The Brooklyn College Foundation Annual Report, 2004–2005 On the cover: Architectural plan for realization of the campus design envisioned by Brooklyn College’s founding architect, Randolph Evans, in 1935. The plan proposes new entrances to Roosevelt and James Halls, a new West Quad to mirror the existing East Quad, and a new building to anchor the entire campus west of Bedford Avenue. The West Quad Project is one of several ambitious plans the College has launched to build a modern, student-centered campus conducive to learning and scholarship. Dear Friends of Brooklyn College At Brooklyn College in the last year, we have been busy building— not only the physical campus, but also the educational environment that best encourages vigorous learning and scholarship. Our priorities result largely from initiatives we launched during the first five years of my presidency—and particularly within the last twelve months. These include expanding the campus, renewing the natural sciences, and broadening our fiscal base. The physical transformation of the campus continues apace. We have doubled the size of the Morton and Angela Topfer Library Café, and it is open again 24/7. Over the summer, we renovated and modernized eleven lecture halls in Ingersoll Hall. We move ahead with the West Quad Project, laying out a new quadrangle and pouring the foundation for a new building. We have begun a major rebuilding of our science facilities and our science curriculum. The project will proceed in two stages. First, Roosevelt Hall will be transformed into a science building; then we will renovate Ingersoll Hall. The science faculty meanwhile has been discussing and defining the shape science teaching and research should take at the College. You can read more about all these projects in the pages of this Annual Report. Brooklyn College has been more enterprising than ever in broadening our fiscal base. Our foremost endeavor is to meet the challenge set by Leonard and Claire Tow, who have given us a $10-million matching grant to build a new performing arts center. We hope you will join our effort to fund the first privately financed building on campus. This is an exciting time of creating new structures for the College and ever greater opportunities for students. The alumnae and alumni named in this report have contributed to this effort and helped make Brooklyn College the magnificent public institution that it is. I look forward to working with you in the coming year. Christoph M. Kimmich President Dear Alumni and Friends I am especially pleased to address you as chairman of the Brooklyn College Foundation at such an exciting time in the history of Brooklyn College, a time that both honors our tradition and looks to a future full of promise. The College celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary this year— an occasion especially meaningful for us in a period of rebirth and expansion. We also broke ground for two new buildings on campus and celebrated our most recent Rhodes Scholar, Eugene Shenderov. Our Rhodes Scholar and our new construction are both examples of how your gifts to the Foundation can make Brooklyn College even more effective in enabling our students to learn, gain inspiration, and embark on productive lives. I thank President Christoph M. Kimmich for his leadership in all these endeavors. He has brought the College to new levels of purposefulness, prominence, and promise. We enjoy national recognition and attract a steady stream of ever more highly qualified students. As you may know, it was my pleasure to establish the Magner Center for Career Development and Internships in 2003. At the Magner Center, students seek guidance about careers, explore internships in their chosen field, and plan for their futures; many win stipends available there to support their education. Again and again students have told me that the help they receive at the Magner Center has been invaluable to them as they move from the College out into the world. I find my direct involvement with students and their career development infinitely rewarding. I urge you, too, to identify an area in the College’s endeavor that interests you, to support it, and to enjoy the rewards. However you choose to support Brooklyn College, you can make a great difference in the lives of our students. Your gift ensures that the College will continue to enrich its academic programs, provide effective student services, support students with scholarships and stipends, and attract and retain an outstanding faculty. On behalf of the Foundation, I thank you for your support, past, present, and future. Marjorie M. Magner, ’69 Chairman Brooklyn College Foundation An Architecture of Brooklyn College continues a long tradition of distinguished campus architecture that creates an environment conducive to learning and scholarship. Excellence The College has had a banner year. We celebrated our seventy-fifth anniversary, launched a major construction and renovation project that will transform the campus, distinguished ourselves with another Rhodes Scholar, won