bold,new steps for college success · 2018-06-01 · bold,new steps for college success page 28 a...

Bold,New Stepsfor CollegeSuccess Page 28

A PUBLICATION OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK WINTER 2015

STSwinter15 cover_Salute Magazine 1/28/15 1:23 PM Page 2

Linda S. PerryFaculty/Fulbright ScholarYORK COLLEGEConsulting/Research in Spain

Daniel FriedmanStudent/Fulbright ScholarBROOKLYN COLLEGEStudying in Austria

Adeyinka Akinsulure-SmithFaculty/Fulbright ScholarCITY COLLEGEResearch in Sierra Leone

Alyssa MarchettiStudent/Fulbright ScholarHUNTER COLLEGE Teaching in Taiwan

Daniel DiSalvoFaculty/Fulbright ScholarCITY COLLEGETeaching in Argentina

Karla SolomonStudent/FulbrightScholarMACAULAYHONORS COLLEGEAT QUEENSCOLLEGETeaching in Spain

cuny.edu/awardwinners

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

— James B. Milliken, Chancellor

More Fulbright Faculty and Student Award-Winners Than Ever

We Chose CUNY!

Zarin TasnimStudent/FulbrightScholarMACAULAYHONORS COLLEGEAT LEHMANCOLLEGETeaching in South Korea


THE FIRST WORDThe Chancellor’s Visionfor the University

GLOBAL NATUREIsabella RosselliniStudies Animal Behavior

EDUCATION STARTUPCUNY CollegesTrain Pre-K Teachers

PROFILEPoet, Novelist Donna MasiniHunter College

GREAT GRADUATESGrandmaster Maurice AshleyCity College

OPENING DOORSGregory RabassaQueens College

NEW ON CAMPUSRudy CrewMedgar Evers College

HISTORY LESSONWhere Merchant MarinesTrained for World War II

FIELD STUDYTeaching PatientsHealth Care in Haiti

PAGE TURNERSSociologist William HelmreichCity College

Biographer Barbara WinslowBrooklyn College

BOOKS-AT-A-GLANCERecent BooksBy CUNY Authors

CROSSWORDIt’s an HonorMacaulay Honors College

NOTESResearch, Grants, Awards and Alumni

CAMPUS TOURAt the Centerof TechnologyCity Tech

LESSONS IN LEADERSHIPElizabeth ButsonBorough of Manhattan Community College

TOP OF THE CLASSGraduate Sheryll PangQueensborough Community College,Baruch College

MENTORSheldon WeinbaumCity College

HEAD OF THE CLASSPhotographer Jules AllenQueensborough Community College

BODY MOVESDance, Dance, Dance!19 Choreographers at 10 Colleges

COVER STORYOn the Path To College SuccessNew Help That Really Works

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A PUBLICATION OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

CONTENTS WINTER 2015

Isabella RosselliniPage 4

GrandmasterMaurice AshleyPage 12

ChoreographerTaeko Koji Page 26

SaluteWinter15_Salute Magazine 1/28/15 1:25 PM Page 1

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ON THE COVER: One of the greatestchallenges in higher education has beenthe abysmally low graduation rates forcommunity colleges nationwide. It’s achallenge the City University of New Yorkhas taken up, with some resoundingresults. Each year, 1.7 millionunprepared students enter U.S. collegesand most quit at some point in thetraditional sequence of remedial math,writing and reading courses. Forstudents, failure and remediation can bediscouraging and costly. Colleges,university systems and states around thecountry are trying to raise the three-yeargraduation rates for community collegestudents, improving remedial educationand encouraging students to stayfocused once they’re in credit-bearingcourses. At CUNY, programs such as theAccelerated Study in Associate Programs(ASAP) have boosted the graduation ratesfor community college students, creatingmodels for others. CUNY Start providescore instruction by specially trainedteachers and student support fromadvisers to build the skills, concepts andstrategies that students need for college-level work. ASAP and CUNY Start haveprovided new ways to approach astubborn challenge in higher education— with exceptional rewards — and theUniversity continues its commitment todevelop methods to improve collegepreparation and timely graduation.

THEFIRSTWORD

salutetoscholarsJay Hershenson • Secretary of the Board of Trustees

and Senior Vice Chancellorfor University Relations

Michael Arena • University Directorof Communications & Marketing

Kristen Kelch • Managing EditorRich Sheinaus • Director of Design

Neill S. Rosenfeld • WriterLenina Mortimer •Writer

Miriam Smith • DesignerStan Wolfson • Photo Editor

Richard Breeden • Copy Editor

DECLARING THAT “the best city deserves thebest public university,” Chancellor James B.Milliken is putting forth an ambitious visionfor a more global, more digital, more STEM-fo-cused City University of New York that will

build on CUNY’s rich history, raised academic standardsand other strengths to develop a tech-savvy 21st-centuryworkforce.

“Our goal should be for the University to achieve itsfull potential in serving the people of New York,”Chancellor Milliken told the Association for a Better NewYork (ABNY) in his first major policy address since hisappointment as Chancellor.

He outlined an ambitious agenda “for the next 10years” — a “new spirit of engagement” — proposingthat CUNY lead in workforce development, developstronger public-private partnerships to benefit studentsand faculty, and foster research and technology develop-ment. The Chancellor envisages a “Global CUNY” bene-fiting the city by addressing global challenges and a“Digital CUNY” expanding the use of technology in teach-ing and learning.

“Our challenges are significant but the payoff isenormous,” the Chancellor said.

Keynoting a November ABNY breakfast at the NewYork Public Library, Chancellor Milliken told the gatheringof business, civic and nonprofit leaders that CUNY serves“many students who otherwise would have little or noopportunity.” Among the University’s strengths, he noted,are its exceptionally diverse, 274,000 degree-seekingstudents — a record enrollment for Fall 2014— as wellas accomplished faculty and “a steady rise in CUNY’svalue and reputation,” driven by a 15-year drive forimproved academic quality and “strategies for studentaccess, mobility and success.”

The latter include CUNY’s groundbreaking AcceleratedStudy in Associate Programs, or ASAP. The intensive,highly structured community college initiative, now anational model, has tripled associate degree programgraduation rates. Another innovative and successfulprogram is CUNY Start, a low-cost program that offersremediation to underprepared students in reading, writ-ing and mathematics before they matriculate at thecommunity colleges.

“Now over half of the undergraduates at our mostselective colleges, such as Baruch, Hunter, Brooklyn andCity, start as community college students, meet remedia-tion requirements and then transfer to a senior college,”the Chancellor told the ABNY, whose chairman, Bill Rudinannounced the creation of a new $10,000 communitycollege student scholarship. “CUNY is providing a path-way that gives students a meaningful opportunity tosucceed,” Milliken said.

“It’s no surprise that the value proposition at CUNY isreceiving national attention,” added Milliken, who alsoemphasized CUNY’s affordability, noting that at least 65percent of students attend college tuition-free due totheir low income, the affordable tuition rates and thefinancial aid from federal, state and local sources; and80 percent graduate from CUNY colleges free of federalstudent-loan debt. Brooklyn, Baruch and Queens Collegeswere named by Washington Monthly magazine as “thethree best ‘bangs for the buck,’” he noted.

Drawing on CUNY’s rich history, Chancellor Millikendeclared that the vision articulated by Free Academyfounder Townsend Harris in 1847 — “ ‘let the children ofthe rich and poor take their seats together and know ofno distinction save that of industry, good conduct, andintellect’ … remains vital today.”

“The record in the second half of the 20th century ismore mixed,” he said, “with very important, positivemovement made in access and diversity, but the conse-quences of an undifferentiated system of colleges withremediation necessary at every campus took its toll onCUNY’s quality, reputation and its value to its students,the city and the state.”

The last 15 years saw the University doing “the diffi-cult and sometimes controversial work of raising stan-dards and increasing quality while at the same timedeveloping strategies for student access, mobility andsuccess,” he continued. “We have seen a steady rise inCUNY’s value and reputation, along with outstandingaccomplishments,” including creation of new graduateschools of journalism and public health, the highly selec-tive Macaulay Honors College and the new-modelGuttman Community College.

But now, he said, there are “new challenges … andopportunities,” and CUNY must respond to dramaticchanges in the higher education landscape. These, hesaid, include the United States’ descent from “No. 1 ineducational attainment” to 14th in the world, the highcollege costs and the “astounding” student debt thathas prompted public questioning of “the quality andrelevance of higher education.”

Globally, he said, “U.S. higher education has lost itslead.”

CUNY “should make no apologies for its pursuit ofquality over the last 15 years,” the Chancellor said. “Thefundamental mission of public higher education is toprovide both access and excellence. ... Let me make thisclear: On all counts CUNY is delivering on its promise farbetter than it did a generation ago.”

But he said, “Despite all the progress … we have alot left to do.” Chancellor Milliken’s agenda includes:

• CUNY must improve college preparation and timelygraduation. “There are still too many students who arrivenot ready for college,” he said. “We need to deepen ourpartnership with the New York City schools, which providethree-quarters of our new freshmen. Eighty percentrequire remediation. We need to challenge our thinkingabout traditional remediation to most effectively servestudents who arrive at our community colleges unpre-pared for college work. At the most basic level, such asaddressing students’ remediation needs, or providing anassociate degree in a reasonable time that leads to a jobor a senior institution, or moving senior college studentstoward a degree, we still have much work to do,” he said.“We have some great programs, but we must address thechallenges of scaling them effectively.”

• CUNY should be a leader in preparing a workforcefor the 21st century. Citing Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s scholar-ship program for STEM — science, technology, engineer-ing and mathematics — students and Mayor Bill deBlasio’s investment in STEM programs at CUNY commu-nity colleges, Milliken said, however, that “real workneeds to start in the public schools” where students

Chancellor Milliken’s Vision


often decide to pursue science and math. He urged “newlevels of collaboration among the schools, CUNY, govern-ment, labor and the private sector” to build upon school-to-employment programs such as P-Tech. Milliken alsosaid New York tech sector leaders “are desperate for well-trained programmers, software developers and gamers —many of whom can come directly from our communitycolleges with less time to a degree, less cost and a quickerpath to earning a very good living. … This is a veryattractive path and one that may be perfect for manyCUNY students.”

• CUNY must develop stronger, richer public-privatepartnerships. “We need more internship opportunities forstudents that can lead to full-time jobs and more mentor-ing opportunities for students who are often the first intheir family to attend college. We should provide interestedfaculty with more opportunities to work collaboratively withthe private sector.”

• CUNY must build its research enterprise andincrease its technology development. “Opportunities in the21st century include businesses that didn’t exist in the20th and our faculty and students can be an integral partof the development of new knowledge, new technologiesand new processes,” the Chancellor said. “We’ve madesome impressive investments in science facilities, withmore to come, but we must double down on recruiting andretaining the best scientists and students to reap the fulladvantage of these investments. We’re in a global race fortalent and we simply must be competitive. We also needan institutional culture that supports, rewards and nur-tures faculty who are interested in commercially develop-ing intellectual property.”

• CUNY should lead in addressing challenges facingcities. “While much of this new spirit of engagement isabout developing knowledge and a skilled workforce forthe new economy, there are other benefits to the city. CUNYshould be a leader in research, education and engagementthat address grand challenges in an increasingly urban-ized global population, attracting leading urban university

partners around the world. Today, this work would includeareas such as applied research in early childhood educa-tion and development, policing and criminal justice, andthe 21st-century built environment.

• CUNY should become Global CUNY. “Every majoruniversity must be global in outlook and scope, and fewuniversities are better positioned than CUNY. We have anenormous advantage: a student body with 40 percent bornoutside this country and students who speak almost 200languages.” Noting that CUNY had a number of studentand faculty winners of Fulbright awards in 2014, he said,“I want our graduates to be competitive with graduatesfrom the best universities anywhere, and without anunderstanding of the world … they will not be.”

• CUNY should become Digital CUNY. “We are devel-oping new technological tools and new classroom plat-forms, blended learning opportunities that aretransforming the way subjects are taught,” he said,adding, “It’s hard to beat 24-hour asynchronous delivery”offered by digital classes. … “I want our students to leaveCUNY very comfortable with online learning.”

• CUNY should be a leader in raising private funds forpublic higher education. “Despite the fact that New Yorkhas been more generous than many other states, CUNYcannot achieve its potential and adequately serve NewYork with only public funding and modest tuition. We arebecoming much less competitive for faculty — and thereis no such thing as a university better than its faculty.”

Chancellor Milliken delivered his remarks as CUNYexperienced record enrollment for Fall 2014 — more than274,000 degree-seeking students choosing CUNY Value,the combination of academic quality, affordability, oppor-tunity and the New York City experience offered by theUniversity. The many facets of CUNY Value are detailed ina new publication, The CUNY Value Plus, and atcuny.edu/value.

Rising standards at the senior colleges, demographicchanges in New York City, where most CUNY studentsreside, and increasing city public high school graduation

rates have combined to drive up enrollment asmore students, including increasing numbers ofwell-prepared students, choose CUNY collegesfor their extraordinary value encompassingquality academics, exceptional affordability andlow student-loan debt among graduates.

Transfer students, overwhelmingly from thecity, constitute a majority of graduates at everyCUNY four-year college including the most high-ly selective. Two-thirds of students who earnbachelor’s degrees from CUNY enter baccalaure-ate programs as transfers rather than fresh-men.

Ambitious students are increasingly applyingto CUNY colleges. The numbers of applicantswith high school grade point averages of 85 orgreater was up by 4.2 percent to 22,700, anoth-er new record, out of more than 70,000 studentsapplying for Fall 2014. More than 12,000 newlyenrolled freshmen in 2014 received $800 NewYork City Council Merit Scholarships given tostudents entering CUNY colleges from New YorkCity high schools with B or better averages.

With colleges conveniently located through-out the five boroughs of culture-and opportuni-

ty-rich New York City, CUNY also offers an array oftraditional extracurricular activities including 199 intercol-legiate sports teams and a multitude of clubs and con-nects hundreds of students per year with life-changinginternships and service opportunities through the CUNYService Corps.

Mentored by distinguished, award-winning professorsand taking advantage of the University’s extensive aca-demic offerings, CUNY students garner numerous presti-gious national awards year after year. In 2014, 22 wonFulbrights for study and teaching abroad, 16 won NationalScience Foundation Graduate Research fellowships andCUNY was well represented among winners of other tophonors. Fourteen CUNY professors also won Fulbrights forresearch, teaching and consulting.

CUNY Value also encompasses support given to stu-dents facing hardships such as homelessness and jobloss. Single Stop USA’s offices in the community collegesprovide services and other assistance to such vulnerablestudents, helping them remain in school. The Carroll andMilton Petrie Foundation Emergency Grant Fund has given$11 million to more than 5,000 CUNY students.

Private donors to CUNY and its colleges provideextraordinary support for institutional scholarships; $560million in CUNY scholarships, 20 percent of $2.8 billiongiven through the Invest in CUNY initiative, has beenawarded since 2000 because of donors’ generosity.

Chancellor Milliken said of CUNY, “This Great AmericanDream Machine serves over 500,000 students every year,the vast majority of whom live, work and contribute to theeconomy, the tax base and quality of life in New York.There is no greater way to leverage a gift than to invest inCUNY.”

“The environment for public higher education is chang-ing in ways that make CUNY more essential than ever,” hesaid. “We have an ambitious agenda … If we’re success-ful, the returns to students and to New York will betremendous.”

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

Chancellor James B. Milliken with Marveline Bazelais, a York College student, at a reception for students and faculty held by theChancellor and his wife, Nana Smith, at the Chancellor’s residence.


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Isabella Rossellini, withthe elephants, in Africa

WHEN 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 aboutanimal 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 12or 13,” says the 62-year-old actress, “but he wrote it so it was comprehensible, andI 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 theyare so mysterious. They are also comical. There’s something about them that alwaysmade me smile. But when I went to college there really weren’t classes in animalbehavior because it was a new science.”

