Cornell Offers Universidad de Puerto Rico Students Academic Haven

ITHACA, NY – As Puerto Rico continues to recover from Hurricane Maria, Cornell University is offering a free semester of study—including tuition, room and board—in spring 2018 for up to 58 students from Universidad de Puerto Rico (UPR).

UPR is the main public university system in Puerto Rico, with 11 campuses and 5,300 faculty members serving 58,000 students. The university is open but not operating at full strength.

“These young people, and nearly everyone in Puerto Rico, have gone through a terrible trauma. This is our way of reaching out to them and our university colleagues in Puerto Rico to show we stand with them and their families during this difficult time in their academic, professional and personal lives,” says Cornell President Martha E. Pollack.

Qualified students will take Cornell courses, earn credits, live alongside Cornell students and receive an official Cornell transcript. They also will have access to resources, including libraries, computing facilities, laboratories, support services and activities.

Up to 50 undergraduate, law and graduate business students will be enrolled through the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions; up to eight graduate research students will be enrolled through the Graduate School. The deadline for applications is December 1.

“Officials at the university told us that this offer for the spring semester may be useful to certain students, and we are delighted to provide the option for continuation of study,” says Provost Michael Kotlikoff. “We have no idea how many students will respond, but the offer is there. It’s one way, in these troubled times, of demonstrating goodwill toward our colleagues in Puerto Rico.”

Kent Kleinman, the Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning, brought the idea to the university’s leadership when he heard the Department of Architecture was willing to enroll students from the devastated island. Pollack reached out to UPR’s president, who said this might be an opportunity for a number of UPR students to be in a setting where they can have full access to curriculum, resources and infrastructure.

Every dean has designated an associate dean or a faculty member to work directly with UPR students, before they arrive if necessary, to ensure they make a smooth transition, says Glenn Altschuler, M.A. ’73, Ph.D. ’76, dean of the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions.

“This is a campuswide effort,” Altschuler says. “Students are going to be giving up some room in their residences; faculty are going to be teaching some extra students; deans are doing the work to make it happen; and our president and provost are leading the way in how we should be responding.”

UPR students will be responsible for the cost of transportation to and from campus, books and other course supplies, living expenses such as laundry and off-campus meals, and health insurance.

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Cornell made a similar offer, enrolling 204 students from Tulane University, Xavier University of Louisiana and the University of New Orleans.

“We aim to offer them a warm welcome to one of the great universities in the world and do our dead-level best to accommodate them,” Altschuler says. “I want the students from Puerto Rico to know that there will be an awful lot of people reaching out to them to be helpful.”

Featured

  • Springfield Breaks Ground on $53.7M Pipkin Middle School Rebuild

    Construction is underway on a new, state-of-the-art Pipkin Middle School in Springfield, Mo., a major step in Springfield Public Schools’ (SPS) long-term facility improvement plan, according to local news. The $53.7-million project officially broke ground in early June, following years of planning and community input aimed at modernizing aging infrastructure and addressing student capacity concerns.

  • ProTeam Launches GoFit 6 HEPA Backpack Vacuum

    Technology leader Emerson recently introduced the new ProTeam GoFit 6 HEPA backpack vacuum, according to a news release. The vacuum was designed to capture 99.97% of particulates down to 0.3 microns—including atmospheric hazards like lead dust, mold spores, and other particulates—through an advanced filtration system.

  • California High School Starts Construction on New CTE Building

    Analy High School, part of the West Sonoma County Union High School District (WSCUHSD) in Sebastopol, Calif., recently broke ground on a new Career Technical Education (CTE) Building, according to a news release. The 15,000-square-foot facility will offer specialized facilities for students in engineering, welding, culinary arts, agricultural sciences, and design thinking.

  • modern college building with circuit and brain motifs

    Anthropic Introduces Claude for Education

    Anthropic has launched a version of its Claude AI assistant tailored for higher education institutions. Claude for Education "gives academic institutions secure, reliable AI access for their entire community," the company said, to enable colleges and universities to develop and implement AI-enabled approaches across teaching, learning, and administration.

Digital Edition