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Human Ecology Urban Semester Program

Summer in the City

May 28–July 23, 2008 - New York City

This program offers students a unique opportunity to spend a productive summer semester in New York City and earn academic credit. Students register for one of the following three credit courses:

The cost of the program is $2,775 and must be paid by May 12. Financial aid is available for qualified Cornell University students. Note: Housing is available for a limited number of students on a first come-first serve basis in the 92nd Street YMCA. All other students must make their own housing arrangements.

Enrollment is open to ten students in The Culture of Medicine, to five students in Community and Public Service or Fieldwork in Diversity, Professional Practice, and Service. All require the instructor's approval.

Applications are available online and in the College of Human Ecology Resource Center, N139 Martha Van Rensselaer Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853-4401 (telephone: 607.255.1846).

Visit the College of Human Ecology website at http://www.human.cornell.edu/.

For more information, contact Corina Igin (email, telephone: 212.746.2273).

The Culture of Medicine

The Urban Semester Program is partnering with the New York Presbyterian Hospital system and Weill Cornell Medical College in which students develop their own medical rotations and research placements that will enable them to recognize the values and behaviors of medical practice with a particular focus on service. Over the course of eight weeks, students learn how to implement experience-based learning techniques and perspectives to enhance their competencies as initiates of medical practice.

Dr. Sam Beck, the director of the program, is a social and cultural anthropologist. He holds weekly reflection seminars with students that include physician guests. He works with students to learn how to identify relevant information and use it to make generalizations about what they observe and what they do in their particular settings. Students exercise their reflection abilities to consider their place, role, and function in the medical world, and the process by which they become part of it.

The program includes a set of site visits and discussions with local leaders and a community service learning project.

Community and Public Service

The Urban Semester Program is partnering with the South Side Mission in Williamsburg and the greater North Brooklyn area to provide students with internships in the neighborhood that has become famous as the "new SOHO." Although there is some truth to this, a very complex set of social, economic, and political relationships have developed that put particularly vulnerable people at risk of losing their community and neighborhood. This new program is open to five students who are interested in working in social service agencies in this part of New York City to experience inner-city life close up while participating in an effort to make life better for those who are most vulnerable.

Placements are available through the South Side Mission and some other local organizations and include opportunities to work with:

Students may develop other community service options in New York City, depending upon student interests and available placements.

This is a highly unusual program for undergraduate students who have an interest in exploring careers in public and community service or for students who want to spend a productive eight weeks in the heart of the greatest city in the world. Students work in their internship placements four days each week, participate in reflection seminars one day each week, meet with New York City community and public service leaders, and work on a community service learning project.

Finance and Business

This course focuses on the intersection of organizational culture, issues of diversity in professional work and practice, and its relationship to community and public service. Students involve themselves in internships of their own choosing to explore professional directions or for professional development.Students may develop their own internship placements in consultation with the Urban Semester Program and draw on our placement opportunities used by previous students. Students may explore any area--for example, law, finance, business, or communications.

The Urban Semester Program focuses learning experiences on student abilities to identify, describe, analyze organizational culture, the culture of professional practice, and the multicultural issue of professional practice as relationships that must be managed to increase productivity and secure organizational and personal success as an activity defined by the idea of community and public service. We do this in the context of imagining a democratic and just society in which human rights are respected and protected.

Students spend four days each week in an internship of their own choosing. One day each week, students have discussions with professionals (practitioners) who represent different aspects of the New York City economy. This exposure enables students to explore a variety of professional perspectives and practices. Students participate in reflections seminars with the director of the program to explore student internship experiences and learning. Students are also involved in a program-organized community service.