There weren’t classes of any kind before long. Rossellini came to New York at 19to attend tiny Finch College, a women’s college on the Upper East Side that hadstarted 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 atorch singer in the art-house classic “Blue Velvet”), modeling (14 years as the

GLOBALNATURE

Back to Her First By Richard Firstman


W I N T E R 2 0 1 5 5

Lancôme “spokesmodel”) and marriage (the first, for three years, to Martin Scorsese).But she eventually found her way back to her childhood fascination with animals —and back to school to study them. About six years ago, nearly four decades after shedropped out of college, Rossellini finished her undergraduate degree, in art and envi-ronmental studies, at New York University. And now she’s a CUNY grad student—en-rolled in Hunter College’s master’s program in animal behavior and conservation.

It was a confluence of art and science in her career that put her back in a class-room. In 2008, urged on by Robert Redford, Rossellini wrote, directed and starred ina series of video shorts for the website of the Sundance Channel: “Green Porno,” inwhich one of her generation’s most glamorous cover girls portrayed creatures frombarnacles to bedbugs explaining the peculiar and sometimes downright bizarre waysin which they have, or approximate, sex. (“Bedbugs have penises like knives ...Chase with me! Mate with me! Seduce me! Doesn’t need a vagina at all! Ha — heejaculates in my wound. The sperm will travel on their own to my ovaries.”)

Naturally, “Green Porno” got some attention. Critics and viewers loved its cheekyinventiveness — “strangely hypnotic,” said the Daily Beast — and the series grewto 40 webisodes and won a couple of Webby awards. Rossellini brilliantly tapped herappreciation of the comical nature of nature, but just as important to her was theWeb show’s biological accuracy — every detail researched and verified with a scien-tific consultant.

“Green Porno” morphed into a book and then a stage performance — a one-woman-many-animal show that Rossellini spent last winter touring from the Brook-

lyn Academy of Music to concert halls in Europe and Australia. Researching the se-ries and then developing the other projects reignited her interest in animals as anintellectual pursuit.

“After I finished my degree at NYU, I was looking for where to study animal be-havior, but I could only find schools in Minnesota and Florida,” says Rossellini, wholives in Bellport, Long Island. And then a bit of serendipity. In 2012, she had majorback surgery and hired a nurse named Jemma Futterman to help her recuperate athome. “I was writing the stage performance then, and I was telling her what I wouldlike to do. She was getting an advanced degree at Hunter, and she said, ‘I think Isaw something like that at Hunter.’ Six months later, I had my first outing. I got aticket to hear a lecture at Hunter by Temple Grandin” — the prominent animal be-haviorist and autism advocate — “and there was a table with brochures about theanimal behavior master’s program. I couldn’t believe it.”

Not only was Hunter nearby, but the program was in its Psychology Department.“All the other programs are very scientific, so there is comparative genetics and Iwould have to do so much chemistry. It would be interesting, but I’m 62 and there’snot enough time. When I first started back at school at NYU, I arrived with great fan-tasy and humor. But taking exams and writing papers was very daunting. I didn’tunderstand why they wanted the papers to be so boring. The first paper I wrote, wewere studying Darwin. He was so interesting; he would go to the zoo with fakesnakes to see if they were recognized. And I wrote a paper that was a fantasy. The

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Love Isabella Rossellini’s FascinationWith Animals Finds a Place to Grow


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professor must have said, ‘This crazy lady, completely wacko.’ But he neverlaughed. 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 programfor the Spring 2013 semester. “I needed Jemma to help me with the enrollmentprocess. It’s not easy. Maybe for a young person it is.” She laughs out loud at the

memory of arrivingfor her first class notjust as the only olderstudent but lookinglike a parody of one.“I still couldn’t movethat well so I askedthe teacher, ‘I haveto come with anurse. Is that allright?’ So she camewith me to my firstlesson. But by thethird lesson I cameby myself. It was acourse in animalwelfare. Joseph Bar-ber was the producer— the professor.”

Since then therehave been courses in animal behavior in captivity and the wild, the biology ofconservation 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 theNational 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 appliedthat experiment to animals and found that bottlenose dolphins and Asian ele-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 shehopes to continue on to the master’s degree. “When you’re enrolled, there is a psy-chological commitment,” she says. “But there are always pressures — theaterperformances to do, going away, opportunities to work. Then you say, ‘Well, maybeI should do that and not go back to the studies.’ So much of this has happened inmy life. I postpone something that is a passion to respond to something that ismoney 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-pressed by ‘Green Porno,’ ” says Reiss, who was a theater set designer beforeshe became a scientist. “How she got the scientific information and the detailsand wove them into a beautiful tapestry that was inventive, dynamic, engaging— and accurate.”

Rossellini wanted to take Reiss’ course in animal thinking last spring, but shewas out of the country touring in “Green Porno” so often that she decided to auditthe course and take it for credit in the fall. Reiss has been Rossellini’s mentor inthe master’s program, and the two have become friends outside the classroom.They gave a talk about performance and behavior earlier this year at the RubinMuseum of Art. And Rossellini has been working on adapting some of Reiss’Psych 757 coursework into her next theater piece: how animals think and commu-nicate when they’re not having sex.

“Isabella is remarkably perceptive,” says Reiss. “She’s one of my star stu-dents, all puns intended.”

Continued from previous page

Rossellini at BAM in “Green Porn,” a one-woman showon mating rituals in nature

When Sherry Cleary was in “nurseryschool,” years ago, a one-sentenceprogress report came home.It said: “Sherry hates worms.”She still does. Nevertheless, within minutes Cleary can

devise a prekindergarten curriculum using worms to teacharithmetic, storytelling, basic science and more.

As executive director of the Early Childhood ProfessionalDevelopment Institute — and a CUNY-connected educationalleader — Cleary is also a key player in Mayor Bill de Blasio’snationally unprecedented initiative to make pre-K available to

Five CUNY CollegesTraining City’sPre-K Teachers

EDUCATIONSTARTUP

Please turn to

By Barbara Fischkin

Back to Her First Love

GLOBALNATURE


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


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every child in the city. This fallmore than 50,000 children wereenrolled in full-day pre-K class-es, up from about 20,000 theyear before.

And in 89 classrooms, thehead teacher was someone new-ly trained — tuition free — bythe University.

As part of a project thatbegan last spring, this intensiveteacher-education program isbeing carried out by faculty atfive senior colleges: Brooklyn,City, Hunter, Lehman andQueens. It is funded by a $6.7million city grant to theUniversity and the EarlyChildhood ProfessionalDevelopment Institute (PDI) —a prominent educational non-profit partnered with theUniversity. As PDI’s executivedirector, Cleary’s goal is to ulti-mately provide 400 pre-Kteachers with master’s degreesand certification in early child-hood education, many of themas soon as September 2015.

This puts CUNY in the fore-front of the future of early child-hood education. What used tobe more commonly called“nursery school” has evolvedfrom a luxury for those whocould afford it — and one withvarying curriculums — to themore structured pre-K, whichaccording to current research isconsidered a crucial ingredientfor student success.

And while CUNY is in theforefront,Miguel Ortizand RuthCazena-Cesarare on the frontline as two ofthose first 89CUNY educa-tion scholars. They both spenttheir summers at the University,Ortiz at Queens, Cazena-Cesarat Brooklyn. Both are now headteachers in city pre-K classes.They will continue theirUniversity studies this fall andare among those who hope toearn both their master’s degrees

and certification before the2015 school year.

Ortiz’s classroom is at theGarden School in JacksonHeights. A 2012 Queens Collegeundergraduate alum, hemajored in CommunicationsSciences and Disorders.

For Ortiz, 23, early childhoodeducation comes naturally. “Ihave grown up in a very largefamily so there were alwayschildren around me, nieces andnephews,” he says. “I think thatchildren are very silly in a goodway. They like to laugh; theythink many things are fun…. Ifyou can be silly with them youcan connect with them, andthen you can use that connec-tion to teach them.”

About the PDI-CUNY pro-gram, he says: “We all shareresources. We have a huge groupemail every night … and the firstfew professors were very help-ful. Even now that we are donewith their classes they have toldus to feel free to email themabout any questions. It’s been avery tight-knit community.”

Cazena-Cesar’s first class-room was at the SCO MorrisKoppelman Early ChildhoodCenter in Brownsville. She, too,has an undergraduate CUNYdegree in biology from BrooklynCollege. She began teaching pre-K after she graduated about fiveyears ago.

“This program is strengthen-ing my skills,” she says of hercurrent Brooklyn College grad-

uate studies. “Myinstructor,Meredith Resnick,when she explainedthe concept oflearning throughplay, it really hit methat this was about

teaching real-life issues andbringing practicality into theclassroom play setting.”Cazena-Cesar, 26, sees thiscome to life in her classroom’sdramatic play area.

“We have different commu-nity worker uniforms and thechildren have to use their imagi-

nations to become differentcharacters. It’s not just dressingup.” She also uses the kitchenarea to teach students how toset a table. “I realize that thisage group is a sponge,” she says.“You have the power to cultivatea child’s mind so that he or shecan become something great … Ican say to them, ‘You are smart.You have the ability to do this.’And these encouraging wordsmold who they become.”

Both Ortiz and Cazena-Cesar are on “Track One” of theUniversity program, which is forthose who need both graduatedegrees and certification. Thereis also a second track for teach-ers who were already in class-rooms when the project beganand are at different stages whenit comes to what they need for

their degrees and certification.When first interviewed

about the entire project lastspring, Cleary said, “It will bevery ambitious — and daunting— for the participants becausethey will have to work very hard.We’re going to be very selectiveand find candidates who havethe ability to thrive. … The PDIis known for being resourceful,nimble, energetic and creative.But this is a big lift and we arecommitted to helping the mayorrealize his vision, which meansall hands on deck.”

Now Cleary sees that “big-lift” working.

“Track One” finished thesummer with those 89 partici-pants, down only from about100. “Some excused themselves… once they realized the intensi-

EDUCATIONSTARTUPFive CUNY CollegesTraining City’sPre-K TeachersContinued from page 6


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ty of the project,” she explained.“A few others lost their spotswhen they couldn’t meet the aca-demic standards. This attritionwas expected and we are delight-ed with the group of scholarsthat remain.” “Track Two,” sheadds, is “coming along slowly butorganically.”

“We are closer than ever totransforming the lives of thou-sands of children,” is what Mayorde Blasio said when the pre-Kinitiative was announced in thespring. To this SchoolsChancellor Carmen Fariña addedthat “through collaboration, ourchildren and families benefit.”

PDI’s recruitment began inMay in preparation for a Junestart-up. By May 21, it hadreviewed about 800 applications.About the CUNY faculty involved

in the effort, Cleary then said,“We called a meeting. We toldthem about this. And they said,‘What do you need us to do tohelp?’ They are extending them-selves and will be teachingthrough the whole summer.”

A PDI educator will work witheach campus and lend furthersupport to each of the students.

Sixty percent of the city’s pre-kindergarten classrooms are incommunity-based facilities suchas child care centers and HeadStart programs. The remaining40 percent are in public schoolsand, according to Cleary, thisratio is likely to continue.

And Cleary’s own take on pre-K?

“Four-year-olds are very com-petent learners, as long as theirteachers know how to create a

learning environment that isplay-based and allows children tohandle the materials aboutwhich they are learning. A goodteacher knows children have tobe active. … If they are sitting inchairs looking at something inthe middle of the room, that isnot an effective way to teach.”

Flexibility is also important.Consider the worms.“Let’s say a teacher comes into

the classroom thinking she or heis going to teach about plants,”Cleary says. “But it’s raining out-side and the children come inand say that there are worms onthe sidewalk. So the teachershifts the program, taking thechildren outside to get theworms. They can make a homefor the worms. They can learnmath literacy by counting the

worms, measuring the length ofthe worms, seeing how fast theworms crawl from plant to plant.They can write a story about theworms. They can talk about theenvironmental value of theworms ... then they can talkabout why we want the wormsback outside.”

Which might be the part ofthe lesson Cleary likes best.

She says she can’t rememberever not wanting to teach youngchildren. She is forthright,though, about just how muchuniversal pre-K can accomplish.

“The real response to that isthat pre-K won’t do enoughunless we have a really good pro-gram that starts at birth,” shesays. “We need to be thinkingabout all young children. Lifedoesn’t start at 4.”

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


10 W I N T E R 2 0 1 5

PROFILE: POET, NOVELIST DONNA MASINI

How did you get your start as a writer? I was an English major at Hunter and I had greatteachers. I always read poetry and wrote poems,but I never would have thought of being a writer. Ileft Hunter without completing my degree andwent back eight years later because of [the latewriter Audre Lorde]. I had been reading her essays.I got so excited when I met her and she said tocome study with her. It was like everything fellinto place.

What kind of topics do you write about?Generally, I don’t focus on a particular subject. Mypoems used to be very urban — with a lot about NewYork City. The city is like a character in my writing.

Where do you find inspiration for your pieces?I’m not one of those people who walk down thestreet and something hits me and I think, “Oh mygod!” and I stop to write down a poem. I usuallyhave to fight for them down the page and then,“Wow, there it is — I’ve got something.”

What are some of the challenges you’ve had to overcome asa writer?At times, I get that voice of doubt saying, “You’renot smart enough, you’re not good enough.” Theidea of being “enough” is really big for me. Thename of my new novel is even called The Good

Enough Mother. That’s why Audre was so good forme. She would say, “I need you to remember this:Everything I’ve done in my life, was done, not with-out fear, but in spite of it.”

It seems like Audre’s mentorship had a strong impact onyour outlook on life and your career. What kind of lessons doyou want to leave with your students?I love my life — I get to talk about poetry and fiction

to people. I get to see students excited by poetry. SoI want them to have a sense of possibility — you cando anything. I tell them that. Some kids grow up ina family in which everything is possible, and othersdon’t. Growing up, if I told my family I want to be awriter, they would have said, “No, it’s too scary.”And in a way, by teaching writing workshops, I canbe a sort of a coach. Students need someone to tellthem that they can find insight within themselvesand that they are important.

You mentioned your latest novel, The Good Enough Motherearlier. What’s it about?The book in a lot of ways is about class. My charac-ter immigrates from one social class to another.She grew up working class and now she’s a psy-choanalyst. She’s a woman who is divorced andhas no children of her own. She becomesobsessed with a young girl she meets at anearby public school. She doesn’t realizethat it’s not so much a child she wants,but rather a childhood.

What advice do you have for aspiringwriters and poets?Writing poems is an art. And greatpoets have written bad poems. Soyou have to learn to fight for yourwork. You don’t settle. I always saythis to my students. It takes awhile to be great. Also, you justhave to show up to the page andwrite. Don’t listen when people say,“Nobody wants to publish poetry.Nobody wants to publish fiction. Themarket is terrible now!” You can’tthink about that. The one thing is thatyou show up, you do the work.

AS A CHILD, Donna Masini read and wrote poetry but never thought becoming a writer wasin the cards. But now she has published two books of poems: That Kind of Danger, whichwon 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 andanthologies, including The American Poetry Review, Open City, TriQuarterly, the ParisReview, KGB BAR Book of Poems and Parnassus: Poetry in Review. She is also a recipient

of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the New York Foundation for the Arts Grant and aPushcart Prize. Masini, an associate professor of English at Hunter, is also an alumna. She currentlyteaches poetry as a part of the college’s MFA Program in Creative Writing.

