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A PUBLICATION OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF WINTER 2015

Bold,New Steps for College

Success Page 28 STSwinter15 cover_Salute Magazine 1/28/15 1:23 PM Page 3 We Chose CUNY!

Zarin Tasnim Linda S. Perry Daniel Friedman Adeyinka Akinsulure-Smith Alyssa Marchetti Daniel DiSalvo Karla Solomon Student/Fulbright Faculty/Fulbright Scholar Student/Fulbright Scholar Faculty/Fulbright Scholar Student/Fulbright Scholar Faculty/Fulbright Scholar Student/Fulbright Scholar YORK COLLEGE BROOKLYN COLLEGE CITY COLLEGE CITY COLLEGE Scholar MACAULAY Consulting/Research in Spain Studying in Austria Research in Sierra Leone Teaching in Taiwan Teaching in Argentina MACAULAY HONORS COLLEGE HONORS COLLEGE AT LEHMAN AT QUEENS COLLEGE COLLEGE Teaching in South Korea Teaching in Spain More Fulbright Faculty and Student Award-Winners Than Ever

A record 22 City University of New York students, plus 14 faculty members, received highly esteemed Fulbright Program grants this past year for research and teaching abroad. The global opportunity reach of this program is taking them to such far-flung places as Taiwan, Spain, South Korea, Argentina, England, Hong Kong, Sierra Leone and more. Fulbright winners share their knowledge, skills and cultural perspectives and return home enriched for further study, service and advancement. — James B. Milliken, Chancellor

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A PUBLICATION OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK CONTENTS WINTER 2015

THE FIRST WORD HISTORY LESSON 2 The Chancellor’s Vision 36 Where Merchant Marines for the University Trained for World War II

GLOBAL NATURE FIELD STUDY 4 Isabella Rossellini 38 Teaching Patients Studies Animal Behavior Health Care in Haiti

EDUCATION STARTUP Isabella Rossellini PAGE TURNERS 6 CUNY Colleges Page 4 40 Sociologist William Helmreich Train Pre-K Teachers City College Biographer Barbara Winslow LESSONS IN LEADERSHIP Brooklyn College PROFILE 18 Elizabeth Butson 10 Poet, Novelist Donna Masini Borough of Community College Hunter College BOOKS-AT-A-GLANCE 42 Recent Books TOP OF THE CLASS By CUNY Authors GREAT GRADUATES 20 Graduate Sheryll Pang 12 Grandmaster Maurice Ashley Queensborough Community College, City College Baruch College CROSSWORD 43 It’s an Honor Macaulay Honors College OPENING DOORS MENTOR 14 Gregory Rabassa 22 Sheldon Weinbaum Queens College City College NOTES 44 Research, Grants, NEW ON CAMPUS HEAD OF THE CLASS Awards and Alumni 16 Rudy Crew 24 Photographer Jules Allen Medgar Evers College Queensborough Community College CAMPUS TOUR 48 At the Center BODY MOVES of Technology Grandmaster 26 Dance, Dance, Dance! City Tech Maurice Ashley 19 Choreographers at 10 Colleges Page 12

COVER STORY 28 On the Path To College Success New Help That Really Works

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THEFIRSTWORD Chancellor Milliken’s Vision

ECLARING THAT “the best city deserves the Drawing on CUNY’s rich history, Chancellor Milliken best public university,” Chancellor James B. declared that the vision articulated by Free Academy Milliken is putting forth an ambitious vision founder Townsend Harris in 1847 — “ ‘let the children of for a more global, more digital, more STEM-fo- the rich and poor take their seats together and know of Dcused City University of New York that will no distinction save that of industry, good conduct, and build on CUNY’s rich history, raised academic standards intellect’ … remains vital today.” and other strengths to develop a tech-savvy 21st-century “The record in the second half of the 20th century is workforce. more mixed,” he said, “with very important, positive “Our goal should be for the University to achieve its movement made in access and diversity, but the conse- full potential in serving the people of New York,” quences of an undifferentiated system of colleges with ON THE COVER: One of the greatest Chancellor Milliken told the Association for a Better New remediation necessary at every campus took its toll on challenges in higher education has been York (ABNY) in his first major policy address since his CUNY’s quality, reputation and its value to its students, the abysmally low graduation rates for appointment as Chancellor. the city and the state.” community colleges nationwide. It’s a He outlined an ambitious agenda “for the next 10 The last 15 years saw the University doing “the diffi- challenge the City University of New York years” — a “new spirit of engagement” — proposing cult and sometimes controversial work of raising stan- has taken up, with some resounding that CUNY lead in workforce development, develop dards and increasing quality while at the same time results. Each year, 1.7 million stronger public-private partnerships to benefit students developing strategies for student access, mobility and unprepared students enter U.S. colleges and faculty, and foster research and technology develop- success,” he continued. “We have seen a steady rise in and most quit at some point in the ment. The Chancellor envisages a “Global CUNY” bene- CUNY’s value and reputation, along with outstanding traditional sequence of remedial math, fiting the city by addressing global challenges and a accomplishments,” including creation of new graduate writing and reading courses. For “Digital CUNY” expanding the use of technology in teach- schools of journalism and public health, the highly selec- students, failure and remediation can be ing and learning. tive Macaulay Honors College and the new-model discouraging and costly. Colleges, “Our challenges are significant but the payoff is Guttman Community College. university systems and states around the enormous,” the Chancellor said. But now, he said, there are “new challenges … and country are trying to raise the three-year Keynoting a November ABNY breakfast at the New opportunities,” and CUNY must respond to dramatic graduation rates for community college York Public Library, Chancellor Milliken told the gathering changes in the higher education landscape. These, he students, improving remedial education of business, civic and nonprofit leaders that CUNY serves said, include the ’ descent from “No. 1 in and encouraging students to stay “many students who otherwise would have little or no educational attainment” to 14th in the world, the high focused once they’re in credit-bearing opportunity.” Among the University’s strengths, he noted, college costs and the “astounding” student debt that courses. At CUNY, programs such as the are its exceptionally diverse, 274,000 degree-seeking has prompted public questioning of “the quality and Accelerated Study in Associate Programs students — a record enrollment for Fall 2014— as well relevance of higher education.” (ASAP) have boosted the graduation rates as accomplished faculty and “a steady rise in CUNY’s Globally, he said, “U.S. higher education has lost its for community college students, creating value and reputation,” driven by a 15-year drive for lead.” models for others. CUNY Start provides improved academic quality and “strategies for student CUNY “should make no apologies for its pursuit of core instruction by specially trained access, mobility and success.” quality over the last 15 years,” the Chancellor said. “The teachers and student support from The latter include CUNY’s groundbreaking Accelerated fundamental mission of public higher education is to advisers to build the skills, concepts and Study in Associate Programs, or ASAP. The intensive, provide both access and excellence. ... Let me make this strategies that students need for college- highly structured community college initiative, now a clear: On all counts CUNY is delivering on its promise far level work. ASAP and CUNY Start have national model, has tripled associate degree program better than it did a generation ago.” provided new ways to approach a graduation rates. Another innovative and successful But he said, “Despite all the progress … we have a stubborn challenge in higher education program is CUNY Start, a low-cost program that offers lot left to do.” Chancellor Milliken’s agenda includes: — with exceptional rewards — and the remediation to underprepared students in reading, writ- • CUNY must improve college preparation and timely University continues its commitment to ing and mathematics before they matriculate at the graduation. “There are still too many students who arrive develop methods to improve college community colleges. not ready for college,” he said. “We need to deepen our preparation and timely graduation. “Now over half of the undergraduates at our most partnership with the schools, which provide selective colleges, such as Baruch, Hunter, Brooklyn and three-quarters of our new freshmen. Eighty percent City, start as community college students, meet remedia- require remediation. We need to challenge our thinking tion requirements and then transfer to a senior college,” about traditional remediation to most effectively serve the Chancellor told the ABNY, whose chairman, Bill Rudin students who arrive at our community colleges unpre- salutetoscholars announced the creation of a new $10,000 community pared for college work. At the most basic level, such as Jay Hershenson • Secretary of the Board of Trustees college student scholarship. “CUNY is providing a path- addressing students’ remediation needs, or providing an and Senior Vice Chancellor way that gives students a meaningful opportunity to associate degree in a reasonable time that leads to a job for University Relations succeed,” Milliken said. or a senior institution, or moving senior college students Michael Arena • University Director “It’s no surprise that the value proposition at CUNY is toward a degree, we still have much work to do,” he said. of Communications & Marketing receiving national attention,” added Milliken, who also “We have some great programs, but we must address the Kristen Kelch • Managing Editor emphasized CUNY’s affordability, noting that at least 65 challenges of scaling them effectively.” Rich Sheinaus • Director of Design percent of students attend college tuition-free due to • CUNY should be a leader in preparing a workforce Neill S. Rosenfeld • Writer their low income, the affordable tuition rates and the for the 21st century. Citing Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s scholar- Lenina Mortimer •Writer financial aid from federal, state and local sources; and ship program for STEM — science, technology, engineer- Miriam Smith • Designer 80 percent graduate from CUNY colleges free of federal ing and mathematics — students and Mayor Bill de Stan Wolfson • Photo Editor student-loan debt. Brooklyn, Baruch and Queens Colleges Blasio’s investment in STEM programs at CUNY commu- Richard Breeden • Copy Editor were named by Washington Monthly magazine as “the nity colleges, Milliken said, however, that “real work three best ‘bangs for the buck,’” he noted. needs to start in the public schools” where students

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A Global, Digital CUNY, Developing n for the University Research, Technology and the Workforce

rates have combined to drive up enrollment as more students, including increasing numbers of well-prepared students, choose CUNY colleges for their extraordinary value encompassing quality academics, exceptional affordability and low student-loan debt among graduates. Transfer students, overwhelmingly from the city, constitute a majority of graduates at every CUNY four-year college including the most high- ly selective. Two-thirds of students who earn bachelor’s degrees from CUNY enter baccalaure- ate programs as transfers rather than fresh- men. Ambitious students are increasingly applying to CUNY colleges. The numbers of applicants with high school grade point averages of 85 or greater was up by 4.2 percent to 22,700, anoth- er new record, out of more than 70,000 students applying for Fall 2014. More than 12,000 newly enrolled freshmen in 2014 received $800 New York City Council Merit Scholarships given to students entering CUNY colleges from New York Chancellor James B. Milliken with Marveline Bazelais, a York College student, at a reception for students and faculty held by the City high schools with B or better averages. Chancellor and his wife, Nana Smith, at the Chancellor’s residence. With colleges conveniently located through- often decide to pursue science and math. He urged “new partners around the world. Today, this work would include out the five boroughs of culture-and opportuni- levels of collaboration among the schools, CUNY, govern- areas such as applied research in early childhood educa- ty-rich New York City, CUNY also offers an array of ment, labor and the private sector” to build upon school- tion and development, policing and criminal justice, and traditional extracurricular activities including 199 intercol- to-employment programs such as P-Tech. Milliken also the 21st-century built environment. legiate sports teams and a multitude of clubs and con- said New York tech sector leaders “are desperate for well- • CUNY should become Global CUNY. “Every major nects hundreds of students per year with life-changing trained programmers, software developers and gamers — university must be global in outlook and scope, and few internships and service opportunities through the CUNY many of whom can come directly from our community universities are better positioned than CUNY. We have an Service Corps. colleges with less time to a degree, less cost and a quicker enormous advantage: a student body with 40 percent born Mentored by distinguished, award-winning professors path to earning a very good living. … This is a very outside this country and students who speak almost 200 and taking advantage of the University’s extensive aca- attractive path and one that may be perfect for many languages.” Noting that CUNY had a number of student demic offerings, CUNY students garner numerous presti- CUNY students.” and faculty winners of Fulbright awards in 2014, he said, gious national awards year after year. In 2014, 22 won • CUNY must develop stronger, richer public-private “I want our graduates to be competitive with graduates Fulbrights for study and teaching abroad, 16 won National partnerships. “We need more internship opportunities for from the best universities anywhere, and without an Science Foundation Graduate Research fellowships and students that can lead to full-time jobs and more mentor- understanding of the world … they will not be.” CUNY was well represented among winners of other top ing opportunities for students who are often the first in • CUNY should become Digital CUNY. “We are devel- honors. Fourteen CUNY professors also won Fulbrights for their family to attend college. We should provide interested oping new technological tools and new classroom plat- research, teaching and consulting. faculty with more opportunities to work collaboratively with forms, blended learning opportunities that are CUNY Value also encompasses support given to stu- the private sector.” transforming the way subjects are taught,” he said, dents facing hardships such as homelessness and job • CUNY must build its research enterprise and adding, “It’s hard to beat 24-hour asynchronous delivery” loss. Single Stop USA’s offices in the community colleges increase its technology development. “Opportunities in the offered by digital classes. … “I want our students to leave provide services and other assistance to such vulnerable 21st century include businesses that didn’t exist in the CUNY very comfortable with online learning.” students, helping them remain in school. The Carroll and 20th and our faculty and students can be an integral part • CUNY should be a leader in raising private funds for Milton Petrie Foundation Emergency Grant Fund has given of the development of new knowledge, new technologies public higher education. “Despite the fact that New York $11 million to more than 5,000 CUNY students. and new processes,” the Chancellor said. “We’ve made has been more generous than many other states, CUNY Private donors to CUNY and its colleges provide some impressive investments in science facilities, with cannot achieve its potential and adequately serve New extraordinary support for institutional scholarships; $560 more to come, but we must double down on recruiting and York with only public funding and modest tuition. We are million in CUNY scholarships, 20 percent of $2.8 billion retaining the best scientists and students to reap the full becoming much less competitive for faculty — and there given through the Invest in CUNY initiative, has been advantage of these investments. We’re in a global race for is no such thing as a university better than its faculty.” awarded since 2000 because of donors’ generosity. talent and we simply must be competitive. We also need Chancellor Milliken delivered his remarks as CUNY Chancellor Milliken said of CUNY, “This Great American an institutional culture that supports, rewards and nur- experienced record enrollment for Fall 2014 — more than Dream Machine serves over 500,000 students every year, tures faculty who are interested in commercially develop- 274,000 degree-seeking students choosing CUNY Value, the vast majority of whom live, work and contribute to the ing intellectual property.” the combination of academic quality, affordability, oppor- economy, the tax base and quality of life in New York. • CUNY should lead in addressing challenges facing tunity and the New York City experience offered by the There is no greater way to leverage a gift than to invest in cities. “While much of this new spirit of engagement is University. The many facets of CUNY Value are detailed in CUNY.” about developing knowledge and a skilled workforce for a new publication, The CUNY Value Plus, and at “The environment for public higher education is chang- the new economy, there are other benefits to the city. CUNY cuny.edu/value. ing in ways that make CUNY more essential than ever,” he should be a leader in research, education and engagement Rising standards at the senior colleges, demographic said. “We have an ambitious agenda … If we’re success- that address grand challenges in an increasingly urban- changes in New York City, where most CUNY students ful, the returns to students and to New York will be ized global population, attracting leading urban university reside, and increasing city public high school graduation tremendous.” SaluteWinter15_Salute Magazine 1/28/15 1:25 PM Page 4

GLOBALNATURE Back to Her First By Richard Firstman HEN ISABELLA ROSSELLINI was a girl growing up in Italy in the mid-1960s, her father bought her a copy of King Solomon’s Ring, a famous book about Wanimal behavior by Konrad Lorenz, an Austrian zoologist who later won a Nobel Prize and may have been the world’s first animal whisperer. Rossellini had always been enraptured by animals, and half a century later she becomes animated at the memory of devouring Lorenz’s book about the intricate so- cial interactions of creatures great and small, airborne and aquatic. “I was only 12 or 13,” says the 62-year-old actress, “but he wrote it so it was comprehensible, and I loved it. It was like — how do you say it in English — a lamp bulb went on. ‘That’s what I want to do.’ I have always been fascinated with animals because they are so mysterious. They are also comical. There’s something about them that always made me smile. But when I went to college there really weren’t classes in animal behavior because it was a new science.” There weren’t classes of any kind before long. Rossellini came to New York at 19 to attend tiny Finch College, a women’s college on the that had started as a finishing school in 1900 and was to close for lack of students in 1975. She worked as a translator while in school and as a reporter for Italy’s public televi- sion station. And then Rossellini, whose parents were Ingrid Bergman and the di- rector Roberto Rossellini, left school to join the family business. “I started to work, which is what actors do,” she says. “It’s really a job for young people.” Over the next few decades, there were movies (most memorably her turn as a torch singer in the art-house classic “Blue Velvet”), modeling (14 years as the

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Isabella Rossellini’s Fascination Love With Animals Finds a Place to Grow

