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AROUND THE QUADS
Seventy-one undergraduates from colleges and universities in the United States and around the world completed the fall semester, raising the total to 1,181 students who have graduated from the Biosphere 2 semester or shorter summer field school programs. The fall class included 64 Earth Semester students and seven Universe Semester graduates. Students in Earth Semester spend the 16-week program exploring the unique laboratory of Biosphere 2, the surrounding Sonoran desert, and global issues such as greenhouse warming and land-use change. Universe Semester students immerse themselves in an intensive astronomy and astrophysics program that takes advantage of southern Arizona's dark skies for observation, using Biosphere 2 Observatory's 24-inch telescope as well as the larger professional telescopes at nearby Kitt Peak National Observatory.
Wagner-McCoy began volunteering as an after-school tutor with the East Harlem Tutorial Program when she was 14. While in high school, she founded several volunteer programs, including a chorus that sang for people who were too ill to attend live performances. She tries to teach children to have "imaginative mobility" — the power to imagine their futures — while organizing after-school programs for underprivileged children. Wagner-McCoy described how her plan to spend next year studying Anglo-Irish literature at the University College in Dublin is connected to her passion for helping children. "I see literature as a way into public service," she said. "The techniques of writing and constructing life are often very helpful when working with children." As an undergraduate, Wagner-McCoy has worked as a child advocate in the juvenile division of the Legal Society, started an after-school tutoring program for children in Brooklyn and an after-school program that involves tutoring and creative activities for children living at Regents House, a long-term family shelter run by the Volunteers of America.
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BIOSPHERE
2: Amelia Smith '03, an environmental biology major, and
Charlie Homans '03, a religion major, were the latest
College students to "graduate" from the Earth Semester program at
Biosphere 2 in December. They bring to 72 the number of College
students who have attended classes at the 250-acre facility near
Tucson, Ariz. since Columbia began managing Biosphere 2 in
1996.
