Syracuse University’s University Lecture Series once brought students from local school districts to campus, but that relationship has faltered in the last decade.

Students from local districts — including the Syracuse City School District, the Fayetteville-Manlius Central School District and the Jamesville-Dewitt Central School District — would get bused to SU to see University Lecture speakers present. The university once offered funding for the buses, and the local schools were able to secure grants to aid in transportation, but both sources of funding have “dried up,” said Esther Gray, who ran the lecture series until her retirement in December.

Gray’s retirement shook up how the lecture series is organized, and as this transition in leadership progresses, some are calling for a reestablishment of the once strong partnership between SU and local school districts.

Barbara Stripling, co-chair of the recently created University Lecture advisory committee, said she thinks a reestablishment of relationships with the school district would be “extremely valuable.”

She said members of the committee have spoken about opportunities to engage the local community, and the idea of connecting with school children has been discussed.  She said there may be interest in bringing the speakers to the schools or bringing back busing to the university.

Dacher Keltner, the first speaker in the spring 2016 lecture series, visited Eagle Hill Middle School in the Fayette-Manlius Central School District on Tuesday before his lecture, an arrangement Gray set up before she retired.

Stripling said no formal decisions or timetables for a revived partnership have been set so far, as the committee has been preparing for the series without Gray’s assistance and is currently finalizing speakers for the next series, but added that she plans to bring up the topic to the committee for further discussion.

Gray said creating close personal relationships with particular school members who are passionate about their kids is the only way to foster the development between SU and the local schools. The extra leg-work involved with bringing these groups together is a heavy load, she said, because the teachers don’t get paid more to put these events on, and the committee has to ask speakers if they are willing to do something extra for free.

Despite budget cuts from both SU and SCSD, Gray said she continued working with the Fayette-Manlius district, because one teacher, Carol Borg, continued to reach out. Over the last 15 years, 12 University Lecture speakers have spoken at Eagle Hill Middle School, and Keltner makes 13.

Borg said she builds lesson plans in the summer around the speaker series. Her students read excerpts from the speakers’ books, research speakers’ biographies, write essays based on what they learned and prepare questions for the speaker’s visit.

Borg said she will never forget the 2012 visit from world-renowned author and environmentalist Terry Tempest Williams. When Williams spoke of her mother’s battle with cancer, Borg said she could “hear a pin drop” in the giant auditorium at Eagle Hill.

“It takes an individual teacher or individual administrator to reach out, and with the pressures that most teacher and administrators are under these days, no one is going to do this,” Borg said. “It takes a lot of effort, a lot of time and you don’t get paid extra for it. When you have New York state breathing down your neck, no one has time for it.”

She mentioned that one person, Carol Terry, did have time for it. It was her job. Terry retired in November 2011, but acted as the field coordinator for fine arts for SCSD. She would work with local school districts and cultural institutions to bring the kids to museums, galleries and speakers.

Terry orchestrated grant money and acted as a liaison between SU and SCSD. She called it a “once great partnership.”

“Once we established a good working relationship, we had teachers and principals knocking at the door, asking ‘When can my kids go? When can my kids go?” Terry said. “We had the main factor, which was transportation. There were times when we had over 1,000 kids from the Syracuse City School District packed into Hendricks Chapel.”

The relationship ended for a variety of factors, Terry said. Funding for transportation stopped, the then-superintendent left and she retired.

Terry added that kids not only learned from the speakers, but were able to experience what it was like to be on a college campus and see firsthand what higher education was like.

SU to many kids, Terry said, is a “mystical place on the hill,” and with high school graduation rates hovering near 50 percent, she said it gave kids a chance to see what their futures could be like.

Correction: In a previous version of this article, Michael Henesey, an administrator for communications for the Syracuse City School District, was misquoted. His statement was not an official statement. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

Published on March 8, 2016 at 10:24 pm

Contact Jacob: jagedets@syr.edu