Lancôme “spokesmodel”) and marriage (the first, for three years, to Martin Scorsese). lyn Academy of Music to concert halls in Europe and Australia. Researching the se- But she eventually found her way back to her childhood fascination with animals — ries and then developing the other projects reignited her interest in animals as an and back to school to study them. About six years ago, nearly four decades after she intellectual pursuit. dropped out of college, Rossellini finished her undergraduate degree, in art and envi- “After I finished my degree at NYU, I was looking for where to study animal be- ronmental studies, at . And now she’s a CUNY grad student—en- havior, but I could only find schools in Minnesota and Florida,” says Rossellini, who rolled in Hunter College’s master’s program in animal behavior and conservation. lives in Bellport, Long Island. And then a bit of serendipity. In 2012, she had major It was a confluence of art and science in her career that put her back in a class- back surgery and hired a nurse named Jemma Futterman to help her recuperate at room. In 2008, urged on by Robert Redford, Rossellini wrote, directed and starred in home. “I was writing the stage performance then, and I was telling her what I would a series of video shorts for the website of the Sundance Channel: “Green Porno,” in like to do. She was getting an advanced degree at Hunter, and she said, ‘I think I which one of her generation’s most glamorous cover girls portrayed creatures from saw something like that at Hunter.’ Six months later, I had my first outing. I got a barnacles to bedbugs explaining the peculiar and sometimes downright bizarre ways ticket to hear a lecture at Hunter by Temple Grandin” — the prominent animal be- in which they have, or approximate, sex. (“Bedbugs have penises like knives ... haviorist and autism advocate — “and there was a table with brochures about the Chase with me! Mate with me! Seduce me! Doesn’t need a vagina at all! Ha — he animal behavior master’s program. I couldn’t believe it.” ejaculates in my wound. The sperm will travel on their own to my ovaries.”) Not only was Hunter nearby, but the program was in its Psychology Department. Naturally, “Green Porno” got some attention. Critics and viewers loved its cheeky “All the other programs are very scientific, so there is comparative genetics and I inventiveness — “strangely hypnotic,” said the Daily Beast — and the series grew would have to do so much chemistry. It would be interesting, but I’m 62 and there’s to 40 webisodes and won a couple of Webby awards. Rossellini brilliantly tapped her not enough time. When I first started back at school at NYU, I arrived with great fan- appreciation of the comical nature of nature, but just as important to her was the tasy and humor. But taking exams and writing papers was very daunting. I didn’t Web show’s biological accuracy — every detail researched and verified with a scien- understand why they wanted the papers to be so boring. The first paper I wrote, we tific consultant. were studying Darwin. He was so interesting; he would go to the zoo with fake “Green Porno” morphed into a book and then a stage performance — a one- snakes to see if they were recognized. And I wrote a paper that was a fantasy. The woman-many-animal show that Rossellini spent last winter touring from the Brook- Please turn to next page

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GLOBALNATURE EDUCATIONSTARTUP

Back to Her First Love Continued from previous page professor must have said, ‘This crazy lady, completely wacko.’ But he never laughed. I never had a C. All As and Bs. I still have that fear of exams. It’s incredi- ble at my age I want to have at least a B, otherwise I get depressed.” Rossellini decided to apply to the Hunter animal behavior master’s program for the Spring 2013 semester. “I needed Jemma to help me with the enrollment process. It’s not easy. Maybe for a young person it is.” She laughs out loud at the memory of arriving for her first class not just as the only older student but looking like a parody of one. “I still couldn’t move that well so I asked the teacher, ‘I have to come with a nurse. Is that all right?’ So she came with me to my first lesson. But by the third lesson I came by myself. It was a course in animal welfare. Joseph Bar- Rossellini at BAM in “Green Porn,” a one-woman show ber was the producer on mating rituals in nature — the professor.” Since then there have been courses in animal behavior in captivity and the wild, the biology of conservation and her favorite, Psychology 757 — Animal Thinking and Communi- cation. It’s taught by Diana Reiss, a prominent behavioral psychologist who di- rects a research program involving dolphin cognition and communication at the National Aquarium in Baltimore. “She has done studies to see what kinds of human behaviors animals have, such as deception and humor and acquiring a sense of self,” Rossellini says. “Children recognize themselves in a mirror at a year and a half, and she applied that experiment to animals and found that bottlenose dolphins and Asian ele- Five CUNY Colleges phants can do that.” Rossellini is working first toward the Hunter program’s master’s certificate, which requires most of the courses for a full degree but not a thesis. Then she hopes to continue on to the master’s degree. “When you’re enrolled, there is a psy- Training City’s chological commitment,” she says. “But there are always pressures — theater performances to do, going away, opportunities to work. Then you say, ‘Well, maybe I should do that and not go back to the studies.’ So much of this has happened in Pre-K Teachers my life. I postpone something that is a passion to respond to something that is money or whatever. This love for animals is so skewed from my career.” Maybe not so much, if her recent career is any indication. “I was so im- By Barbara Fischkin pressed by ‘Green Porno,’ ” says Reiss, who was a theater set designer before she became a scientist. “How she got the scientific information and the details hen Sherry Cleary was in “nursery and wove them into a beautiful tapestry that was inventive, dynamic, engaging school,” years ago, a one-sentence — and accurate.” progress report came home. Rossellini wanted to take Reiss’ course in animal thinking last spring, but she It said: “Sherry hates worms.” was out of the country touring in “Green Porno” so often that she decided to audit She still does. the course and take it for credit in the fall. Reiss has been Rossellini’s mentor in Nevertheless, within minutes Cleary can the master’s program, and the two have become friends outside the classroom. Wdevise a prekindergarten curriculum using worms to teach They gave a talk about performance and behavior earlier this year at the Rubin arithmetic, storytelling, basic science and more. Museum of Art. And Rossellini has been working on adapting some of Reiss’ As executive director of the Early Childhood Professional Psych 757 coursework into her next theater piece: how animals think and commu- Development Institute — and a CUNY-connected educational nicate when they’re not having sex. leader — Cleary is also a key player in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “Isabella is remarkably perceptive,” says Reiss. “She’s one of my star stu- nationally unprecedented initiative to make pre-K available to dents, all puns intended.” Please turn to Page 8

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Miguel Ortiz, a CUNY-trained pre-K teacher, at Garden School in Jackson Heights

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EDUCATIONSTARTUP Five CUNY Colleges Training City’s Pre-K Teachers Continued from page 6 and certification before the every child in the city. This fall 2015 school year. more than 50,000 children were Ortiz’s classroom is at the enrolled in full-day pre-K class- Garden School in Jackson es, up from about 20,000 the Heights. A 2012 Queens College year before. undergraduate alum, he And in 89 classrooms, the majored in Communications head teacher was someone new- Sciences and Disorders. ly trained — tuition free — by For Ortiz, 23, early childhood the University. education comes naturally. “I As part of a project that have grown up in a very large began last spring, this intensive family so there were always teacher-education program is children around me, nieces and being carried out by faculty at nephews,” he says. “I think that five senior colleges: Brooklyn, children are very silly in a good City, Hunter, Lehman and way. They like to laugh; they Queens. It is funded by a $6.7 think many things are fun…. If million city grant to the you can be silly with them you University and the Early can connect with them, and Childhood Professional then you can use that connec- Development Institute (PDI) — tion to teach them.” a prominent educational non- About the PDI-CUNY pro- profit partnered with the gram, he says: “We all share University. As PDI’s executive resources. We have a huge group director, Cleary’s goal is to ulti- email every night … and the first mately provide 400 pre-K few professors were very help- teachers with master’s degrees ful. Even now that we are done and certification in early child- with their classes they have told hood education, many of them us to feel free to email them as soon as September 2015. about any questions. It’s been a This puts CUNY in the fore- very tight-knit community.” front of the future of early child- Cazena-Cesar’s first class- hood education. What used to room was at the SCO Morris be more commonly called Koppelman Early Childhood “nursery school” has evolved Center in Brownsville. She, too, from a luxury for those who has an undergraduate CUNY could afford it — and one with degree in biology from Brooklyn varying curriculums — to the College. She began teaching pre- nations to become different their degrees and certification. more structured pre-K, which K after she graduated about five characters. It’s not just dressing When first interviewed according to current research is years ago. up.” She also uses the kitchen about the entire project last considered a crucial ingredient “This program is strengthen- area to teach students how to spring, Cleary said, “It will be for student success. ing my skills,” she says of her set a table. “I realize that this very ambitious — and daunting And while CUNY is in the current Brooklyn College grad- age group is a sponge,” she says. — for the participants because forefront, uate studies. “My “You have the power to cultivate they will have to work very hard. Miguel Ortiz instructor, a child’s mind so that he or she We’re going to be very selective and Ruth Meredith Resnick, can become something great … I and find candidates who have Cazena-Cesar when she explained can say to them, ‘You are smart. the ability to thrive. … The PDI are on the front the concept of You have the ability to do this.’ is known for being resourceful, line as two of learning through And these encouraging words nimble, energetic and creative. those first 89 play, it really hit me mold who they become.” But this is a big lift and we are CUNY educa- that this was about Both Ortiz and Cazena- committed to helping the mayor tion scholars. They both spent teaching real-life issues and Cesar are on “Track One” of the realize his vision, which means their summers at the University, bringing practicality into the University program, which is for all hands on deck.” Ortiz at Queens, Cazena-Cesar classroom play setting.” those who need both graduate Now Cleary sees that “big- at Brooklyn. Both are now head Cazena-Cesar, 26, sees this degrees and certification. There lift” working. teachers in city pre-K classes. come to life in her classroom’s is also a second track for teach- “Track One” finished the They will continue their dramatic play area. ers who were already in class- summer with those 89 partici- University studies this fall and “We have different commu- rooms when the project began pants, down only from about are among those who hope to nity worker uniforms and the and are at different stages when 100. “Some excused themselves earn both their master’s degrees children have to use their imagi- it comes to what they need for … once they realized the intensi-

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Two pre-K students enjoying their class at Garden School in Jackson Heights

ty of the project,” she explained. in the effort, Cleary then said, learning environment that is worms, measuring the length of “A few others lost their spots “We called a meeting. We told play-based and allows children to the worms, seeing how fast the when they couldn’t meet the aca- them about this. And they said, handle the materials about worms crawl from plant to plant. demic standards. This attrition ‘What do you need us to do to which they are learning. A good They can write a story about the was expected and we are delight- help?’ They are extending them- teacher knows children have to worms. They can talk about the ed with the group of scholars selves and will be teaching be active. … If they are sitting in environmental value of the that remain.” “Track Two,” she through the whole summer.” chairs looking at something in worms ... then they can talk adds, is “coming along slowly but A PDI educator will work with the middle of the room, that is about why we want the worms organically.” each campus and lend further not an effective way to teach.” back outside.” “We are closer than ever to support to each of the students. Flexibility is also important. Which might be the part of transforming the lives of thou- Sixty percent of the city’s pre- Consider the worms. the lesson Cleary likes best. sands of children,” is what Mayor kindergarten classrooms are in “Let’s say a teacher comes into She says she can’t remember de Blasio said when the pre-K community-based facilities such the classroom thinking she or he ever not wanting to teach young initiative was announced in the as child care centers and Head is going to teach about plants,” children. She is forthright, spring. To this Schools Start programs. The remaining Cleary says. “But it’s raining out- though, about just how much Chancellor Carmen Fariña added 40 percent are in public schools side and the children come in universal pre-K can accomplish. that “through collaboration, our and, according to Cleary, this and say that there are worms on “The real response to that is children and families benefit.” ratio is likely to continue. the sidewalk. So the teacher that pre-K won’t do enough PDI’s recruitment began in And Cleary’s own take on shifts the program, taking the unless we have a really good pro- May in preparation for a June pre-K? children outside to get the gram that starts at birth,” she start-up. By May 21, it had “Four-year-olds are very com- worms. They can make a home says. “We need to be thinking reviewed about 800 applications. petent learners, as long as their for the worms. They can learn about all young children. Life About the CUNY faculty involved teachers know how to create a math literacy by counting the doesn’t start at 4.”

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PROFILE: POET, NOVELIST DONNA MASINI THE IDEA OF BEING ‘ENOUGH’

S A CHILD, Donna Masini read and wrote poetry but never thought becoming a writer was in the cards. But now she has published two books of poems: That Kind of Danger, which won the Barnard Women Poet’s Prize, and Turning to Fiction. She has also written two nov- els, About Yvonne and The Good Enough Mother. Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies, including The American Poetry Review, Open City, TriQuarterly, the Paris Review, KGB BAR Book of Poems and Parnassus: Poetry in Review. She is also a recipient ofA a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the New York Foundation for the Arts Grant and a Pushcart Prize. Masini, an associate professor of English at Hunter, is also an alumna. She currently teaches poetry as a part of the college’s MFA Program in Creative Writing.

How did you get your start as a writer? to people. I get to see students excited by poetry. So I was an English major at Hunter and I had great I want them to have a sense of possibility — you can teachers. I always read poetry and wrote poems, do anything. I tell them that. Some kids grow up in but I never would have thought of being a writer. I a family in which everything is possible, and others left Hunter without completing my degree and don’t. Growing up, if I told my family I want to be a went back eight years later because of [the late writer, they would have said, “No, it’s too scary.” writer Audre Lorde]. I had been reading her essays. And in a way, by teaching writing workshops, I can I got so excited when I met her and she said to be a sort of a coach. Students need someone to tell come study with her. It was like everything fell them that they can find insight within themselves into place. and that they are important.

What kind of topics do you write about? You mentioned your latest novel, The Good Enough Mother Generally, I don’t focus on a particular subject. My earlier. What’s it about? poems used to be very urban — with a lot about New The book in a lot of ways is about class. My charac- York City. The city is like a character in my writing. ter immigrates from one social class to another. She grew up working class and now she’s a psy- Where do you find inspiration for your pieces? choanalyst. She’s a woman who is divorced and I’m not one of those people who walk down the has no children of her own. She becomes street and something hits me and I think, “Oh my obsessed with a young girl she meets at a god!” and I stop to write down a poem. I usually nearby public school. She doesn’t realize have to fight for them down the page and then, that it’s not so much a child she wants, “Wow, there it is — I’ve got something.” but rather a childhood.

What are some of the challenges you’ve had to overcome as What advice do you have for aspiring a writer? writers and poets? At times, I get that voice of doubt saying, “You’re Writing poems is an art. And great not smart enough, you’re not good enough.” The poets have written bad poems. So idea of being “enough” is really big for me. The you have to learn to fight for your name of my new novel is even called The Good work. You don’t settle. I always say Enough Mother. That’s why Audre was so good for this to my students. It takes a me. She would say, “I need you to remember this: while to be great. Also, you just Everything I’ve done in my life, was done, not with- have to show up to the page and out fear, but in spite of it.” write. Don’t listen when people say, “Nobody wants to publish poetry. It seems like Audre’s mentorship had a strong impact on Nobody wants to publish fiction. The your outlook on life and your career. What kind of lessons do market is terrible now!” You can’t you want to leave with your students? think about that. The one thing is that I love my life — I get to talk about poetry and fiction you show up, you do the work.

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GREATGRADUATES

Chess grandmaster Maurice Ashley at a kids’ chess tournament at P.S. 6 on the Upper East Side.

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CITY COLLEGE KNIGHT TO . . . GRANDMASTER By Richard Firstman

AURICE ASHLEY given that life after coronation isn’t exactly People see a chessboard and think it’s boring remembers it as if it its own reward. and dull but it’s really two armies in battle. were yesterday — or “I’ve been all over the world, playing, The tension is high; the need to be accurate today: The move, bish- making appearances,” Ashley says. “It’s the is so critical that you’re on the razor’s edge op to e7, that made him life, right? It’s the dream. Unfortunately, for from the moment you make your first move. an international grand- chess grandmasters, and I’m one who has One slip and you’re dead.” Mmaster of chess, and the first black player in suffered this fate, there’s not a lot of money These days Ashley is trying to build the the world to achieve that most exalted sta- in it so you have to do other things if you’re mass appeal of chess with something it’s nev- tus. “It was exactly 15 years ago — today’s my going to stay in chess.” er been about: glitz. In October, he staged the anniversary!” the onetime star of the City Ashley has not only figured out how to Millionaire Chess Open — a five-day battle College chess team was saying one afternoon stay in the game, but in some respects he’s royale at the Planet Hollywood Resort and in his Brooklyn apartment. The coincidence risen higher than most of his grandmaster Casino in Las Vegas that he billed as “the triggered a checkmate smile and a burst of brethren in the decade and a half since his biggest and most amazing open tournament memories. crowning achievement as a player. At 48, he in chess history.” Indeed, it seemed more like “I had been chasing this moment for 20 no longer competes in tournaments with the a high-stakes poker event than a chess tour- years and suddenly, here it was — I beat this frequency or focus he did when he was pur- nament. More than 560 players from 44 guy, I’m in,” Ashley recalled. The guy was no suing the holy grail. But he has capitalized on countries each paid an entrance fee of $1,000 slouch: a fellow international master from his prominence as the world’s first black to compete for a million dollars in prize Romania, he had once played Garry Kasparov grandmaster by fashioning a career as a kind money, $100,000 for first place — all record to a draw. “I went into the game nervous, of chess celebrity — an irrepressible promot- breakers for an open tournament. really tight. And then in one moment I sud- er of the game who’s become something of a “I want to bring chess into the denly became totally calm. It’s just another household name, at least in households limelight,” Ashley says, “and I think the tim- game. It’s all good. You’re gonna be fine. Just where chess is king. ing is excellent. Chess has been growing over play the game. I began pressuring him and he Ashley is a sought-after teacher and the years because of the digital age. So many must have sensed the shift because he got coach (Will Smith, the actor, is among his people play online. In the old days, when I totally nervous. I kept up the pressure, chas- students), a chess author and TV commenta- was trying to get better I had to go to chess ing him around, playing cat and mouse, con- tor, a motivational speaker who’s a true clubs, I had to go look for guys in Prospect fusing him with some moves. And in the end believer in the powers of the game — espe- Park, get hustled for money. But now you he just blundered — allowed a move that was cially for kids from neighborhoods like the have chess prodigies who can go online any- so easy. And I thought, wow, this is ironic. I one he grew up in. time and get a game against anyone from come this far and the move that makes me a “Nobody tells you when you’re dreaming anywhere in the world, and they can study grandmaster is a beginner’s blunder.” of becoming the world’s best that it means using computers that far surpass humans in There are 1,453 grandmasters in the you’ll end up being a high-priced coach,” ability. It’s the perfect time to be born as a world, 82 of them Americans. (There are Ashley says. “But I love coaching. I’ve done it chess player.” now two more black grandmasters — one privately and in schools for decades and it’s Ashley himself wasn’t born into chess and from Zambia, the other from Sweden.) To be very fulfilling. I’ve watched students I’ve he started too late to be a prodigy. He came conferred the exalted title by the coached go on to become successful in other to New York from Jamaica with his family International Chess Federation, a player fields, which is the goal when you’re teaching when he was 12 and didn’t play his first game must compile a succession of victories and chess to kids. You’re teaching them critical of chess until he was 14 and a freshman at impressive performances against the world’s thinking.” Brooklyn Technical High School. “Somebody elite players, enough to attain a complex His passion for spreading the popularity had a chess set,” he says. “He brought me to numerical rating that factors in the strength of chess to young people led to a joint fellow- the chess club at school and I fell in love with of his opponents. “It’s as if, to play in the ship with the MIT Media Lab and Harvard’s the game. He and I played chess every single NBA, instead of a draft, college players had Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He day after school.” to play one-on-one games against both the created a chess app, part of his work with Soon he was hanging out with a group for top college players and NBA players,” Ashley researchers to develop ways of using elec- whom chess was actually cool, a kind of explains. “They’d have to crush the other tronic chess to improve learning in America. blood sport for boys of a cerebral bent. There college players and do well enough against “Chess is a battle of minds,” Ashley says. were weekend “chess rumbles,” Ashley the pros to prove they belong.” “You’re trying to outwit the other person in recalls, in which “you had to be a gladiator,” Once so knighted, a grandmaster is a an ocean of information and strategies and willing to choose chess over girls and every grandmaster for life. Which seems only fair tactics, and it changes every time you play. Please turn to next page

