Corning Community College - Corona Yearbook (Corning, NY)

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The College: Corning Community College, as one of the youngest members of the State University of New York, is not unique in its material beginning. First there was an idea. From the idea came a desire, which resulted in the rebirth of “Old School Three.” This provided a new media, a use new not only to the building but to the citizens of Corning as well. The addition of the Houghton House to our campus shows the citizen approval of our beginning, as does the eventual dona- tion of the Sullivan House. 3 The Houghton House ... 22 West Third Street.

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The Idea: The Two Bison drawn on the cave wall of Lascaux in Southern France is a work of art evoking a moment of life long ago. The paint- ing recalls a civilization whose history is unknown, whose philoso- phies were not written or expressed in music, architecture, drama, or the other arts. Just this ancient drawing lives now. In those times, as today, the guiding idea most cherished in all human endeavor was the awe and triumph of life itself, as this rich legacy depicts. And after the men of the cave, the pagan world drew stories from imagination and dreamed of Prometheus and his gift of fire for man, and later still the Christian world dreams of Christ and his gift of redemption and a new beginning. In our time, few achievements or gifts from science equal for sheer beauty, as well as significance, Niels Bohr’s original conception of the atom. The diagram shows the orbits of the 88 electrons of the radium atom in a schematic representation. It is a stark and almost hypnotic image, and like the Two Bison and its age, this image of the atom may come to be one of the main symbols by which our times will be identified. If scratched on a cave wall, will this modern draw- ing be the only surviving work of art fifteen centuries hence? Yet the power of the cave and the atom drawings, executed nearly 3,000 years apart one from another, is not that these drawings repre- sent the imaginative embodiment of man’s great triumph over na- ture, they are expressions of his widening grasp of reality. Beautifully fresh and magnificently alive, both drawings bespeak eloquently of the inquiring spirit of man to wonder, to discover, even to create. This small college in Corning, New York is a year old. Even in its creation its guiding idea is the same idea which lies back of all places, in the free world of learning. This guiding idea is the belief in the worth and in the dignity of each man to become, through his own education, all that he is capable of becoming. This is yet the greatest triumph, the highest gift of man to himself—learning and teaching. To these only ends, the Corning Community College is quietly and confidently dedicated, and as such, joins with a pride of companionship the larger community of organized civilization. WILLIAM L. PERRY President 1959-60 College Catalog 4