A Debt-Free CUNY Degree
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CMfall2013xx_CM Spring 09 8/21/13 11:33 AM Page 1 he experiment is to be tried… whether the children of the people, ‘Tthe children of the whole people, can be educated; whether an institution of learning, of the highest grade, can be successfully controlled by the popular will, not by the privileged few, but by the privileged many.” — Horace Webster Founding Principal, The Free Academy CUNYcuny.edu/news • THE CITY UNIVERSITYMatters OF NEW YORK • FOUNDED 1847 FALL 2013 GRANTS&HONORS Recognizing Faculty Achievement HE UNIVERSITY’S renowned Bhaskaran faculty members continually Twin professional-achieve- ment awards from prestigious organizations as well as research grants from government agen- cies, farsighted foundations and leading corporations. Pictured Simmons are just a few of the recent hon- orees. Brief summaries of many ongoing research projects start here and continue inside. Sunil Gupta and John Graham of Borough of Gupta Manhattan Community College have received a $2,939,619 grant from the U.S. Department of Labor-Employment and Training Administration (ETA) for the “BMCC Health Care Lattice Project.” The N.Y. State Bragg Education Department has awarded $374,239 to City College for the program “STEP: Gateway to Higher Education,” directed by Morton Slater. Jennifer Adams of Brooklyn College has received $133,051 in A Debt-Free CUNY Degree Salley grant funding from the National Science Foundation for “CAREER: % ILETES: Informal Learning Nearly 80 Graduate Without a Loan Environments in Teacher Education for STEM.” earing graduation from high school issue,” he says. “A lot of people I knew under debt by the time I graduated. So The project “College in 2007, Michael Suarez looked up were going to private colleges in the my counselor said, ‘Why don’t you apply Jang Opportunity to Prepare for Nsome of the colleges his friends Northeast, some out West. I had no idea to CUNY?’” Employment,” under the were applying to and felt nothing so how they were going to manage this. I Suarez checked the tuition at direction of Marie Beavers of much as alarm. knew I could never do it. People kept say- LaGuardia Community College. “At first, Kingsborough Community “I was apprehensive about college ing, ‘Just take out loans, just take out I didn’t believe it,” he says. “I didn’t think College, has been awarded a because I knew money was going to be an loans.’ But I didn’t want to be buried Continued on next page ‰ $447,632 grant from the N.Y.C. Human Resources Adams Administration. Hunter College has received a $358,042 grant from the N.Y.C. Department of INSIDE Environmental Protection for a Non-Profit Org project directed by Sean Ahearn, CUNYMatters U.S. Postage PAID “Natural Resource Program Data Office of University Relations PAGE Permit # 153 Management Services: GIS, 205 East 42nd St. ‘CUNY New Haven, CT New York, NY 10017 4 Countdown’ Becker WALIS, and STREAMS to Elections Geodatabase.” The Federal Bureau of Investigation has awarded $120,252 to Maria PAGE Hartwig of John Jay College for Nobel Legacy Lives On the project “Eliciting Information 6 in Baruch Student’s Work in Intelligence Interviews: The Greenberg Effect of Priming Disclosure Concepts.” PAGE A Century of News 8 and Help — in Spanish Two individuals affiliated with City College’s Spitzer School of Architecture have received PAGE Taking Discoveries National Design Awards: 11 to the Marketplace Distinguished Professor Michael Murelli Continued on page 4 ‰ CMfall2013xx_CM Spring 09 8/20/13 1:50 PM Page 2 THECHANCELLOR’SDESK Back to the Future T MAY NO LONGER come with the ment was made possi- smell of sharpened pencils and freshly ble by the findings of copied syllabi, but the start of a new their Nobel Prize- A Debt-Free academic year still brings with it a stir winning predecessor, Continued from page 1 graduates who exemplify that compelling, of anticipation and possibility, espe- the late Jerome Karle I would be able to get a quality education for long-term trend: In great numbers, CUNY Icially at CUNY. — a wonderful exam- such an affordable tuition. But I researched students manage to emerge from college I welcome you to the 2013-14 year with ple of CUNY’s schol- it, and I was pretty confident when I walked with little or no loan debt in an era when gratitude for the encouragement and warm arly legacy. through the doors of LaGuardia.” their peers on campuses across the country wishes I’ve received from across the They come through the benevolence of In the spring, Suarez graduated from increasingly find themselves already deep in University. I am delighted to have the hundreds of students committed