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GREATGRADUATES OPENINGDOORS

City College Knight to . . . and said, ‘Could you tone it down?’ ” Ashley was an international master at The GRANDMASTER that point, one step below grandmaster Continued from previous page but a big one. “My Jamaican grandmother other teenage temptation. He began would say to me, ‘Jack of all trades, master MAGICAL dreaming of becoming one of the world’s of none,’ ” Ashley recalls. “I thought she elite players, a grandmaster, and City was putting me down but what she meant College was the first step. Ashley was the was that I had been doing all these things TOUCH of star and captain of the chess team, leading — coaching, commentating, writing — it to the national college championship instead of focusing on my dream, which tournament — CCNY’s first taste of inter- was to become a grandmaster. Finally the GREGORY collegiate glory since the days of Nat light bulb went on.” Holman. Alas, he says, “We were wiped out Ashley devoted himself to the quest and by Harvard.” began collecting victories against a succes- RABASSA Ashley would have majored in chess if sion of higher-ranked players, including he could have. “I started out in engineer- grandmasters. Word began traveling in the ing,” he says, “but I fled because there was chess world that an American was primed By Margaret Ramirez too much math, which I was good at, but it to become the first black grandmaster. The was just too much work because I was real- pressure became intense, Ashley recalls. HEN RENOWNED ly being a chess player. So I switched to He couldn’t go to a tournament without Latin American creative writing.” being asked when and where he thought author Gabriel García After graduating, Ashley joined an ini- the big moment would happen. Finally, in Márquez died in April, tiative by the American Chess Foundation March 1999, he was pitted against the his passing sparked to send coaches into inner-city schools. It Romanian grandmaster who represented renewed interest in began with modest expectations but the last hurdle. It turned out to be a tour- Whis rapturous novels filled with magic real- Ashley took it several moves ahead. “In the nament just a few subway stops from ism, especially the beloved Cien Años de beginning I would go twice a week and give home. Soledad, or One Hundred Years of Solitude. the kids lessons, make sure they’re playing “I had traveled the whole world and But most Americans would never have every day. Then I started taking them to wound up doing it at a tournament at the read Márquez had it not been for the tournaments, analyzing their games, Manhattan Chess Club,” Ashley says. “I remarkable work of Gregory Rabassa, one ‘here’s your mistake,’ really attacking it remember ironing my shirt before the of the most like serious chess players. And the kids game, thinking about this big moment in important were attracted to the game as a competi- my life, thinking about my grandmother — literary trans- tive activity. They wanted to win — ‘Sit ‘focus on your dream.’ And I actually lators of the down, I’m going to kill you.’ ” Ashley dropped the iron and started crying. I was 20th century. became renowned for coaching teams of still feeling the emotion when I started the Rabassa, Harlem middle schoolers — the Raging game, but I managed to get control.” now 92, a dis- Rooks and the Dark Knights — to three Ashley says he’s always had some tinguished national championships, gaining national mixed emotions about being thought of as professor recognition for breaking down some kind of Jackie Robinson of chess. emeritus of stereotypes. The times were different, for one thing. “I Hispanic lan- In these years, Ashley wrote two books know people weren’t allowed in chess guage and lit- on chess and became ESPN’s chess com- clubs, the same restrictions as in society, erature at mentator, making a splash with a rollick- but I never experienced that. There were a Queens College and the CUNY Graduate ing style that suggested Clyde Frazier couple of experiences where ignorant peo- Center, achieved worldwide recognition for calling chess as an action sport: “The ple said ignorant things,” but nothing like translating more than 50 books from the knight is galloping toward the middle!” what Robinson went through. Still, he Spanish and Portugese by some of Latin “Pawns are attacking mercilessly!” “The understood the significance of his achieve- America’s greatest writers, including bishop is slicing and dicing!” ment, of course. “African-Americans are Márquez, Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas “The announcer responsible for such famous for being athletes and performers, Llosa, Jorge Amado, José Lezama Lima, breathless chess chat is Maurice Ashley, a so it made people proud to have someone Miguel Angel Asturias and Clarice 27-year-old international master, who is be one of the best in the world at some- Lispector. In 2006, Rabassa was awarded the voice of the Professional Chess thing that’s considered one of the highest the prestigious National Medal of Arts for Association’s Intel World Chess Grand intellectual activities. I understood that, his translation, the nation’s highest honor Prix,” TV sports even if it’s in many ways almost random to for contributions to the arts in the United columnist, Richard Sandomir, wrote in talk about it now.” States. 1994. “Ashley is loud. Not obnoxious. Just Besides, Ashley says, when it comes to From his apartment on the Upper East louder than a voice is expected to be for titles, “I’m the least successful member of Side, Rabassa reflected on the legacy of noise-free chess.” Ashley told Sandomir my family. My brother is a three-time Márquez, the state of translations, and his what happened when he covered a tense world-champion kickboxer. And my sister concerns about the impact of technology tournament in Moscow: “I was going is a four-time WBC boxing champion. And on language. crazy. The Russian announcer came over a black belt in karate.” When asked about Márquez, who was

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Gregory Rabassa, at his Upper East Side apartment, was awarded the prestigious National Medal of Arts for his translations.

affectionately known as “Gabo,” Rabassa says had already read the book and so it took Rabassa said he didn’t receive royalties and they exchanged occasional letters, but he some of the fun out of it. Márquez later earned only a few hundred dollars. In April only met Gabo once during a visit to New praised Rabassa as having improved the orig- 2005, Rabassa published a memoir on his York in the 1970s. inal text and called him “the best Latin career, If This Be Treason: Translation and A few years before, in 1967, Argentine American writer in the English language.” Its Dyscontents, and recounted how transla- novelist Julio Cortázar had recommended The humble Rabassa shrugs at such tors were paid by the word and often failed Rabassa to Márquez as a translator for One praise, saying it is Márquez who deserves the to receive recognition, rights or royalties. He Hundred Years of Solitude. The novel, set in credit for writing an epic. credited publisher Alfred A. Knopf Sr. for the imaginary town of Macondo, was already “The book itself wasn’t a lemon,” he says leading the fight to have the translator’s a hit throughout Latin America, but Spanish- with a laugh. “It was so well-written that I name printed on the book jacket. language novels were still a hard sell in the always say that book translated itself.” “In later years, I received royalties for United States. Born the son of multilingual parents — his books of more recent authors, but not for Rabassa said he was unsure how father was from Cuba and his mother was of Cien años, he said. “Things have improved a American readers would react to Márquez, Scottish and English ancestry — Rabassa holds bit, but not much. It’s still a business.” the magic realism literary style, and the a master’s degree in Spanish literature and a Still, Rabassa has no regrets on the many themes of imperialism, incest, economics, doctorate in Portuguese from Columbia treasured books he has translated and close dictatorships, and destiny found in One University. He began teaching at the CUNY friends he has made. His biggest concern Hundred Years. Graduate Center and Queens College in 1968 today is the impact of digital technology on “I knew it was damn good book,” said and retired in 2008. language and the written word. Rabassa. “But at that time, I was very skepti- In describing his craft, Rabassa added: “I guess what worries me a little bit more cal about books from down there, making it “It’s like being a musician and being given a is that with all the technological devices we up here [in the U.S.]” theme. You can’t vary the theme but you have now, you see language is disappearing,” Rabassa translates books as he reads, page work around it in your own way.” Rabassa said. “What’s going to happen to by page, usually on a yellow writing pad. But Despite the phenomenal success of One each individual language? The word, the with One Hundred Years, Rabassa said he Hundred Years of Solitude in English, sound, and the beauty.”

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NEWONCAMPUS

THE CORNERSTONE: Confident Learners, Giving Their All

S A LIVING LEGEND in How will you make this vision a reality? American public secondary Medgar sits in the midst of a community education, Rudy Crew that arguably has some of the lowest-per- developed a panoramic view forming elementary, middle and high of what works. He held schools in all of New York City. You can sit leadership positions in six here and decry that, say: “Oh my gosh Astates, including New York. A national what’s coming in the door is not the right advocate for school reform initiatives, he kind of raw material that we need.” Or you began as a teacher in middle and high can say that part of the job now is to culti- schools and was a principal as well. vate the K-12 students so that they come Now, as the president of Medgar Evers here with a treasure trove of skills. So, I am College, Crew, who has also taught univer- taking 30 or 40 schools and I am going to sity students, is bringing his ideals, goals partner them with Medgar. We are calling it and expectations to higher education in a the “Pipeline Project.” If you are a child broader way. born within “earshot” of the campus you’re Over three decades, Crew has mine. You are a Medgar student automati- engendered great praise. With his signa- cally and the only question for me is, can I ture wit, he concedes there has been a flip get you? side. Appointed in January 2013, he told the CUNY Board of Trustees, “I don’t Specifically, how do you help those who need this remember the last time someone clapped academic support? for me, so can you please do it again?” We are assembling a recruitment team. We He ran the New York City public school are looking at this with market segmenta- system from 1995-2000, when vouchers tion. Who are the students? What kind of were an issue, as charter schools are now. interests do they display? What are their Crew, adamantly on the side of public edu- parents talking about? What needs do they cation, often butted heads with then- have academically? We will offer summer Mayor Rudy Giuliani. About charter courses. We should own the summer. We schools, he now says he prefers to help should own the Internet. We should own make the public schools in Medgar Evers having conversations with parents so that posed to be a bad idea. You only came here Central Brooklyn neighborhood better. their kids are living in a college-going cul- if you had no other choice. These students Crew became the college’s president 50 ture. We are going to have a whole lot of could go to SUNY and they had other years after Evers’ assassination, as civil people push this conversation into the options as well. We started by having a rights continues to be a challenge for a homes of Brooklyn. meeting there. There were more than 500 diverse America. These days, Crew cele- students and parents. brates the diversity of Central Brooklyn. You were raised in Poughkeepsie, by your father, His taste in music is eclectic, too, running who was widowed when you were small. He was If there were no restrictions and you could do from jazz to country to the gospel selection devoted to education. Do you want the college to anything at all to ensure success here, what would that was playing during an interview in his give students what you got from your father? that be? office earlier this year. The song: “I Can That’s exactly right. And sometimes you’ve I don’t have a picture of being prohibited Imagine.” got to say it and it’s tough. Love is not from doing what is possible. I have a picture Medgar Evers College Associate always easy and bouncy. of being enabled. … I view this as a wonder- Professor of Education Sheilah Paul — the ful campus on which I get a chance to make department chair — says the new president What about the students who believe they can do a patina, like watercolor where you don’t has come to the school with “a vision based better than here? have complete control. It bleeds into the on what the college really was developed to There is a Medgar Evers Prep, a high school. mat and your job is to kind of get it to angle do, to serve the community in which it was But traditionally those students bypassed itself in the right direction. This is about built.” this school. They understood it was sup- allowing people in this college to have their

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Rudy Crew, president, Medgar Evers College, with students on the Brooklyn campus, from left, Jose Diaz, Tiffany Bob-Semple, Hasani Douglas and Jed Justiniani

own campus. If you get that happening class? And why are fewer and fewer students, about being smart or dumb. There are more among faculty and staff it will automatically including middle class students, unable to choices than this. More intelligences. This happen to students. get into the middle class themselves? In isn’t a question of being defined as smart or Central Brooklyn, specifically, parents are dumb by a state test. Or as quote-unquote You have had a broad view of education in America, asking what’s the new on-ramp to get into a “remedial.” How do we create a way of talk- mostly K-12. How do you see the landscape of post-secondary institution. ing about knowledge so that we understand higher education? it is simply another asset we can distribute? The landscape is dotted with an enormous What is the on-ramp? To everyone. Just because one student array of places that are a few questions away It is to build really confident learners and knows algebra does not mean there is less from greatness. But failure to answer those then to maximize their efforts so that they algebra in the world. It just means that questions will lead us to a circular road, ask- can learn anything that anyone puts before another student gets a chance to learn alge- ing the same questions generation after gen- them. But if the cornerstone is not built, if bra and may do it very differently. eration. How do we educate those with the they are not really confident in anything, least? How do we build better strategy? How then social change, let alone academic On a personal note, what is it like to be back in New do we offer more opportunity? And how do change, won’t happen. Students need to York? we distribute differently without causing a learn: I might get an “F.” But I am not an “F.” I have come home because it is home. I am breakage in the covenant with people who living in Brooklyn. My son lives here. This is don’t need all these things? Where and what How do you teach this? going to be home again for me for a very long is the trampoline, the jump to the middle You do this by not ascribing theory to them time. I don’t have anywhere else to go.

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LESSONSINLEADERSHIP

BMCC scholarship benefactor Elizabeth Butson, center, at the Fiterman Art Center, with two students who have benefited from her scholarships, Gentiana Rina from Albania, at left, and Bibechanya Basnet from Nepal.

What’s It All About? –‘It’s About C By Lenina Mortimer lizabeth Butson knows what really “We talk about inequality and ‘the haves Soon after, Butson — who, with her late matters and it’s not money. and the have-nots,’ but that’s not what it’s husband, Tom Butson, owned two Lower “It’s all about making a difference all about,” says Butson, who is a BMCC Manhattan newspapers, Downtown in the lives of others,” says the phi- Foundation board member. “It’s about cre- Express and The Villager — was invited to Elanthropist. ating opportunity and BMCC gives anyone join the BMCC board. Butson, a former Philip Morris who really wants an education that Born in Istanbul to parents of Greek International advertising executive, chance.” heritage, Butson has a story that in some reporter for Time/Life magazine and local It was nearly 15 years ago that Butson way mirrors those of many foreign-born newspaper publisher, spent her early life attended the college’s annual gala and BMCC students. She moved to the United making opportunities for herself. Now she became inspired by a student from the States alone at 18 in search of educational creates them for others. Caribbean who had struggled in life. “He opportunity. She received a scholarship A longtime supporter of the Borough of was kicked out of his home and he lived in a from Boston University, studied political Manhattan Community College, she has crawl space in the roof of a building,” recalls science and journalism, and supplemented given the school thousands of dollars over Butson. “But look at what determination to her income by teaching Greek-American the years, funding many scholarships for succeed can do. He got a scholarship ... and children in the Boston area. academically gifted students. One was he was one of the top graduating students “When I came here, I really had to make named in honor of her mother, Katy even though he didn’t have a place to live. I it on my own,” she says. “My parents could- Halepli. really wanted to be a part of that.” n’t help me because the Turkish

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Creating Opportunity’

government didn’t allow people to send mon- years ago to further her education. “When I know where they are and what they are ey out of the country. I did all those things on came, I didn’t know anybody and I didn’t doing.” my own — being able to do that energized me. speak a word of English,” she says. She was Though Butson is celebrated for her phil- It also energizes me when I see it in others.” accepted into BMCC’s ESL program and now anthropic work, she is most proud of her pro- Since its inception in 2002, the $1,000 she has a 4.0 GPA. She plans to follow in her fessional accomplishments. “I was the first Katy Halepli Scholarship has been awarded father’s footsteps to become an engineer. female V.P. at Philip Morris in a very male to 12 graduating women seniors. The “There are people driven to succeed and dominated world, in a very conservative busi- Elizabeth Butson Scholarship, which was make it to the top,” says Butson. “Most peo- ness,” she says. “Now, the number of women established last year, has been awarded to ple need for someone to open a door for in exec jobs has significantly increased I am eight students. They received $1,600 schol- them. For me, opening doors for myself and glad that I opened doors for them.” Butson arships. others has been a big part of my life.” worked for Philip Morris International for 27 Gentiana Rina, a recipient of an Elizabeth Last spring, Butson joined four scholar- years where she was the first woman hired Butson Scholarship, is juggling school with a ship recipients for lunch at BMCC’s Shirley for a nonsecretarial position. job in retail. The scholarship means she can Fiterman Art Center. She wanted to get to “Success in life is not all about making afford to take some time off from work so know them and hoped they would learn a money,” she says. “It is about making new she can study more. bit about her. “Every time I see those kids tracks, taking the road less traveled, sharing Rina is 30 and a third-year engineering graduate, I feel really terrific,” she says. “I the knowledge you have gained with those science major who arrived from Albania four wanted to meet them because I want to who are getting started. Opening doors.”

