For many Cornell students, such as the 37 undergraduate and graduate students participating in the fifth Cornell Urban Scholars Program (CUSP) summer internship program in New York City, education is enhanced with work far beyond the ivory towers.

"You can use academic terms to define social justice, redistribution or social policy revision, but those words are so cold and unfeeling that you still don't get what it means," said Cornell intern Matthew Ricchiazzi '08. "You have to feel it to be able to articulate it. You can't just think about it; you have to actually experience it. That's what we learned this summer."

Ricchiazzi was attending the July 26 City Hall reception that marked the fifth anniversary of recognizing the importance of social justice and its role in educational programming at Cornell. The reception also recognized the interns' summer supervisors from such agencies as the Coalition for the Homeless, American Civil Liberties Union and the Children's Aid Society.

Mohsen Mostafavi, dean of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning (AAP), spoke of AAP's new Manhattan office (50 W. 17th St) and his hope that the space will enable AAP to work much more systematically with the public service agencies engaged with CUSP.

CUSP co-director Ken Reardon, associate professor of AAP, and Mostafavi concurred that much of CUSP's ability to reach out to neighborhoods in the city is because of key partnerships with Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE)-New York City and Weill Cornell Medical College. Reardon said that "if it weren't for the network of grassroots organizations, public agencies, foundations and policy-makers that CCE creates and nurtures every day, we wouldn't be able to come down and give a little boost in the summer."

The work also wouldn't be possible without the Heckscher Foundation for Children, which is supported and directed by the Sloane family and has provided complete funding for CUSP since its inception.

"In many ways there wouldn't be an Urban Scholars program if the Sloanes didn't challenge Cornell to think about what a land-grant university would look like in the new century," said Reardon.

And part of that land-grant mission is to take the knowledge generated by the university and apply it to real-world problems.

"You have to wake up and try to change the world and … you don't change the world that day, but you have to wake up the next morning with the same amount of ambition and the same amount of dedication and enthusiasm to believe that you can," said Ricchiazzi. "You have to always be dissatisfied, but not disheartened."

Brenda Tobias '97 is director of Cornell-New York City relations. The CU in the City column appears monthly. To suggest an item for coverage, e-mail Tobias at NYC@cornell.edu.