MEINIG FAMILY CORNELL NATIONAL SCHOLARS
EXCELLENCE IN LEADERSHIP AWARD
Rebecca Vichniac
Arts and Sciences '04
Not long after arriving at Cornell, I began to miss one major aspect of my high school career—working with children. I began to look for opportunities within Ithaca to work with local youth. After only a couple of weeks, I saw an advertisement in the Daily Sun advertising the REACH (Raising Education Attainment Challenge) program run through the public service center. Shortly afterwards, I began tutoring through REACH at Beverly J. Martin Elementary School in downtown Ithaca two afternoons a week.
Before I knew it, I began take on the role as The Math tutor. Whenever anyone wanted help with their math homework, they were sent over to me. I unofficially converted a table in the cafeteria for "math only help." One afternoon, while helping a fifth grader understand least common multiples, Laura Cover, the supervisor of REACH at that time, came down to do a site visit and sat down with us. After the after school program ended, Laura told me about a new "math room" that was going to open the following fall at the Greater Ithaca Activity Center and encouraged me to apply to become an Americorp Fellow and help initiate that new program.
I took Laura’s advice, and applied to become an Americorp Fellow at GIAC for my Sophomore year. I have been a Fellow ever since and GIAC has become my second home. The Greater Ithaca Activity Center is a community center in downtown Ithaca serving Ithaca’s families, youth, and elderly. I work with the after school program that serves over one hundred and twenty five youth ages four through eighteen. As a Fellow, I serve as a liaison between the Public Service Center, GIAC staff, and the Cornell tutors. I help recruit, train, and place all tutors at GIAC. Since I have begun working at GIAC, I have recruited, trained, and supervised over one hundred and fifty Cornell tutors, a mix volunteers, work study students, and students earning credit through one of the various education courses. I have also help initiate and bring various Cornell groups to GIAC to do small workshops or help in a special event. This year, I helped the MFCNS service committee begin their LEAP(Leadership Education and Practice)-- a project to teach fourth and fifth graders at GIAC leadership skills.
My largest role at the GIAC is to manage and run two resource rooms, the reading and math rooms. My first challenge at GIAC was to help create and plan activities for the Math room. Enticing children to come up to and do anything involving the word "math" or "science" after a long day of school when they have other options that include playing outside, cooking, and arts and crafts is not an easy task. After hours of research, reading through books, surfing the web, and talking to various education professors, I began to plan and implement hands on math and science activities. Some have included multiplication lessons with M&Ms, making DNA with twizzlers and spice drops, and creating lava lamps. In the reading room, I have helped create activities that go along with specific books. We also have theme months, in which we encourage children to write a story about a specific theme including "winter stories", "a perfect world", and "what I will be doing in then years". This year I began a new project – reading buddies. I paired all the kindergarten and first graders with one tutor to read with once or twice a week. This new project has been a huge success.
In order for the rooms to run, there is constant need to buy new supplies and replace the old ones. I have applied for numerous grants, such as a United Way Grant, Community Partnership Grant, and Robinson Appell and raised over $5000 to buy supplies for both the reading and math rooms along with other GIAC programs. This holiday season, I found over fifty Cornell organizations, groups, and individuals to purchase gifts for the GIAC Holiday gift celebration and helped create a new element—the book gift. Along with a toy, all students now receive a book to take home for the holiday season. Since my Freshman year, I have dedicated over 1,000 hours to the REACH program. In addition, I worked with GIAC’s summer program running the swim lesson program in the mornings and serving as a lifeguard in the evenings and weekends during the summer between my Sophomore and Junior year.
As I sat in LEAP session and listened to fellow Meinig Family Cornell National Scholars ask GIAC participants what characteristics leader held, I began to ponder which characteristics of those I held but more importantly which ones I had gained through both my experience as National Scholar and at GIAC. I believe that my largest development as a leader during the past couple of years has been understanding the importance of effective needs assessment to ensure that my efforts are focused on the most important needs of the GIAC community and also that I use the proper means of attaining those goals. For example, after spending a substantial amount of time at GIAC, I realized that although the students had stories read to them on a regular basis, there was no opportunity for them to read aloud. There were many students entering the second and third grades that lacked basic reading skills. After realizing this, I shifted the focus of the reading room from listening to stories and then participating in an arts and crafts activity about the story to one on one reading with Cornell tutors.
Furthermore, I realized that in order for me to work effectively at GIAC I could no longer be viewed as an "outsider from Cornell" but needed to be seen as a "GIAC staff member." In order to be accepted into the GIAC community, I began to changing my pattern of activity. Instead of only coming in when the reading and math rooms were open, I began coming in earlier and helping fellow staff prepare snacks and get ready for the kids to come. I also stayed after programming and waited for the parents to come pick up the kids. This allowed me to meet the parents and learn about their concerns and comments on the math and reading rooms. On a social level, I starting hanging out with staff after GIAC and slowly was not seen as a Cornellian but as a friend and member of the GIAC community. This has been extremely important in order to achieve effective lines of communication with staff as well as support from staff and the community for our initiatives with the reading and math rooms.
I have always had interests in working with children. This began as a hobby in high school and in the beginning of college but has evolved to an academic and career interest. After working at GIAC, I decided to enroll in some courses in education policy. I found this coursework extremely exciting and relevant to the issues I faced everyday at GIAC. I decided to dedicate more of my academic focus to Education Policy. After completing a course in Sociology and Education with Professor Morgan, I became a research assistant for him. While working with Professor Morgan, I determined college entry and persistence rates amongst minority students which will soon be published in On the Edge of Commitment: Educational Achievement and Race in the United States. I also helped him revise his course by doing a thorough research review on issues of school choice, family involvement, and affirmative action, all areas very relevant to my work with GIAC. After completing Cornell, I will become a Research Assistant at the Brookings Institution working on welfare issues including education policy. The leadership role that I have taken on at Cornell through the REACH program was not only my most valuable experience at Cornell but also helped shape my future educational and career plans.