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TOPOFTHECLASS ADVERSITY the Mother of Success By Lenina Mortimer

heryll Pang is no stranger to hardship, but it’s the students who share similar experiences,” says Tu. adversity that has driven her to succeed. While Pang’s studies at QCC boosted her confidence — she Pang, 25 years old, says that at 16 her abu- really found her stride at Baruch. “[At Baruch] I said, ‘I can do sive stepfather kicked her out of their house. this. I’m going to work my way to the top.’” Pang became more And three years later, she became a single active on campus and discovered the Starr Career mother. Development Center’s Financial Leadership Program, which S“I was told I was stupid and that I’d never amount to prepares students for careers at top financial institutions. anything,” she says. “I really didn’t think I would be able to go “I didn’t even know what finance was. But having mentors to college. I did not believe I had the and joining these programs that guided mental capacity.” With the encouragement of her me, helped me to identify what I want- She would never have guessed, just ed to do and what I could be good at,” nine years ago, that in the spring of says Pang, who was later admitted to 2014 she would graduate from Baruch professors, Pang applied to the the highly competitive Zicklin College summa cum laude with a Undergraduate Honors Program. degree in finance and investment. New York Needs You fellowship “Sheryll stood out even among real- “My life was a bit of mess and unsta- ly smart students in terms of her abili- ble before I had my son,” says Pang, — a career-development and ty to communicate and participate. We who described her life back then as tur- had Larry Zicklin as a guest lecturer bulent. She had a series of abusive rela- leadership program at CUNY for and the students were intimidated. But tionships and worked dead-end retail not Sheryll, she had her hand in the air, jobs. But once Jayden, who is now 5 asking really smart questions,” recalls years old, was born her life took a dif- students who are the first in marketing professor Gloria Thomas, ferent direction. “After I had him every- who also serves as the director of the thing became 100 percent [clear] — I their family to attend college. Zicklin Undergraduate Honors pro- knew what I had to do and I wanted to gram. give him a better life. “I love learning. I took school a lot Jayden was only two months old when Pang enrolled at more seriously, since I worked first and then went to college,” Queensborough Community College. It didn’t take long for says Pang who started college three years after graduating her professors to take notice of her academic prowess. “QCC from high school. Along with her major in finance Pang had a was a stepping stone to something bigger,” she says. “I triple minor in economics, international business and thought I was going to get an associate’s degree and maybe advanced business analysis. find a job on Craigslist. But my professors would reach out to After her junior year, Pang was given an early job offer at me and tell me that I was capable of much more.” the asset management firm BlackRock as a financial analyst. With the encouragement of her professors, Pang applied to “I believe that she has top management potential,” says Carol the New York Needs You fellowship — a career-development Gamm, an executive coach who mentored Pang for two years and leadership program at CUNY for students who are the through Baruch’s Executive on Campus program. “Through her first in their family to attend college. “When I learned about life experience, I think she has developed a kind of street smarts. the program, I thought it was amazing. It’s what I really need- And that’s not something you can teach people.” ed,” says Pang, who was born in Singapore and raised in New As a new graduate she has many plans, and among them is Jersey. “They give a $2,500 stipend but that’s not where the working with other single mothers to coach them to fulfill value is … it’s in the mentoring that helped to guide me their potential. through the college process.” “I really do want to inspire women. I want to show them “She was doing well in school. But the NYNY network that you’re not in it alone. A lot of people get embarrassed by opened her up to new opportunities in finance that she the bad decisions they make,” says Pang, “but for me, I realize hadn’t fully explored as an industry,” says chief program offi- that I had to go through it to be who I am today. We’ve all gone cer of NYNY, Marianna Tu. “She’s entrepreneurial in the way through our own adversity, and it’s what you do about it that she shares her story. She has a strong sense of giving back to really matters.”

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Sheryll Pang with her son, Jayden

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MENTOR SUPERSTAR, ACTIVIST, ENGINEERING GURU — and Regular Guy

By Barbara Fischkin

ROFESSOR Sheldon recently, he proposed a new fuel-saving con- Weinbaum, now 77, retired cept for an airborne jet ski train that travels from City College in 2007. at more than 430 miles an hour. Or more accurately: “never There is more. He also has been a promi- really retired.” Hired in 1967, nent, staunch, risk-taking activist for diver- he is still very much a pres- sity, at CUNY in particular. Pence at City College and its Grove School of Along with all of this, Weinbaum is also Engineering, advising graduate students, among the University’s proudest mentors overseeing grants and participating in cours- and his devotion to diversity comes into play es as a guest instructor. here as well. He relishes the fact that in a One day last spring, dressed in a plaid field overwhelmingly male in years past, 17 shirt, black sweater vest, blue jeans and of his 45 Ph.D. students have been women sneakers, he offered encouraging advice to and/or underrepresented minorities. Once those presenting papers on the intricacies of he even spent a month in China, recruiting kidneys, tubular diameter change and the women students. absorption of fluid through epithelial cells, Asked to suggest a few former students to leaky and otherwise. The papers were contact, Weinbaum gushed over a number of accomplished; the students nervous, never- the them, including Ghebre Tzeghai (’84) his theless. first African-American Ph.D. student. “This is stuff you wouldn’t know yet,” Tzeghai retired last summer after 30 years Weinbaum said, after suggesting a plan for at Proctor & Gamble, where he was Global additional exploration. “But I do.” R&D and Innovation Executive. He is now Some laughed, most seemed to relax a bit. working part time as Chief Innovation Certainly, Sheldon Weinbaum is in many Officer and Independent Consultant at respects a regular guy. He signs his emails Summit Innovation Labs. Tzeghai was “Shelly,” and that is what many colleagues recently elected to the National Academy of and staff call him, even if his students and Engineering, the fourth African-American former students are generally more deferen- to be elected in the field of bioengineering. tial. This is perhaps because in his field, And then there is Bingmei Fu, now a City Sheldon Weinbaum, regular guy, is a super- College professor. She was the first female star. Ph.D. in the Department of Mechanical Formally, he is a Distinguished Professor Engineering. enough to be one of Dr. Weinbaum’s of Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering, His students return the admiration. students. But he calmed me down. He emeritus. Last year when elected to the One, born in Kiev, even went to Ukraine showed me the email he got from another American Academy of Arts and Sciences with him to help him trace his father’s roots. professor stating that I had excellent pres- (AAAS) he became one of nine living per- Others, when asked to write about their entation skills, comparable to students from sons to hold membership in these four elite experience with Weinbaum, quickly sent Harvard or MIT. He told me that one course national science academies: the National back glowing emails, offering to write or is not enough to pass judgment on who you Academy of Sciences, the National Academy talk more about his influence on them. In are and that not everybody can be good at of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine truth, their stories could fill a book about everything.” and the AAAS – and the only one in New mentoring. Arnold earned her Ph.D. in biomedical York State. Here is an offering from Yi Arnold, who engineering from City College in collabora- His contributions to re-entry aerodynam- as a student was Yi Duan: tion with Yale School of Medicine and ics and fluid mechanics are widely recog- “I had trouble learning fluid mechanics Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 2008 and nized. In 2002, he was the first engineer during my first trimester at CCNY and received postdoctoral training at Columbia awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in received a not-so-good grade. I was very University. She is now a senior scientist at molecular and cellular biology. More upset because I thought I wasn’t good Osiris Therapeutics in Baltimore.

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Bingmei Fu, professor of biomedical engineering at City College, with mentor Sheldon Weinbaum, Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the college.

Professor Bingmei Fu received her Ph.D. Weinbaum has been married to Sandy porter of Black and Puerto Rican student in 1995, and her own page on the college’s Weinbaum, also an educational activist, for demands in their takeover of the City website, if printed, would be seven pages 52 years. (Alexandra Weinbaum, as the pro- College campus in 1969. He was almost long and includes students she has men- fessor’s wife is known professionally, is a fired. Later, in the 1990s, acting on a long- tored herself. “The most precious thing I documentarian of the new Guttman held belief that diversity was crucial to learned from professor Weinbaum is an Community College in collaboration with CUNY, he led students and professors in a optimistic attitude,” she notes. “Not only in Nan Bauer-Maglin and Camille Rodríguez, class-action lawsuit, “Weinbaum vs. my career but also in life.” with funding support from the Bill & Cuomo,” which argued that New York State To this, Laura Causey Sandoval, who Melinda Gates Foundation). financing of higher education was racially received her Ph.D. from City College in bio- She also was the one, the professor says, discriminatory. It was unsuccessful yet medical engineering in 2013 and is now a who persuaded the scientist to become an enabled new voices to be heard. program associate at Rice 360 Institute for activist. In speaking about the original impetus Global Health Technologies, adds, “He has And, as a result — as a recently hired pro- for his activism so many years ago, Regular constantly worked for a more just world.” fessor — Weinbaum led a demonstration Guy Weinbaum recalls: “My wife said to me, Weinbaum says this is because the men- against the at the college’s Why don’t you do something important tor had a mentor: his wife. Steinman Hall and was an outspoken sup- with your life?”

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HEADOFTHECLASS

Jules Allen, Queensborough Community College Art and Design professor, right, reviews the photo contact sheet of student Rashad Khan

Learning to Look Before You The Art of Photography From an Artist By Richard Firstman

NE MIDSEMESTER DAY at Queensborough Queensborough for more than three decades, is a renowned art photog- Community College, Colleen Abbate arranged an rapher whose work, primarily focused on the contemporary African- array of black and white photographs on the black- American experience, is in the permanent collections of the Museum of board ledge in the college’s photo studio. Then she Modern Art, the Smithsonian and the National Gallery, among others. stepped away and glanced back and forth between the His books include studies of nude black women, denizens of Gleason’s images and her professor’s panning eyes. Gym and people who wear hats. A forthcoming volume looks at the O“What is that — it looks like a Diane Arbus photograph,” Jules Allen culture of black marching bands — a “precision-based art form that said, casually tossing off a comparison to one of the most famously idio- fully embodies the love of the public event as a spectacle,” as Allen sees syncratic photographers of the last century. His students are it, and “breathes the soul and spirit of Africa within the modern world.” accustomed to such references, even if they don’t always get the refer- Allen brings serious intellect to his photography, but to his students ences, or the compliments. he’s an amalgam of personality and attitude — a professor apt to tell a “What was it — Halloween or something?” Allen asked. student, “It’s disgusting how good that photograph is.” He’s demanding “It was the Polar Bear Club where we jumped in the ocean in but playful, worldly and wide-eyed, insightful and inciting. January,” explained Abbate, a Navy veteran. And, at 67, still very cool. “You went into the water in January?” Allen asked, as if simultane- “That’s a beautiful photograph of that parrot,” Allen said, moving to ously appalled and delighted. That’s another thing his students are another photo. “Is that your bird?” accustomed to: the exaggerated tease. “It’s my boyfriend’s,” Abbate said, “but I bought it.” “We did it for the Make-a-Wish Foundation,” Abbate explained, but “Okay, go to work on these three, they’re killers. Burn the sky on that Allen didn’t care: “You went in the ocean when it was zero outside? one.” You’re crazy!” “What about that one over there, with my daughter crying?” Abbate Allen, a professor of art and design who’s been a fixture at asked.

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“That one’s too muddy,” Allen said. “Why’s Allen paused to call over to another student. “Sequoia! First of all, your daughter crying? Because you wouldn’t that’s a name to die for. Do you have some photographs with you?” pick her up? You were being mean.” “It’s in the thingie,” Sequoia told him. “She’s like 45 pounds!” “What’d I tell you about that word? There’s no thingie in here.” “That’s impossible. You told me she’s 2 Jules Allen grew up in San Francisco, the son of cultured, working- years old!” class parents. “My father was a barber and worked in the post office, but Allen is always getting into it with his stu- he was a very well-read and aesthetically polished cat. He was very, very dents, always asking questions, whether finished. We had prints of Picasso and Degas on the wall, Duke Ellington, about their photographs or their lives, or, as is we subscribed to the New Yorker and GQ. I was the only black kid around often the case, both at once. “I’m always ask- with that stuff.” ing them, ‘Where you from, where’re your But Allen says he was still a street kid as a teenager, a little too easily parents from, where do you work, where’d tempted by trouble. Then one day he saw a picture of a striking-looking you get those boots,” says Allen, who once black man in Life magazine. “I asked my father who it was and he says, worked as a psychiatric social worker in a ‘That’s Gordon Parks, he’s a famous photographer.’ He had this shearling county jail in his native California. “I want to coat on with the collar turned up, the hair and that moustache. He was know who you are. Let’s get this going, let’s beautiful. Then my father take an interest in the world, pay attention, Allen paused to call over to showed me these photographs ask questions. When you learn to investigate another student. “Sequoia! Parks had done of Malcolm X. in here, it’s going to translate outside.” And my eyes lit up. I said at that Abbate said her daughter was almost 3. First of all, that’s a name to die very moment, ‘I’m gonna be a Then she headed off to the darkroom. Like for. Do you have some photographer.’ ” most of Allen’s students, her experience Someone Allen knew, an ama- didn’t go much beyond snapping pictures photographs with you?” teur photographer, told him with her iPhone before she enrolled in his about a public darkroom run by Photography 1 course, but she discovered a “It’s in the thingie,” Sequoia San Francisco’s parks and recre- new world in old-fashioned film photography. told him. ation department. “It was my “Half of them take it as an elective and saving grace — it opened a whole they get hooked,” Allen says. “It’s interesting “What’d I tell you about new world for me,” he says. “It that the majority want to study film, not digi- that word? There’s no thingie in gave me something to think tal. They fumble and stumble at first. They about other than being slick, don’t know what visual thinking is, and here.” trying to get something for noth- they’re afraid of the chemistry in the dark- ing.” Discovering Gordon Parks, room. Learning this visual competence along learning how to make pictures, “I learned that you could be creative and with the mechanical competence is that was okay. It didn’t just belong over there” — he motions as if to the overwhelming.” other side of the tracks. “We could have it too.” Allen has been teaching at Queensborough But Allen was still a kid, too unfocused to think about a career and for more than 30 years, full time since 1998. with a high school education he describes as “most poorly.” And then He’s always had a simple approach: Don’t try came the draft. Allen went to Vietnam in 1968, though he managed to to teach a student how to see but how to look. bring his camera with him and even found his way to a darkroom. “I was a “Visually, they don’t know what they’re look- resourceful cat,” he says. “I took a lot of photographs. But it was a horror. u Shoot ing at so when they show me a photograph I A horror. And when I got home my mother got rid of all of them. She said, ask them a lot of questions: What’s going on in ‘Baby, you’re home, you’re safe, it’s over, let it go. You don’t need to see any this photograph? Why did you take the photo- of that ever again.” graph? Who is this person? Who is he to you? The war did what war tends to do — beat the foolish youth out of him. What’s he looking at? I used to say this about “When I got home I bought a VW Beetle and drove around the U.S. raising my children: I didn’t lead them, I fol- because I had just been in the war and I wanted to see what this country lowed them and encouraged them and made sure wherever they were was. Then I went back home and I said, ‘I’m through with the streets. I’m going they were exploring their own sensibilities.” going to school.’ I settled down, started reading books.” Of course, as any teacher or parent knows, sometimes encouraging Allen enrolled at California State University in San Francisco and involves a little pushing. Out the door, in this case. For Allen, teaching started out as an English major. But photography still was inside him. photography to community college students means insisting they break “One day I wandered into the art building and I met Jack Welpott,” a out of their cocoons. prominent photographer who was at the center of San Francisco’s thriv- “They are required to go to the International Center of Photography, ing photography community, which included his mentor, Ansel Adams. they are required to go to the Museum of Modern Art. I tell them: ‘It is “He invited me to his house and there was a wall of art books, art was mandatory that you look at magazines and books, that you look at a news- everywhere — drawings, paintings, sculptures — and everything was cre- paper, that you see films, that you listen to music, that you eat, that you ative and personal. He made the furniture. And I’m like, ‘Bong!’ I said, cook. All of it goes in. The ones who take it seriously find a way to learn ‘You can live like this?’ ” photography.” Welpott and other luminaries of San Francisco’s thriving photography He pointed to a photograph by Angela Kaffetzakis, a second-year stu- community became mentors. “All those cats embraced me. They said, dent. “This is pretty amazing, just three semesters of photography. This is ‘This is a tough game for a black kid to be in, Jules, but you got a lot of tal- fine work and I celebrate it and I support it but I don’t let her off the hook. ent and we like you.’ ” Once you commit, that’s it, you’re in. I fight you to the bitter end. You can Allen switched his major to photography and earned a BFA. And then learn to do this. And then it’s not a matter of can you but will you. This is a a master’s in clinical psychology and counseling because he wanted to tough ballgame, photography, and it’s getting tougher. Talent is one thing learn about human behavior — and earn a living. He worked as a psychi- but character, integrity, discipline and focus — that changes the game. We atric social worker in the county jail for three years and was planning to have students go from here to SVA [School of Visual Arts], Pratt, get a Ph.D. when it occurred to him that what he really wanted to do was Purchase.” Please turn to next page

