The Importance of Off-Campus Study

A Presidential White Paper
Addressed to the Cornell College family
from Leslie H. Garner Jr.

May 2008 

“At Cornell, there are many opportunities to pursue intensive academic studies—and I love that. As a freshman, I went to Guatemala to study at a Spanish Language School for four weeks. This year, I did an independent study in Honduras and an internship with the U.N. World Food Programme in Bolivia. Next year,  to Trinidad and Barbados for an advanced anthropology class. There is no other college where I could have those incredible opportunities.”

Sophomore Brittany Atchison, Northfield, Minn.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in “The American Scholar” that it is in the world of action that knowledge ripens into truth. Few colleges can support learning through action as well as Cornell, where One Course At A Time (OCAAT) opens doors to learning beyond the Hilltop. Through off-campus classes, educational programs like Dimensions and the Berry Center, and experiential opportunities like Cornell Fellows, the world truly is our classroom.

Opportunities We Offer

One of the tenets of our mission statement is the integration of theory and practice. Off-campus opportunities available through OCAAT allow students to integrate theory learned in the classroom with practical experience in a variety of locations. At Cornell, students can:  

• take an off-campus class for a block, internationally or domestically,
• take a class that goes off-campus for a few hours, a few days, or a few weeks,
• travel on a semester or year-long program,
• be a Cornell Fellow almost anywhere, for varying lengths of time,
• find an internship through the Berry Center, and
• participate in Operation Walk and internships in major laboratories through Dimensions.

Even that list is not exhaustive of all the possibilities. The inherent flexibility of OCAAT—the modular nature of the schedule, one class at a time without competing academic distractions, the singular focus each block—means that a student can study in many different locations around the world, at many different times of the year, as long as courses, internships, independent study opportunities or semester programs are available and approved.

Cornell offers a number of courses taught off-campus. Here is a sample of the courses that will be offered for the 2008-2009 academic year:  

• Art 103 – Drawing – Japan
• Biology 485 – Biological Problems – Bahamas
• Classics 377 – City of Rome – Italy
• Education 260 – Comparative Educational Systems: the United States and Southern Africa – South Africa
• Philosophy 302 – Ancient Philosophy – Greece
• Politics 371 – Wilderness Politics – Boundary Waters, Minnesota
• Russian 384 – Russia Today – Russia
• Spanish 381 – Peninsular Culture and Civilization – Spain
• Theatre 370 – Contemporary Theatre – New York

What better way to study contemporary theatre than traveling to New York to actually see contemporary theatre at its best? Where more clearly can you hear the echoes of Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes than in the birthplace of philosophy? What better way to learn about contemporary Russia than by traveling to and studying within Russia? On the OCAAT system, the answers to these questions are “academic.”

ACM Semester and Year-Long Programs

Through Cornell’s affiliation with the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM), Cornell’s students and faculty have the opportunity to participate in its off-campus programs internationally and domestically. At this time, the ACM offers 10 sites for semester-long academic study, including locations as near as Chicago and as remote as Africa, India, and Japan. ACM programs are periodically reviewed and are of high quality. However, as costs associated with the ACM programs have increased steadily over the years, fewer faculty and students are able to participate.

Interdisciplinary Study

One hallmark of a liberal arts education is the integration of learning across disciplines. Our off-campus study programs support interdisciplinary learning. For example, every year we offer a set of courses in the same block on San Salvador Island in the Bahamas. Biology classes travel there to study speciation of fire coral, while geology classes travel to the same station at the same time to study ancient coral reefs, and anthropology classes investigate the local culture. Students work, live, and learn together during the block, sharing what they’ve learned along the way.

Next year, on the other side of the globe, English and education students will travel to South Africa during second block. In the eighth block, philosophy students will visit Greece alongside Foundations of Education students. During the first block, two biology classes, an English literature class, and a politics class all take place at the Wilderness Field Station in Minnesota, with canoe trips into the Boundary Waters.

Alumni Support

In the past few years, we’ve been fortunate to have support for our off-campus programs from our alumni. The Cornell Fellows Program has its roots in an internship Cornell trustee Dean Riesen ’79 enjoyed while at Cornell. Cornell Fellows are sponsored by alumni, and, in some instances, alumni serve as mentors to Fellows. Since its inception in 2005, the Cornell Fellows program has placed over 90 students in locations ranging from the Katoh School in Numazu, Japan, to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C.

In 1999, the Catherine Levy Off-Campus Study Fund was created to help students pursue off-campus study opportunities in the arts, humanities, and sciences. Then, in 2005, the class of 1955, recognizing the importance of the off-campus experience, created the Class of 1955 Student Off-Campus Study Fund to further augment study abroad opportunities. Their support, and that of many other alumni, continues to underpin the importance of off-campus study at Cornell and the ever-increasing opportunities we offer.

The Berry Center and Dimensions

The Berry Center and Dimensions, two of our recent program initiatives, have expanded off-campus opportunities in exciting ways. The Berry Center, founded with the leadership of Jim McWethy ’65, has placed students in a number of interesting and important positions, including with elected officials in Des Moines and Washington, D.C., at a brokerage house in Uruguay, and at financial positions in various banks. The Berry Center has also sponsored trips to graduate schools in economics and has sent classes to Chicago to study at the Newberry Library. With the help of the Berry Center Advisory Board, we will soon develop plans to teach finance classes in Chicago, as well.

Through Operation Walk, founded by Dr. Lawrence Dorr ’63, Dimensions offers students the chance to travel to underserved and developing areas around the world to assist in performing joint-replacement surgeries. Cornell students work alongside doctors in places such as El Salvador, China, and Peru, mixing with different cultures while learning from some of the best doctors in the world. Dimensions also regularly sends students to the Milwaukee Department of Public Health, Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, and to the Mayo Clinic.

Exploring New Opportunities

This year, we’ve made a concerted effort to continue opening the world to our students. Professor Gayle Luck, Faculty Director for International and Off-Campus Studies, encourages faculty to develop programs that will extend the academic experience internationally. In addition, I traveled to Japan in order to meet with our alumni and to foster relations with two partner universities, Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo and Kyoto Seika University in Kyoto. These partnerships will allow for an even richer set of offerings for Cornell students in Japan.

To give more of our students access to off-campus study, Extraordinary Opportunities: Campaign for Cornell College will raise $1.5 million in endowment to fund off-campus study. The endowment will enable more students to study off-campus and provide support for senior-year capstone projects that take students into the field, into labs, and into libraries across the country and around the world.

Conclusion

Never in the history of Cornell have the opportunities for off-campus study been so numerous and so varied. It is more important than ever for students to engage in the world beyond Cornell. They need breadth of perspective to succeed in a global environment and a constantly changing world. Learning can take place any time, anywhere. In addition to providing our students extraordinary opportunities in the classroom and on the campus, we need to provide them extraordinary opportunities around the world.