THE IDEA OF BE ING

‘ENOUGH’


W I N T E R 2 0 1 5 11


12 W I N T E R 2 0 1 5

GREATGRADUATES

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


W I N T E R 2 0 1 5 13

MAURICE ASHLEYremembers it as if itwere yesterday — ortoday: The move, bish-op to e7, that made himan international grand-

master of chess, and the first black player inthe world to achieve that most exalted sta-tus. “It was exactly 15 years ago — today’s myanniversary!” the onetime star of the CityCollege chess team was saying one afternoonin his Brooklyn apartment. The coincidencetriggered a checkmate smile and a burst ofmemories.

“I had been chasing this moment for 20years and suddenly, here it was — I beat thisguy, I’m in,” Ashley recalled. The guy was noslouch: a fellow international master fromRomania, he had once played Garry Kasparovto a draw. “I went into the game nervous,really tight. And then in one moment I sud-denly became totally calm. It’s just anothergame. It’s all good. You’re gonna be fine. Justplay the game. I began pressuring him and hemust have sensed the shift because he gottotally nervous. I kept up the pressure, chas-ing him around, playing cat and mouse, con-fusing him with some moves. And in the endhe just blundered — allowed a move that wasso easy. And I thought, wow, this is ironic. Icome this far and the move that makes me agrandmaster is a beginner’s blunder.”

There are 1,453 grandmasters in theworld, 82 of them Americans. (There arenow two more black grandmasters — onefrom Zambia, the other from Sweden.) To beconferred the exalted title by theInternational Chess Federation, a playermust compile a succession of victories andimpressive performances against the world’selite players, enough to attain a complexnumerical rating that factors in the strengthof his opponents. “It’s as if, to play in theNBA, instead of a draft, college players hadto play one-on-one games against both thetop college players and NBA players,” Ashleyexplains. “They’d have to crush the othercollege players and do well enough againstthe pros to prove they belong.”

Once so knighted, a grandmaster is agrandmaster for life. Which seems only fair

given that life after coronation isn’t exactlyits own reward.

“I’ve been all over the world, playing,making appearances,” Ashley says. “It’s thelife, right? It’s the dream. Unfortunately, forchess grandmasters, and I’m one who hassuffered this fate, there’s not a lot of moneyin it so you have to do other things if you’regoing to stay in chess.”

Ashley has not only figured out how tostay in the game, but in some respects he’srisen higher than most of his grandmasterbrethren in the decade and a half since hiscrowning achievement as a player. At 48, heno longer competes in tournaments with thefrequency or focus he did when he was pur-suing the holy grail. But he has capitalized onhis prominence as the world’s first blackgrandmaster by fashioning a career as a kindof chess celebrity — an irrepressible promot-er of the game who’s become something of ahousehold name, at least in householdswhere chess is king.

Ashley is a sought-after teacher andcoach (Will Smith, the actor, is among hisstudents), a chess author and TV commenta-tor, a motivational speaker who’s a truebeliever in the powers of the game — espe-cially for kids from neighborhoods like theone he grew up in.

“Nobody tells you when you’re dreamingof becoming the world’s best that it meansyou’ll end up being a high-priced coach,”Ashley says. “But I love coaching. I’ve done itprivately and in schools for decades and it’svery fulfilling. I’ve watched students I’vecoached go on to become successful in otherfields, which is the goal when you’re teachingchess to kids. You’re teaching them criticalthinking.”

His passion for spreading the popularityof chess to young people led to a joint fellow-ship with the MIT Media Lab and Harvard’sBerkman Center for Internet and Society. Hecreated a chess app, part of his work withresearchers to develop ways of using elec-tronic chess to improve learning in America.“Chess is a battle of minds,” Ashley says.“You’re trying to outwit the other person inan ocean of information and strategies andtactics, and it changes every time you play.

People see a chessboard and think it’s boringand dull but it’s really two armies in battle.The tension is high; the need to be accurateis so critical that you’re on the razor’s edgefrom the moment you make your first move.One slip and you’re dead.”

These days Ashley is trying to build themass appeal of chess with something it’s nev-er been about: glitz. In October, he staged theMillionaire Chess Open — a five-day battleroyale at the Planet Hollywood Resort andCasino in Las Vegas that he billed as “thebiggest and most amazing open tournamentin chess history.” Indeed, it seemed more likea high-stakes poker event than a chess tour-nament. More than 560 players from 44countries each paid an entrance fee of $1,000to compete for a million dollars in prizemoney, $100,000 for first place — all recordbreakers for an open tournament.

“I want to bring chess into thelimelight,” Ashley says, “and I think the tim-ing is excellent. Chess has been growing overthe years because of the digital age. So manypeople play online. In the old days, when Iwas trying to get better I had to go to chessclubs, I had to go look for guys in ProspectPark, get hustled for money. But now youhave chess prodigies who can go online any-time and get a game against anyone fromanywhere in the world, and they can studyusing computers that far surpass humans inability. It’s the perfect time to be born as achess player.”

Ashley himself wasn’t born into chess andhe started too late to be a prodigy. He cameto New York from Jamaica with his familywhen he was 12 and didn’t play his first gameof chess until he was 14 and a freshman atBrooklyn Technical High School. “Somebodyhad a chess set,” he says. “He brought me tothe chess club at school and I fell in love withthe game. He and I played chess every singleday after school.”

Soon he was hanging out with a group forwhom chess was actually cool, a kind ofblood sport for boys of a cerebral bent. Therewere weekend “chess rumbles,” Ashleyrecalls, in which “you had to be a gladiator,”willing to choose chess over girls and every


CITY COLLEGE KNIGHT TO . . . GRANDMASTER

By Richard Firstman


14 W I N T E R 2 0 1 5

GREATGRADUATES

other teenage temptation. He begandreaming of becoming one of the world’selite players, a grandmaster, and CityCollege was the first step. Ashley was thestar and captain of the chess team, leadingit to the national college championshiptournament — CCNY’s first taste of inter-collegiate glory since the days of NatHolman. Alas, he says, “We were wiped outby Harvard.”

Ashley would have majored in chess ifhe could have. “I started out in engineer-ing,” he says, “but I fled because there wastoo much math, which I was good at, but itwas just too much work because I was real-ly being a chess player. So I switched tocreative writing.”

After graduating, Ashley joined an ini-tiative by the American Chess Foundationto send coaches into inner-city schools. Itbegan with modest expectations butAshley took it several moves ahead. “In thebeginning I would go twice a week and givethe kids lessons, make sure they’re playingevery day. Then I started taking them totournaments, analyzing their games,‘here’s your mistake,’ really attacking itlike serious chess players. And the kidswere attracted to the game as a competi-tive activity. They wanted to win — ‘Sitdown, I’m going to kill you.’ ” Ashleybecame renowned for coaching teams ofHarlem middle schoolers — the RagingRooks and the Dark Knights — to threenational championships, gaining nationalrecognition for breaking downstereotypes.

In these years, Ashley wrote two bookson chess and became ESPN’s chess com-mentator, making a splash with a rollick-ing style that suggested Clyde Fraziercalling chess as an action sport: “Theknight is galloping toward the middle!”“Pawns are attacking mercilessly!” “Thebishop is slicing and dicing!”

“The announcer responsible for suchbreathless chess chat is Maurice Ashley, a27-year-old international master, who isthe voice of the Professional ChessAssociation’s Intel World Chess GrandPrix,” The New York Times TV sportscolumnist, Richard Sandomir, wrote in1994. “Ashley is loud. Not obnoxious. Justlouder than a voice is expected to be fornoise-free chess.” Ashley told Sandomirwhat happened when he covered a tensetournament in Moscow: “I was goingcrazy. The Russian announcer came over

and said, ‘Could you tone it down?’ ”Ashley was an international master at

that point, one step below grandmasterbut a big one. “My Jamaican grandmotherwould say to me, ‘Jack of all trades, masterof none,’ ” Ashley recalls. “I thought shewas putting me down but what she meantwas that I had been doing all these things— coaching, commentating, writing —instead of focusing on my dream, whichwas to become a grandmaster. Finally thelight bulb went on.”

Ashley devoted himself to the quest andbegan collecting victories against a succes-sion of higher-ranked players, includinggrandmasters. Word began traveling in thechess world that an American was primedto become the first black grandmaster. Thepressure became intense, Ashley recalls.He couldn’t go to a tournament withoutbeing asked when and where he thoughtthe big moment would happen. Finally, inMarch 1999, he was pitted against theRomanian grandmaster who representedthe last hurdle. It turned out to be a tour-nament just a few subway stops fromhome.

“I had traveled the whole world andwound up doing it at a tournament at theManhattan Chess Club,” Ashley says. “Iremember ironing my shirt before thegame, thinking about this big moment inmy life, thinking about my grandmother —‘focus on your dream.’ And I actuallydropped the iron and started crying. I wasstill feeling the emotion when I started thegame, but I managed to get control.”

Ashley says he’s always had somemixed emotions about being thought of assome kind of Jackie Robinson of chess.The times were different, for one thing. “Iknow people weren’t allowed in chessclubs, the same restrictions as in society,but I never experienced that. There were acouple of experiences where ignorant peo-ple said ignorant things,” but nothing likewhat Robinson went through. Still, heunderstood the significance of his achieve-ment, of course. “African-Americans arefamous for being athletes and performers,so it made people proud to have someonebe one of the best in the world at some-thing that’s considered one of the highestintellectual activities. I understood that,even if it’s in many ways almost random totalk about it now.”

Besides, Ashley says, when it comes totitles, “I’m the least successful member ofmy family. My brother is a three-timeworld-champion kickboxer. And my sisteris a four-time WBC boxing champion. Anda black belt in karate.”

By Margaret Ramirez

WHEN RENOWNEDLatin Americanauthor Gabriel GarcíaMárquez died in April,his passing sparkedrenewed interest in

his rapturous novels filled with magic real-ism, especially the beloved Cien Años de

Soledad, or One Hundred Years of Solitude.But most Americans would never have

read Márquez had it not been for theremarkable work of Gregory Rabassa, one

of the mostimportantliterary trans-lators of the20th century.

Rabassa,now 92, a dis-tinguishedprofessoremeritus ofHispanic lan-guage and lit-erature at

Queens College and the CUNY GraduateCenter, achieved worldwide recognition fortranslating more than 50 books from theSpanish and Portugese by some of LatinAmerica’s greatest writers, includingMárquez, Julio Cortázar, Mario VargasLlosa, Jorge Amado, José Lezama Lima,Miguel Angel Asturias and ClariceLispector. In 2006, Rabassa was awardedthe prestigious National Medal of Arts forhis translation, the nation’s highest honorfor contributions to the arts in the UnitedStates.

From his apartment on the Upper EastSide, Rabassa reflected on the legacy ofMárquez, the state of translations, and hisconcerns about the impact of technologyon language.

When asked about Márquez, who was

TheMAGICALTOUCH ofGREGORYRABASSA

OPENINGDOORS


City College Knight to . . .G R A N D M A S T E R


W I N T E R 2 0 1 5 15S P R I N G 2 0 0 9 15

Gregory Rabassa, at his Upper East Sideapartment, was awardedthe prestigious NationalMedal of Arts for histranslations.

affectionately known as “Gabo,” Rabassa saysthey exchanged occasional letters, but heonly met Gabo once during a visit to NewYork in the 1970s.

A few years before, in 1967, Argentinenovelist Julio Cortázar had recommendedRabassa to Márquez as a translator for One

Hundred Years of Solitude. The novel, set inthe imaginary town of Macondo, was alreadya hit throughout Latin America, but Spanish-language novels were still a hard sell in theUnited States.

Rabassa said he was unsure howAmerican readers would react to Márquez,the magic realism literary style, and thethemes of imperialism, incest, economics,dictatorships, and destiny found in OneHundred Years.

“I knew it was damn good book,” saidRabassa. “But at that time, I was very skepti-cal about books from down there, making itup here [in the U.S.]”

Rabassa translates books as he reads, pageby page, usually on a yellow writing pad. Butwith One Hundred Years, Rabassa said he

had already read the book and so it tooksome of the fun out of it. Márquez laterpraised Rabassa as having improved the orig-inal text and called him “the best LatinAmerican writer in the English language.”

The humble Rabassa shrugs at suchpraise, saying it is Márquez who deserves thecredit for writing an epic.

“The book itself wasn’t a lemon,” he sayswith a laugh. “It was so well-written that Ialways say that book translated itself.”

Born the son of multilingual parents — hisfather was from Cuba and his mother was ofScottish and English ancestry — Rabassa holdsa master’s degree in Spanish literature and adoctorate in Portuguese from ColumbiaUniversity. He began teaching at the CUNYGraduate Center and Queens College in 1968and retired in 2008.

In describing his craft, Rabassa added:“It’s like being a musician and being given atheme. You can’t vary the theme but youwork around it in your own way.”

Despite the phenomenal success of One

Hundred Years of Solitude in English,

Rabassa said he didn’t receive royalties andearned only a few hundred dollars. In April2005, Rabassa published a memoir on hiscareer, If This Be Treason: Translation and

Its Dyscontents, and recounted how transla-tors were paid by the word and often failedto receive recognition, rights or royalties. Hecredited publisher Alfred A. Knopf Sr. forleading the fight to have the translator’sname printed on the book jacket.

“In later years, I received royalties forbooks of more recent authors, but not forCien años, he said. “Things have improved abit, but not much. It’s still a business.”

Still, Rabassa has no regrets on the manytreasured books he has translated and closefriends he has made. His biggest concerntoday is the impact of digital technology onlanguage and the written word.

“I guess what worries me a little bit moreis that with all the technological devices wehave now, you see language is disappearing,”Rabassa said. “What’s going to happen toeach individual language? The word, thesound, and the beauty.”


16 W I N T E R 2 0 1 5

NEWONCAMPUS

AS A LIVING LEGEND inAmerican public secondaryeducation, Rudy Crewdeveloped a panoramic viewof what works. He heldleadership positions in six

states, including New York. A nationaladvocate for school reform initiatives, hebegan as a teacher in middle and highschools and was a principal as well.

Now, as the president of Medgar EversCollege, Crew, who has also taught univer-sity students, is bringing his ideals, goalsand expectations to higher education in abroader way.

Over three decades, Crew hasengendered great praise. With his signa-ture wit, he concedes there has been a flipside. Appointed in January 2013, he toldthe CUNY Board of Trustees, “I don’tremember the last time someone clappedfor me, so can you please do it again?”

He ran the New York City public schoolsystem from 1995-2000, when voucherswere an issue, as charter schools are now.Crew, adamantly on the side of public edu-cation, often butted heads with then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani. About charterschools, he now says he prefers to helpmake the public schools in Medgar EversCentral Brooklyn neighborhood better.

Crew became the college’s president 50years after Evers’ assassination, as civilrights continues to be a challenge for adiverse America. These days, Crew cele-brates the diversity of Central Brooklyn.His taste in music is eclectic, too, runningfrom jazz to country to the gospel selectionthat was playing during an interview in hisoffice earlier this year. The song: “I CanImagine.”

Medgar Evers College AssociateProfessor of Education Sheilah Paul — thedepartment chair — says the new presidenthas come to the school with “a vision basedon what the college really was developed todo, to serve the community in which it wasbuilt.”

How will you make this vision a reality?Medgar sits in the midst of a communitythat arguably has some of the lowest-per-forming elementary, middle and highschools in all of New York City. You can sithere and decry that, say: “Oh my goshwhat’s coming in the door is not the rightkind of raw material that we need.” Or youcan say that part of the job now is to culti-vate the K-12 students so that they comehere with a treasure trove of skills. So, I amtaking 30 or 40 schools and I am going topartner them with Medgar. We are calling itthe “Pipeline Project.” If you are a childborn within “earshot” of the campus you’remine. You are a Medgar student automati-cally and the only question for me is, can Iget you?

