Blog Archives

Cornell Tech Gives Thanks: November 2019

12/30/2018

On November 28th and 29th, just after Thanksgiving, faculty, staff, and post doctoral students from Cornell Tech University volunteered across the Island for many different kinds of service hours. Julia Ferguson and Neal Weissman hosted six Cornell employees for leaf clean up and mulch clean up. Anthony Longo hosted three more for compost sifting and compost prep. It was a cold Wednesday morning in November and yet, we enjoyed every moment outdoors in the gardens together!

Later that afternoon, Julia, Jack, Neal, and Paul Lenner were hosted at Cornell Tech in order that RIGC might use their copy/scanner machines. We began digitizing RIGC history in pictures by scanning three full albums from Ali Schwayri dating back to 1985. Jane Swanson, Cornell Tech Community Liaison, and other Cornell employees in education services and IT helped us along with this beginning. This was a very special day in so many ways!

Urban Nature, Our Stories, and Our Health: Remaking the City with Cornell Tech Students

12/29/2018

For a second year of collaborative service projects, Roosevelt Island Garden Club worked with Cornell Tech graduate students again this fall. The Cornell Tech course by Tapan Parikh is called Remaking the City and is centered on local, community connections. Both this year and last, we worked in combination with Anthony Longo of GRIN (Green Roosevelt Island Neighbors) and with Christina Delfico of iDig2Learn.

The graduate students who chose us this year were Daren Liu and Mew Rojnirun who are both in their second year of Masters programs at Cornell Tech. We were thrilled again to work with such steady, generous, and resourceful students.

Mew and Daren are interested in the intersections of technology, health, and nature. They began by exploring tech ideas which might be used to bring more choices, flowers, and nature to Coler Hospital residents. Then, realizing the limited access to technology in that setting, the plan shifted and broadened to include all kinds of Roosevelt Islanders. Mew and Daren created 'Outdoors on R Island' which is a live web page that we can continue to develop and share. This page is designed to help people share their connections with outdoor spaces and to realize more deeply how the amazing urban nature that surrounds us is a positive source of health and well-being for us all.

'Outdoors on R Island' is a collection of brief stories in the form of audio recordings alongside beautiful pictures of natural, outdoor spaces on Roosevelt Island. It includes a special green map developed by an artist who works at Cornell Tech. This project was cited briefly in a New York Times article about Cornell Tech. Also, one of the sources of inspiration for the design of the page was the Climate Stories Project by musician and environmentalist, Jason Davis.

We are excited about this new product that resulted from our collaboration and the careful work of these graduate students. However, once again this year as was also true last year, the process, our conversations together, and the connections we made were the real win for all! Collaborative and service learning courses and work with Cornell Tech students and RI organizations are so important for our Roosevelt Island community. We hope that they will continue.

Cornell Tech Gives Thanks: November 2019

Urban Nature, Our Stories, and Our Health: Remaking the City with Cornell Tech Students

Categories

Archives by date