It wasn't the Academy Awards, but one movie shown on campus this summer got plenty of applause, praise, and positive feedback.
Not bad for the novice writers, directors, actors, and actresses from nearby Schenectady High School.
The movie, Diversity Camp, was based on the reflections and experiences of twenty-three young men and women who spent two weeks in Union's first Diversity Camp. The
students male and female, ethnic minority and Caucasian-came from the General Electric Scholars Program at the high school.
Initiated by President Roger Hull, Diversity Camp was created to help students learn to communicate in an increasingly multicultural and interdependent world. The camp aimed at promoting the exchange of personal experiences while instilling a sense of individual and group accomplishment.
Assistant Dean of Students Edgar Letriz 91, who served as the program's director, said, “The camp was not designed as sensitivity training. We did not try to convert anyone or challenge anyone. The purpose was to provide a nurturing environment where students could explore issues without being judged.”
To instill this sense of individual and group accomplishment, the students were given the task of making the film to document the learning process of diversity and understanding.
Each morning the studentsall in their first and second year of high school-took a film appreciation course in which they learned theories of filmmaking. They then viewed and discussed films based on cultural issues and prejudice, such as Do the Right Thing and Philadelphia. The students then had the chance to put theory into practice
through hands-on technical experience. The final product was their film, which they wrote, directed, acted, and produced.
The final step was to show the film to an audience that included the students' parents, camp staff members, and teachers. All were impressed with the film, which blended personal reflections and experiences with brief biographies of John F. Kennedy, Simon Bolivar, Gandhi, Native American leaders, and others.
Although the film was the camp's main project, the students had a number of other activities to keep them busy. Because the camp was established as a cooperative project between the College and Schenectady, each afternoon was devoted to a community service project. The students helped run a three-day Kids Olympics for Schenectady children and worked on cleaning up Vale Park and other areas in the city. There were also field trips, sports and arts, and semi
nars on career choices, college admissions, and computer skills.
Letriz says that the students loved the two-week camp and he has received letters of thanks from many of them. Watching the students interact, he says, was the best part of Diversity Camp. The most challenging task was learning to give the
students enough credit and not treating them like children. “Students responded very well to our discussions and explorations. They are quite aware of the issues around them, and they are very open to discussing these issues,” he says.
Another group of students on campus for two weeks this summer did a slightly different kind of exploration.
Twenty-one students from across the state participated in
the Howard Hughes Medical Institute workshop for high school students who are generally underrepresented in science.
Led by Professor Peter Tobiessen of the Biology Department, the institute encouraged students to explore topics and careers in
the sciences. Students took three mini-courses (cell motility, DNA techniques, and cell structure) taught by Union professors and also visited the New York State Police Crime Lab, Albany Medical Center, the New York State Department of Health, the GE Research
and Development Center, and Community Health Plan.
Several teachers from the Capital District also spent time at Union over the summer in four grant-sponsored teaching workshops run under the auspices the Union College Teaching and Learning Center, a professional development school aimed at bringing the most
up-to-date classroom strategies to area teachers.
Elementary and middle grade teachers learned new methods of teaching math, science, and technology through three different workshops funded by the Howard Hughes Foundation and NYNEX, the General Electric Fund, and a state-sponsored Goals 2000 grant. A Goals 2000 pre-service grant also gave several teachers from nearby Mohonasen High School the opportunity to gain professional development and critique the College's Master of Arts in Teaching program.