Specifically, how do you help those who need thisacademic support? We are assembling a recruitment team. Weare looking at this with market segmenta-tion. Who are the students? What kind ofinterests do they display? What are theirparents talking about? What needs do theyhave academically? We will offer summercourses. We should own the summer. Weshould own the Internet. We should ownhaving conversations with parents so thattheir kids are living in a college-going cul-ture. We are going to have a whole lot ofpeople push this conversation into thehomes of Brooklyn.

You were raised in Poughkeepsie, by your father,who was widowed when you were small. He wasdevoted to education. Do you want the college togive students what you got from your father?That’s exactly right. And sometimes you’vegot to say it and it’s tough. Love is notalways easy and bouncy.

What about the students who believe they can dobetter than here?There is a Medgar Evers Prep, a high school.But traditionally those students bypassedthis school. They understood it was sup-

posed to be a bad idea. You only came hereif you had no other choice. These studentscould go to SUNY and they had otheroptions as well. We started by having ameeting there. There were more than 500students and parents.

If there were no restrictions and you could doanything at all to ensure success here, what wouldthat be?I don’t have a picture of being prohibitedfrom doing what is possible. I have a pictureof being enabled. … I view this as a wonder-ful campus on which I get a chance to makea patina, like watercolor where you don’thave complete control. It bleeds into themat and your job is to kind of get it to angleitself in the right direction. This is aboutallowing people in this college to have their

THE CORNERSTONE:Confident Learners,Giving Their All


W I N T E R 2 0 1 5 17

own campus. If you get that happeningamong faculty and staff it will automaticallyhappen to students.

You have had a broad view of education in America,mostly K-12. How do you see the landscape ofhigher education?The landscape is dotted with an enormousarray of places that are a few questions awayfrom greatness. But failure to answer thosequestions will lead us to a circular road, ask-ing the same questions generation after gen-eration. How do we educate those with theleast? How do we build better strategy? Howdo we offer more opportunity? And how dowe distribute differently without causing abreakage in the covenant with people whodon’t need all these things? Where and whatis the trampoline, the jump to the middle

class? And why are fewer and fewer students,including middle class students, unable toget into the middle class themselves? InCentral Brooklyn, specifically, parents areasking what’s the new on-ramp to get into apost-secondary institution.

What is the on-ramp?It is to build really confident learners andthen to maximize their efforts so that theycan learn anything that anyone puts beforethem. But if the cornerstone is not built, ifthey are not really confident in anything,then social change, let alone academicchange, won’t happen. Students need tolearn: I might get an “F.” But I am not an “F.”

How do you teach this?You do this by not ascribing theory to them

about being smart or dumb. There are morechoices than this. More intelligences. Thisisn’t a question of being defined as smart ordumb by a state test. Or as quote-unquote“remedial.” How do we create a way of talk-ing about knowledge so that we understandit is simply another asset we can distribute?To everyone. Just because one studentknows algebra does not mean there is lessalgebra in the world. It just means thatanother student gets a chance to learn alge-bra and may do it very differently.

On a personal note, what is it like to be back in NewYork?I have come home because it is home. I amliving in Brooklyn. My son lives here. This isgoing to be home again for me for a very longtime. I don’t have anywhere else to go.

Rudy Crew, president, Medgar Evers College, with students on theBrooklyn campus, from left, JoseDiaz, Tiffany Bob-Semple, HasaniDouglas and Jed Justiniani


Elizabeth Butson knows what reallymatters and it’s not money.

“It’s all about making a differencein the lives of others,” says the phi-lanthropist.

Butson, a former Philip MorrisInternational advertising executive,reporter for Time/Life magazine and localnewspaper publisher, spent her early lifemaking opportunities for herself. Now shecreates them for others.

A longtime supporter of the Borough ofManhattan Community College, she hasgiven the school thousands of dollars overthe years, funding many scholarships foracademically gifted students. One wasnamed in honor of her mother, KatyHalepli.

“We talk about inequality and ‘the havesand the have-nots,’ but that’s not what it’sall about,” says Butson, who is a BMCCFoundation board member. “It’s about cre-ating opportunity and BMCC gives anyonewho really wants an education thatchance.”

It was nearly 15 years ago that Butsonattended the college’s annual gala andbecame inspired by a student from theCaribbean who had struggled in life. “Hewas kicked out of his home and he lived in acrawl space in the roof of a building,” recallsButson. “But look at what determination tosucceed can do. He got a scholarship ... andhe was one of the top graduating studentseven though he didn’t have a place to live. Ireally wanted to be a part of that.”

Soon after, Butson — who, with her latehusband, Tom Butson, owned two LowerManhattan newspapers, DowntownExpress and The Villager — was invited tojoin the BMCC board.

Born in Istanbul to parents of Greekheritage, Butson has a story that in someway mirrors those of many foreign-bornBMCC students. She moved to the UnitedStates alone at 18 in search of educationalopportunity. She received a scholarshipfrom Boston University, studied politicalscience and journalism, and supplementedher income by teaching Greek-Americanchildren in the Boston area.

“When I came here, I really had to makeit on my own,” she says. “My parents could-n’t help me because the Turkish

BMCC scholarshipbenefactor ElizabethButson, center, at theFiterman Art Center,with two students whohave benefited from herscholarships, GentianaRina from Albania, atleft, and BibechanyaBasnet from Nepal.

LESSONSINLEADERSHIP

–‘It’s About CWhat’s It All About?By Lenina Mortimer

18 W I N T E R 2 0 1 5


government didn’t allow people to send mon-ey out of the country. I did all those things onmy own — being able to do that energized me.It also energizes me when I see it in others.”

Since its inception in 2002, the $1,000Katy Halepli Scholarship has been awardedto 12 graduating women seniors. TheElizabeth Butson Scholarship, which wasestablished last year, has been awarded toeight students. They received $1,600 schol-arships.

Gentiana Rina, a recipient of an ElizabethButson Scholarship, is juggling school with ajob in retail. The scholarship means she canafford to take some time off from work soshe can study more.

Rina is 30 and a third-year engineeringscience major who arrived from Albania four

years ago to further her education. “When Icame, I didn’t know anybody and I didn’tspeak a word of English,” she says. She wasaccepted into BMCC’s ESL program and nowshe has a 4.0 GPA. She plans to follow in herfather’s footsteps to become an engineer.

“There are people driven to succeed andmake it to the top,” says Butson. “Most peo-ple need for someone to open a door forthem. For me, opening doors for myself andothers has been a big part of my life.”

Last spring, Butson joined four scholar-ship recipients for lunch at BMCC’s ShirleyFiterman Art Center. She wanted to get toknow them and hoped they would learn abit about her. “Every time I see those kidsgraduate, I feel really terrific,” she says. “Iwanted to meet them because I want to

know where they are and what they aredoing.”

Though Butson is celebrated for her phil-anthropic work, she is most proud of her pro-fessional accomplishments. “I was the firstfemale V.P. at Philip Morris in a very maledominated world, in a very conservative busi-ness,” she says. “Now, the number of womenin exec jobs has significantly increased I amglad that I opened doors for them.” Butsonworked for Philip Morris International for 27years where she was the first woman hiredfor a nonsecretarial position.

“Success in life is not all about makingmoney,” she says. “It is about making newtracks, taking the road less traveled, sharingthe knowledge you have gained with thosewho are getting started. Opening doors.”

Creating Opportunity’

W I N T E R 2 0 1 5 19S P R I N G 2 0 0 9 19


By Lenina Mortimer

Sheryll Pang is no stranger to hardship, but it’sadversity that has driven her to succeed.

Pang, 25 years old, says that at 16 her abu-sive stepfather kicked her out of their house.And three years later, she became a singlemother.

“I was told I was stupid and that I’d never amount toanything,” she says. “I really didn’t think I would be able to goto college. I did not believe I had themental capacity.”

She would never have guessed, justnine years ago, that in the spring of2014 she would graduate from BaruchCollege summa cum laude with adegree in finance and investment.

“My life was a bit of mess and unsta-ble before I had my son,” says Pang,who described her life back then as tur-bulent. She had a series of abusive rela-tionships and worked dead-end retailjobs. But once Jayden, who is now 5years old, was born her life took a dif-ferent direction. “After I had him every-thing became 100 percent [clear] — Iknew what I had to do and I wanted togive him a better life.

Jayden was only two months old when Pang enrolled atQueensborough Community College. It didn’t take long forher professors to take notice of her academic prowess. “QCCwas a stepping stone to something bigger,” she says. “Ithought I was going to get an associate’s degree and maybefind a job on Craigslist. But my professors would reach out tome and tell me that I was capable of much more.”

With the encouragement of her professors, Pang applied tothe New York Needs You fellowship — a career-developmentand leadership program at CUNY for students who are thefirst in their family to attend college. “When I learned aboutthe program, I thought it was amazing. It’s what I really need-ed,” says Pang, who was born in Singapore and raised in NewJersey. “They give a $2,500 stipend but that’s not where thevalue is … it’s in the mentoring that helped to guide methrough the college process.”

“She was doing well in school. But the NYNY networkopened her up to new opportunities in finance that shehadn’t fully explored as an industry,” says chief program offi-cer of NYNY, Marianna Tu. “She’s entrepreneurial in the wayshe shares her story. She has a strong sense of giving back to

the students who share similar experiences,” says Tu.While Pang’s studies at QCC boosted her confidence — she

really found her stride at Baruch. “[At Baruch] I said, ‘I can dothis. I’m going to work my way to the top.’” Pang became moreactive on campus and discovered the Starr CareerDevelopment Center’s Financial Leadership Program, whichprepares students for careers at top financial institutions.

“I didn’t even know what finance was. But having mentorsand joining these programs that guidedme, helped me to identify what I want-ed to do and what I could be good at,”says Pang, who was later admitted tothe highly competitive ZicklinUndergraduate Honors Program.

“Sheryll stood out even among real-ly smart students in terms of her abili-ty to communicate and participate. Wehad Larry Zicklin as a guest lecturerand the students were intimidated. Butnot Sheryll, she had her hand in the air,asking really smart questions,” recallsmarketing professor Gloria Thomas,who also serves as the director of theZicklin Undergraduate Honors pro-gram.

“I love learning. I took school a lotmore seriously, since I worked first and then went to college,”says Pang who started college three years after graduatingfrom high school. Along with her major in finance Pang had atriple minor in economics, international business andadvanced business analysis.

After her junior year, Pang was given an early job offer atthe asset management firm BlackRock as a financial analyst.

“I believe that she has top management potential,” says CarolGamm, an executive coach who mentored Pang for two yearsthrough Baruch’s Executive on Campus program. “Through herlife experience, I think she has developed a kind of street smarts.And that’s not something you can teach people.”

As a new graduate she has many plans, and among them isworking with other single mothers to coach them to fulfilltheir potential.

“I really do want to inspire women. I want to show themthat you’re not in it alone. A lot of people get embarrassed bythe bad decisions they make,” says Pang, “but for me, I realizethat I had to go through it to be who I am today. We’ve all gonethrough our own adversity, and it’s what you do about it thatreally matters.”

TOPOFTHECLASS

With the encouragement of her

professors, Pang applied to the

New York Needs You fellowship

— a career-development and

leadership program at CUNY for

students who are the first in

their family to attend college.

20 W I N T E R 2 0 1 5

ADVERSITYthe Mother of Success


Sheryll Pang with her son, Jayden

W I N T E R 2 0 1 5 21


By Barbara Fischkin

PROFESSOR SheldonWeinbaum, now 77, retiredfrom City College in 2007.Or more accurately: “neverreally retired.” Hired in 1967,he is still very much a pres-

ence at City College and its Grove School ofEngineering, advising graduate students,overseeing grants and participating in cours-es as a guest instructor.

One day last spring, dressed in a plaidshirt, black sweater vest, blue jeans andsneakers, he offered encouraging advice tothose presenting papers on the intricacies ofkidneys, tubular diameter change and theabsorption of fluid through epithelial cells,leaky and otherwise. The papers wereaccomplished; the students nervous, never-theless.

“This is stuff you wouldn’t know yet,”Weinbaum said, after suggesting a plan foradditional exploration. “But I do.”

Some laughed, most seemed to relax a bit.Certainly, Sheldon Weinbaum is in many

respects a regular guy. He signs his emails“Shelly,” and that is what many colleaguesand staff call him, even if his students andformer students are generally more deferen-tial. This is perhaps because in his field,Sheldon Weinbaum, regular guy, is a super-star.

Formally, he is a Distinguished Professorof Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering,emeritus. Last year when elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences(AAAS) he became one of nine living per-sons to hold membership in these four elitenational science academies: the NationalAcademy of Sciences, the National Academyof Engineering, the Institute of Medicineand the AAAS – and the only one in NewYork State.

His contributions to re-entry aerodynam-ics and fluid mechanics are widely recog-nized. In 2002, he was the first engineerawarded a Guggenheim Fellowship inmolecular and cellular biology. More

recently, he proposed a new fuel-saving con-cept for an airborne jet ski train that travelsat more than 430 miles an hour.

There is more. He also has been a promi-nent, staunch, risk-taking activist for diver-sity, at CUNY in particular.

Along with all of this, Weinbaum is alsoamong the University’s proudest mentorsand his devotion to diversity comes into playhere as well. He relishes the fact that in afield overwhelmingly male in years past, 17of his 45 Ph.D. students have been womenand/or underrepresented minorities. Oncehe even spent a month in China, recruitingwomen students.

Asked to suggest a few former students tocontact, Weinbaum gushed over a number ofthe them, including Ghebre Tzeghai (’84) hisfirst African-American Ph.D. student.Tzeghai retired last summer after 30 yearsat Proctor & Gamble, where he was GlobalR&D and Innovation Executive. He is nowworking part time as Chief InnovationOfficer and Independent Consultant atSummit Innovation Labs. Tzeghai wasrecently elected to the National Academy ofEngineering, the fourth African-Americanto be elected in the field of bioengineering.

And then there is Bingmei Fu, now a CityCollege professor. She was the first femalePh.D. in the Department of MechanicalEngineering.

His students return the admiration.One, born in Kiev, even went to Ukraine

with him to help him trace his father’s roots.Others, when asked to write about theirexperience with Weinbaum, quickly sentback glowing emails, offering to write ortalk more about his influence on them. Intruth, their stories could fill a book aboutmentoring.

Here is an offering from Yi Arnold, whoas a student was Yi Duan:

“I had trouble learning fluid mechanicsduring my first trimester at CCNY andreceived a not-so-good grade. I was veryupset because I thought I wasn’t good

enough to be one of Dr. Weinbaum’sstudents. But he calmed me down. Heshowed me the email he got from anotherprofessor stating that I had excellent pres-entation skills, comparable to students fromHarvard or MIT. He told me that one courseis not enough to pass judgment on who youare and that not everybody can be good ateverything.”

Arnold earned her Ph.D. in biomedicalengineering from City College in collabora-tion with Yale School of Medicine andMount Sinai School of Medicine in 2008 andreceived postdoctoral training at ColumbiaUniversity. She is now a senior scientist atOsiris Therapeutics in Baltimore.

22 W I N T E R 2 0 1 5

MENTOR

SUPERSTAR, ACTIVIST,ENGINEERING GURU— and Regular Guy


Professor Bingmei Fu received her Ph.D.in 1995, and her own page on the college’swebsite, if printed, would be seven pageslong and includes students she has men-tored herself. “The most precious thing Ilearned from professor Weinbaum is anoptimistic attitude,” she notes. “Not only inmy career but also in life.”

To this, Laura Causey Sandoval, whoreceived her Ph.D. from City College in bio-medical engineering in 2013 and is now aprogram associate at Rice 360 Institute forGlobal Health Technologies, adds, “He hasconstantly worked for a more just world.”

Weinbaum says this is because the men-tor had a mentor: his wife.

