Cornell undergraduates learn about lives of migrant workers in new course that emphasizes person-to-person contact

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Cornell University undergraduates can take courses in everything from canine genetics to elementary Pali (the language of Theravaada Buddhist texts). To this rich assortment add one on migrant farmworkers, a course believed to be the only one of its kind in the nation.

"The course is intended to provide a very broad and eclectic perspective on the world of migrant, rural laborers, primarily from the Caribbean and mainland Latin America who work in central and upstate New York," says Ray Craib, assistant professor of history and the primary coordinator of the course.

The course, Farmworkers (listed as Latino Studies 431/631, History/Latin American Studies 431, City and Regional Planning 395 and Industrial and Labor Relations Collective Bargaining 402), is co-taught by professors in eight departments across campus, including Latino Studies, Romance Studies, Industrial and Labor Relations, Latin American Studies, History, Applied Economics and Management, Human Ecology, and City and Regional Planning Latino Studies sponsored the course and coordinated the course materials.. It covers migration and labor in global history, farmworkers and the agricultural industry, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and contemporary rural migration, migrant labor and human rights.

One of the unusual aspects of the course is that students are required to perform at least 40 hours of service, most of it outside of Cornell's location in Tompkins County in upstate New York.

"Cornell is making a concerted effort to give undergraduates the opportunity to interact with whatever programs the university offers, such as the Cornell Migrant Program. Before this course, the migrant program never had an undergraduate component," says Herb Engman, director of the Cornell Migrant Program, which seeks to improve the living and working conditions of farmworkers and their families and to recognize farmworkers' contributions to society.

Students taking the course have worked on such projects as teaching English as a second language to farmworkers, fundraising and developing a Web site and designing a newsletter for the advocacy group, the Independent Farmworkers Center (CITA).

Marco Castro, a senior from Lansing, N.Y., majoring in English, worked on a Web site project for a farmworker organization and met with migrant workers in Albion, N.Y. "I would often pass by workers in my community. I wondered what their lives were like, what their stories were," Castro says. "Farmworkers are often dehumanized and ignored. This class has done the opposite. We see farmworkers as individuals with lives like our own -- people who make valuable contributions to our economy as a result of their work. The course has allowed me to meet migrant workers face to face. They are no longer strangers from another country picking in the fields. They are families struggling to survive like you and me."

Castro and his classmates have learned, for example, that although migrant workers harvest most of the fruits and vegetables in the United States, they are among the nation's lowest-paid laborers, earning an average of less than $10,000 a year. New York state's 47,000 migrant farmworkers -- about 40,000 of them Latinos, primarily from Mexico -- are excluded from labor laws that guarantee a day of rest each week, overtime pay and protection to bargain with employers as a collective unit.

"Prior to taking this course, I knew little about migrant farmworkers," says senior Pat Avery, a Cornell administrative manager in policy analysis and management who is majoring in industrial and labor relations. After teaching English to two young men from Mexico working in regional vineyards, she says, "I have learned that farmworkers contribute much more to our society and economy than many people realize, and I have discovered, first hand through the service-learning component, that farmworkers are incredibly hard-working people."

The new course has been so successful that it is slated to be taught again next spring, when it will be coordinated by Mary Pat Brady, an assistant professor of English who is director of the Latino Studies Program.

The Public Service Center provided guidance for the service component, engaged a Bartels scholar, Pilar McKay, president of the student group Cornell Farmworker Advocacy Coalition, to assist with the course and awarded a Faculty Fellow In Service grant to help underwrite the cost of the course.

Related World Wide Web sites: The following sites provide additional information on this news release.

Cornell Migrant Program: http://www.farmworkers.cornell.edu/

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