COVER STORY
Students take on the Big Apple -- Cornell's urban lab
The experience, says Wood, who is considering a career in social justice, "affirms a lot of things for me." Particularly, perhaps, the juxtaposition of poverty with plenty -- that Wood later experienced only a few dozen blocks away when she and her classmates in the Urban Scholars Program went on a walking tour of Midtown Manhattan with guide and adjunct professor Ned Kauffman. An hour later, she was at the College of Architecture, Art and Planning's airy studio space on West 17th Street listening to guest speaker Robert Padgug, an associate professor of health and nutrition services at the City University of New York and an expert on health policy.
Padgug was impressed with all of the Cornell students and the work they are doing across the city. In between bites of a deli sandwich, he summed up why New York City is so valuable as an extension of the Ithaca campus. "I think the best experience they could have is living here for a while," he says. "It's such a different place."
Indeed, New York City is a place where one scholar can perform research on a park bench in Harlem, while another creates a profitable mathematical model for the titans of international finance. It's a place where an intern can find herself working for the top names in media, while another labors to convey her love of reading to some of the most underprivileged young people in the country.
These are experiences that cannot be replicated just anywhere, and that's why Cornell makes sure all of them can happen in New York City.