Weinbaum has been married to SandyWeinbaum, also an educational activist, for52 years. (Alexandra Weinbaum, as the pro-fessor’s wife is known professionally, is adocumentarian of the new GuttmanCommunity College in collaboration withNan Bauer-Maglin and Camille Rodríguez,with funding support from the Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation).

She also was the one, the professor says,who persuaded the scientist to become anactivist.

And, as a result — as a recently hired pro-fessor — Weinbaum led a demonstrationagainst the Vietnam War at the college’sSteinman Hall and was an outspoken sup-

porter of Black and Puerto Rican studentdemands in their takeover of the CityCollege campus in 1969. He was almostfired. Later, in the 1990s, acting on a long-held belief that diversity was crucial toCUNY, he led students and professors in aclass-action lawsuit, “Weinbaum vs.Cuomo,” which argued that New York Statefinancing of higher education was raciallydiscriminatory. It was unsuccessful yetenabled new voices to be heard.

In speaking about the original impetusfor his activism so many years ago, RegularGuy Weinbaum recalls: “My wife said to me,Why don’t you do something importantwith your life?”

W I N T E R 2 0 1 5 23

Bingmei Fu, professor of biomedicalengineering at City College, withmentor Sheldon Weinbaum,Distinguished Professor of BiomedicalEngineering at the college.


24 W I N T E R 2 0 1 5

HEADOFTHECLASS

By Richard Firstman

ONE MIDSEMESTER DAY at QueensboroughCommunity College, Colleen Abbate arranged anarray of black and white photographs on the black-board ledge in the college’s photo studio. Then shestepped away and glanced back and forth between theimages and her professor’s panning eyes.

“What is that — it looks like a Diane Arbus photograph,” Jules Allensaid, casually tossing off a comparison to one of the most famously idio-syncratic photographers of the last century. His students areaccustomed to such references, even if they don’t always get the refer-ences, or the compliments.

“What was it — Halloween or something?” Allen asked.“It was the Polar Bear Club where we jumped in the ocean in

January,” explained Abbate, a Navy veteran. “You went into the water in January?” Allen asked, as if simultane-

ously appalled and delighted. That’s another thing his students areaccustomed to: the exaggerated tease.

“We did it for the Make-a-Wish Foundation,” Abbate explained, butAllen didn’t care: “You went in the ocean when it was zero outside?You’re crazy!”

Allen, a professor of art and design who’s been a fixture at

Queensborough for more than three decades, is a renowned art photog-rapher whose work, primarily focused on the contemporary African-American experience, is in the permanent collections of the Museum ofModern Art, the Smithsonian and the National Gallery, among others.His books include studies of nude black women, denizens of Gleason’sGym and people who wear hats. A forthcoming volume looks at theculture of black marching bands — a “precision-based art form thatfully embodies the love of the public event as a spectacle,” as Allen seesit, and “breathes the soul and spirit of Africa within the modern world.”

Allen brings serious intellect to his photography, but to his studentshe’s an amalgam of personality and attitude — a professor apt to tell astudent, “It’s disgusting how good that photograph is.” He’s demandingbut playful, worldly and wide-eyed, insightful and inciting.

And, at 67, still very cool. “That’s a beautiful photograph of that parrot,” Allen said, moving to

another photo. “Is that your bird?”“It’s my boyfriend’s,” Abbate said, “but I bought it.”“Okay, go to work on these three, they’re killers. Burn the sky on that

one.”“What about that one over there, with my daughter crying?” Abbate

asked.

Jules Allen,QueensboroughCommunity CollegeArt and Designprofessor, right,reviews the photocontact sheet ofstudent Rashad Khan

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


W I N T E R 2 0 1 5 25

“That one’s too muddy,” Allen said. “Why’syour daughter crying? Because you wouldn’tpick her up? You were being mean.”

“She’s like 45 pounds!”“That’s impossible. You told me she’s 2

years old!”Allen is always getting into it with his stu-

dents, always asking questions, whetherabout their photographs or their lives, or, as isoften the case, both at once. “I’m always ask-ing them, ‘Where you from, where’re yourparents from, where do you work, where’dyou get those boots,” says Allen, who onceworked as a psychiatric social worker in acounty jail in his native California. “I want toknow who you are. Let’s get this going, let’stake an interest in the world, pay attention,ask questions. When you learn to investigatein here, it’s going to translate outside.”

Abbate said her daughter was almost 3.Then she headed off to the darkroom. Likemost of Allen’s students, her experiencedidn’t go much beyond snapping pictureswith her iPhone before she enrolled in hisPhotography 1 course, but she discovered anew world in old-fashioned film photography.

“Half of them take it as an elective andthey get hooked,” Allen says. “It’s interestingthat the majority want to study film, not digi-tal. They fumble and stumble at first. Theydon’t know what visual thinking is, andthey’re afraid of the chemistry in the dark-room. Learning this visual competence alongwith the mechanical competence isoverwhelming.”

Allen has been teaching at Queensboroughfor more than 30 years, full time since 1998.He’s always had a simple approach: Don’t tryto teach a student how to see but how to look.“Visually, they don’t know what they’re look-ing at so when they show me a photograph Iask them a lot of questions: What’s going on inthis photograph? Why did you take the photo-graph? Who is this person? Who is he to you?What’s he looking at? I used to say this aboutraising my children: I didn’t lead them, I fol-

lowed them and encouraged them and made sure wherever they weregoing they were exploring their own sensibilities.”

Of course, as any teacher or parent knows, sometimes encouraginginvolves a little pushing. Out the door, in this case. For Allen, teachingphotography to community college students means insisting they breakout of their cocoons.

“They are required to go to the International Center of Photography,they are required to go to the Museum of Modern Art. I tell them: ‘It ismandatory that you look at magazines and books, that you look at a news-paper, that you see films, that you listen to music, that you eat, that youcook. All of it goes in. The ones who take it seriously find a way to learnphotography.”

He pointed to a photograph by Angela Kaffetzakis, a second-year stu-dent. “This is pretty amazing, just three semesters of photography. This isfine work and I celebrate it and I support it but I don’t let her off the hook.Once you commit, that’s it, you’re in. I fight you to the bitter end. You canlearn to do this. And then it’s not a matter of can you but will you. This is atough ballgame, photography, and it’s getting tougher. Talent is one thingbut character, integrity, discipline and focus — that changes the game. Wehave students go from here to SVA [School of Visual Arts], Pratt,Purchase.”

Allen paused to call over to another student. “Sequoia! First of all,that’s a name to die for. Do you have some photographs with you?”

“It’s in the thingie,” Sequoia told him.“What’d I tell you about that word? There’s no thingie in here.”

Jules Allen grew up in San Francisco, the son of cultured, working-class parents. “My father was a barber and worked in the post office, buthe was a very well-read and aesthetically polished cat. He was very, veryfinished. We had prints of Picasso and Degas on the wall, Duke Ellington,we subscribed to the New Yorker and GQ. I was the only black kid aroundwith that stuff.”

But Allen says he was still a street kid as a teenager, a little too easilytempted by trouble. Then one day he saw a picture of a striking-lookingblack man in Life magazine. “I asked my father who it was and he says,‘That’s Gordon Parks, he’s a famous photographer.’ He had this shearlingcoat on with the collar turned up, the hair and that moustache. He was

beautiful. Then my fathershowed me these photographsParks had done of Malcolm X.And my eyes lit up. I said at thatvery moment, ‘I’m gonna be aphotographer.’ ”

Someone Allen knew, an ama-teur photographer, told himabout a public darkroom run bySan Francisco’s parks and recre-ation department. “It was mysaving grace — it opened a wholenew world for me,” he says. “Itgave me something to thinkabout other than being slick,trying to get something for noth-ing.” Discovering Gordon Parks,

learning how to make pictures, “I learned that you could be creative andthat was okay. It didn’t just belong over there” — he motions as if to theother side of the tracks. “We could have it too.”

But Allen was still a kid, too unfocused to think about a career andwith a high school education he describes as “most poorly.” And thencame the draft. Allen went to Vietnam in 1968, though he managed tobring his camera with him and even found his way to a darkroom. “I was aresourceful cat,” he says. “I took a lot of photographs. But it was a horror.A horror. And when I got home my mother got rid of all of them. She said,‘Baby, you’re home, you’re safe, it’s over, let it go. You don’t need to see anyof that ever again.”

The war did what war tends to do — beat the foolish youth out of him.“When I got home I bought a VW Beetle and drove around the U.S.because I had just been in the war and I wanted to see what this countrywas. Then I went back home and I said, ‘I’m through with the streets. I’mgoing to school.’ I settled down, started reading books.”

Allen enrolled at California State University in San Francisco andstarted out as an English major. But photography still was inside him.“One day I wandered into the art building and I met Jack Welpott,” aprominent photographer who was at the center of San Francisco’s thriv-ing photography community, which included his mentor, Ansel Adams.“He invited me to his house and there was a wall of art books, art waseverywhere — drawings, paintings, sculptures — and everything was cre-ative and personal. He made the furniture. And I’m like, ‘Bong!’ I said,‘You can live like this?’ ”

Welpott and other luminaries of San Francisco’s thriving photographycommunity became mentors. “All those cats embraced me. They said,‘This is a tough game for a black kid to be in, Jules, but you got a lot of tal-ent and we like you.’ ”

Allen switched his major to photography and earned a BFA. And thena master’s in clinical psychology and counseling because he wanted tolearn about human behavior — and earn a living. He worked as a psychi-atric social worker in the county jail for three years and was planning toget a Ph.D. when it occurred to him that what he really wanted to do was

Allen paused to call over toanother student. “Sequoia!First of all, that’s a name to diefor. Do you have somephotographs with you?”

“It’s in the thingie,” Sequoiatold him.

“What’d I tell you aboutthat word? There’s no thingie inhere.”

u Shoot



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 meetingother photographers and they really helped meget 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. Inthe 1980s, he took up boxing at Gleason’s, thelegendary Manhattan boxing gym, but found fighttraining to be a window into the souls he found in andaround the ring. He wound up doing more shootingthan sparring, “and two years later I had a book” — orat least the makings of one. Double Up, Allen’sfourth book, was published in 2011, 30 yearslater.

Overhearing the discussion, a studentasked Allen, “When you do concepts andyou focus mainly on blacks, do you feel likethat kind of limits you?”

“That’s a good question — you’re a smartman,” Allen replied. “But I think it actuallyexpands me. Diane Arbus said the more spe-cific something is the more general it is.”

“So by focusing on one group of people you’reshooting for the whole world?” the student said.

“Bam!” Allen said. “In order to be whoever you areyou 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.”

In the age of camera phones, selfies and underem-ployment, students often tell Allen that their parentsthink photography courses are a waste of time. “Theydon’t understand what their children are doing takingpictures,” he says.

Allen freely acknowledges photography is a toughcareer to break into, especially photography thataspires to art. Years ago, he found himself confrontedwith that reality by students themselves. “They said,‘We’re supposed to make a living doing what you do,this art? You’re supposed to be the teacher — teach ushow to make a living. They wanted to learn commer-cial photography but I never did that at all. So I wentto the department, got some lights, some backdropsand in my studio I taught myself how to light and put aportfolio together, started looking for work. Andbefore I knew it, I was blowing up. I had all students asmy assistants. We were doing advertising, magazineshoots.”

Allen had realized long before that he had the kindof embracing personality that allowed him to blendinto the culture he was trying to portray and shoot“from the inside out.” The same personality his stu-dents knew. It turned out to have a similar effect withfamous and powerful people.

“We went to do Colin Powell at the Waldorf,” Allenrecalls. “And he says, ‘What’s happening, man? Howyou doing, baby?’ He took all that Mr. Secretary ofState stuff off.”

26 W I N T E R 2 0 1 5

By Margaret Ramirez

WITH THE AUTUMN SUNblazing through HunterCollege’s north studio,hip-hop choreographerJennifer Weber leads abrash group of dance

students in a master class that attempts to rein-vent hip-hop.

As the beat thumps, the dancers followWeber’s movements, learning an animated routinefilled with swooping arms and complicated foot-work. Weber then splits the class into pairs, askingthem to play off each other’s movements, in a styleless like hip-hop and more reminiscent of ballet.

Weber, who is founder and artistic director ofthe hip-hop dance company Decadancetheatre, isone of 19 acclaimed choreographers taking resi-

dence, rehearsing and teaching at 10 collegesacross The City University of New York.

The groundbreaking new residency program,known as the CUNY Dance Initiative, strikes aunique cultural partnership by providing dancecompanies with free rehearsal space on a collegecampus, while allowing students and surroundingcommunities to interact with professional dancersat master classes, public lectures and openrehearsals.

In addition to the Decadancetheatre residencyat Hunter College, some of the other dance compa-nies participating in the CUNY Dance Initiativeinclude: Renegade Dance at Brooklyn College; ElisaMonte Dance at City College; Chloe Arnold’sSyncopated Ladies at John Jay College; Les BalletsTrockadero de Monte Carlo at Lehman College and


HEADOFTHECLASS

Learning to LookBefore You Shoot

19 Choreographers at 10 Colleges

Dance, Dance, BODYMOVES


W I N T E R 2 0 1 5 27

Dance to the People at the College of Staten Island.Jeffrey Rosenstock, assistant vice president of

external and governmental relations at QueensCollege, which is leading the Dance Initiative, said theproject gives dance companies an opportunity toexplore the diverse neighborhoods where CUNY’s col-leges are located.

“This is a chance for these dance companies to seehow their work fits on an audience that might not betheir regular audience,” Rosenstock said. “So I thinkCUNY really has another opportunity … to impact thecultural life of our city.”

Jana Feinman, director of Hunter’s dance program,said the initiative provides dance students with aunique opportunity to observe a working artist in themidst of creating an original performance work. Weber,for example, will be holding rehearsals at Hunter

College for the upcoming December premiere of “A HipHop Nutcracker in Washington Heights.”

Feinman said several dance professors are inte-grating the Dance Initiative into their curriculumthrough lectures and also by requiring students toattend master classes and rehearsals.

“There’s a feeling of intensity that you get fromquestioning and observing these choreographers anddancers,” Feinman said. “It’s something you can’tteach.”

Malaika Holder, a Hunter dance major who attend-ed the Decadancetheatre master class, said she wasimpressed by how much she learned from choreogra-phers Weber and another Decadancetheatre member,Taeko Koji.

“It was refreshing how they broke stereotypes ofhip-hop,” Holder said. “It’s known to be rough. But I’ve

never seen it as vulnerable in the way that she wasteaching today.”

Weber said the most exciting thing about the ini-tiative is not just the space, but also the relation-ships to be forged while the dance companies are oncampus.

“It’s so important as an artist to have a home tocreate work,” Weber said. “And that is the best thingabout this Dance Initiative. This is now going to bethe home for the next piece that we are creating. Andnow that we’ve had this class, it’s more than just anempty rehearsal room, it’s a space that we feel con-nected to.

“Now we’ve already started this relationship andwe have this history already in this space from today,”she said. “So, there is a certain energy that we willthen bring through to our work.”

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


28 W I N T E R 2 0 1 5

By Neill S. Rosenfeld

NEWLY ARRIVED in the United States and work-ing in a restaurant, Qiong Zhou wondered: “Isthis job I will have all my life? Wash tableclothsand cleaning table, clean up cups and theplates?”

She had left China in 2010 with a shaky grasp of English but afirm hold on her dreams. “My family preferred for me to workrather than study, but I was very determined to continue myeducation,” Zhou recalls.

And in two years Zhou had completed an associate degree atBronx Community College and started a bachelor’s in nutritionat Brooklyn College. She credits her achievement to theUniversity’s Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP),an initiative started in 2007 to help community college studentsearn 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 yearsto earn their degrees. But Zhou is one of the ASAP program’smany 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 thethree-year graduation rate of a comparison group of non-ASAPCUNY students.