to building Hunter College with a degree in psychology, the hole as they enter the job market or opportunity to serve an institution I’ve a stronger future for all New Yorkers by a minor in Italian — and just $1,500 in loans move on to graduate school. loved since I first arrived at Queens College. becoming part of CUNY’s Service Corps, to repay. That’s a fraction of the more than “People think that taking loans is just I assume the position of Interim joining city agencies to take on New York’s $26,000 average debt that students nation- part of going to college, worry about it later, Chancellor during a time of great strength civic, economic, and environmental chal- wide graduate with and far less than the and that sounds like a good idea at the time,” for the University, evident in so many ways lenges. tens of thousands of dollars or more that says Suarez, who is hoping to go to medical — in our robust enrollment and And they come from deter- burden many graduates of high-end private school. “But then you graduate and get this diverse student body, mined teams of staff, adminis- institutions in these times of runaway letter, ‘Your repayment starts in six months’ in our new trators, and alumni across tuition bills. and the next thing you know you have to programs our campuses who build new Indeed, Suarez owes nothing at all for keep working and working and working to and record classrooms, residence halls, tuition. Like some 60 percent of CUNY’s pay off this standard education. So graduat- number of and child-care centers, offer full-time undergraduates, he qualified for ing with very little debt with hopes of going degrees con- critical financial-aid guid- need-based aid — grants from New York to medical school is a big deal for me. It puts ferred, in our ance, and create and fund State’s Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) me way ahead of the game.” fiscal footing. new scholarship programs and the federal Pell program — that made his Christina Terracino graduated from the CUNY has that help CUNY students tuition free. He borrowed only to pay for a College of Staten Island with a degree in made remark- — including those pro- semester he spent living on campus at English literature this spring and says she’s able progress filed in these pages — to Queens College. “I wanted to try dorming moving on to graduate school “debt free across the last achieve an outstanding and had to take a loan for that,” he says. and worry free because I don’t have to tack- decade, and we and affordable educa- “Otherwise, I would be completely debt- le a graduate degree while holding a full- are positioned to tion. free.” He transferred to Hunter after that time job.” make even greater The Economist one semester and managed to repay most of Terracino had a “small amount in a col- strides in the once referred to the $3,500 loan by the time he graduated. He lege fund” when she started college and that months and CUNY as “the expects to pay off the rest within a year. was enough to cover her first year at CSI. years ahead. American dream Suarez is far from unusual at CUNY, State TAP grants and an annual CSI scholar- I thank all of machine,” using whose affordable tuition and availability of ship covered her remaining three years of you — students, alumnus and for- financial aid — close to $1 billion awarded in tuition. “The scholarships were a happy sur- faculty, staff, mer Intel chair- 2012-13 — allow nearly 80 percent of prise, but even without them I knew I’d be alumni — for enabling man Andrew Grove’s students to graduate free of student loan okay.” that progress. Your apt phrase. It falls to us to realize debt. He’s among the thousands of 2013 When Terracino was in high school and day-in, day-out com- that promise. That we will do so, I have no mitment to teaching doubt. What spurs our anticipation are the and learning has made all the difference. As countless moments of discovery yet to hap- joyful and inspiring as our recent pen, moments that epitomize CUNY’s sin- commencement ceremonies were, they did- gular mission of true access, high standards, Single Stop USA Aids n’t capture the marvelous, often unobserved and realized dreams. moments when learning happens: the long Low-Income CUNY Students $25 subway ride when an instructor’s patient million explanation of a complicated theory sud- ITH HELP from the philanthropic brought almost as much money to stu- denly becomes clear to a student; the ran- organization Single Stop USA, dents as federal Pell grants, Sanchez dom aside by a professor that sparks a new Health — William P. Kelly the University put more than said. An early study at one campus Insurance direction for a thesis.