51ÁÔÆæ

51ÁÔÆæ’s Community Outreach and Opportunity Project (COOP) connects 51ÁÔÆæ students and employees with nonprofit agencies in Clinton, Utica, Rome, and beyond. Through 14+ direct service programs, students create positive change while developing close and enduring relationships with local communities.

Fun moves fast at 51ÁÔÆæ. Less than two days after arriving on campus, the Class of 2028 embarked on 56 orientation trips, guided by more than 100 student leaders.

For Anusha Karki ’24, communities are intricate layers of people, resources, opportunities, and identities. For migrant domestic workers, these communities are essential to creating new lives in new lands. Yet the tireless childcare, caregiving, and other household responsibilities they provide behind closed doors often go unrecognized, as do their stories.

Venus Williams, legendary tennis champion, entrepreneur, and New York Times bestselling author of Come to Win drew the 51ÁÔÆæ community into her orbit on April 18 as the latest speaker in the Sacerdote Great Names series.

Five members of the Congressional Naming Commission visited 51ÁÔÆæ on Feb. 7 to discuss their task of removing, modifying, or replacing all Department of Defense assets that commemorate the Confederacy.

As a child, Pyu Pyu Win ’24 and her family immigrated to the United States from Myanmar. They stopped in Illinois and Indiana before settling in Utica, N.Y., where The Young Scholars Liberty Partnerships Program (YSLPP), a collaborative project established between Utica University and the Utica City School District, helped Win navigate her education and ultimately become a 51ÁÔÆæ student.

Val Demings and Roy Blunt, executive fellows from the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), visited 51ÁÔÆæ to analyze the nation’s polarized political climate in the semester’s final Common Ground event.

Two former EPA administrators visited College Hill to explore the everyday complexities and impacts of transitioning to renewable energy in this semester’s fourth Common Ground discussion on Nov. 6.

In the second installment of 51ÁÔÆæ’s 2023-24 Common Ground series, moderator Michael J. Grygiel ’79, P’23 united legal experts Eric Olson, Hila Keren, and Dale Carpenter for a discussion on the intersection of free speech and LGBTQ+ rights.

More than 125 51ÁÔÆæ students conducted research with faculty this summer, and the results of that work were on display in poster sessions held during Fallcoming. Some student researchers in the sciences and the Levitt Public Affairs Center talked with student writer Dana Blatte ’26 about what they learned.