Through Food, Students Explore Culture at Straight

Flavorful aromas permeated through the double doors of Willard Straight Hall as students, faculty and community members, buzzing with excitement, lined up to experience foods from all over the world at last night’s Taste of Culture food festival.

Nancy Li ’12, co-program coordinator of the Translator Interpreter Program, and Diana Chen ’10, co-program coordinator of the Language Pairing Program, were two of the main organizers of the Taste of Culture event. Both organizations are part of the Public Service Center, which sponsored the event along with the International Students Program Board.

The goal of the event was to “let the Cornell University community [learn] about different cultures by trying different types of food,” Li said.

The event was set up with booths run by 13 cultural organizations on campus. Each organization brought at least one cultural dish, adding up to a total of some 30 dishes, as well as a simple explanation that taught participants how to ask for and to say thank you for the food in the culture’s native language.

This was the first year that organizers invited different cultural organizations to participate in the event rather than providing all the food themselves, Chen said.

Li said she felt that this event was important for the Translator Interpreter Program because it would spread awareness for the program, which trains multilingual students to provide translation and interpretation services in the Tompkins County area. Chen agreed, saying that the Language Pairing Program, a group that gives native speakers the opportunity to improve language skills with a fellow Cornell student, participates in events “that are culturally relevant and [that] encourage language speaking.”

Bo Li ‘12 and Iris Mai ‘12 participated in the event as a member of their Kappa Phi Lambda sorority.

“As a culturally-based sorority, [this is a] great way to show our heritage through food,” Mai said. It was the first time the sorority participated in the event, and Li and Mai said that they were pleased with their experience.

The Cornell Italian-American Association was also present. Anthony Lynch ‘12 said that although he is not Italian, he “loves Italian culture, [and wants to] share the love!” He joined the Italian-American Association to learn more and to help break the common misconceptions about Italian culture.

Melissa Perri ‘10, president of the Italian-American Association, said that as a cultural organization, the group welcomes all who are interested, not just people of Italian descent. The organization partners with the Italian Language Program and gives opportunities for Italian language learners to practice their language skills during meetings and dinners. As a group, the club raises awareness about Italian culture through social events such as soccer games and trips to the opera.

Marion Alberty ‘12, the president of the Cornell Hellenic Students Association, hosted the organization’s booth. The group is “devoted to [helping] Greeks on campus enjoy their heritage [through] monthly social meetings and to be part of the Greek connection on campus,” she said.

For this event, the Hellenic Students Association made two dishes from scratch: galaktoboureko and dolmathes.

The Coalition of Pan-African Scholars said it participated in the event as a means of expanding the horizons of the Cornell community.

The group participates in “activities that exemplify service and scholarship,” Eudora Okine ‘12 said. During Africa Week, an annual week of festivities, the organization invites speakers and puts on a variety of programs, such as a fashion show, to learn about and to raise awareness regarding the different aspects of African culture. The group holds dinners and plans to invite stu30 percent of engineering undergraduates are women — higher, however, than the national average of 17 percent. Despite this underrepresentation, women do comprise a majority of the students in other programs. The College of Human Ecology is 75 percent female, the College of Veterinary Medicine is 77 percent female and the Weill Cornell Medical College is 53 percent female.

“In general, these data suggest that Cornell is doing a good and improving job in attracting female students,” Skorton wrote, “although the data also show us areas for further emphasis.”

In the STEM fields, women comprise only 19 percent of Cornell’s faculty. Women are vastly underrepresented in these fields nationwide, especially in math-intensive sciences.

Williams and Ceci plan to address statistics such as these in their research. According to a summary from their website, many women complete Ph.D. programs but fail to transition into tenure track academic positions. Williams and Ceci’s project, “Assessing and Reducing Gender Bias in STEM Recruitment, Mentorship and Evaluation,” will analyze how pre-doctoral students are trained in graduate school and evaluated when applying for their first tenure-track position.

“We seek to better understand and ultimately improve, norms of behavior that may consciously or unconsciously lead current professors to create gender-biased recruitment, mentorship, and evaluation environments,” Williams and Ceci wrote on their website.

Williams and Ceci will explore whether current training and mentorship lead to an “identity threat,” the notion that a person’s identity will be devalued in a particular context. They believe such “identity threat” may be the basis for low enrollment and retention of women in STEM fields. According to Samantha Bobra ‘13, an undergraduate engineering student, this “identity threat” is present even before the graduate level.

“I don’t think it’s so much that women who want to pursue [these fields] aren’t able to,” Bobra said. “The problem is definitely that so few women are interested. Liking math or computers just isn’t ‘cool’ when you’re a teenage girl, but it’s almost expected for guys.”

In addition to the issue of “identity threat,” Williams and Ceci will examine interactions between professors and their graduate students, analyzing whether students are trained and advised differently based on gender. Their research will also explore how gender and gender-related information affects the evaluations of applicants for assistant professorships.

According to Olivia Hentz ’13, a chemistry major, the interaction between instructors and their female students can have a key impact on whether those students pursue scientific fields. Hentz cites the encouragement of her high school chemistry teacher as one of the factors that pushed her towards a chemistry major. However, Hentz also pointed out that the professor-student relationship might be overemphasized.

“My lecture classes are really large. I could be [either] a boy or a girl, and [my professors] wouldn’t notice,” said Hentz.

Still, Hentz remains optimistic about the potential impact of the CIWS.

“I think if the information is out there, then people will be more willing to notice it and make changes,” Hentz said. “I think a lot of it has to do with that we haven’t gotten too far away from times where women couldn’t have jobs [in STEM fields] ... We kind of have to have the times catch up.”

As Williams stated in an e-mail, “there is no easy answer” about why women are underrepresented in STEM fields, but Williams and Ceci are hopeful that their research and the CIWS will shed light on these issues. The underrepresentation of women in STEM fields might come down to simple psychology, speculated Bobra. “Walking into a room and realizing you’re the only girl can be kind of intimidating,” she said.