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HEADOFTHECLASS Learning to Look Before You Shoot Continued from previous page move to New York — and become a photographer. “New York had a rhythm, a pace,” Allen says, “and Harlem was like magic to me. I started meeting other photographers and they really helped me get going. Everyone got along around the image, but everyone was scrambling to make a living.” The first notice he got was a show of street photog- raphy at the Studio Museum in Harlem that was cov- ered by The New York Times and the Village Voice. In the 1980s, he took up boxing at Gleason’s, the legendary Manhattan boxing gym, but found fight training to be a window into the souls he found in and around the ring. He wound up doing more shooting than sparring, “and two years later I had a book” — or at least the makings of one. Double Up, Allen’s fourth book, was published in 2011, 30 years later. Overhearing the discussion, a student asked Allen, “When you do concepts and you focus mainly on blacks, do you feel like that kind of limits you?” “That’s a good question — you’re a smart man,” Allen replied. “But I think it actually expands me. Diane Arbus said the more spe- cific something is the more general it is.” “So by focusing on one group of people you’re shooting for the whole world?” the student said. “Bam!” Allen said. “In order to be whoever you are you have to be who everybody else is. Because every- body has a culture and the closer you are to your cul- ture the more you can give to the rest of the world.” BODYMOVES In the age of camera phones, selfies and underem- ployment, students often tell Allen that their parents think photography courses are a waste of time. “They 19 Choreographers at 10 Colleges don’t understand what their children are doing taking pictures,” he says. Allen freely acknowledges photography is a tough career to break into, especially photography that aspires to art. Years ago, he found himself confronted with that reality by students themselves. “They said, Dance, Dance, ‘We’re supposed to make a living doing what you do, this art? You’re supposed to be the teacher — teach us By Margaret Ramirez how to make a living. They wanted to learn commer- cial photography but I never did that at all. So I went ITH THE AUTUMN SUN dence, rehearsing and teaching at 10 colleges to the department, got some lights, some backdrops blazing through Hunter across The City University of New York. and in my studio I taught myself how to light and put a College’s north studio, The groundbreaking new residency program, portfolio together, started looking for work. And hip-hop choreographer known as the CUNY Dance Initiative, strikes a before I knew it, I was blowing up. I had all students as Jennifer Weber leads a unique cultural partnership by providing dance my assistants. We were doing advertising, magazine brash group of dance companies with free rehearsal space on a college shoots.” Wstudents in a master class that attempts to rein- campus, while allowing students and surrounding Allen had realized long before that he had the kind vent hip-hop. communities to interact with professional dancers of embracing personality that allowed him to blend As the beat thumps, the dancers follow at master classes, public lectures and open into the culture he was trying to portray and shoot Weber’s movements, learning an animated routine rehearsals. “from the inside out.” The same personality his stu- filled with swooping arms and complicated foot- In addition to the Decadancetheatre residency dents knew. It turned out to have a similar effect with work. Weber then splits the class into pairs, asking at Hunter College, some of the other dance compa- famous and powerful people. them to play off each other’s movements, in a style nies participating in the CUNY Dance Initiative “We went to do Colin Powell at the Waldorf,” Allen less like hip-hop and more reminiscent of ballet. include: Renegade Dance at Brooklyn College; Elisa recalls. “And he says, ‘What’s happening, man? How Weber, who is founder and artistic director of Monte Dance at City College; Chloe Arnold’s you doing, baby?’ He took all that Mr. Secretary of the hip-hop dance company Decadancetheatre, is Syncopated Ladies at John Jay College; Les Ballets State stuff off.” one of 19 acclaimed choreographers taking resi- Trockadero de Monte Carlo at Lehman College and

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Decadancetheatre master hip- hop class at Hunter College, led by co-choreographer Taeko Koji Dance! (left) leaping in the air

Dance to the People at the College of Staten Island. College for the upcoming December premiere of “A Hip never seen it as vulnerable in the way that she was Jeffrey Rosenstock, assistant vice president of Hop Nutcracker in Washington Heights.” teaching today.” external and governmental relations at Queens Feinman said several dance professors are inte- Weber said the most exciting thing about the ini- College, which is leading the Dance Initiative, said the grating the Dance Initiative into their curriculum tiative is not just the space, but also the relation- project gives dance companies an opportunity to through lectures and also by requiring students to ships to be forged while the dance companies are on explore the diverse neighborhoods where CUNY’s col- attend master classes and rehearsals. campus. leges are located. “There’s a feeling of intensity that you get from “It’s so important as an artist to have a home to “This is a chance for these dance companies to see questioning and observing these choreographers and create work,” Weber said. “And that is the best thing how their work fits on an audience that might not be dancers,” Feinman said. “It’s something you can’t about this Dance Initiative. This is now going to be their regular audience,” Rosenstock said. “So I think teach.” the home for the next piece that we are creating. And CUNY really has another opportunity … to impact the Malaika Holder, a Hunter dance major who attend- now that we’ve had this class, it’s more than just an cultural life of our city.” ed the Decadancetheatre master class, said she was empty rehearsal room, it’s a space that we feel con- Jana Feinman, director of Hunter’s dance program, impressed by how much she learned from choreogra- nected to. said the initiative provides dance students with a phers Weber and another Decadancetheatre member, “Now we’ve already started this relationship and unique opportunity to observe a working artist in the Taeko Koji. we have this history already in this space from today,” midst of creating an original performance work. Weber, “It was refreshing how they broke stereotypes of she said. “So, there is a certain energy that we will for example, will be holding rehearsals at Hunter hip-hop,” Holder said. “It’s known to be rough. But I’ve then bring through to our work.”

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COVERSTORY On the Path To College Success New Help That Really Works By Neill S. Rosenfeld

EWLY ARRIVED in the United States and work- ing in a restaurant, Qiong Zhou wondered: “Is this job I will have all my life? Wash tablecloths and cleaning table, clean up cups and the plates?” NShe had left China in 2010 with a shaky grasp of English but a firm hold on her dreams. “My family preferred for me to work rather than study, but I was very determined to continue my education,” Zhou recalls. And in two years Zhou had completed an associate degree at Bronx Community College and started a bachelor’s in nutrition at Brooklyn College. She credits her achievement to the University’s Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP), an initiative started in 2007 to help community college students earn their degrees and do so faster than is usual. Community colleges nationwide have dismally low gradua- tion rates, and many of the students who stick with it take years to earn their degrees. But Zhou is one of the ASAP program’s many success stories: Like 57 percent of the students who start- ed ASAP with her in 2011, she earned her associate degree with- in the program’s three-year target. That’s more than twice the three-year graduation rate of a comparison group of non-ASAP CUNY students. Please turn to Page 30

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. . . it’s CUNY’s ASAP that stands out for being both academically successful and cost-effective.

At Borough of Manhattan Community College, ASAP student Joel Bascombe with tutor Rashema Floyd

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COVERSTORY On the Path to College Success New Help That Really Works

Continued from Page 28 state’s 112 community colleges improve remediation. At last count, Zhou was hardly alone in beating the goal by a year. A third of 195 colleges and universities, including LaGuardia Community the 2011 ASAP freshmen earned their degrees in just two years, College, have adopted a program developed by a Maryland commu- nearly four times the rate of comparable students who didn’t join nity college English professor that mainstreams underprepared the program. students in regular classes while providing additional class time to ASAP’s success has been noticed far beyond New York City. Its remedy weaknesses. And with the help of an influential advocacy results are unmatched by any of the other initiatives launched by group, Complete College America, five states have launched cam- American community colleges and university systems, and it has paigns similar to one in Hawaii that encourages students to earn 15 put the University in the forefront of a national reform movement. credits a semester to earn associate degrees in four semesters and Ohio education officials announced at a recent White House con- bachelor’s degrees in eight. ference that their state is replicating ASAP on three campuses. But it’s CUNY’s ASAP that stands out for being both academi- Colleges as far away as Hawaii have imported the cally successful and cost-effective. The program, which approach, and many more have shown interest in adapt- accepts both college-ready students and those needing up ing the model. to two remedial courses, costs the University $3,900 a While ASAP aims to keep students on track for timely year per student above usual community college alloca- graduation, it also has gained attention for a remedial tions, but that’s a money-saving investment. ASAP’s suc- program, CUNY Start. More than half of America’s com- cess at keeping students on track means it actually costs munity college students need remedial courses before $6,500 less per three-year graduate than for those taking they can tackle college-level work. The University pro- the typical community college route, according to a study vides remediation at its community colleges; in 2012, by Henry Levin of the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies in fully 82 percent of entering students needed remedia- Education at ’s Teachers College. ASAP starts with tuition-free summer developmental tion. Qiong Zhou credits Most of America’s remedial students never complete ASAP with helping courses, group workshops and opportunities to meet the traditional sequence of courses and drop out. Many her complete her with an adviser. All students participate in a mandatory spend a good deal of their state and federal tuition aid associate degree Summer Institute that builds community between stu- taking and retaking these noncredit courses, leaving less at Brooklyn dents and staff, orients students to program expectations, aid for courses that lead to degrees. It’s part of the reason Community College. and informs them about campus resources. Based on many give up and quit school. research-based practices that have been shown to CUNY Start students tell a different story. Between Fall 2009 improve student outcomes, ASAP requires full-time study in select and Spring 2014, some 3,300 students took the full-time, one- majors, which will expand within two years to include more in sci- semester program (there’s also a part-time version); all had failed at ence, technology, engineering and math. ASAP also offers a consoli- least two of the University’s assessment tests and more than two- dated course schedule, which encourages rapport between students thirds had failed all three. Thanks to CUNY Start, about half tested and helps them balance job and family responsibilities. And it pro- proficient in reading, writing and math; another third passed two vides close, hands-on monitoring by advisers — “intrusive advis- tests; and 82 percent enrolled in a University degree program the ing,” as it’s called — along with career development services and following semester. (More details below.) tutoring. The success of ASAP and CUNY Start has led to significant To measure ASAP’s effectiveness, the University contracted with expansion of both initiatives. ASAP’s enrollment of 4,300 students MDRC, an independent education and social policy research organ- this academic year is four times what it was three years ago, and ization, to conduct a five-year study of 900 students at three col- Mayor Bill de Blasio awarded the University an additional $35 mil- leges. It was a random-assignment study, the gold standard in lion to expand the program to 13,000 over the next three years. research but a rarity in education studies. Two years in, MDRC CUNY Start, meanwhile, has more than tripled its reach since 2011, found that ASAP students earned substantially more credits per to an anticipated 3,800 students this year. semester and had higher graduation rates than similar students The University’s innovations are crucial to President Obama’s who followed the conventional route. The University’s internal push for more students to graduate from community colleges. analysis of the program demonstrated that across ASAP’s first five Other countries “are working every day to out-educate and out- cohorts, 52 percent of participants earned degrees within the three- compete us,” the president has said, and community colleges, which year goal, compared with the 22 percent rate for similar non-ASAP enroll more than 7 million students, or 45 percent of all U.S. under- students. graduates, are a key to America’s economic future. MDRC researchers said that ASAP’s increases were “larger than To achieve President Obama’s goal, community colleges need to the effects of any other community college program that has been overcome what reformers call “the leaking pipeline” of remedia- studied to date using a large-scale, rigorous experimental design.” tion: Each year, 1.7 million unprepared students enter U.S. colleges, These findings indicate that ASAP is the kind of “comprehensive, and most quit at some point in the traditional sequence of remedial extended intervention” that may be necessary for substantial math, writing and reading courses. Failing to turn struggling stu- improvement in community college graduation rates. dents into job-ready graduates costs students and taxpayers an esti- Qiong Zhou’s success illustrates what makes the program work. mated $7 billion a year. She came to the United States at age 20 with her mother and With such high stakes, colleges, university systems and some younger brother. Her father had been in New York for a decade, states are trying to raise their three-year community college gradu- working six and seven days a week to pay off the Chinese smugglers ation rates with initiatives aimed both at improving remedial edu- who had gotten him into the country. When he got a green card, cation and encouraging matriculated students to stay focused so making him a legal resident, he sent for his family, but getting clear- they earn degrees in reasonable time. ance from Chinese and U.S. authorities took years more. In California, a faculty-driven program helps instructors at the Please turn to Page 32

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ASAP provides close, hands-on monitoring by advisers —“intrusive advising.”

Johnny Lopez Castillio takes part in ASAP at Queensborough Community College. SaluteWinter15_Salute Magazine 1/28/15 1:25 PM Page 32

COVERSTORY On the Path to College Success New Help That Really Works

Continued from Page 30 Soon after arriving in New York, Zhou concentrated on improv- ing her English. She completed a GED high school equivalency course and a city Department of Education college-transition pro- Slaying the Math Dragon gram. Still, she says, “My reading was so-so, and I had no confidence.” T’S NOT OFTEN that a presenta- fering statistics for students who College would have been out of reach without ASAP’s financial tion about math at an education don’t intend to pursue degrees re- incentives, Zhou says. They included a free monthly MetroCard Iconference draws a standing- quiring advanced math. It’s an idea that enabled her to travel to Bronx Community College, cost-free room-only audience, several rounds not without controversy — reform- use of textbooks and a waiver of the difference between tuition and of loud applause and comments af- ers say statistics is more practical the amount of her federal and state financial aid. terward of the “Thank you for doing while traditionalists consider it a “I thought it would take four years [to earn an associate degree] this important work” variety. lowering of standards — but in because of bad English, bad writing,” Zhou recalls. “But ASAP pre- But that’s what happened when 2013 Logue and Watanabe-Rose set pared me for college, and I tried my best.” CUNY faculty scholars Alexandra out to see how much difference it She says her English 10 class, a six-hour-a-week course incorpo- Logue and Mari Watanabe-Rose pre- makes, especially in combination rating remedial and credit-bearing work, prepared her for the sented the findings of their research with another growing approach in University’s assessment test, which students must pass to take col- aimed at helping improve college remediation: building extra help into lege-credit courses. But most important, she says, was Melanie graduation rates by breaking down courses. Robles, her ASAP adviser at Bronx Community. “I always spoke to one of the key barriers for many stu- Logue especially wanted to test her, and she always say, ‘Come on, you can do it!’ which for me is a dents: Doing the math. the idea with the rigor of a con- lot,” Zhou says. She adds, smiling, “My husband says that, but he Nationally, about 60 percent of trolled laboratory study, something loves me.” new college freshmen need remedial rarely done in education research Robles says, “We walk students through their whole first year, courses, and math accounts for because it’s difficult and time con- and it’s intense. A lot of what we do is coaching them through the most — algebra, to be specific, and suming to get enough consenting things that are going on in their lives.” Zhou talked “not only about what happens next might be the ul- participants for a statistically valid her classes, but also about her relationships and things she might be timate math problem. “The percent- sampling. The size of CUNY helped thinking and feeling. She passed all her classes with A’s, maybe one age of remedial students who finish get over that hurdle. Last fall, B … She was willing to take risks in communications. Immigrants the courses is dismal,” says Logue, Logue and Watanabe-Rose began a sometimes hold back in the classroom because of how they sound; who recently left her position as study involving 721 incoming fresh- she wasn’t like that.” CUNY’s executive vice chancellor men at three CUNY community col- Zhou earned her associate degree in January and wore cap and and provost to do research. “They leges: Borough of Manhattan, gown at the graduation ceremony in May to the cheers of her family. don’t pass the courses, they don’t LaGuardia and Hostos. They were She’s looking forward to the next step, earning her nutrition degree take the whole sequence. . . . It’s randomly assigned to one of three at Brooklyn College, and then a career improving the diets of clear that the whole approach to re- groups, and these were the results: Chinese immigrants, particularly women, infants and seniors. “I mediation is one of the biggest • Traditional remedial algebra want to tell them how to give good nutrition to themselves and their blocks to students getting their col- class: 39 percent passed. children,” she says. lege degrees.” • Remedial algebra plus a weekly Efforts Across the Country Some community colleges workshop: 45 percent passed. around the country have started of- • College-level, introductory statis- During a White House conference on Aug. 13, Cecilia Muñoz, director of President Obama’s Domestic Policy Council, announced in a blogpost that the Great Lakes Higher Education Guaranty Should a student’s prospects for earning a college d Corporation, a nonprofit student loan servicer, was committing $5 million to an experiment: A partnership with MDRC, the Ohio success initiatives, to speak about ASAP at several of its national Board of Regents and CUNY “to replicate CUNY’s successful and state conferences, and audiences were intrigued. Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) to support as Meanwhile, the University hosted an ASAP “Design Studio” last many as 2,000 community college students in Ohio to help more spring that attracted 19 colleges, 10 states and several research students graduate sooner.” organizations. Groups also visited ASAP programs at five CUNY It will be the largest replication attempt, but just the most campuses. This may lead to further replication. recent example of the interest ASAP has drawn from higher educa- Linderman and other reformers were invited to speak at a con- tion officials and reform advocates. Much of the attention stems ference hosted by the Hawaii Graduation Initiative, a program from the program’s showcasing by Complete College America, an launched by the University of Hawaii in 2010 to help 25 percent organization funded by education philanthropy heavyweights more students graduate in five years. After hearing Linderman’s including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Lumina presentation on ASAP, Hawaii educators traveled to New York to Foundation. see it firsthand. They liked what they saw, and so far two of Hawaii’s Complete College America was established in 2009 to help close community colleges have adapted the ASAP approach. the success gap in American higher education. “We’ve made “We’re taking the best practices that show success and are doing progress in giving students from all backgrounds access to college,” a lot of professional development for our faculty as they customize the organization says, “but we haven’t finished the all-important job what they’re learning to fit their course or campus,” says Suzette of helping them achieve a degree.” Complete College America invit- Robinson, director of academic programs for Hawaii’s community ed Donna Linderman, the University’s associate dean for student colleges.