COVERSTORY

On the Path To College Success

New Help That Really Works

Please turn to


W I N T E R 2 0 1 5 29

. . . 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


COVERSTORY

Zhou was hardly alone in beating the goal by a year. A third ofthe 2011 ASAP freshmen earned their degrees in just two years,nearly four times the rate of comparable students who didn’t jointhe program.

ASAP’s success has been noticed far beyond New York City. Itsresults are unmatched by any of the other initiatives launched byAmerican community colleges and university systems, and it hasput the University in the forefront of a national reform movement.Ohio education officials announced at a recent White House con-ference that their state is replicating ASAP on three campuses.Colleges as far away as Hawaii have imported theapproach, and many more have shown interest in adapt-ing the model.

While ASAP aims to keep students on track for timelygraduation, it also has gained attention for a remedialprogram, CUNY Start. More than half of America’s com-munity college students need remedial courses beforethey can tackle college-level work. The University pro-vides remediation at its community colleges; in 2012,fully 82 percent of entering students needed remedia-tion.

Most of America’s remedial students never completethe traditional sequence of courses and drop out. Manyspend a good deal of their state and federal tuition aidtaking and retaking these noncredit courses, leaving lessaid for courses that lead to degrees. It’s part of the reasonmany give up and quit school.

CUNY Start students tell a different story. Between Fall 2009and Spring 2014, some 3,300 students took the full-time, one-semester program (there’s also a part-time version); all had failed atleast two of the University’s assessment tests and more than two-thirds had failed all three. Thanks to CUNY Start, about half testedproficient in reading, writing and math; another third passed twotests; and 82 percent enrolled in a University degree program thefollowing semester. (More details below.)

The success of ASAP and CUNY Start has led to significantexpansion of both initiatives. ASAP’s enrollment of 4,300 studentsthis academic year is four times what it was three years ago, andMayor Bill de Blasio awarded the University an additional $35 mil-lion to expand the program to 13,000 over the next three years.CUNY Start, meanwhile, has more than tripled its reach since 2011,to an anticipated 3,800 students this year.

The University’s innovations are crucial to President Obama’spush for more students to graduate from community colleges.Other countries “are working every day to out-educate and out-compete us,” the president has said, and community colleges, whichenroll more than 7 million students, or 45 percent of all U.S. under-graduates, are a key to America’s economic future.

To achieve President Obama’s goal, community colleges need toovercome what reformers call “the leaking pipeline” of remedia-tion: Each year, 1.7 million unprepared students enter U.S. colleges,and most quit at some point in the traditional sequence of remedialmath, writing and reading courses. Failing to turn struggling stu-dents into job-ready graduates costs students and taxpayers an esti-mated $7 billion a year.

With such high stakes, colleges, university systems and somestates are trying to raise their three-year community college gradu-ation rates with initiatives aimed both at improving remedial edu-cation and encouraging matriculated students to stay focused sothey earn degrees in reasonable time.

In California, a faculty-driven program helps instructors at the

state’s 112 community colleges improve remediation. At last count,195 colleges and universities, including LaGuardia CommunityCollege, have adopted a program developed by a Maryland commu-nity college English professor that mainstreams underpreparedstudents in regular classes while providing additional class time toremedy weaknesses. And with the help of an influential advocacygroup, Complete College America, five states have launched cam-paigns similar to one in Hawaii that encourages students to earn 15credits a semester to earn associate degrees in four semesters andbachelor’s degrees in eight.

But it’s CUNY’s ASAP that stands out for being both academi-cally successful and cost-effective. The program, whichaccepts both college-ready students and those needing upto two remedial courses, costs the University $3,900 ayear per student above usual community college alloca-tions, but that’s a money-saving investment. ASAP’s suc-cess at keeping students on track means it actually costs$6,500 less per three-year graduate than for those takingthe typical community college route, according to a studyby Henry Levin of the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies inEducation at Columbia University’s Teachers College.

ASAP starts with tuition-free summer developmentalcourses, group workshops and opportunities to meetwith an adviser. All students participate in a mandatorySummer Institute that builds community between stu-dents and staff, orients students to program expectations,and informs them about campus resources. Based onresearch-based practices that have been shown to

improve student outcomes, ASAP requires full-time study in selectmajors, which will expand within two years to include more in sci-ence, technology, engineering and math. ASAP also offers a consoli-dated course schedule, which encourages rapport between studentsand helps them balance job and family responsibilities. And it pro-vides close, hands-on monitoring by advisers — “intrusive advis-ing,” as it’s called — along with career development services andtutoring.

To measure ASAP’s effectiveness, the University contracted withMDRC, an independent education and social policy research organ-ization, to conduct a five-year study of 900 students at three col-leges. It was a random-assignment study, the gold standard inresearch but a rarity in education studies. Two years in, MDRCfound that ASAP students earned substantially more credits persemester and had higher graduation rates than similar studentswho followed the conventional route. The University’s internalanalysis of the program demonstrated that across ASAP’s first fivecohorts, 52 percent of participants earned degrees within the three-year goal, compared with the 22 percent rate for similar non-ASAPstudents.

MDRC researchers said that ASAP’s increases were “larger thanthe effects of any other community college program that has beenstudied to date using a large-scale, rigorous experimental design.”These findings indicate that ASAP is the kind of “comprehensive,extended intervention” that may be necessary for substantialimprovement in community college graduation rates.

Qiong Zhou’s success illustrates what makes the program work.She came to the United States at age 20 with her mother andyounger brother. Her father had been in New York for a decade,working six and seven days a week to pay off the Chinese smugglerswho had gotten him into the country. When he got a green card,making him a legal resident, he sent for his family, but getting clear-ance from Chinese and U.S. authorities took years more.

30 W I N T E R 2 0 1 5

Qiong Zhou creditsASAP with helping her complete herassociate degree at BrooklynCommunity College.

On the Path to College SuccessNew Help That Really Works

Please turn to

Continued from Page 28


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

Johnny Lopez Castillio takes part in ASAP at Queensborough Community College.


COVERSTORY

32 W I N T E R 2 0 1 5

Soon after arriving in New York, Zhou concentrated on improv-ing her English. She completed a GED high school equivalencycourse and a city Department of Education college-transition pro-gram. Still, she says, “My reading was so-so, and I had noconfidence.”

College would have been out of reach without ASAP’s financialincentives, Zhou says. They included a free monthly MetroCardthat enabled her to travel to Bronx Community College, cost-freeuse of textbooks and a waiver of the difference between tuition andthe amount of her federal and state financial aid.

“I thought it would take four years [to earn an associate degree]because of bad English, bad writing,” Zhou recalls. “But ASAP pre-pared me for college, and I tried my best.”

She says her English 10 class, a six-hour-a-week course incorpo-rating remedial and credit-bearing work, prepared her for theUniversity’s assessment test, which students must pass to take col-lege-credit courses. But most important, she says, was MelanieRobles, her ASAP adviser at Bronx Community. “I always spoke toher, and she always say, ‘Come on, you can do it!’ which for me is alot,” Zhou says. She adds, smiling, “My husband says that, but heloves me.”

Robles says, “We walk students through their whole first year,and it’s intense. A lot of what we do is coaching them through thethings that are going on in their lives.” Zhou talked “not only abouther classes, but also about her relationships and things she might bethinking and feeling. She passed all her classes with A’s, maybe oneB … She was willing to take risks in communications. Immigrantssometimes hold back in the classroom because of how they sound;she wasn’t like that.”

Zhou earned her associate degree in January and wore cap andgown at the graduation ceremony in May to the cheers of her family.She’s looking forward to the next step, earning her nutrition degreeat Brooklyn College, and then a career improving the diets ofChinese immigrants, particularly women, infants and seniors. “Iwant to tell them how to give good nutrition to themselves and theirchildren,” she says.

Efforts Across the Country During a White House conference on Aug. 13, Cecilia Muñoz,

director of President Obama’s Domestic Policy Council, announcedin a blogpost that the Great Lakes Higher Education GuarantyCorporation, a nonprofit student loan servicer, was committing $5million to an experiment: A partnership with MDRC, the OhioBoard of Regents and CUNY “to replicate CUNY’s successfulAccelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) to support asmany as 2,000 community college students in Ohio to help morestudents graduate sooner.”

It will be the largest replication attempt, but just the mostrecent example of the interest ASAP has drawn from higher educa-tion officials and reform advocates. Much of the attention stemsfrom the program’s showcasing by Complete College America, anorganization funded by education philanthropy heavyweightsincluding the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the LuminaFoundation.

Complete College America was established in 2009 to help closethe success gap in American higher education. “We’ve madeprogress in giving students from all backgrounds access to college,”the organization says, “but we haven’t finished the all-important jobof helping them achieve a degree.” Complete College America invit-ed Donna Linderman, the University’s associate dean for student

success initiatives, to speak about ASAP at several of its nationaland state conferences, and audiences were intrigued.

Meanwhile, the University hosted an ASAP “Design Studio” lastspring that attracted 19 colleges, 10 states and several researchorganizations. Groups also visited ASAP programs at five CUNYcampuses. This may lead to further replication.

Linderman and other reformers were invited to speak at a con-ference hosted by the Hawaii Graduation Initiative, a programlaunched by the University of Hawaii in 2010 to help 25 percentmore students graduate in five years. After hearing Linderman’spresentation on ASAP, Hawaii educators traveled to New York tosee it firsthand. They liked what they saw, and so far two of Hawaii’scommunity colleges have adapted the ASAP approach.

“We’re taking the best practices that show success and are doinga lot of professional development for our faculty as they customizewhat they’re learning to fit their course or campus,” says SuzetteRobinson, director of academic programs for Hawaii’s communitycolleges.

IT’S NOT OFTEN that a presenta-tion about math at an educationconference draws a standing-

room-only audience, several roundsof loud applause and comments af-terward of the “Thank you for doingthis important work” variety.

But that’s what happened whenCUNY faculty scholars AlexandraLogue and Mari Watanabe-Rose pre-sented the findings of their researchaimed at helping improve collegegraduation rates by breaking downone of the key barriers for many stu-dents: Doing the math.

Nationally, about 60 percent ofnew college freshmen need remedialcourses, and math accounts formost — algebra, to be specific, andwhat happens next might be the ul-timate math problem. “The percent-age of remedial students who finishthe courses is dismal,” says Logue,who recently left her position asCUNY’s executive vice chancellorand provost to do research. “Theydon’t pass the courses, they don’ttake the whole sequence. . . . It’sclear that the whole approach to re-mediation is one of the biggestblocks to students getting their col-lege degrees.”

Some community collegesaround the country have started of-

fering statistics for students whodon’t intend to pursue degrees re-quiring advanced math. It’s an ideanot without controversy — reform-ers say statistics is more practicalwhile traditionalists consider it alowering of standards — but in2013 Logue and Watanabe-Rose setout to see how much difference itmakes, especially in combinationwith another growing approach inremediation: building extra help intocourses.

Logue especially wanted to testthe idea with the rigor of a con-trolled laboratory study, somethingrarely done in education researchbecause it’s difficult and time con-suming to get enough consentingparticipants for a statistically validsampling. The size of CUNY helpedget over that hurdle. Last fall,Logue and Watanabe-Rose began astudy involving 721 incoming fresh-men at three CUNY community col-leges: Borough of Manhattan,LaGuardia and Hostos. They wererandomly assigned to one of threegroups, and these were the results:• Traditional remedial algebraclass: 39 percent passed.• Remedial algebra plus a weeklyworkshop: 45 percent passed.• College-level, introductory statis-

Should a student’s prospects for earning a college d

Slaying the Math Dragon Continued from Page 30



W I N T E R 2 0 1 5 33

Windward Community College, for example, started with a pro-gram for all full-time freshmen with developmental needs thatincludes an “intro to college” class and “early warning” from instruc-tors at specified checkpoints in the first half of the term. The collegealso has started two grant-funded projects with intrusive advising forunderrepresented Native Hawaiians.

Leeward Community College tried an ASAP-based pilot programlast year at a satellite campus called G2FO (Going to Finish Ontime).Results were so encouraging that the college secured a five-year grantto expand it to its main campus. Aimed at students who commit tofull-time study so they can graduate in two to three years, G2FO fea-tures a consolidated course schedule, structured course pathways, acommon seminar course, free textbooks and $500 scholarships atcredit milestones.

“ASAP was our model and we tried to replicate it as much as wecould,” says Leeward’s interim dean of student services, LaurieLawrence. The early results are promising. G2FO students took twiceas many college-level credits in Spring 2014 as they did the previous

semester. Meanwhile, enrollment in developmental courses fellbecause fewer students needed them. Besides a fresh instructionalapproach, Lawrence says, success came from “relationship-building,the support students received and the community they built amongthemselves to support each other.”

Much of the thinking behind efforts to boost graduation rates andthe pace of students’ progress comes from research showing thatmany students don’t recover from the adverse psychological effects ofearly struggles. “We think that a few unsuccessful attempts at [reme-dial] writing or reading or math are all it takes to convince them thatthey are not college material,” says Peter Adams, an English professorat the Community College of Baltimore County in Maryland.

Over the course of two decades Adams has developed anapproach, called the Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) that mixesremedial and college-ready students in a “gatekeeper” introductorycollege-level English course. After each class, teachers spend moretime with the ALP students, shoring up their weaknesses. A 2010

degree — and the lifelong benefits associated with it — depend on passing one algebra course?

tics plus a weekly workshop: 56 percentpassed

Logue first presented the findingsat this year’s National Conference onAcceleration in Developmental Educa-tion, and they were so well-receivedthat experts and advocates in the re-mediation reform movement have beentalking about it ever since. The buzzhas led to more presentations and cov-erage in education media.

“This is huge,” a researcher at the

Community College Research Center, atColumbia University’s Teachers College,told Inside Higher Education.

Bruce Vandal, the vice president ofComplete College America, a nonprofitadvocacy organization, said the studysupports an ongoing national movementto reduce the number of students innoncredit remedial courses. “This is justgoing to add more fuel to it,” he said.

The CUNY study may be the biggestanswer yet to the sinkhole that reme-

dial math is for so many students. Foreducators, it might come down to asimple question — one as moral as itis practical: Should a student’sprospects for earning a college degree— and the lifelong benefits associatedwith it — depend on passing one alge-bra course?

Logue says the conventional ap-proach to remediation doesn’t takeinto account the often devastatingpsychological effects of stigmatization

and discouragement. “What I learnedfrom many years as an experimentalpsychologist is that it’s harder to bemotivated for goals that are delayed,”Logue says. “So it’s hard for studentsto stay motivated when they thinkthey’re starting college but insteadthey have to take what are basicallyhigh school courses for no credit, andthey have to use up their financial aidto pay for them.”

— Richrd Firstman

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.


analysis found that nearly twice as many ALP participants as tradi-tional remediation students completed the gatekeeper course. Thishas led 195 community colleges and universities so far to adopt theALP method.

At LaGuardia Community College, for example, 10 remedialEnglish students are in a class with 12 proficient students. Theymeet together for four hours a week and the remedial students workthree more hours with the same instructor to perfect skills neededto pass the University’s proficiency test. If they pass, they earn three

34 W I N T E R 2 0 1 5

COVERSTORY

Over the first five years of ASAP, 52% of participants earned degrees, compared with the 2


Students in ASAP at Hostos Community College



W I N T E R 2 0 1 5 35

credits. The success rate at LaGuardia has been comparable toBaltimore’s.

“I think this should be the default way we teach basic writing atLaGuardia,” says English professor Heidi L. Johnsen, who directedLaGuardia’s program for three years.

Math Innovation and CUNY StartCUNY, meanwhile, is pioneering an approach for improving reme-

dial math that uses mainstreaming and workshops; it substitutes astatistics course for traditional remedial algebra. A recent study led byAlexandra 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 whotook a credit-bearing introductory statistics course plus aweekly workshop. The statistics students had a pass ratenearly 50 percent higher.

