The discussions about race, ethnicity, religion and sexuality are tough, really tough for the students in the College of Human Ecology's Urban Semester program. Small wonder.

Consider that the undergraduates in Urban Semester are expected to move about New York City's five boroughs, visiting with people unlike any they had ever met before: a Haitian voodoo priest inside his temple; an illegal Senegalese immigrant in the Muslim school he founded for West African children; a 26-year-old Hassidic rabbi in the social service agency he established to serve his religious community, 40 percent of whose members are on welfare; and a member of the Lakota nation who is venerated as a leader by the American Indian and non-Native American communities alike.

There is little time for small talk as these exchanges are intended to press students to open their minds to ways of viewing the world often diametrically opposed to what they believe is "true."

"This isn't a theological exercise; we're not trying to change anybody's mind, but we are trying to question their assumptions and expand their ideas of reality," explains Sam Beck, director of the Urban Semester program who, for 35 years, has been creating experienced-based learning contexts that offer students intense, face-to-face encounters with individuals, young and old, who exemplify a life well lived.

Beck uses the perspectives of anthropology -- among them cultural relativism -- to help students become aware of, then suspend, their own assumptions to become deeply immersed in the experiences of others. "In this way, students can come to understand, hence respect, another person on his or her own terms and, at a minimum, should be able to articulate why the person believes as he or she does," Beck says.

Alumna Janelle Greene '95 found that the program makes an overarching contribution to developing the leaders of tomorrow through these encounters, which increase students' comfort with differences and, in the process, help them get to know themselves better.

"True leaders are genuine and are not restrained at expressing their true beliefs, but have the grace and wisdom to know how and when to share those beliefs or make judicious decisions in light of this for the common good," says Greene, who went on to earn a law degree and now is working in community development and intergovernmental relations for a large not-for-profit affordable housing organization in New York.

In the global marketplace of the 21st century, Beck knows that individuals who are at ease when surrounded by others different from themselves will hold the competitive edge. Diversity and nonconformity are the font of novel insights, ideas and perspectives essential to keeping pace with rapidly changing times.

Where better to feel immersed in diversity than in the nation's most densely populated city, drawing 8.1 million people from 180 countries to live within its 321 square miles? People flock there, many to change themselves, a fact not lost on Urban Semester students.

Most of the 32 juniors and seniors in the program are from the College of Human Ecology. One in three is premed. Most Urban Semester participants self-identify as growing up in homogeneous communities -- generally white and Asian, relatively affluent suburbs.

Three days a week, the students work in internships in medicine, law, government, the not-for-profit sector, design and the arts, or the media. They cross ethnocultural, socioeconomic and racial boundaries on the fourth day by tutoring and mentoring children in inner-city schools. Such community service experiences increase students' awareness of their civic responsibilities while providing support for a community in need, Beck says.

Urban Semester students also attend two group seminars: Multicultural Issues in Urban Affairs, in which they travel about the city, and Multicultural Practice, which is their intellectual home base. The latter is a three-hour, graduate-style seminar, in which students present to their classmates oral reflections on the fields they are gaining expertise in or on newly found passions.

Beck shows students how to use the tools of ethnographic inquiry in their internships to make detailed observations of, as he puts it, "the circumstances, practices and activities that make up the local character of work." He also provides them with a rapid assessment tool with which to quickly understand the organization's culture.

Secure leaders are confident that they can draw information from a wide range of sources. Hence, a primary goal of the program is to show students that knowledge is found beyond books; that learning is an organic process, a social process involving encounters with people and attending to "reading the world." Beck says that the program encourages young people to "look at real experiences as an authoritative way to learn and to see the wisdom of others as a text."

"We also focus a lot of attention on assets -- individual assets, social assets, community assets -- because it's very difficult to build on deficits," Beck says. "When we go into low-income communities, it's best to look at the strengths, rather than what's missing. And if we want to create a just, democratic and equitable society, we have to look at what people and communities bring to the table that can be used to build on. That's what leadership is about."

For Greene, who interned at the Legal Defense and Education Fund, the program not only exposed her to what possibilities existed with a law degree and gave her a chance to interact with many of the country's best civil rights litigators, but also "increased my confidence concerning what I desired to achieve academically and socially," she says. "The program was a gift that Cornell gave me."

This story was adapted from Human Ecology magazine.