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With College-Level Statistics

Lexa Logue and Mari Watanabe (right and left, seated) and the student workshop leaders engaged in a study on teaching statistics for remedial math. tics plus a weekly workshop: 56 percent Community College Research Center, at dial math is for so many students. For and discouragement. “What I learned passed Columbia University’s Teachers College, educators, it might come down to a from many years as an experimental Logue first presented the findings told Inside Higher Education. simple question — one as moral as it psychologist is that it’s harder to be at this year’s National Conference on Bruce Vandal, the vice president of is practical: Should a student’s motivated for goals that are delayed,” Acceleration in Developmental Educa- Complete College America, a nonprofit prospects for earning a college degree Logue says. “So it’s hard for students tion, and they were so well-received advocacy organization, said the study — and the lifelong benefits associated to stay motivated when they think that experts and advocates in the re- supports an ongoing national movement with it — depend on passing one alge- they’re starting college but instead mediation reform movement have been to reduce the number of students in bra course? they have to take what are basically talking about it ever since. The buzz noncredit remedial courses. “This is just Logue says the conventional ap- high school courses for no credit, and has led to more presentations and cov- going to add more fuel to it,” he said. proach to remediation doesn’t take they have to use up their financial aid erage in education media. The CUNY study may be the biggest into account the often devastating to pay for them.” “This is huge,” a researcher at the answer yet to the sinkhole that reme- psychological effects of stigmatization — Richrd Firstman degree — and the lifelong benefits associated with it — depend on passing one algebra course?

Windward Community College, for example, started with a pro- semester. Meanwhile, enrollment in developmental courses fell gram for all full-time freshmen with developmental needs that because fewer students needed them. Besides a fresh instructional includes an “intro to college” class and “early warning” from instruc- approach, Lawrence says, success came from “relationship-building, tors at specified checkpoints in the first half of the term. The college the support students received and the community they built among also has started two grant-funded projects with intrusive advising for themselves to support each other.” underrepresented Native Hawaiians. Much of the thinking behind efforts to boost graduation rates and Leeward Community College tried an ASAP-based pilot program the pace of students’ progress comes from research showing that last year at a satellite campus called G2FO (Going to Finish Ontime). many students don’t recover from the adverse psychological effects of Results were so encouraging that the college secured a five-year grant early struggles. “We think that a few unsuccessful attempts at [reme- to expand it to its main campus. Aimed at students who commit to dial] writing or reading or math are all it takes to convince them that full-time study so they can graduate in two to three years, G2FO fea- they are not college material,” says Peter Adams, an English professor tures a consolidated course schedule, structured course pathways, a at the Community College of Baltimore County in Maryland. common seminar course, free textbooks and $500 scholarships at Over the course of two decades Adams has developed an credit milestones. approach, called the Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) that mixes “ASAP was our model and we tried to replicate it as much as we remedial and college-ready students in a “gatekeeper” introductory could,” says Leeward’s interim dean of student services, Laurie college-level English course. After each class, teachers spend more Lawrence. The early results are promising. G2FO students took twice time with the ALP students, shoring up their weaknesses. A 2010 as many college-level credits in Spring 2014 as they did the previous Please turn to next page

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COVERSTORY On the Path to College Success New Help That Really Works

Continued from previous page At LaGuardia Community College, for example, 10 remedial analysis found that nearly twice as many ALP participants as tradi- English students are in a class with 12 proficient students. They tional remediation students completed the gatekeeper course. This meet together for four hours a week and the remedial students work has led 195 community colleges and universities so far to adopt the three more hours with the same instructor to perfect skills needed ALP method. to pass the University’s proficiency test. If they pass, they earn three Over the first five years of ASAP, 52% of participants earned degrees, compared with the 2

Students in ASAP at Hostos Community College

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credits. The success rate at LaGuardia has been comparable to Math Innovation and CUNY Start Baltimore’s. CUNY, meanwhile, is pioneering an approach for improving reme- “I think this should be the default way we teach basic writing at dial math that uses mainstreaming and workshops; it substitutes a LaGuardia,” says English professor Heidi L. Johnsen, who directed statistics course for traditional remedial algebra. A recent study led by LaGuardia’s program for three years. Alexandra Logue, the University’s former executive vice chancellor and university provost, compared the pass rates of math stu- dents in a traditional remedial algebra class with those who 22% rate for students who were not in ASAP. took a credit-bearing introductory statistics course plus a weekly workshop. The statistics students had a pass rate nearly 50 percent higher. The math experiment is the latest University initiative to excite advocates of remediation reform, following the suc- cess of CUNY Start in improving student performance in remedial courses: Once matriculated, CUNY Start students take and earn more credits, earn higher GPAs and are retained at higher rates than similar students. The program has a strong commitment to teacher train- ing and instructional practices and curricula that build the skills, concepts and strategies students will need for college- level work. Adult literacy and education experts developed the program and serve as professional development coordi- nators for the participating colleges. Professional develop- ment is critical, and instructors take on their on classroom or advising caseload only after a semester of close training under a lead teacher or adviser. CUNY Start is offered at six of the seven community col- leges and at two senior colleges. It has full-time and part-time versions. The full-time program runs 25 hours a week with instruction in reading, writing and math, the subjects of the three University assessment tests, along with a college success seminar. The part-time program addresses either reading/writing (taught as one subject) or math for 12 hours a week. The cost to students is just $75. Classroom instruction is student-centered and highly interactive, with teachers encouraging “student talk over teacher talk” and advisers supporting development of effec- tive communication, self-advocacy skills, time management and study habits. After 12 weeks of core instruction by the specially trained CUNY Start teachers and support from the program’s advis- ers, students retake any required assessment tests in read- ing and writing or a common math department final exam. Three to six weeks of additional instruction are available if needed, followed by retesting. There’s also individualized advisement to help students complete the program and matriculate in a University degree program. For students like Rosa Rios, CUNY Start has made all the difference. For most of her 42 years, she was challenged by an eighth-grade education, pressing family needs and weak training that led to unsatisfying jobs. “I fell through the cracks,” she says. When her mother developed Alzheimer’s disease, Rios cared for her until she died four years ago. With a lot of hard work and support, Rios used CUNY Start to bring herself up to college level in reading, writing and math. “The student-faculty relationship is real quality and great. They prepared us for college,” she says. She became such a good writer that she won second place in a campus competition. Now maintaining a 3.0 GPA at Queensborough Community College, she aims for a career as a registered nurse. When she encounters struggling students, “I tell them, ‘Go with CUNY Start and work your way up.’” WINTER 2015 35 SaluteWinter15_Salute Magazine 1/28/15 1:25 PM Page 36

HISTORYLESSON

By Lenina Mortimer

HENEVER HE CAN, Stanley Greff starts his shift as a public safety offi- cer at Kingsborough Community College by raising an American flag. “This is how I do my part to honor the flag, freedom and the people Wtrained here who made the ultimate sacrifice for this coun- try,” says Greff, who is a retired gunnery sergeant of the United States Marine Corps. At the onset of America’s entry into World War ll, KCC was the site of the largest U.S. Maritime Service Training Station in the country. The $8.5 million facility in Sheepshead Bay trained 500,000 merchant mariners to man merchant vessels called Liberty ships. And, while the government decommissioned the station in 1954, traces of the World War II military installation remain. A memorial plaque, a naval gun and a flagpole are some of the reminders. The large bronze plaque displayed outside of the Central Services building lists names of mariners who trained at the base who died on duty. In the dis- tance, a Where Merchant deck gun used on Liberty ships to sink enemy vessels flanks the flagpole that once stood in the 1939 World’s Fair in Queens. The campus’s military history is a point of pride for many at KCC, which is why Greff and other former service- men continue the tradition of raising the flag — seven days Marines a week between 6 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. The merchant mariners served to support the U.S. Navy and were called upon to deliver military personnel and materials. The Liberty ships carried battle equipment such as explosives, army tanks and fuel. However, wartime car- goes were not limited to war materiel. They included food, Trained clothing, medicine, hospital supplies and construction material. “To send all that equipment to the Allied Forces we had to expand the merchant marines and build Liberty ships,” explains professor Anthony DiLernia, who is the director of the Maritime Technology program at KCC and a licensed captain in the U.S. merchant marines. “They were for considered ugly ducklings. They were not very fast or maneuverable but they were easy to build,” says DiLernia. The Liberty ships were 441 feet long, 57 feet wide, carried 10,500 tons of deadweight, and reached a top speed of 11 knots. The merchant mariners were not part of the military, World War but they were targeted during the war. There were two areas where the ships would get torpedoed, says DiLernia. DiLernia, referring to Germany’s effort to disrupt the flow German submarines would sit right outside of the of supplies that supported the Allied Forces on the Russian Verrazano Narrows at the entrance of the New York front. Harbor. “If you were on the outside of the convoy you were going If the ships made it to Europe they would have to travel to get sunk, but we threw more ships at them than they through the Murmansk Run. German U-boats would just could sink,” says DiLernia. American shipyards built 2,751 sit in a line and blow up Liberty ships left and right,” says Liberty ships during World War II, according to the U.S.

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Anthony DiLernia, director of the Maritime Technology program at Kingsborough Community College, leans against a naval gun, left on campus from when the site was the largest U.S. Maritime Service training station in the country during World War II.

r II

Department of Transportation, and because of the founded in 1963 — maritime training and the tradi- simplicity of design they were built very quickly. The tion of service live on through the Maritime fastest ship to be built on record took three days to Technology program. The program focuses on operat- complete. ing small boats like tugboats, ferries and pleasure Though the merchant marine base is gone — the boats. Students receive technical training in courses city purchased it from the federal government for one like oceanography, navigation, sailing, vessel repair dollar in 1954, and Kingsborough took it when it was and firefighting.

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FIELDSTUDY

FOR YORK COLLEGE assistant nursing professor Margarett which is funded by the Office of the University Dean for Health Alexandre, sometimes humanitarian aid can do more harm than and Human Services, students assist doctors and nurse practi- good: To create lasting change, volunteer missions need to be tioners by taking vital signs and doing intake assessments. “They about helping others help themselves. do patient-teaching once the physician orders medication,” she Five years after the earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince, says. “There are many cases of hypertension, so students do pre- Haiti, Alexandre is most concerned about what will happen to the sentations on food choices and food additives, like salt. We were Haitian people after the aid is gone. “We cannot be helicopter sav- helping people understand that it’s a lifelong illness and medica- iors. We have to ask ourselves, ‘Whatever I’m doing? How is that tion must be taken continuously.” going to be sustained once I leave?’” says Alexandre, a Haitian- It is Alexandre’s hope that this program will inspire students to American, who directs York’s two-week volunteer program in help others abroad and at home. “I want to share with the students Carries, Haiti. what my world is about,” she says. “No matter the obstacles, you Alexandre travels with a group of nursing students and faculty can always try to do better for yourself and the next person. You to teach in health care workshops and provide care at the Mission can be an advocate for change, not only in your own backyard but of Grace medical clinic and orphanage. During the program, globally. And it doesn’t take much to make a difference.”

Students teaching schoolchildren body parts in English at the Grace Community School in Carries, Haiti 38 WINTER 2015 SaluteWinter15_Salute Magazine 1/28/15 1:26 PM Page 39

Playtime with one of the boys, building cars with Lego parts, at the Children of Grace Orphanage

Helping out in the clinic pharmacy, Grace Community Medical Clinic (left). Students and faculty visit Health Center of Grand-Bois (above) in L’Artibonite, Haiti. WINTER 2015 39 SaluteWinter15_Salute Magazine 1/28/15 1:26 PM Page 40

PAGETURNERS

HIDDEN NEW YORK ON FOOT By Margaret Ramirez

ALKING the streets of New York with William data on the city’s five boroughs, Helmreich decided to walk the Helmreich is a trip into the hidden soul of this entire city, block by block. chaotic and often misunderstood city. On a By the end of four years, the City College sociology professor had recent tour in East Harlem, he shared a histo- walked a grand total of 6,048 miles, an average of 1,512 miles a year, ry lesson on the Robert F. Wagner housing 126 miles a month or 120,960 city blocks. He wore out nine pairs of development. He unraveled mini mysteries shoes and chronicled his urban adventure in the 449-page book, Wpainted into an immense mural. And his knock on The New York Nobody Knows. a basement door unlocked a heartwarming secret. “New York is a complex city that needs to be explored in Outside a brick building on East 124th Street, order to be fully appreciated. And you can’t do it unless you go Helmreich spotted a dingy, narrow staircase lead- out and walk it,” Helmreich said. “You could take me to any ing underground and walked down. Upon reach- street and I could find something that will interest you.” ing the door, he knocked and was greeted by a Since its release, the book has become wildly popular, earn- man’s stern face and the wafting aroma of roasted ing rave reviews for its rich storytelling, scholarly observations turkey. and laugh-out-loud vignettes. Helmreich himself has also “Isn’t it true that you cook meals in this place achieved personal fame, fielding hundreds of requests for inter- for all the homeless in the whole city?” Helmreich views and walking tours from journalists around the world. His asked in a mock accusatory tone. most recent fan mail came from Roman Catholic Archbishop of The stern face soon melted into a toothy smile. New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan. “Well, not the whole city,” he said coyly. “Come in and take a After walking a few blocks with Helmreich, it becomes clear how look.” he was able to get so many New Yorkers to open up. The silver- The little known basement kitchen used by the Coalition for the haired professor is charming and charismatic, and speaks to Homeless is just one of the many intriguing places discovered on strangers as if he’s known them forever. his remarkable tour of New York. Drawn by the lack of sociological In rougher neighborhoods, he steps with a bit more swagger but

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The COURAGE of SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

N HER NEW BOOK, Shirley Chisholm: Catalyst for Change, Brooklyn College education professor Barbara Winslow traces Chisholm’s life from her upbringing in Barbados and Brooklyn to her historic election as the first black woman elected to Congress and ends with her iconic I1972 presidential campaign. What led you to write about Shirley Chisholm? To be very honest I hadn’t thought much about Mrs. Chisholm until I became a professor at Brooklyn College. And I realized that she was a graduate of the college, and that she had been unrecog- nized. I was trying to develop ideas for proj- ects, and I wanted to do something about women’s activism because that’s my field. So I went to my colleagues in the Women and Gender Studies program and suggested we name this new research center after her. Can you imagine my surprise when half our faculty didn’t even know who she was? That’s the fac- ulty under the age of 40 because Mrs. Chisholm was out of the political and personal spotlight for so long. So creating the Shirley Chisholm Project of Brooklyn Women’s Activism has become a real mission of mine. And because I was so immersed in every aspect of her life, writing this biography was not only a labor of great love, but also a natural extension of all the work I’ve been doing.

Chisholm decided to run for president in 1972. From your research, was she trying to make a statement or did she think she could win? I just want to remind everyone how courageous this was. The Voting Rights Act had just passed in 1965. So the Voting Rights Act William Helmreich and his block-eating stride that took him down every street in New York City. was seven years old. And when Chisholm campaigned in the South, for example, African-Americans had never seen an African- American campaigning for the vote. She writes about how so many elderly African-Americans came up to her crying, and saying they never thought they would live to see the day. I don’t believe she retains the same laid-back attitude that puts people at ease. While he thought she could get elected or get the nomination. But she did was walking on the grounds of the Wagner housing development, believe that she was the most qualified … to fight for a progressive some residents stared curiously at Helmreich, an obvious outsider in social agenda for the Democratic Party. their midst. He nodded a silent hello and they nodded back. “Do I fit in?” he asked. “No, of course not! But so what? It’s a free What can young people learn from your book? country,” he said with a smile. I hope the book gets into high schools and colleges. Many of my Helmreich said his theme throughout the book was to explain how students at Brooklyn College, when they see the city has changed since 1975. On his walking journey, Helmreich Shola Lynch’s documentary and read interviewed scores of residents on the impact of immigration and gen- parts of my book, can identify with trification. He said listening to firsthand accounts of displacement Mrs. Chisholm. She could be their proved valuable in understanding the city’s dramatic transformation. great-aunt or their grandmother’s “When it comes to displacement, there are so many different rea- best friend. She is such a familiar sons that people are leaving neighborhoods, and you just can’t see person in the borough of them on a statistical grid,” he said. Brooklyn. My thesis is basically: Despite the extraordinary diversity of the city, Helmreich said he Chisholm’s life exemplifies urban found that New York is still one of the most segregated cities in the America, post-World War II. That nation, where groups often live beside one another in the same is, it talks about the immigrant expe- neighborhood and never speak. His hope is that the book inspires rience, the working-class experience, more New Yorkers to walk their own blocks. and the black struggle. … So her life is a win- “New York is made up of such diverse different communities. dow into a certain period in U.S. history. Walking it is like visiting hundreds of small towns. So I hope the book — Margaret Ramirez gets more people to rediscover their own neighborhoods,” he said. “The city is the world’s greatest outdoor museum. It awaits you.” For the complete interview, go to: www.cuny.edu/chisholm

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BOOKSAT-A-GLANCE

Here is a collection of new books written by CUNY authors:

The Color Bind: Talking (and Not Talking) and poems of war convey the rippling effects of violence and About Race at Work dislocation, of love and its aftermath. We see traces of mythol- Hunter College associate professor of psychology ogy, ritual, and other languages. Tamara R. Buckley and New York University associate professor of public and nonprofit The Modern Art Cookbook management Erica Gabrielle Foldy Graduate Center Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature, English and French Russell Sage Foundation Mary Ann Caws Workplace experts Foldy and Buckley investigate diversity in office settings, looking at how both the “color blind” Reaktion Books approach, which emphasizes similarity and assimilation and Food has always played a role in art, but how understanding people as individuals rather than members of well, and what did the artists themselves eat? racial or cultural groups, and what they call “color Exploring a panoply of artworks of food, cooking and eating cognizance” have effects on the ways co-workers think and from Europe and the Americas, Caws opens a window into interact with each other. Based on an intensive two-and-a- the lives of artists, writers and poets in the kitchen and the half-year study of employees at a child welfare agency, the studio, from the end of the 19th century to the present. She authors show how color cognizance — the practice of recog- examines the parallels between the art of cuisine and the nizing the profound impact of race and ethnicity on life visual arts and literature, using artworks, diaries, novels, experiences while affirming the importance of racial diversi- letters and poems to illuminate the significance of particular ty — can help workers move beyond silence on the issue of ingredients and dishes in the lives of the world’s greatest race toward more inclusive workplace practices. artists. In between, she supplies numerous recipes from these artists — including Ezra Pound’s poetic eggs, Cézanne’s The Double Life of Paul de Man baked tomatoes and Monet’s madeleines — alongside 100 Graduate Center and College of Staten Island professor color illustrations and thought-provoking selections from emerita of English Evelyn Barish both poetry and prose. Liveright Breathless: An American Girl in Paris Given the tremendous influence of the charis- Graduate Center Distinguished Professor of matic literary critic Paul de Man, shock waves Comparative Literature, English and French resulted when it was discovered, five years after his death, that he had written for collaborationist Nancy K. Miller newspapers in Belgium during World War II. After the war, Seal Press he abandoned his family and fled to New York, penniless, but The story of a girl who rebelled against con- quickly rose again. Relying on years of original archival work ventional expectations for marriage, children and interviews with more than 200 of de Man’s circle of and suburban life, Breathless offers a glimpse into the inti- friends and family, Barish explores de Man’s personal story mate lives of girls before feminism took hold. Paris was a and his meteoric rise through American academia. magnet for those eager to resist domesticity, and Miller was enamored of everything French. Upon graduating from Romantic Intimacy in 1961, she set out for Paris with a plan to Baruch associate professor of English Nancy Yousef take classes at the Sorbonne and live out a great romantic Stanford University Press life inspired by the movies. But after a string of sexual mis- How much can we know about what other adventures, she gave up her short-lived freedom and mar- people are feeling and how much can we sym- ried an American expatriate who promised her a future of pathize or empathize with them? The term three-star meals and five-star hotels — and who turned out “intimacy,” which has always referred both to to be a con man. the inmost and personal, and to relationships of exceptional closeness, captures a tension between a confidence in the More Than Two to Tango possibility of shared experience and a competing belief that Queens College associate professor of public health thoughts and feelings are irreducibly private. This book is an Anahí Viladrich interdisciplinary study of shared feeling as imagined in 18th- University of Arizona Press century ethics, romantic literature and 20th-century psy- This book offers a detailed portrait of choanalysis. Argentine immigrants for whom tango is both an art form and a means of survival. It also Birthplace with Buried Stones addresses broader questions on the understudied role of Hunter College Distinguished Professor of English informal networks in the entertainment field. Through the Meena Alexander voices of both early generations of immigrants and the latest Tri-Quarterly wave of newcomers, Viladrich reveals a diverse community With their intense lyricism, Alexander’s poems navigating issues of identity, class and race as it struggles with convey the fragmented experience of the trav- practical concerns, such as the high cost of living in New York eler for whom home is both nowhere and City and affordable health care. She also considers Argentina’s everywhere. These poems range widely over time and place, social history in exploring the immigrant’s unified front to from Alexander’s native India to New York City. Poems of love keep tango as their own “authentic” expression.

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CROSSWORDPUZZLE It’s an Honor 123 45678 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

By Miriam Smith 16 17 18 19 20 and Ronald E. Roel Across 21 22 23 24 25 1. Dean of Macaulay: Ann _____ 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 9. British test of secondary subject 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 14. Short punch 16. “_____ to Joy” 17. Scrutinized 42 43 44 18. Between hi-fi and no-fi 21. Painter’s medium 45 46 47 48 49 22. Nat. Park Service, Abbr. 23. Macaulay is housed in a _____ building. 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 25. Overhead railway 26. Colorful common carp 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 27. Asian holiday 28. Arafat’s grp. 64 65 66 67 68 69 30. Scottish one 31. Annie Hall: “La-de-__” 32. Bank offering, for short 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 33. Moo goo _____ pan 35. Chipped stone of the 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 late Tertiary Period 38. Greece, Abbr. 39. Book parts, Abbr. 84 85 86 87 88 41. Silver symbol 42. More than 60% of 89 90 91 92 93 94 Macaulay students are from families of _____. 43. Humane org. 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 45. Hugs, symbolically 46. Romeo or Juliet 103 104 105 47. Funky centric start 49. Int. base on balls 106 107 108 109 110 111 50. ___ and outs 52. Pen name of George William Russell. 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 53. “Borstal Boy” author 55. Coll. in Troy, N.Y. 122 123 124 125 126 127 57. Vegas opener 58. Small counter with a sink 128 129 130 131 132 61. Sot’s gp. 62. Clique 133 134 135 64. Well-liked 66. David _____, (Intel Science Prize First Place Winner, 2005) graduated 108. Boob ending, minor Down 44. Students may receive 19% of applicants. 101. Chatterboxes from Macaulay in 2009 and mistake $7500 to study _____. 91. William Macaulay’s gift 102. Macaulay students 1. More eccentric ______went on to become a 109. Train, Abbr. 2. Prefix with -syncratic 48. Stylish was million dollars, receive full Rhodes Scholar. 110. Colored wax for 3. Creeds 50. 007 creator Fleming the largest single donation scholarships. 68. Philanthropist William drawing 51. _____ Cummings in the history of CUNY. 105. _____ and behold 4. 1/100th of a peseta ______was a 1966 111. Senseless follower 5. Alumnus Anthony 52. One way to be taken 92. David H. , former 107. A.A.R.P. members Honors graduate of City of illo Volodkin, 2007, founded 53. “Pow!” C.I.A. director, teaches pub- 114. Eyebrow shape College. 112. Country club figure The _____ Machine, an 54. Collections lic policy at Macaulay. 116. Small Georgia city 70. Willingly 113. Sixth note 56. Small slate-green lentil 94. Abominable Snowman 119. Opening run MP3 blog aggregator. _____ 73. “i” lid 115. Symbol for technetium 6. Kitty 57. Women’s 96. ET carrier 121. Orange soda 75. Didn’t dillydally 117. “Wheel of Fortune” 7. _____ White 59. Pulminary infection, 98. CUNY Prof. Staff Cong. 123. Paternity identifier 77. Garages request 8. Egyptian solar deity Abbr. 99. Indian bread 124. Fight-ending letters 80. The program has 118. Choose 60. The college’s color 100. The Macaulay build- 125. Poster bottom 9. Apportioned _____ students at _____ colleges. 120. Blast maker 10. Grassland is . ing, located at 35 West 128. Soldier on food prep. 83. “Hey!” 122. _____ Eliot 63. Spiralled after who 67th Street, is half a block 130. “Good game” Abbr. 11. Giant author Ferber _____

84. Graduates receive a 123. “Love is just another 12. “A Nightmare on 65. Lass from Park. 131. Strong bust front

LSEIN I OLDSTE G ONORS H PA

dual _____ from both their _____.” – Hemingway _____ 67. 1973 Supreme Court G 135 134 Street” 133

HO V ACE R OURG Y NOCK K

‘home college’ and 126. Baseball card stat. decision name S 132 131 130 129

13. Burden 128

EI I BI R E I YL RT I D S

127. iShares 3-7 yr. treas. 69. Hurt T

127 126 125 124 123

Macaulay. 14. NY int. airport 122

RO T N T P A T NE A C T A L

bond 70. Each Macaulay student P

121 120 119 118 117 116 115 114 113

85. Train, abbr. 15. ET 112

I IC G RAYON C R R O O S

128. Rap receives a _____ computer. U

111 110 109 108 107

86. Driving a nail obliquely 19. Concluding 106

R U EMATE TABL S I FFT

129. Form of address for 71. Students build ____ to P

105 104

88. Not guzzle 20. Macaulay is a _____ 103

T EL M C D EN P H K T U O

British royalty collect and show their work. S 102 101 100 99 98 97 96

89. Orig. NYC subway program for 1,400 students 95 EN Y O D O P O ECT R RT I

94 93 92 91 90

90. Odd-numbered page 132. Where TV signals come per year. 72. Notability 89 OMA L P I IP S G N I OE T R R D

88 87 86 85

93. Kick the bucket from 74. Little bird 84

O Y D HT IG E KS ARPAR 24. Students may design C

83 82 81 80 79 78

94. Appetite 133. The program attracts 76. Daddy-o 77

P PED S C OT D C F IE L a university-wide, individu- B

76 75 74 73 72 71

95. Fully anesthetized students with a mean high _____ 77. Geometric fig. 70 CAULAY A M AUER B G N

alized program. I

69 68 67 66 65

school _____ of 93.5. 78. 15-ball cluster 64

OUP NGR I A A BAR ET W AS

97. Internet domain name 25. Big time L

63 62 61 60 59 58

134. Known as the 79. Angel’s favorite letters 57

I P R N EHA B D E A E NS

for Cambodia 28. Mesa I

56 55 54 53 52 51

Macaulay _____ College 81. Farewell 50

H BB I C E EEN T G OO O

98. Remain unsettled 29. Pickup shtick? R

49 48 47 46

University Scholars Pro- 82. Seventh tone of the scale 45

S PCA S R S T N A GR I MM I

101. Brooks of “The 34. Singer Tori E

44 43

gram, it launched in 2000. 83. Yang’s counterpart 42 G A P P R G TH I L O E I A G

Producers” 36. Either I 41 40 39 38 37 36 35 34 33

RA I A D E A O L P ET T OI

103. “Kaput” 135. Macaulay was the 37. TV station for selling 84. Upsets K 32 31 30 29 28 27 26

IL O L E MARK AND L PS

104. One of several horses brainchild of Chancellor 87. Not by any means N

25 24 23 22 goods 21

F FI OW L YEBALLED E DE

with the same owner Matthew _____. 88. Macaulay is highly O 20 19 18 17 40. Environmental pollutant 16

B A J L VE E L A R E N H SC R I

106. Amer. _____, accepting only K 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 WINTER 2015 43 SaluteWinter15_Salute Magazine 1/28/15 1:26 PM Page 44

NOTES STUDENT AWARDS

In India for Research and Teaching Recognizing Simone Gordon (City College, B.S. in childhood education, 2014) has a nine-month Fulbright English Teaching Assistanship in Faculty Calcutta, India. A native of Jamaica who emigrated to New York Achievement at age 6, Gordon has wanted to teach since third grade at P.S. 135 in Queens Village. Gordon sought a Fulbright assistantship he University’s faculty to work in India, teaching English literature and grammar to members continually win middle school students because of the opportunity to blend Tprofessional-achievement teaching with research. At City College, she held student awards from prestigious government posts, participated in the Colin Powell Fellowship organizations as well as research program and received public service and leadership honors. grants from government agencies, foundations and Forging Cultural Connections in Malaysia SIMONE GORDON corporations. John Brendan Horgan (Brooklyn College, M.A. in Education, John Mogulescu, Senior 2014) headed to Beijing in 2012 to teach English at the Vitaly University Dean for Academic Springs Experimental Kindergarten. Soon after, he came to Affairs and Dean of the School of Brooklyn College, where he earned his master’s degree in Professional Studies, announced education while teaching inner-city students with special needs that The Robin Hood Foundation at the New York Harbor School on Governors Island. As a Fulbright has awarded $1.25 million to “At English Teaching Assistant in Malaysia, Horgan says he wants to Home in College,” which provides strengthen cultural connections and encourage educational an array of instructional and enrichment. “I would also like to manipulate technology with support services to high school programs such as Google Docs and Skype to arrange for direct students, high school English interaction between Malaysian students and native English and math teachers and college speakers in the United States.” advisers; and $1 million for the JOHN HORGAN expansion of CUNY’s Accelerated English Language in Taiwan Study in Associate Programs Alyssa Marchetti (Hunter College, M.S. Ed., 2014), an immigrant (ASAP), which is designed to from China, will channel her experience as an English-language accelerate degree completion learner during her Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship in within three years at community Taiwan. Born in the People’s Republic of China and raised from colleges. Michael Geller of age 11 in the United States, Marchetti has explored the Kingsborough Community boundaries of race, ethnicity and identity through her experience College has received $276,250 in as an English-language learner. After college, she signed on for a grant funding from the NY City two-year stint with Teach for America and headed to Hunter for Council for the “Lighthouse: her master’s degree, specializing in adolescent special Alcohol and Substance Abuse education. In Taiwan on a Fulbright English Teaching Program.” City College has been Assistantship, she brings a profound understanding of the awarded a $783,627 grant from difficulties that students can face when learning the language ALYSSA MARCHETTI the U.S. Department of Education that gave her so much trouble. for “CUNY’s Initiative for Teaching English in South Korea Continuous Innovative Learning Environments in STEM (CILES),” Zarin Tasnim (Macaulay Honors College at Lehman College, under the direction of Jorge 2014) is teaching conversational English through a Fulbright Gonzalez. Jeffrey Butts of John English Teaching Assistantship. She’s off to South Korea to Jay College has been awarded a teach conversational English to elementary and secondary $250,000 grant from the NY City school students through a yearlong assistantship. Tasnim Council for “Implementation and received a number of academic awards, including the Horace W. Outcome Assessment of the New Goldsmith Scholarship, Jewish Foundation for Education of York City Anti-Gun Violence Women Scholarship, Freeman Asia Scholarship and a St. Initiative.” The U.S. Department George’s Society Scholarship. “She is definitely one of our of Health & Human Services has stars,” says professor Gary Schwartz, who directs the Macaulay ZARIN TASNIM awarded a $1,605,000 grant to Honors College at Lehman and the Lehman Scholars Program. Carlos Molina of Hostos “Zarin is an exceptional combination of intellect, tact, sensitivity, insight and leadership.” Researching Linguistic Connections in Austria Daniel Friedman (Brooklyn College, MFA in Creative Writing, 2014) is a mathematician, poet, philosopher and scholar of the German language. For Friedman, a Fulbright U.S. Student Program award will allow him to finally connect those diverse academic and intellectual interests. Friedman believes the key to cultural exchange and mutual understanding between two cultures lies in the study of their languages. With his Fulbright in Vienna, Friedman plans to collaborate and write a poetry manuscript focused on the philosophical and poetic potentials in Gonzalez German and English. DANIEL FRIEDMAN

