ky., took golf during CAU.

Cornell Outdoor Education facilitator Alice Henshaw adjusts the harness of Donnel Buckner for a team-building exercise that hurtled him through the air by rope and pulley Aug. 11 at the Hoffman Challenge Course. Buckner, a 10th-grader, was one of 26 black and Hispanic students visiting Cornell from Cesar Chavez Charter High School for Public Policy in Washington, D.C. The Chavez students were hosted by Cornell urban planning students and professors Aug. 9-13, and Telluride House provided free room and board for the second year in a row. Some of the students who visited last August have since applied and gotten into Cornell, and one was invited to live at Telluride, a residence for high academic achievers.

By Stephani S. Pierce

As anyone who entered the gym at Helen Newman Hall during peak hours in the past few months can tell you, Cornell's campus population may wane during the summer -- but there are still a lot of folks involved in university programs. About 9,000 people were on campus during the summer enrolled in learning activities ranging from courses in Medieval Latin to wrestling.

This year, 4,021 students were enrolled in classes for credit through the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions -- up from 3,903 in 1999 -- and participants ranged from matriculating students looking to fulfill requirements to community members eager to expand their knowledge in particular areas of interest.

Some of the programs are large and a very visible part of the campus's summer life, such as the three, six and eight-week Summer Sessions courses -- which involved 1,451 students -- and the six-week Summer College program for high school students.

Cornell junior Carolyn M. Deckinger, who took Psych 350 "Statistics and Research Design " during Summer Sessions, said she enjoyed the ambience of summer on campus. "Mindsets are more relaxed, not as stressful or competitive as during the year," she said. "Smaller classes allow for more personal attention and questions."

Summer College, whose participants included both the 566 students involved in the general program and the 55 in the special architecture program, gives young people between their junior and senior years of high school a preview of what college will demand of them.

"I feel that I have lived fully and I'm really glad I went to Summer College at Cornell," said Erika Almanza from San Francisco. "I'm glad because I didn't have a good idea of how it would feel to go to college."

Along with these programs are the smaller programs for high school sophomores and first-year Cornell students. This year 192 students were involved in the high school sophomore summer honors program, which for the past four years has been allowing younger students the same type of college preview experience that high school juniors have been experiencing at Cornell. In addition to the high school students, there were 34 students in the freshman summer-start program, which allows students who have already been accepted to Cornell to get a head start during the less overwhelming summer atmosphere.

But there are also plenty of smaller programs, like the School of Hotel Administration's Summer Honors Program Pipeline, which this year included eight hotel school students. And there are larger programs that involve yearlong Cornellians, such as the 814-person architecture honors program.

Fourteen students of varying ages spent three weeks in Cornell's intensive medieval Latin program and there were 27 graduate and undergraduate students in FALCON (Full-year Asian Language Concentration program), the university's special intensive language program in Chinese and Japanese.

There also were more than 900 students on campus taking non-credit summer sessions courses, including 105 studying English as a second language in Cornell's Intensive English Program, which combines its English language instruction with an introduction to American culture for foreign students.

And instruction outside the classroom on campus this summer included 2,771 students, ranging in age from 7 to 18, who were enrolled in the university's Sports School, which offered its 21st annual summer sports camp this year.

Finally, there were 1,239 people enrolled in the popular Cornell Adult University (CAU) summer programs, including 596 in CAU's children's programs, with participants being about 65 percent Cornell alumni -- including members of the Class of 1929 to the Class of 1990.