Students recreate residential program

Nine students registeredNine students registeredfor the original researchNine students registeredfor the original researchpilot have formed EFFECT Since the Center for Advanced Undergraduate Study and Exploration pilot residential program will not operate next fall due to low enrollment, a handful of students have created a new program with a similar research-oriented theme. The pilot program, which was intended to be an experimental model for the proposed residential college system, enrolled only about 10 to 15 students, fewer than the 32 that were needed for the program to run as planned, Academic Programs in Residence Director Christopher Dennis said. "CAUSE as we originally conceived it is not going to happen, but we're going to continue the ideas in a smaller sense," he explained. CAUSE will have a spin-off program that has now been coined "EFFECT." Students involved in EFFECT have a common interest in presenting and learning more about research. Engineering junior Raj Iyer, student coordinator of EFFECT, said nine of the students who originally enrolled in CAUSE will join the new program. EFFECT will be located in Van Pelt College House instead of CAUSE's original home in the Quadrangle. And 12 more Van Pelt residents have expressed interest in joining the program next year. "When I found out that CAUSE was going to be cancelled I was surprised and disappointed," Iyer said. "But I wanted to see what we could salvage of the program." According to Chodorow, CAUSE is not defunct, but has simply been renamed. "CAUSE is not cancelled," he said Modnay. "It is flourishing." But Iyer contends that EFFECT "is not CAUSE or CAUSE II or anything." "EFFECT is not running as the original CAUSE program would have," he added. "CAUSE means University support. EFFECT has support but not to the same degree." In addition, EFFECT will have a smaller budget than CAUSE would have had. "It's more of a cash fund," Iyer said. The future of EFFECT is unknown, but it is expected to be in place for at least next year. Iyer said he hopes the CAUSE program will resurface in 1997. Dennis said Civic House, another of the four proposed pilot programs, will not house students next fall either. Director of the Center for Community Partnerships Ira Harkavy said the Civic House program is optimistic that plans for the pilot will continue in the future. But Provost Stanley Chodorow explained that although many students are interested in community service, Civic House "is an experiment, and experiments sometimes fail." According to Dennis, the faculty and students involved in creating the pilots will progress with their plans. "This is a tremendous venture," he said. Both CAUSE and the Civic House suffered low enrollment because students were not informed of these programs until this semester, after most had already made living arrangements for next year, Dennis said. "It was a matter of timing," said Frank Johnston, an Anthropology professor who was to be the faculty director for Civic House. "We just didn't get all the information out early enough." And Harkavy said he had "every reason to believe" that Civic House will move forward next year.