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GRANTS & HONORS

Butts Simmons Wheelock Rodriguez-Dorestant Carpi

Community College as a “Health Tubercular Natural Products,” Colin L. Powell School for Civic LaGuardia Community College’s Control/NIOSH for “World Trade Profession Opportunity Grant to directed by Ryan Murelli of and Global Leadership have Honors Program and the Center-Heart: Cardiovascular Serve TANF Recipients: Allied Brooklyn College, has been received awards for exceptional school’s scholarship coordinator, Health Impact and Prediction of Health Career Pipeline.” Gisela awarded a $141,300 grant from articles in scholarly journals. An is a winner of the 2014 Bonita Incident (Primary and Rivera of Queensborough the National Institutes of article co-authored by Maria C. C. Jacobs Transfer Champion Subsequent) Cardiovascular Community College has received Health. Gerald Mallon of Hunter Binz-Scharf was honored as an Award of the National Institute Events Among WTC two grants from the New York College has received two grants: American Review of Public for the Study of Transfer Responders.” Ramona Brown of State Education Department: $1,477,186 from Administration Best Article, Students. David Kennedy of the College of Staten Island has $299,087 with Sherri-Ann HHS/Administration for Children while Dr. Katherine K. Chen John Jay College has received received a $109,000 award from Simmons for the “Liberty and Families for a “National received the Literati Network two grants: $237,420 from the the New York City Council for the Partnerships Program – Project Resource Center for Permanency Award for Excellence/2013 Community Foundation of St. “Black Male Initiative.” PRIZE”; and $219,380 for and Family Connections”; and Outstanding Author Contribution Joseph for “Reducing Serious Simone Rodriguez-Dorestant “CSTEP – Collegiate Science $291,384 from the NY State Award. Violence in South Bend, and LeHendro Gadson of and Technology Entry Program,” Office of Children and Family Anthony Carpi and Nathan Indiana”; and $169,487 from Medgar Evers College have with Marie-Francesca Services for a “Community Case Lents of John Jay College were the State of Via received a $782,738 grant from Berrouet. Carlos Meriles of City Management Institute.” The U.S. awarded $797,970 from the U.S. University of New Haven for the NYC Department of College has won a $425,440 Department of Education has Department of Education for “Preventing Gang Violence in Education for a “Young Adult grant from the National Science awarded $575,000 in grant “Creating Hispanic Scientists: A Connecticut: Continued Efforts Borough Center,” while the U.S. Foundation for “GOALI: Research funding to Patricia Rachal of Model Articulation Program in New Haven, Launch in Department of Education and Development of Chip- Queens College for “Special Between Hispanic Serving Bridgeport and Hartford.” awarded $308,546 to Abraham Integrated, Magnetic- Education-Technical Assistance Institutions”; Carpi and Kate Joshua Brown of the Graduate Nyameh and Rodriguez- Resonance-Based Platforms for and Dissemination to Improve Szur received $642,056 from School and University Center Dorestant for the “Talent Search Chemical Sensing of Trace Services and Results for the U.S. Department of has received $200,000 from the Program.” Additionally, the NYS Systems.” Anne Rothstein of Children with Disabilities.” Education for “Title V: Success National Endowment for the Education Department granted Lehman College has won Stephen Fearnley of York through Engagement: Humanities for a project $350,000 to Sean Anderson $232,734 in grant support from College has won $498,250 in Development of a concerning the “Visual Culture and Rodriguez-Dorestant for the the NY State Department of grant support from the National Comprehensive Program to of the American Civil War.” “Liberty Partnership Program”; Education for the “Science and Institutes of Health for a Promote Undergraduate as well as $287,054 to William Technology Entry Program: research project titled Research and First Year Bailey and Rodriguez-Dorestant Mathematics and Science “Oxazolone Cycloadducts as Transition Toward Increasing for the “MEC Science Technology through Excellence and Heterocyclic Scaffolds for Persistence and Graduation Entry Program”; and $188,562 Research.” Robert Piechotta of Decahydroquinoline Alkaloid.” Rates of Hispanic Students”; to John Brown and Rodriguez- New York City College of The Creative Arts Team (CAT) of while Szur was awarded Dorestant for the “Science, Math Technology has received CUNY has been awarded an 18- $232,819 from the NY State and Robotics Science $654,078 from RF SUNY for month, $460,000 grant from Education Department for Technology Entry Program.” “Hurricane Sandy The New York Community Trust “Perkins IV.” Peter Mertens of Hostos Revitalization.” City College – Brooke Astor Fund for New Elvir Dincer of the Dental Community College has been has been awarded a $646,678 York City Education to expand Hygiene Division of the Allied awarded $293,484 from the U.S. grant from the U.S. Department CAT’s successful Early Learning Health Sciences Department at Koffi Social Security Administration of Education for a project aimed Program (ELP) in K-2 classes at Hostos Community College has for “Work Incentives Planning at “Increasing Retention and four New York City public been appointed to Hunter College has received and Assistance”; and the NY Graduation Rates through schools with high the Editorial two grants: $1,197,141 from the State Education Department Enhanced Pedagogy and concentrations of Board of Case NY State Education Department has awarded two grants, Improved Technology,” under the disadvantaged students Study of to David Steiner and Matthew $197,794 to Mertens and Moise direction of Craig Levinsky. and English-language Dental Caballero for “2013-2016 21st Koffi for “STEP/Proyecto Dean Balsamini of the College learners. Helen Science, the Century Community Learning Access”; and $170,719 to of Staten Island has received a Wheelock directs the international Centers Program”; and Mertens and Koffi for “CSTEP.” $516,687 grant from ELP, and Lynda journal of the $1,109,185 from the U.S. President Jeremy Travis of John NPORG/Research Zimmerman is executive Association of Department of Education to Jay College served as chair of a Foundation/SUNY for “NYS director of the CAT. Two Medical and Matthew Caballero, for “Teacher National Research Council Hurricane Sandy Business faculty Dental Doctors. Quality Partnerships.” Alfredo committee dealing with “The Assistance.” A project titled members Karlyn Koh, Morabia of Queens College has Growth of Incarceration in the “SC2: Synthetic and Biological from City director of been awarded $499,187 from United States: Exploring Causes Studies of Understudied Anti- College’s Brown the Center for Disease and Consequences.”

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NOTES ALUMNI

Police and Minority Communities John Jay Alumni Awards ohn Jay College of Criminal Justice was The Outstanding Young Alumnus Award of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, created in 2013, was Jawarded a competitive, three-year, $4.75 presented to Andrew Schweighardt (M.S. ’99, Ph.D. ’12), a criminalist with the Office of the New York RESEARCH million grant to launch a National Initiative for City Chief Medical Examiner. Schweighardt spoke of his good fortune to be working in “one of the Building Community Trust and Justice, it was greatest labs in the world,” where some 30 John Jay alumni are on the staff of his department. “John announced by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. John Jay Jay is the Ivy League of criminal justice, and I’m so proud to say that.” will lead a team including Yale Law School, UCLA, and the Urban Institute as principal partners. The National Initiative is The recipient of John Jay’s annual Distinguished Alumna Award, LaBrenda Garrett-Nelson (B.A. ’75), designed to improve relationships between, and especially, racial who recently retired after a distinguished legal career, was saluted for her work as a prominent taxa- and ethnic minority communities and the police and other arms of tion law specialist. She has worked for the blue-chip law firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacob- the criminal justice system; and advance the scholarly sen, served on the staff of the Joint Congressional Committee on Taxation, founded the boutique law understanding of, and the public conversation on, those issues. firm of Washington Counsel PC, and concluded her career as a principal for “This is one of the most ambitious and important steps the federal the accounting firm of Ernst & Young LLP. government has taken during my career in criminal justice,” said John Jay College President Jeremy Travis. “Addressing the broken Thermos CEO Alex Huang relationships between the police and communities of color across As the CEO of Thermos, Alex Huang (Baruch Ph.D. ’01) travels the the nation is a fundamental challenge facing our world to run a multinational corporation whose vacuum-insulated democracy.” The initiative will be directed by containers are iconic enough to be in the Smithsonian Institution’s John Jay professor David Kennedy as part of the National Museum of American History. Huang began working at Thermos Huang college’s National Network for Safe Communities, in 2001, first as the company controller, next as CFO and then COO. In which works in troubled communities nationally 2005 he became CEO, running worldwide operations from the company’s U.S. and has been driving innovative practice in racial headquarters in Chicago. “Baruch has a good reputation in Taiwan,” Huang reconciliation. says. He was also persuaded to study here by Stan Ross Professor of Accountancy Joseph Weintrop, who later became his dissertation adviser. What he learned in his doctoral program continues to influence Brain Waves of 16 Predict Market Preferences his business style, Huang says. “I follow logic tremendously; I don’t get emotional in decision making.” edia and marketing experts have long sought a reliable Mmethod of forecasting responses from the general population Brittany Hodak, Co-Founder of ZinePak to future products and messages. According to a study conducted Co-founder of startup CD packaging company ZinePak, Brittany Hodak (Baruch M.S. ’10) remembers at The City College of New York, it appears that the brain being fascinated with her dad’s record collection as a child. “I remember looking at the pictures and responses of just a few individuals can be a remarkably strong touching them; I remember the way they smelled. I fell in love with physical predictor. By analyzing the brain waves of 16 individuals as music.” That early memory helped inspire her idea for music they watched mainstream television content, packaging for “superfans” that incorporates a magazine plus researchers were able to accurately predict the exclusive merchandise and digital features. Hodak started preferences of large TV audiences, up to 90 percent in ZinePak in 2011 with partner Kim Kaupe, and its impressive the case of Super Bowl commercials. The findings appear roster of clients includes Katy Perry, KISS, the Beach Boys, and in a paper, “Audience Preferences Are Predicted by Taylor Swift. What Hodak says she loved about Baruch was “the Temporal Reliability of Neural Processing,” published July emphasis on real-world education that you can apply the next 29, 2014, in “Nature Communications.” Jacek Dmochowski, lead day on the job.” She says of her master’s program: “If I could have taken author of the paper and a postdoctoral fellow at City College 30 more hours of classes for the degree, I would have. I learned so much and met so many fantastic during the research, said that brain signals measured using people.” The Baruch education “really helps me reframe the way I think electroencephalography (EEG) can provide immediate about everything we do at ZinePak.” physiological responses, and that “our findings show that these immediate responses are in fact closely tied to the subsequent Mark Weber, DKNY CEO behavior of the general population.” DKNY International CEO Mark Weber (Brooklyn College ’72) wel- comed nearly 30 Brooklyn College students and graduates to the For-Profit vs. Nonprofit Home Care Costs fashion firm’s headquarters in the summer and shared some career Weber or-profit home health agencies are far costlier for Medicare advice. “You may not get everything you want in your first job ... but Fthan nonprofit agencies, according to a nationwide study in every job there’s always something of value that you’ll learn, even if published in the August issue of the journal Health Affairs. it is patience or discipline,” he said. “So it is important that you find your Overall cost per patient was $1,215 higher at for-profits, with own niche because what we think we want to do is not necessarily the best, or operating costs accounting for $752 of the wisest, choice.” After finishing a B.A. in psychology at Brooklyn College and trying different jobs, difference and excess profits for $463. Yet the Weber landed a position with Phillips-Van Heusen, starting in retail as a merchandising assistant and quality of care was actually worse at for-profit moving up to become the company president and CEO, which is the subject of a new book, Always in agencies, and more of their patients required Fashion: From Clerk to CEO — Lessons for Success in Business and in Life (McGraw Hill), to be re- repeat hospitalizations. Researchers at the City leased in January 2015. “The truth is that the education I received at Brooklyn College was not only University of New York School of Public good — it was better than the one you get in many of today's private schools,” Weber said. Health analyzed detailed Cost Reports filed with Medicare by 7,165 home health agencies Hockey Maven Stan Fischler in 2010-2011, as well as data for 22 quality measures from Stan Fischler (Brooklyn College ’54) recently finished his 100th book, Behind the Net: 101 Incredible Medicare’s Home Health Compare database covering 9,128 Hockey Stories, with most of the anecdotes coming from his many years of personal hockey experience. agencies. Compared to nonprofits, operating costs at for-profit It was quick to follow book No. 99, We Are the Rangers, an oral history of the New agencies were 18 percent higher, with excess administration (at York team, in which Fischler has collected stories about the team and luminaries of $476 per patient) accounting for nearly two-thirds of the $752 the Rangers organization from its beginning to today. His own history is well docu- difference in operating costs. For-profits also did many more mented in the book, starting as a New York Rangers employee out of college, moving therapy visits, which are often highly profitable under the into the world of journalism at the New York Journal-American, Hockey News and the complex Medicare payment formula. Despite their higher costs, Toronto Star, then on to broadcasting for other teams, including the Hartford for-profit agencies delivered slightly lower-quality care. Whalers, and for the MSG Network. 46 WINTER 2015 SaluteWinter15_Salute Magazine 1/28/15 1:26 PM Page 47

WE REMEMBER

“The kind of RUBY DEE ELAINE M. BRODY uby Dee, an alumna of laine M. Brody, 91, died July beauty I want Rboth Hunter College High E9 at her home in California. School and Hunter College, A 1942 graduate of City Col- most is the died June 11 at age 91. The lege, she became a social actress, poet and civil rights worker and researcher whose hard-to-get activist made several Broad- work helped to found the field way appearances with Harry of gerontology. She wrote six kind that Belafonte, and in both the film books, including Women in the comes from and stage versions of “A Middle: Their Parent Care Years Raisin in the Sun” with Sidney and scores of academic pa- within — Poitier. She continued to work pers. She was associate direc- in later years, playing opposite tor of the Polisher Research strength, her husband, actor Ossie Institute in Philadelphia, where Davis — who died in 2005 — she spent 31 years, and estab- courage, in Spike Lee’s 1989 film, lished a group residence for “Do The Right Thing.” elderly women who needed as- dignity.”— Ruby Dee She was a member of sistance but not full-time care, the Congress of a forerunner of contemporary Kaufman Racial Equality, living arrangements. the NAACP, the Student BEL KAUFMAN Nonviolent PAUL GIBSON el Kaufman died in her Coordi- aul Gibson Jr., 86, a City Col- BManhattan home on July nating Plege graduate and New York 25 at age 103. The 1934 Committee, City’s first black deputy mayor, Hunter College graduate was and the died on July 11 at his home in best known for her 1965 Southern Jamaica, Queens. Gibson was a novel, Up the Down Staircase, Christian vice president of American Air- inspired by Kaufman’s years as Leadership lines when Mayor Abraham D. a New York City public school- Conference. Beame appointed him deputy teacher. Kaufman retired from mayor. Mr. Gibson had earlier the school system more than been general counsel and hous- half a century ago, but she ing chairman in the state never stopped teaching, and in NAACP, a board member of the 2011 she taught a seminar on Dee Democratic Club in Jamaica and Jewish humor at Hunter. a social worker in Brooklyn, among other positions. “If I don’t want to go someplace CLAIRE TOW ERNESTO BUTCHER Feldstein all I have to laire Tow, 83, co-founder rnesto Butcher, 69, a Hunter Cwith her husband of the ECollege graduate, was a say is, ‘No cable television company Cen- soft-spoken Panamanian im- tury Communications Corp. AL FELDSTEIN migrant who effectively took thank you, and the cellular telephone over management of the Port l Feldstein, the Brooklyn company Centennial Cellular Authority of New York and New ACollege alumnus who put I’m 101 years Corp., died July 7 after a 14- Jersey after the attacks of Sept. the “mad” in Mad magazine, year struggle with Lou Gehrig’s 11, 2001, as its most experi- died on April 29 at age 88. As old!’ Terrific Disease (ALS). She was born in enced surviving operations of- editor from 1956 to 1985, it Brooklyn and graduated from ficer. He died on May 15 in was Feldstein, a writer and il- excuse. Brooklyn College, where she Maplewood, lustrator of comic books, who met her husband, Leonard, in N.J. Before made the iconic cartoon char- It’s such a 1949. She was president of The becoming acter Alfred E. Neuman the Tow Foundation, the charitable chief operat- satiric magazine’s mascot, and liberating foundation she and her hus- ing officer, it was he who turned the humor band founded in 1988. Through Butcher was publication into a pop-culture experience grants from the foundation, Butcher manager of sensation. After his retirement, to say no she offered opportunities for the George he pursued his first love – personal success and helped to Washington Bridge, director of painting – specializing in thank you.” alleviate pain and suffering for bridges and tunnels and head wildlife and landscapes. countless individuals. Tow of several other departments. — Bel Kaufman

WINTER 2015 47 SaluteWinter15_Salute Magazine 1/28/15 1:26 PM Page 48

CAMPUSTOUR CITY TECH

QUICK FACTS ABOUT CITY TECH • Founded in 1946 as New York State Institute of Applied Arts and Sciences; joined CUNY in 1964 • Largest public, baccalaureate college of technology in the Northeast. • 66 degree and certification programs • Alumni: 89,700 in tech, engineering, culinary arts, teaching, social services and health care • Enrollment: 16,861 students, representing 138 countries • Accessibility: Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5 and A, C, F subway lines, and 10 Brooklyn buses: Nos. 26, 37, 38, 41, 51, 52, 54, 61, 67 and 75 At the Center of Thriving Technology By Lenina Mortimer

HREE YEARS AGO, while on the City Tech is one of the largest public colleges THEHOTSPOTS AT CITY TECH way to class, New York City of technology in the state. It was established in 1946 as the New York State Institute for College of Technology senior The Student Wellness Center offers a wide Applied Arts and Sciences. City Tech joined Yevgeniy Babkin got off on the variety of free services such as massages, CUNY in 1964 and merged with Voorhees wrong floor and discovered the fitness classes, glucose, cholesterol and Technical Institute in 1971. Mechatronics/Robotics blood-pressure screenings, rapid HIV test- City Tech offers 27 associate and 24 Technology Center. ing, and vaccinations. T baccalaureate degree programs. Some of its “I’m really passionate about electronics and offerings include Communication Design, The College Learning Center provides robotics so when I found this place it was like a Dental Hygiene, Accounting, Mechanical computer labs, tutoring assistance and dream. I like to get my hands on everything, Engineering Technology, Biomedical workshops for City Tech students. and with the tools and material available in the Informatics, Radiologic Sciences and Bookstore, café and two full-service mechatronics club I was able to do anything my Hospitality Management. City Tech serves cafeterias heart desired,” says Babkin, a computer engi- about 17,000 degree students and 13,000 non- Grace Gallery showcases the work of neering technology major who recently took degree students through its Schools of students in the Advertising Design & home the top prize at the Digilent Design Technology & Design, Professional Studies and Graphic Arts Departments alongside the Contest — an international tech competition. Arts & Sciences. The college also boasts the work of art and design professionals from Babkin, along with teammates Bijan Mokhtari only program in Emerging Media Technology the metropolitan area. and Angjelo Kuka and team adviser Ali Harb, cre- east of the Mississippi, and an award-winning Dental Hygiene Clinic offers free or low- ated TOBiAS, which stands for Tele-Operated Bi- program in culinary arts. cost dental hygiene procedures for Manual Augmented System, using a 3D printer The City Tech campus includes nine build- students, faculty, staff, alumni and available at the center. TOBiAS is a humanoid ings within Downtown Brooklyn. College community residents. robot that mimics the movement of the person administration and offices, the Ursula C. Vision Care Technology Eyeglass Clinic operating the control unit — a remote control Schwerin Library, the School of Professional offers eye-care services to students, faculty, worn as a glove. The user gets a virtual reality- Studies, and the School of Arts & Sciences are staff, alumni and community residents. style immersive experience by wearing a helmet primarily based in a complex formed by the Eye examinations are provided at no charge that receives a live video feed from a camera Namm, Atrium, General, and the Pearl build- with eyewear purchase. mounted on the robot. ings in MetroTech Center. A new 350,000- Immigration Clinic, staffed by attorneys, An increasing number of innovative tech square-foot academic complex is currently paralegals, students and volunteers, creations such as TOBiAS are being developed under construction on the site that was former- provides assistance to students and the in Brooklyn, which is a growing tech hub. The ly occupied by the Klitgord Building. community on immigration issues. Brooklyn tech triangle, which encompasses Construction on the $406 million project is Our Children’s Center is a licensed early DUMBO, Downtown Brooklyn and the expected to be completed in 2017. The eight- childhood education day care facility, Brooklyn Navy Yard, is home to more than 500 story building, which is currently unnamed, will providing quality educational programs for startups, computer science research firms and be home to City Tech’s expanding programs in children of City Tech students. digital design companies — and City Tech is in health care and the core sciences such as the center of it all. physics, chemistry and biological sciences.

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