A group of active-duty military members, reservists and veterans spent a week at Cornell University in late June through a national program designed to help enlisted service members build confidence for college.
Cornell hosted the Warrior-Scholar Project from June 20 to 27, offering an academic boot camp that included science, technology, engineering and math coursework, college readiness sessions and exposure to campus life.
The program included 18 participants from the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines. Ten studied STEM topics, while eight took part in a college readiness cohort focused on American democracy, according to Cornell.
The Warrior-Scholar Project is a nonprofit that helps active-duty and veteran enlisted personnel pursue higher education. Cornell has hosted the program since 2015.
Program participants took part in more than 75 academic hours with tutors, mentors and university faculty. Cornell said the boot camps are designed to simulate an intense finals week while giving participants a peer network of people with similar military experience.
The Cornell sessions included a class with Glenn Altschuler, the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies Emeritus, who discussed democracy, equality and close reading. A STEM lecture by astronomy professor Shami Chatterjee focused on the Fermi paradox and what NASA's Kepler mission has shown about planets beyond the solar system.
Participants also received admissions advice from a panel that included Kyle Downey, who leads Cornell's undergraduate admissions for veteran and ROTC students; Hanh Dinh, undergraduate student veteran program director; and Sara Horvath, an undergraduate veteran in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Cornell said the program is intended to help service members who may have been away from school for years transition academically and culturally into higher education.
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