Contact:	Kim Brockway					For immediate release
		(212) 854-2419
		kkb18@columbia.edu



Linking New York's Great Institutions


Columbia University Establishes New Collaborations 
With Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum


	Columbia University President George Rupp has announced agreements 
with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art that will 
enable students to gain free entrance to these institutions at any time upon 
presentation of a Columbia student I.D. card.  In addition, the agreements 
include student internship and work-study opportunities, and include 
mechanisms to facilitate research in partner libraries and collections. An 
agreement with Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts has established an 
internship program, with plans to expand the partnership. 
	In an agreement reached with MoMA, matriculating Columbia students 
will be admitted free to the museum upon presentation of a valid Columbia ID 
card, and, to augment their classroom studies, they will have opportunities for 
internships at MoMA.  Columbia students and museum staff will have mutual 
access, as appropriate, to both institutions' research facilities, collections and 
courses.
	In addition, the university and the museum will engage in joint activities 
using the Internet and other electronic and computer resources.  And the two 
institutions will discuss possible joint appointments to adjunct professorships and 
other cooperative programs that involve the professional staff of the museum in 
the educational functions of the university. 
	According to the agreement reached with The Metropolitan Museum of 
Art, Columbia students will have free admission to the museum and 
opportunities for work-study positions, and Museum employees enrolled in degree 
programs at the University may be eligible for tuition assistance.  And the two 
institutions will have cooperative use of each other's libraries and computer 
resources.
	Columbia has also reached an oral agreement for new collaborations with 
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.  An internship program has been 
established with the intention of expanding the formal relationship along the 
lines of the MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum agreements.
	Discussions are underway for additional collaborations with other city 
institutions and businesses, including the United Nations, the National 
Basketball Association and IBM.
	The university already has an arrangement with the Juilliard School 
which enables Columbia College students to study music performance at 
Juilliard.  And Columbia is a member of The Center for Environmental Research 
and Conservation (CERC), a consortium of five institutions that also includes the 
New York Botanical Garden, the American Museum of Natural History, the 
Wildlife Conservation Society and the Wildlife Preservation Trust International.  
Columbia students have access to the courses, collections, libraries, research 
centers and field sites of CERC member institutions. 
	Columbia has also forged a number of significant links to the community 
and city including active participation in the Greater Harlem Chamber of 
Commerce, the Morningside Area Alliance, the Upper Manhattan 
Empowerment Zone, the Association for a Better New York (ABNY), the Harlem 
Community Development Corporation, the Schomburg Center for Research in 
Black Culture, the Abyssinian Development Corporation, local community 
boards, Harlem Hospital, and the Audubon Biomedical Science and Technology 
Park.  The university's Community Impact Program channels more than 700 
student volunteers into community service programs, and Columbia's School of 
Social Work places 2,000 students a year in field service programs in more than 
600 area social welfare and health care agencies.
	"Columbia has a special relationship with the City of New York," said 
Columbia President George Rupp.  "Our location in the intellectual and cultural 
capital of the world is a magnet for students and scholars from around the globe.  
Indeed, 19 percent of our students and 30 percent of our faculty have come to us 
from other countries, and most have become committed New Yorkers.
	"These new partnerships with the Metropolitan Museum, MoMA and 
Lincoln Center will enable our students to take better advantage of what New 
York has to offer, giving them a range of educational and cultural opportunities 
that could only be possible in the kind of 'great metropolitan university' that Seth 
Low envisioned."
	Columbia Provost Jonathan Cole sees a great competitive advantage in 
these collaborations.  "Columbia does not have the largest endowment of any 
American university," he said, "but if we leverage our assets with those of the 
city's great libraries, museums and galleries, the 'expanded endowment' we have 
to offer students and faculty is unmatched.
	"I am especially pleased about our new partnerships because Columbia 
undergraduate students have not built their own links to the city to the same 
extent that our faculty and graduate students have.  Our plan is to build formal 
pathways to the city for undergraduates, to make a Columbia student ID a 
passport to the City of New York.  This program may well be unique.  If not, it 
certainly puts the university in the vanguard of the effort to integrate urban 
universities more fully with their communities and cities."

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