Program History
 

Background

The expansion of the Metro New York City economy in the 1990s attracted significant numbers of new immigrants to the city. While these immigrants have contributed greatly to the economic, cultural, and social life of the city, helping to revitalize many of its older neighborhoods, the human service needs which many new immigrants have present formidable challenges to local social service providers. While demand for services has risen, financial resources have dwindled post-9/11 as state and federal funding has been diverted to anti-terrorism and defense initiatives.

Concerned about the continued ability of the city's non-profit service organizations to address the critical needs of the urban poor, Peter Sloane, President of the August Heckscher Foundation for Children, invited Cornell University to create a new public service program designed to increase the number of students committed to working with organizations serving New York City's most economically distressed neighborhoods.
 

Evolution

1. The Cornell Urban Scholars Program began its Undergraduate Student Internship Program in 2002, sending 25 students to New York City for an eight-week summer placement.
    
2. Feedback from this initial program led to the creation of an Urban Immersion Program that provides 40 freshmen and sophomores with limited urban community service experience with the opportunity to spend seven days in NYC, as part of a specially designed Alternative Spring Break Program started in 2003.
    
3. In addition, students encouraged the CUSP faculty and staff to develop a spring course to prepare students for their NYC service experience by introducing them to the city's changing demographics, political economy, non-profit sector, and key public policy challenges. They also recommended the development of a fall course that would enable returning students to systematically reflect on the public policy implications of their NYC experiences by encouraging and guiding them to write publishable papers focused on the structural causes of and potential resolutions to urban poverty. The spring course, CRP 331, and the fall course, CRP 332 - Urban Policy Research Seminar, started in 2003 as a direct result of the experiences of this first cohort of students.
    
4. Also begun in 2003, the Graduate Research Fellowship in Community Development Policy-Making was developed to provide an opportunity for 10 graduate students to engage in participatory action research projects focused on the critical program development and policy-making issues confronting non-profit organizations and public agencies.
    
5. In 2004, CUSP began subsidizing an annual Non-Profit Career Fair to support student efforts to secure information about post-graduate employment in the non-profit sector.
    
6. In 2005, CUSP secured additional funding from the Iscol Family to increase the number of undergraduate summer interns to 27.
    
7. The journal, New Urban Explorations: A Journal of Cooperative Inquiry and Action for Social Justice and the City, is set to begin in 2006. The New Urban Explorations journal is designed to be a new refereed publication featuring articles jointly produced by local citizen leaders and university-based academics focused on the causes, consequences, and possible solutions to social inequality in the city. The Journal plans to issue its first call for papers in October 2006, with an inaugural issue to appear in the summer of 2007.
    

Additional Information on the History of CUSP

		The Cornell Urban Scholars Program: Cultivating New York City's Next Generation of Civic Leaders Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement Kenneth M. Reardon Spring/Summer, 2005 PDF: 153 KB