In Fall 2025, Chloe Kritas ‘27 and Oksana Sikora, a cook at Cornell’s Morrison Dining, got together for an hour of English practice each week. Kritas, a hotel administration major interested in learning how to teach, came prepared with vocabulary games, flashcards and worksheets tailored to Sikora’s goal of communicating more easily with others. “It really helped me improve my English skills as now I feel more comfortable talking,” Sikora said.

They were among the roughly 40 employee-student learning partnerships brought together each semester through the Community Learning and Service Partnership (CLASP). Founded in 1990 by Ruth Bonous, then a lecturer in Cornell’s College of Human Ecology, and most recently housed in Global Development in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, CLASP became part of the Einhorn Center for Community Engagement this summer.

“This is one of the longest-running community-engaged learning programs at the university,” said Basil Safi, M.Eng. ’24, executive director of the Einhorn Center. “What I like most about it is that it’s an accessible on-campus partnership. With community-engaged learning, we often think about off-campus organizations as the only means for community engagement, but here students have the opportunity to build relationships with staff within Cornell. Over the coming year, we plan to expand student and staff participation in CLASP through the development of a brand new student organization to fuel new co-curricular opportunities.”

At the heart of CLASP are learning goals set by employees themselves. Participants have traditionally been matched, based on interests and schedules, with both undergraduates and graduate students from a wide range of schools and majors. 

Employee participants come from across the university, with the largest numbers working in Cornell Dining and Building Care, as well as areas including Housekeeping at the Statler Hotel, the College of Veterinary Medicine, Transportation and Grounds.

UAW Local 2300 has been a partner in CLASP since the program’s founding, helping to make these learning opportunities accessible to Cornell employees.

While learning goals are set by staff members, Sasha Endo, program liaison for CLASP, emphasizes that learning flows in both directions. “Both the employee and the student are bringing skills and experience to the partnership,” she said. “They are both mentors and mentees to each other simultaneously.”

English for Speakers of Other Languages is the most commonly requested area of study, followed by computer skills, but goals vary widely, from studying for the GED to learning an instrument or improving health and wellness.

Sikora learned about CLASP from a coworker who had participated in the program. Having moved to the United States from Ukraine, she hoped to improve her English. Kritas, meanwhile, enrolled in the affiliated course “Introduction to Adult Learning” to gain hands-on teaching experience. To prepare for their sessions, she drew on what she was learning in class and consulted her father, an English teacher, as she developed lessons tailored to Sikora’s needs and interests.

“I could see Oksana becoming more and more engaged throughout the program,” Kritas said. “She would tell me about going to night school and all the other things she was doing to learn English, and it made me excited and proud of her.”

Sikora appreciated Kritas’ approach. “Chloe is an incredible teacher,” she said. “I loved the way she planned out lessons. During our weekly meetings we would work on building sentences and learning new vocabulary through games.”

Over the course of those weekly meetings, the partnership also became personal. Kritas came to think of Sikora as a friend as they talked about their lives alongside their English lessons. At Christmas, Sikora knitted her a stocking.

Inspired by the experience, Kritas is now applying for a Fulbright fellowship to teach English in Indonesia. “The idea to apply came right out of CLASP,” she said. “Working with Oksana was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had, and it made me want to keep teaching.”

The experience of Kritas and Sikora reflects what Endo has seen across many CLASP partnerships. Employees have used the program to advance professionally, take on new responsibilities and build skills they share with coworkers, while students have discovered interests in teaching and even changed career goals as a result of the experience.

“Partners tell us great stories about what they learned from sitting down each week with someone they might not otherwise have talked with,” Endo said. “Both students and employees have often said that they felt more connected to someone from a different generation or background.”

Christine Charles, second vice president of UAW Local 2300, hopes CLASP’s move to the Einhorn Center will bring these co-learning opportunities to an even broader audience.

“I want to see the program expand access for more UAW Cornell employees, deepening relationships of mutual respect across campus,” she said. “By weaving our worker-student partnerships into the center's university-wide network, we can ensure that staff development and shared growth remain at the heart of Cornell's community engagement mission.”

Olivia Hall is a freelance writer for the Einhorn Center