NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Twenty-four undergraduates from Cornell University are spending this summer interning with community-based organizations serving New York City's poorest children and families. And an additional nine Cornell graduate students are collaborating with agencies serving the city's poor.

Members of the media are invited to attend a public forum at the Cornell Club in New York City on Wednesday, July 23, from 5 to 7 p.m., during which students participating in this year's Cornell Urban Scholars Program will discuss the results of their summer internship placements and collaborative research activities. The club is at 6 E. 44th St. (near Grand Central Station).

The student program was designed by Cornell faculty concerned by the apparent contradiction between the rising number of college and university students involved in community service activities and the declining number of students engaged in traditional forms of civic activities, such as voting, neighborhood organizing and legislative advocacy. The aim was to encourage students to combine their direct-service efforts with all forms of civic action.

The undergraduates are assisting professionals from the city's most innovative human service organizations for four days each week. Among the agencies involved are: ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), Cornell Cooperative Extension, Covenant House, Legal Aid Society, New Settlement Apartments, New York Weill Cornell Medical Center and The Outreach Project.

The students are engaged in a wide variety of community-building and policy-making efforts focused on teenage substance abuse, public school reform, parenting education, community gardening and homelessness. They also are given an opportunity to connect their direct-service work to the larger public policy issues confronting New York City at a weekly seminar conducted by a Cornell faculty member. The graduate students involved in the Cornell Urban Scholars Program this summer are working on collaborative research projects with the senior staff of agencies serving the poor. Some projects include: an evaluation of the public health impact of student-created and -directed videos; an investigation of the effectiveness of the city's numerous anti-sweatshop organizing campaigns; an examination of the impact of lower Manhattan's community gardens on resident empowerment; and an investigation of the potential value of reverse commuter programs to expand employment opportunities for low-income residents of the South Bronx.

The Cornell Urban Scholars Program was launched two years ago with support from the New York City-based Heckscher Foundation for Children through the sponsorship of Peter Sloane. The program was created to encourage more of Cornell's top students to consider public service careers with the city's human service organizations and get more of them involved in public policy debates on the issues contributing to growing social inequality in the United States.