The math experiment is the latest University initiative toexcite advocates of remediation reform, following the suc-cess of CUNY Start in improving student performance inremedial courses: Once matriculated, CUNY Start studentstake and earn more credits, earn higher GPAs and areretained at higher rates than similar students.

The program has a strong commitment to teacher train-ing and instructional practices and curricula that build theskills, concepts and strategies students will need for college-level work. Adult literacy and education experts developedthe program and serve as professional development coordi-nators for the participating colleges. Professional develop-ment is critical, and instructors take on their on classroomor advising caseload only after a semester of close trainingunder 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-timeprogram runs 25 hours a week with instruction in reading,writing and math, the subjects of the three Universityassessment tests, along with a college success seminar. Thepart-time program addresses either reading/writing (taughtas one subject) or math for 12 hours a week. The cost tostudents is just $75.

Classroom instruction is student-centered and highlyinteractive, with teachers encouraging “student talk overteacher talk” and advisers supporting development of effec-tive communication, self-advocacy skills, time managementand study habits.

After 12 weeks of core instruction by the specially trainedCUNY 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 ifneeded, followed by retesting. There’s also individualizedadvisement to help students complete the program andmatriculate in a University degree program.

For students like Rosa Rios, CUNY Start has made all thedifference. For most of her 42 years, she was challenged byan eighth-grade education, pressing family needs and weaktraining that led to unsatisfying jobs. “I fell through thecracks,” she says. When her mother developed Alzheimer’sdisease, Rios cared for her until she died four years ago.

With a lot of hard work and support, Rios usedCUNY Start to bring herself up to college level in reading,writing and math. “The student-faculty relationship is realquality and great. They prepared us for college,” she says.She became such a good writer that she won second place ina campus competition.

Now maintaining a 3.0 GPA at QueensboroughCommunity College, she aims for a career as a registerednurse. When she encounters struggling students, “I tellthem, ‘Go with CUNY Start and work your way up.’”

22% rate for students who were not in ASAP.


By Lenina Mortimer

WHENEVER HE CAN, Stanley Greffstarts his shift as a public safety offi-cer at Kingsborough CommunityCollege by raising an American flag.

“This is how I do my part to honorthe flag, freedom and the people

trained here who made the ultimate sacrifice for this coun-try,” says Greff, who is a retired gunnery sergeant of theUnited States Marine Corps.

At the onset of America’s entry into World War ll, KCCwas the site of the largest U.S. Maritime Service TrainingStation in the country. The $8.5 million facility inSheepshead Bay trained 500,000 merchant mariners toman merchant vessels called Liberty ships.

And, while the government decommissioned the stationin 1954, traces of the World War II military installationremain. A memorial plaque, a naval gun and a flagpole aresome of the reminders. The large bronze plaque displayedoutside of the Central Services building lists names ofmarinerswhotrainedat thebase whodied onduty. Inthe dis-tance, adeck gun used on Liberty ships to sink enemy vesselsflanks the flagpole that once stood in the 1939 World’s Fairin Queens.

The campus’s military history is a point of pride formany at KCC, which is why Greff and other former service-men continue the tradition of raising the flag — seven daysa week between 6 a.m. and 6:30 a.m.

The merchant mariners served to support the U.S. Navyand were called upon to deliver military personnel andmaterials. The Liberty ships carried battle equipment suchas explosives, army tanks and fuel. However, wartime car-goes were not limited to war materiel. They included food,clothing, medicine, hospital supplies and constructionmaterial.

“To send all that equipment to the Allied Forces we hadto expand the merchant marines and build Liberty ships,”explains professor Anthony DiLernia, who is the directorof the Maritime Technology program at KCC and alicensed captain in the U.S. merchant marines. “They wereconsidered ugly ducklings. They were not very fast ormaneuverable but they were easy to build,” says DiLernia.The Liberty ships were 441 feet long, 57 feet wide, carried10,500 tons of deadweight, and reached a top speed of 11knots.

The merchant mariners were not part of the military,but they were targeted during the war. There were twoareas where the ships would get torpedoed, says DiLernia.German submarines would sit right outside of theVerrazano Narrows at the entrance of the New YorkHarbor.

If the ships made it to Europe they would have to travelthrough the Murmansk Run. German U-boats would justsit in a line and blow up Liberty ships left and right,” says

DiLernia, referring to Germany’s effort to disrupt the flowof supplies that supported the Allied Forces on the Russianfront.

“If you were on the outside of the convoy you were goingto get sunk, but we threw more ships at them than theycould sink,” says DiLernia. American shipyards built 2,751Liberty ships during World War II, according to the U.S.

HISTORYLESSON

36 W I N T E R 2 0 1 5

Where Merchant Marines Trained for World War


Department of Transportation, and because of thesimplicity of design they were built very quickly. Thefastest ship to be built on record took three days tocomplete.

Though the merchant marine base is gone — thecity purchased it from the federal government for onedollar in 1954, and Kingsborough took it when it was

founded in 1963 — maritime training and the tradi-tion of service live on through the MaritimeTechnology program. The program focuses on operat-ing small boats like tugboats, ferries and pleasureboats. Students receive technical training in courseslike oceanography, navigation, sailing, vessel repairand firefighting.

W I N T E R 2 0 1 5 37

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

r II


FOR YORK COLLEGE assistant nursing professor MargarettAlexandre, sometimes humanitarian aid can do more harm thangood: To create lasting change, volunteer missions need to beabout helping others help themselves.

Five years after the earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince,Haiti, Alexandre is most concerned about what will happen to theHaitian people after the aid is gone. “We cannot be helicopter sav-iors. We have to ask ourselves, ‘Whatever I’m doing? How is thatgoing to be sustained once I leave?’” says Alexandre, a Haitian-American, who directs York’s two-week volunteer program inCarries, Haiti.

Alexandre travels with a group of nursing students and facultyto teach in health care workshops and provide care at the Missionof Grace medical clinic and orphanage. During the program,

38 W I N T E R 2 0 1 5

FIELDSTUDY

which is funded by the Office of the University Dean for Healthand Human Services, students assist doctors and nurse practi-tioners by taking vital signs and doing intake assessments. “Theydo patient-teaching once the physician orders medication,” shesays. “There are many cases of hypertension, so students do pre-sentations on food choices and food additives, like salt. We werehelping people understand that it’s a lifelong illness and medica-tion must be taken continuously.”

It is Alexandre’s hope that this program will inspire students tohelp others abroad and at home. “I want to share with the studentswhat my world is about,” she says. “No matter the obstacles, youcan always try to do better for yourself and the next person. Youcan be an advocate for change, not only in your own backyard butglobally. 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


W I N T E R 2 0 1 5 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 facultyvisit Health Center of Grand-Bois (above) in L’Artibonite, Haiti.


40 W I N T E R 2 0 1 5

WALKING the streets of New York with WilliamHelmreich is a trip into the hidden soul of thischaotic and often misunderstood city. On arecent tour in East Harlem, he shared a histo-ry lesson on the Robert F. Wagner housingdevelopment. He unraveled mini mysteries

painted into an immense mural. And his knock ona basement door unlocked a heartwarming secret.

Outside a brick building on East 124th Street,Helmreich spotted a dingy, narrow staircase lead-ing underground and walked down. Upon reach-ing the door, he knocked and was greeted by aman’s stern face and the wafting aroma of roastedturkey.

“Isn’t it true that you cook meals in this placefor all the homeless in the whole city?” Helmreichasked in a mock accusatory tone.

The stern face soon melted into a toothy smile.“Well, not the whole city,” he said coyly. “Come in and take a

look.”The little known basement kitchen used by the Coalition for the

Homeless is just one of the many intriguing places discovered onhis remarkable tour of New York. Drawn by the lack of sociological

data on the city’s five boroughs, Helmreich decided to walk theentire city, block by block.

By the end of four years, the City College sociology professor hadwalked a grand total of 6,048 miles, an average of 1,512 miles a year,126 miles a month or 120,960 city blocks. He wore out nine pairs ofshoes and chronicled his urban adventure in the 449-page book,

The New York Nobody Knows.“New York is a complex city that needs to be explored in

order to be fully appreciated. And you can’t do it unless you goout and walk it,” Helmreich said. “You could take me to anystreet and I could find something that will interest you.”

Since its release, the book has become wildly popular, earn-ing rave reviews for its rich storytelling, scholarly observationsand laugh-out-loud vignettes. Helmreich himself has alsoachieved personal fame, fielding hundreds of requests for inter-views and walking tours from journalists around the world. Hismost recent fan mail came from Roman Catholic Archbishop ofNew York Cardinal Timothy Dolan.

After walking a few blocks with Helmreich, it becomes clear howhe was able to get so many New Yorkers to open up. The silver-haired professor is charming and charismatic, and speaks tostrangers as if he’s known them forever.

In rougher neighborhoods, he steps with a bit more swagger but

By Margaret Ramirez

PAGETURNERS

HIDDENNEW YORKON FOOT


IN HER NEW BOOK, Shirley Chisholm: Catalyst for

Change, Brooklyn College education professor BarbaraWinslow traces Chisholm’s life from her upbringing inBarbados and Brooklyn to her historic election as the firstblack woman elected to Congress and ends with her iconic1972 presidential campaign.

What led you to write about Shirley Chisholm?To be very honest I hadn’t thought much about Mrs. Chisholmuntil I became a professor at Brooklyn College. And I realized thatshe 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 aboutwomen’s activism because that’s my field. So Iwent to my colleagues in the Women andGender Studies program and suggested wename this new research center after her. Canyou imagine my surprise when half our facultydidn’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 personalspotlight for so long. So creating the Shirley

Chisholm Project of Brooklyn Women’s Activism has become a realmission of mine. And because I was so immersed in every aspect ofher 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 shetrying 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 Actwas 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 manyelderly African-Americans came up to her crying, and saying theynever thought they would live to see the day. I don’t believe shethought she could get elected or get the nomination. But she didbelieve that she was the most qualified … to fight for a progressivesocial agenda for the Democratic Party.

What can young people learn from your book?I hope the book gets into high schools and colleges. Many of my

students at Brooklyn College, when they seeShola Lynch’s documentary and read

parts of my book, can identify withMrs. Chisholm. She could be their

great-aunt or their grandmother’sbest friend. She is such a familiarperson in the borough ofBrooklyn. My thesis is basically:

Chisholm’s life exemplifies urbanAmerica, post-World War II. That

is, it talks about the immigrant expe-rience, the working-class experience,

and the black struggle. … So her life is a win-dow into a certain period in U.S. history.

— Margaret Ramirez

For the complete interview, go to: www.cuny.edu/chisholm

The COURAGE ofSHIRLEY CHISHOLM

retains the same laid-back attitude that puts people at ease. While hewas walking on the grounds of the Wagner housing development,some residents stared curiously at Helmreich, an obvious outsider intheir 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 freecountry,” he said with a smile.

Helmreich said his theme throughout the book was to explain howthe city has changed since 1975. On his walking journey, Helmreichinterviewed scores of residents on the impact of immigration and gen-trification. He said listening to firsthand accounts of displacementproved valuable in understanding the city’s dramatic transformation.

“When it comes to displacement, there are so many different rea-sons that people are leaving neighborhoods, and you just can’t seethem on a statistical grid,” he said.

Despite the extraordinary diversity of the city, Helmreich said hefound that New York is still one of the most segregated cities in thenation, where groups often live beside one another in the sameneighborhood and never speak. His hope is that the book inspiresmore New Yorkers to walk their own blocks.

“New York is made up of such diverse different communities.Walking it is like visiting hundreds of small towns. So I hope the bookgets more people to rediscover their own neighborhoods,” he said.“The city is the world’s greatest outdoor museum. It awaits you.”

William Helmreich and his block-eating stride that took him down every street in New York City.

W I N T E R 2 0 1 5 41


42 W I N T E R 2 0 1 5

The Color Bind: Talking (and Not Talking)About Race at WorkHunter College associate professor of psychologyTamara R. Buckley and New York University associate professor of public and nonprofitmanagement Erica Gabrielle FoldyRussell Sage Foundation

Workplace experts Foldy and Buckley investigate diversityin office settings, looking at how both the “color blind”approach, which emphasizes similarity and assimilation andunderstanding people as individuals rather than members ofracial or cultural groups, and what they call “colorcognizance” have effects on the ways co-workers think andinteract with each other. Based on an intensive two-and-a-half-year study of employees at a child welfare agency, theauthors show how color cognizance — the practice of recog-nizing the profound impact of race and ethnicity on lifeexperiences while affirming the importance of racial diversi-ty — can help workers move beyond silence on the issue ofrace toward more inclusive workplace practices.

The Double Life of Paul de Man Graduate Center and College of Staten Island professoremerita of English Evelyn BarishLiveright Given the tremendous influence of the charis-matic literary critic Paul de Man, shock wavesresulted when it was discovered, five years

after his death, that he had written for collaborationistnewspapers in Belgium during World War II. After the war,he abandoned his family and fled to New York, penniless, butquickly rose again. Relying on years of original archival workand interviews with more than 200 of de Man’s circle offriends and family, Barish explores de Man’s personal storyand his meteoric rise through American academia.

Romantic IntimacyBaruch associate professor of English Nancy YousefStanford University PressHow much can we know about what otherpeople are feeling and how much can we sym-pathize or empathize with them? The term“intimacy,” which has always referred both to

the inmost and personal, and to relationships of exceptionalcloseness, captures a tension between a confidence in thepossibility of shared experience and a competing belief thatthoughts and feelings are irreducibly private. This book is aninterdisciplinary study of shared feeling as imagined in 18th-century ethics, romantic literature and 20th-century psy-choanalysis.

Birthplace with Buried Stones Hunter College Distinguished Professor of EnglishMeena AlexanderTri-QuarterlyWith their intense lyricism, Alexander’s poemsconvey the fragmented experience of the trav-eler for whom home is both nowhere and

everywhere. These poems range widely over time and place,from Alexander’s native India to New York City. Poems of love

and poems of war convey the rippling effects of violence anddislocation, of love and its aftermath. We see traces of mythol-ogy, ritual, and other languages.

The Modern Art CookbookGraduate Center Distinguished Professor ofComparative Literature, English and French Mary Ann CawsReaktion BooksFood has always played a role in art, but howwell, and what did the artists themselves eat?

Exploring a panoply of artworks of food, cooking and eatingfrom Europe and the Americas, Caws opens a window intothe lives of artists, writers and poets in the kitchen and thestudio, from the end of the 19th century to the present. Sheexamines the parallels between the art of cuisine and thevisual arts and literature, using artworks, diaries, novels,letters and poems to illuminate the significance of particularingredients and dishes in the lives of the world’s greatestartists. In between, she supplies numerous recipes fromthese artists — including Ezra Pound’s poetic eggs, Cézanne’sbaked tomatoes and Monet’s madeleines — alongside 100color illustrations and thought-provoking selections fromboth poetry and prose.

Breathless: An American Girl in Paris Graduate Center Distinguished Professor ofComparative Literature, English and French Nancy K. MillerSeal PressThe story of a girl who rebelled against con-ventional expectations for marriage, children

and suburban life, Breathless offers a glimpse into the inti-mate lives of girls before feminism took hold. Paris was amagnet for those eager to resist domesticity, and Miller wasenamored of everything French. Upon graduating fromBarnard College in 1961, she set out for Paris with a plan totake classes at the Sorbonne and live out a great romanticlife inspired by the movies. But after a string of sexual mis-adventures, she gave up her short-lived freedom and mar-ried an American expatriate who promised her a future ofthree-star meals and five-star hotels — and who turned outto be a con man.

