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The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/2003/09/26/s-a-funds-readership-program/)

September 26, 2003

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S.A. Funds Readership Program

By wpengine | September 26, 2003

Beginning next fall, Cornell students will be able to get their daily newspaper fix for free. Last night, the Student Assembly granted funding to the USA Today-sponsored College Readership Program, which has run several pilot programs at the University over the past two years.

The S.A. voted to approve the off-campus organization’s request for a $5 share of the student activity fee, a portion of tuition which students pay to support campus programs. The approval of the funding, the culmination of a three-year process, was the final step in making the newspaper stands a permanent fixture on campus.

“I’m really excited that Cornell has decided to embrace this program,” said Robin Irwin, regional marketing manager for USA Today. “I think that the students will find it a valuable part of their Cornell experience.”

Over 200 schools participated in the College Readership Program as of last spring and more are expected to join this year, including Dartmouth College and Duke University.

Related

Smash! Kabam! Games of the Future

By wpengine September 29, 2003

The enemy fighter explodes in a burst of flames, unable to avoid a player’s barrage of lasers. “Wait, try this,” a student says, tapping in a few lines of code and restarting the game. This time, the enemy fighter dodges out of the player’s way and shoots back. The student starts explaining his artificial intelligence changes when Prof. Mohan Rajagopalan, computer science, decides it’s time to start the day’s lecture. After a quick introduction, the day’s guest lecturer, Rama Hoetzlein ’01, launches into a discourse on the history of computer games. Except for a few thoughtful questions, the audience is silent, absorbing the illustrated history of games from Pong to Pac-Man, through the video game crash of 1983. After class, a few students linger, asking questions or optimizing those last few lines of code. “CS 490: The Computer Game Design Project” is obviously not your typical computer science course, but then again, as Rajagopalan explains, it isn’t meant to be. “There really is a lot about computer game design that transcends what you learn in computer science classes. … It is a creative craft,” he said. This “craft” crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries as computer science majors team up with artists and musicians to create a common vision that comes to fruition as a fully-playable, stand-alone game. Synthesizing ideas and teamwork is half the course’s challenge. “I even had to change my stereotypes,” co-instructor Prof. David Schwartz, computer science, admitted. “The [computer science students] thought they would tell the artists what to draw and the artists thought the engineers would program the game they envisioned.” The right mix is somewhere in between. Hoetzlein explained the importance of the day’s lecture as part of appreciating this balance between artistic and technical skills. “We use the history of computer games to allow students from both the arts and computer science to work together. … All through its history, making computer games has been a cross-disciplinary collaboration,” he said. The program started with seven students in fall 2001, growing to 10 students the next spring. The potential and the interest were both clearly there, so Schwartz sat down with Hoetzlein and they came up with a formalized syllabus. They decided to cover as much as possible, an overview of a field that Schwartz concedes truly needs its own curriculum and possibly major. The syllabus hit concrete topics such as artwork, physics, music and networking and even some esoteric ones such as gaming violence and social impact. “In a technical class, it’s ‘How does this algorithm affect speed?’ But how do you bring up ‘How does this algorithm affect society?'” Schwartz said, emphasizing the nuances inherent in the class that separate it from much of the computer science department. Hoetzlein developed a lecture series for the topics and wrote the GameX engine. GameX is used to illustrate various concepts to the class and also serves as the base for many of the students’ games. Hoetzlein, who graduated with a dual degree in computer science and fine arts, placed simplicity and ease-of-use as a priority with GameX, so that both programmers and artists could get involved in their project right away. Each design team is typically made up of four or five students who decide everything from game type to difficulty level. From time to time, outside talent has been brought in, such as students from Prof. Todd McGrain’s Drawing III class and Prof. David Borden’s Digital Music class. Both of them added not only to the quality of the games but gave the teams real-life practice in communicating their ideas clearly to third parties. Hopes are high for the future of the course. The class is officially an undergraduate research project, but with over 40 students participating, organizers hope to turn the research into an official course. But more pressing, Schwartz, Rajagopalan and Hoetzlein are working hard to secure funding — their General Electric grant runs out at the end of this semester. Despite their unofficial status and monetary uncertainty, the project team is upbeat. “[Computer game design] is a new frontier here and around the country,” said Rajagopalan. Schwartz agreed, adding that Cornell is “poised to be a forerunner in this industry. And this year, especially, we have an amazingly skilled group of students.” With this sort of enthusiasm and commitment, along with a booming $7 billion-a-year computer game industry, there is little question that the project will continue to grow in scope and sophistication. Archived article by Michael Morisy
Museum Celebrates Opening

By wpengine September 29, 2003

Ithaca’s new Museum of the Earth held its ribbon-cutting and dedication ceremony on Thursday. In his opening remarks at the ceremony, Warren D. Allmon, Ph.D., director of the museum and adjunct associate professor at Cornell, cited Ezra Cornell’s purchase of a fossil collection as the first step in the chain of events that eventually led to the opening of the museum. The museum’s purpose is, among other things, to showcase the enormous collection of objects that belong to the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI), of which Allmon is also the director. “I would often wonder what PRI was and what went on in that building,” said New York State Sen. James Seward (R-50th), with the modern, environmentally friendly new facility as a backdrop. “Thanks to Warren Allmon, those fossils came to life.” Due to Cornell’s role as PRI’s unofficial partner and collaborator, Kraig Adler, vice provost for life sciences, was also present and noted that the museum will provide research, volunteer and internship opportunities to Cornellians. Moments before the ribbon was cut, Christopher Maples, president of the PRI Board of Trustees, motioned toward the 44-foot skeleton of a north Atlantic right whale inside the building and joked, “If you agree that ‘Ithaca is gorges,’ you’ll agree that this is a whale of a museum as well.” The ribbon was then cut by Raymond Von Houtte, former president of the Tompkins Trust Company and one of the first people to advocate for the PRI’s collections to be made publicly accessible. On a tour of the facility given to The Sun, it was apparent that art plays an important role in the museum’s design. The building itself, with a unique angular roof and floor-to-ceiling windows, seems to blend in with its natural surroundings. Furthermore, a 500 – foot mural by local artist Barbara Page MFA ’75 and five original murals by renowned Earth history artist Douglas Henderson help to blur the line between art and science. Robert M. Ross, director of education and exhibits for the museum, explained other benefits of the museum that will be enjoyed by its visitors. The interactive nature of many of the exhibits allows visitors to “do all the kinds of things that people do in the actual sciences,” Ross said, including using computers and digital photography to inspect artifacts. Thanks to these innovative exhibits, he explains, “Every time you come [to the museum] you have a different experience and take [your] knowledge a step further.” Thanks to its proximity to both Cornell and Ithaca College, combined with its accessibility via TCAT, the museum hopes to attract many students. The museum has also planned special promotional days which are designed to motivate Cornellians to visit. PRI will be hosting a symposium on campus on Oct. 6, entitled, “The Future of the Past: Frontiers in Paleontology.” On Oct. 11, museum admission will be free to all members of the community. On Oct. 25, Cornell alumni, staff and faculty will enjoy half-price admission, and on Nov. 1, Cornell students and their families receive the same incentive, in recognition of Family Weekend. Archived article by Andrew Beckwith