high marks from the Princeton Review for quality and affordability, and made plans to ensure that we will continue to perform at this high level. A huge crowd—students, faculty, staff, trustees, and guests— gathered on the Quad on May 10, 2005, for our seventy-fifth birthday party. Actors portraying President Franklin D. Roosevelt, his wife, Eleanor, and Mayor Fiorello La Guardia arrived in a classic car to lay the cornerstone of the campus once again. Mack the Knife and Pirate Jenny performed numbers from a gala production of The Threepenny Opera. The Theater Department designed a giant birthday cake, a children’s choir sang and a school orchestra played, and everyone signed a huge birthday card. The celebration continues throughout the year. The “Brooklyn on My Mind” reading series, hosted by Leonard Lopate of WNYC Radio, will feature such leading Brooklyn writers as Jonathan Lethem, Pete Hamill, Susan Choi, and Colson Whitehead. The Department of Theater will present a number of notable works, such as Nobel Prize–winning poet Seamus Heaney’s adaptation of Antigone and works by Donald Margulies (Sight Unseen), Marivaux (The Game of Love and Chance), and Arthur Miller (the McCarthy-era parable The Crucible). The Conservatory of Music will offer nearly fifty concerts this year, and in December the Brooklyn College Opera Theater will mount a full-scale production of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro. The Art Department will finish the year with an important retrospective exhibit of the works of the most esteemed graduates since the inception of its M.F.A. program. Brooklyn College is famous for its beautiful campus. The College is also notable for its state-of-the-art technology. These contribute to a learning environment in which students can change their lives. In the most important capital expansion since the Midwood campus was constructed during the Great Depression, the College continues its tradition of distinguished architecture and first-rate facilities in five major projects: the new West Quad Building; the new Center for the Performing Arts; expansion of the Morton and Angela Topfer Library Café; conversion of Roosevelt Hall into a center for science and research and modernization of the Ingersoll lecture halls; and creation of a conference center in the Student Center. Brooklyn College’s Rhodes Scholars Eugene Shenderov, ’05 Born in Ukraine, Eugene was two years old when the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, 140 miles from his home, melted down. Eugene developed leukemia, and the Shenderovs immigrated to Brooklyn to seek treatment when Eugene was six. After years of home schooling, Eugene entered Edward R. Murrow High School, where he graduated near the top of his class. He entered Brooklyn College on a Presidential Scholarship and enrolled in the B.A.–M.D. program. A chemistry major, he won a Furman Travel Stipend in summer 2004, which he used to pursue cancer research at Oxford University. In fall 2004, Eugene was named a Rhodes Scholar and the following spring, a National Institutes of Health fellow. He has now returned to Oxford University to work with Dr. Enzo Cerundolo, a world-renowned cancer researcher, at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine. Lisette Nieves, ’91 Lisette Nieves was a 1992 Rhodes Scholar and is a graduate also of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs of Princeton University. She was director for special projects at the After-School Corporation, where she designed forums for superintendents and principals and pilot programs for mentoring in local high schools. She also served as director of grants management at the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone and as chief of staff for the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development. Currently, Lisette is a consultant to nonprofit organizations in strategic planning, program development, and management, and a graduate instructor in public administration at Brooklyn College. A vision realized... This past year, President Christoph M. Kimmich launched the most ambitious part of a plan to restore the campus to the original 1935 design by its founding architect, Randolph Evans. A second quadrangle will be created west of Bedford Avenue, anchored by a strikingly beautiful West Quad Building. As a first step to implementing this plan, Plaza Building has been demolished. Throughout the spring and summer, workers painstakingly separated Plaza from adjacent James and Roosevelt Halls, and at the end of the summer it was reduced to rubble. For the master plan of which this project is a part, the Society of College and University Planners awarded Brooklyn College the Excellence in Planning and Architecture Merit Award in Campus Heritage at its annual meeting in July 2005. The continuing West Quad Building The stunning new West Quad Building will consolidate under one roof currently scattered student services—registrar, bursar, academic advisement, scholarships, financial aid, and the Magner Center for Career Development and Internships.