“I’ve had the goal to make our department as paperless as practical — and the missing piece of the puzzle was the Community Work-Study Program (CWSP),” says Rob Covert ’89, the now-retired chief of the City of Ithaca Fire Department (IFD).

That support arrived in the summer of 2023, when Jessie Sutton ’25 joined the department through CWSP. Taking the lead on overhauling IFD’s Laserfiche records retention system, the CALS environment and sustainability major with a policy and governance concentration, tackled stacks of boxes that represented decades of incident logs, fire reports, EMS patient care documentation and photos. She created an organizational structure; turned the time-consuming paper archive into a searchable, secure database; and trained her colleagues on the new setup.

Sutton at IFD

The impact was immediate. For a department that answers more than 5,200 calls annually, the streamlined system “really increases our efficiency,” says Covert, who oversaw firefighting, emergency medical care, specialized rescue and public safety education from the department’s four stations. The change has freed up not only valuable space in the stations but also other staff members’ time, which they can now devote to more critical tasks, such as scheduling fire inspections. The public, in turn, receives critical records — such as insurance documents after emergencies — more quickly.

Covert emphasizes that the benefits extend well beyond efficiency gains. “Anytime that members of the community and Cornell students have a chance to interact, it helps break through barriers of stereotypes, ultimately fostering more understanding and empathy,” he says. That sense of belonging is what he saw in Sutton’s work. 

For Sutton, the role became an education in leadership, collaboration and project management as much as in software. Appreciative of the flexibility and support she received from both her employer and CWSP, she advises other students considering such opportunities: “Do it! This is an opportunity you will not have any other time in your life.”

Thanks to this track record, Sutton was hired into a full-time position at the City of Ithaca Department of Planning and Development immediately after graduation.

This story is part of a series highlighting Cornell’s Community-Work Study Program.