Five of the six pairs of Tompkins County community and student leaders who won 2010 Robert S. Smith Awards for Community Progress and Innovation Dec. 9 include Cornell students.

The award supports partnerships between grassroots community leaders and area college students to jointly plan and carry out innovative community-building projects that strengthen Tompkins County communities. Recipients receive grants of up to $3,000 to help carry out their project.

This fall's Cornell award recipients and their winning projects are:

• Ashley Jeanlus '11 – Discover New York Series: With area educators and the Science and Mathematics Saturday Academy (which is affiliated with the Cornell Center for Materials Research) that support the academic achievement of underrepresented youth, the funds will support the academy to develop a series of trips to such New York state landmarks as the Erie Canal, National Women's Hall of Fame and National Soaring Museum, for students whose families often do not have the resources to travel outside Ithaca. The trips will connect to area schools' curriculum.
• Amara Pinnock '11 – Rebuilding the Wall: In connection with the Calvary Baptist Church, the Rebuilding the Wall project will provide training and support to help young adults who have been hard to employ move into steady employment. The grant provides seed funding to enable the project to develop a track record as it seeks further funding to grow.
• Jessica Perez '13 – Southside Community Center Workshops: This project will expose elementary schoolchildren in an after-school program to Spanish language and Latin American cultural customs. It will include twice weekly Spanish lessons, hands-on arts and crafts, simple cooking, singing and dancing activities. The project organizers also hope to impact the children's parents to help bridge cultural barriers that divide people and keep them from working together.
• Ryan Arams '12 – El Museo Latinoamericano: This project will allow local third-grade after-school students to create a museum through which they can learn about Latin American culture and the Spanish language through art. Twice a month, the children will be exposed to visiting artists from Cornell and downtown. They will create sculptures, masks, paintings and other artifacts to install in their own museum and will visit Cornell's Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art (a partner in the project) to learn about museums. When completed, the students' museum will be open to the public.
• Xochitl (Chilly) Cruz '12 – Graphing Greater Success!: In partnership with the Village at Ithaca and New Roots Charter School, this project will offer a series of math workshops using graphing calculators for high school students. The goal is not only to increase math skills required for the Regents exams and the SAT, but also to help students be more motivated in school. The workshops will be facilitated by college students who are math or engineering majors. The grant will help purchase graphing calculators, some of which will be loaned to low-income students so they can practice at home and have the same advantage as other students.

The Robert S. Smith Award solicits project ideas and visions from "everyday" community leaders who partner with local college students to develop the project proposal and transform those ideas into reality.

Established in 1994 by a $100,000 grant from Tompkins Trust Co., the award is named for the late Robert S. Smith, former bank chairman and W.I. Myers Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Finance at Cornell. It is administered by Cornell Cooperative Extension-Tompkins County.