More Than Two to Tango Queens College associate professor of public healthAnahí ViladrichUniversity of Arizona PressThis book offers a detailed portrait ofArgentine immigrants for whom tango is bothan art form and a means of survival. It also

addresses broader questions on the understudied role ofinformal networks in the entertainment field. Through thevoices of both early generations of immigrants and the latestwave of newcomers, Viladrich reveals a diverse communitynavigating issues of identity, class and race as it struggles withpractical concerns, such as the high cost of living in New YorkCity and affordable health care. She also considers Argentina’ssocial history in exploring the immigrant’s unified front tokeep tango as their own “authentic” expression.

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

BOOKSAT-A-GLANCE


Across1. Dean of Macaulay: Ann _____9. British test of secondarysubject14. Short punch16. “_____ to Joy”17. Scrutinized18. Between hi-fi and no-fi21. Painter’s medium22. Nat. Park Service, Abbr.23. Macaulay is housed in a_____ building.25. Overhead railway26. Colorful common carp27. Asian holiday28. Arafat’s grp.30. Scottish one31. Annie Hall: “La-de-__”32. Bank offering, for short33. Moo goo _____ pan35. Chipped stone of thelate Tertiary Period38. Greece, Abbr. 39. Book parts, Abbr.41. Silver symbol42. More than 60% ofMacaulay students are fromfamilies of _____.43. Humane org.45. Hugs, symbolically46. Romeo or Juliet47. Funky centric start49. Int. base on balls50. ___ and outs52. Pen name of GeorgeWilliam Russell.53. “Borstal Boy” author55. Coll. in Troy, N.Y.57. Vegas opener58. Small counter with asink61. Sot’s gp.62. Clique64. Well-liked66. David _____, (Intel Science Prize First PlaceWinner, 2005) graduatedfrom Macaulay in 2009 andwent on to become aRhodes Scholar.68. Philanthropist William_____ was a 1966 Honors graduate of CityCollege.70. Willingly73. “i” lid75. Didn’t dillydally77. Garages80. The program has students at _____ colleges.83. “Hey!”84. Graduates receive adual _____ from both their‘home college’ andMacaulay.85. Train, abbr.86. Driving a nail obliquely88. Not guzzle89. Orig. NYC subway90. Odd-numbered page93. Kick the bucket94. Appetite95. Fully anesthetized97. Internet domain namefor Cambodia98. Remain unsettled101. Brooks of “The Producers”103. “Kaput”104. One of several horseswith the same owner106. Amer.

108. Boob ending, minormistake109. Train, Abbr.110. Colored wax for drawing111. Senseless follower of illo112. Country club figure113. Sixth note115. Symbol for technetium117. “Wheel of Fortune” request118. Choose120. Blast maker122. _____ Eliot123. “Love is just another_____.” – Hemingway126. Baseball card stat.127. iShares 3-7 yr. treas.bond128. Rap129. Form of address forBritish royalty132. Where TV signals comefrom133. The program attractsstudents with a mean highschool _____ of 93.5.134. Known as theMacaulay _____ CollegeUniversity Scholars Pro-gram, it launched in 2000.135. Macaulay was thebrainchild of ChancellorMatthew _____.

Down1. More eccentric2. Prefix with -syncratic3. Creeds4. 1/100th of a peseta5. Alumnus Anthony Volodkin, 2007, foundedThe _____ Machine, anMP3 blog aggregator.6. Kitty7. _____ White8. Egyptian solar deity9. Apportioned10. Grassland11. Giant author Ferber12. “A Nightmare on_____ Street”13. Burden14. NY int. airport15. ET19. Concluding20. Macaulay is a _____program for 1,400 studentsper year.24. Students may design a university-wide, individu-alized _____ program.25. Big time28. Mesa29. Pickup shtick?34. Singer Tori36. Either37. TV station for sellinggoods40. Environmental pollutant

44. Students may receive$7500 to study _____.48. Stylish50. 007 creator Fleming51. _____ Cummings52. One way to be taken53. “Pow!”54. Collections56. Small slate-green lentil57. Women’s _____59. Pulminary infection,Abbr.60. The college’s color is _____.63. Spiralled after who65. Lass67. 1973 Supreme Courtdecision name69. Hurt70. Each Macaulay studentreceives a _____ computer.71. Students build ____ tocollect and show their work.72. Notability74. Little bird76. Daddy-o77. Geometric fig.78. 15-ball cluster79. Angel’s favorite letters81. Farewell82. Seventh tone of the scale83. Yang’s counterpart84. Upsets87. Not by any means88. Macaulay is highly_____, accepting only

19% of applicants.91. William Macaulay’s giftwas _____ million dollars,the largest single donationin the history of CUNY.92. David H. _____, formerC.I.A. director, teaches pub-lic policy at Macaulay.94. Abominable Snowman96. ET carrier98. CUNY Prof. Staff Cong.99. Indian bread100. The Macaulay build-ing, located at 35 West67th Street, is half a blockfrom _____ Park.

101. Chatterboxes102. Macaulay students receive full _____scholarships. 105. _____ and behold107. A.A.R.P. members114. Eyebrow shape116. Small Georgia city119. Opening run121. Orange soda123. Paternity identifier124. Fight-ending letters125. Poster bottom128. Soldier on food prep.130. “Good game” Abbr.131. Strong bust front

W I N T E R 2 0 1 5 43

It’s an HonorBy Miriam Smithand Ronald E. Roel

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44 W I N T E R 2 0 1 5

NOTES

DANIEL FRIEDMAN

ZARIN TASNIM

ALYSSA MARCHETTI

JOHN HORGAN

SIMONE GORDON

STUDENT AWARDS

The University’s facultymembers continually winprofessional-achievement

awards from prestigiousorganizations as well as researchgrants from governmentagencies, foundations andcorporations. John Mogulescu, SeniorUniversity Dean for AcademicAffairs and Dean of the School ofProfessional Studies, announcedthat The Robin Hood Foundationhas awarded $1.25 million to “AtHome in College,” which providesan array of instructional andsupport services to high schoolstudents, high school Englishand math teachers and collegeadvisers; and $1 million for theexpansion of CUNY’s AcceleratedStudy in Associate Programs(ASAP), which is designed toaccelerate degree completionwithin three years at communitycolleges. Michael Geller ofKingsborough CommunityCollege has received $276,250 ingrant funding from the NY CityCouncil for the “Lighthouse:Alcohol and Substance AbuseProgram.” City College has beenawarded a $783,627 grant fromthe U.S. Department of Educationfor “CUNY’s Initiative forContinuous Innovative LearningEnvironments in STEM (CILES),”under the direction of JorgeGonzalez. Jeffrey Butts of JohnJay College has been awarded a$250,000 grant from the NY CityCouncil for “Implementation andOutcome Assessment of the NewYork City Anti-Gun ViolenceInitiative.” The U.S. Departmentof Health & Human Services hasawarded a $1,605,000 grant toCarlos Molina of Hostos

Gonzalez

RecognizingFacultyAchievement

In India for Research and TeachingSimone Gordon (City College, B.S. in childhood education, 2014)has a nine-month Fulbright English Teaching Assistanship inCalcutta, India. A native of Jamaica who emigrated to New Yorkat age 6, Gordon has wanted to teach since third grade at P.S.135 in Queens Village. Gordon sought a Fulbright assistantshipto work in India, teaching English literature and grammar tomiddle school students because of the opportunity to blendteaching with research. At City College, she held studentgovernment posts, participated in the Colin Powell Fellowshipprogram and received public service and leadership honors.

Forging Cultural Connections in MalaysiaJohn Brendan Horgan (Brooklyn College, M.A. in Education,2014) headed to Beijing in 2012 to teach English at the VitalySprings Experimental Kindergarten. Soon after, he came toBrooklyn College, where he earned his master’s degree ineducation while teaching inner-city students with special needsat the New York Harbor School on Governors Island. As a FulbrightEnglish Teaching Assistant in Malaysia, Horgan says he wants tostrengthen cultural connections and encourage educationalenrichment. “I would also like to manipulate technology withprograms such as Google Docs and Skype to arrange for directinteraction between Malaysian students and native Englishspeakers in the United States.”

English Language in Taiwan Alyssa Marchetti (Hunter College, M.S. Ed., 2014), an immigrantfrom China, will channel her experience as an English-languagelearner during her Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship inTaiwan. Born in the People’s Republic of China and raised fromage 11 in the United States, Marchetti has explored theboundaries of race, ethnicity and identity through her experienceas an English-language learner. After college, she signed on for atwo-year stint with Teach for America and headed to Hunter forher master’s degree, specializing in adolescent specialeducation. In Taiwan on a Fulbright English TeachingAssistantship, she brings a profound understanding of thedifficulties that students can face when learning the languagethat gave her so much trouble.

Teaching English in South KoreaZarin Tasnim (Macaulay Honors College at Lehman College,2014) is teaching conversational English through a FulbrightEnglish Teaching Assistantship. She’s off to South Korea toteach conversational English to elementary and secondaryschool students through a yearlong assistantship. Tasnimreceived a number of academic awards, including the Horace W.Goldsmith Scholarship, Jewish Foundation for Education ofWomen Scholarship, Freeman Asia Scholarship and a St.George’s Society Scholarship. “She is definitely one of ourstars,” says professor Gary Schwartz, who directs the MacaulayHonors College at Lehman and the Lehman Scholars Program.“Zarin is an exceptional combination of intellect, tact,sensitivity, insight and leadership.”

Researching Linguistic Connections in AustriaDaniel Friedman (Brooklyn College, MFA in Creative Writing,2014) is a mathematician, poet, philosopher and scholar of theGerman language. For Friedman, a Fulbright U.S. StudentProgram award will allow him to finally connect those diverseacademic and intellectual interests. Friedman believes the keyto cultural exchange and mutual understanding between twocultures lies in the study of their languages. With his Fulbright inVienna, Friedman plans to collaborate and write a poetrymanuscript focused on the philosophical and poetic potentials inGerman and English.


W I N T E R 2 0 1 5 45

Community College as a “HealthProfession Opportunity Grant toServe TANF Recipients: AlliedHealth Career Pipeline.” GiselaRivera of QueensboroughCommunity College has receivedtwo grants from the New YorkState Education Department:$299,087 with Sherri-AnnSimmons for the “LibertyPartnerships Program – ProjectPRIZE”; and $219,380 for“CSTEP – Collegiate Scienceand Technology Entry Program,”with Marie-FrancescaBerrouet. Carlos Meriles of CityCollege has won a $425,440grant from the National ScienceFoundation for “GOALI: Researchand Development of Chip-Integrated, Magnetic-Resonance-Based Platforms forChemical Sensing of TraceSystems.” Anne Rothstein ofLehman College has won$232,734 in grant support fromthe NY State Department ofEducation for the “Science andTechnology Entry Program:Mathematics and Sciencethrough Excellence andResearch.” Robert Piechotta ofNew York City College ofTechnology has received$654,078 from RF SUNY for“Hurricane SandyRevitalization.” City Collegehas been awarded a $646,678grant from the U.S. Departmentof Education for a project aimedat “Increasing Retention andGraduation Rates throughEnhanced Pedagogy andImproved Technology,” under thedirection of Craig Levinsky.Dean Balsamini of the Collegeof Staten Island has received a$516,687 grant fromNPORG/ResearchFoundation/SUNY for “NYSHurricane Sandy BusinessAssistance.” A project titled“SC2: Synthetic and BiologicalStudies of Understudied Anti-

Tubercular Natural Products,”directed by Ryan Murelli ofBrooklyn College, has beenawarded a $141,300 grant fromthe National Institutes ofHealth. Gerald Mallon of HunterCollege has received two grants:$1,477,186 fromHHS/Administration for Childrenand Families for a “NationalResource Center for Permanencyand Family Connections”; and$291,384 from the NY StateOffice of Children and FamilyServices for a “Community CaseManagement Institute.” The U.S.Department of Education hasawarded $575,000 in grantfunding to Patricia Rachal ofQueens College for “SpecialEducation-Technical Assistanceand Dissemination to ImproveServices and Results forChildren with Disabilities.”Stephen Fearnley of YorkCollege has won $498,250 ingrant support from the NationalInstitutes of Health for aresearch project titled“Oxazolone Cycloadducts asHeterocyclic Scaffolds forDecahydroquinoline Alkaloid.”The Creative Arts Team (CAT) ofCUNY has been awarded an 18-month, $460,000 grant fromThe New York Community Trust– Brooke Astor Fund for NewYork City Education to expandCAT’s successful Early LearningProgram (ELP) in K-2 classes atfour New York City publicschools with highconcentrations ofdisadvantaged studentsand English-languagelearners. HelenWheelock directs theELP, and LyndaZimmerman is executivedirector of the CAT. Twofacultymembersfrom CityCollege’s

Colin L. Powell School for Civicand Global Leadership havereceived awards for exceptionalarticles in scholarly journals. Anarticle co-authored by Maria C.Binz-Scharf was honored as anAmerican Review of PublicAdministration Best Article,while Dr. Katherine K. Chenreceived the Literati NetworkAward for Excellence/2013Outstanding Author ContributionAward.Anthony Carpi and NathanLents of John Jay College wereawarded $797,970 from the U.S.Department of Education for“Creating Hispanic Scientists: AModel Articulation ProgramBetween Hispanic ServingInstitutions”; Carpi and KateSzur received $642,056 fromthe U.S. Department ofEducation for “Title V: Successthrough Engagement:Development of aComprehensive Program toPromote UndergraduateResearch and First YearTransition Toward IncreasingPersistence and GraduationRates of Hispanic Students”;while Szur was awarded$232,819 from the NY StateEducation Department for“Perkins IV.”Elvir Dincer of the DentalHygiene Division of the AlliedHealth Sciences Department atHostos Community College has

been appointed tothe Editorial

Board of CaseStudy ofDentalScience, the

internationaljournal of the

Association ofMedical and

Dental Doctors.Karlyn Koh,

director of

LaGuardia Community College’sHonors Program and theschool’s scholarship coordinator,is a winner of the 2014 BonitaC. Jacobs Transfer ChampionAward of the National Institutefor the Study of TransferStudents. David Kennedy ofJohn Jay College has receivedtwo grants: $237,420 from theCommunity Foundation of St.Joseph for “Reducing SeriousViolence in South Bend,Indiana”; and $169,487 fromthe State of Connecticut ViaUniversity of New Haven for“Preventing Gang Violence inConnecticut: Continued Effortsin New Haven, Launch inBridgeport and Hartford.”Joshua Brown of the GraduateSchool and University Centerhas received $200,000 from theNational Endowment for theHumanities for a projectconcerning the “Visual Cultureof the American Civil War.”

Hunter College has receivedtwo grants: $1,197,141 from theNY State Education Departmentto David Steiner and MatthewCaballero for “2013-2016 21stCentury Community LearningCenters Program”; and$1,109,185 from the U.S.Department of Education toMatthew Caballero, for “TeacherQuality Partnerships.” AlfredoMorabia of Queens College hasbeen awarded $499,187 fromthe Center for Disease

Control/NIOSH for “World TradeCenter-Heart: CardiovascularHealth Impact and Prediction ofIncident (Primary andSubsequent) CardiovascularEvents Among WTCResponders.” Ramona Brown ofthe College of Staten Island hasreceived a $109,000 award fromthe New York City Council for the“Black Male Initiative.”Simone Rodriguez-Dorestantand LeHendro Gadson ofMedgar Evers College havereceived a $782,738 grant fromthe NYC Department ofEducation for a “Young AdultBorough Center,” while the U.S.Department of Educationawarded $308,546 to AbrahamNyameh and Rodriguez-Dorestant for the “Talent SearchProgram.” Additionally, the NYSEducation Department granted$350,000 to Sean Andersonand Rodriguez-Dorestant for the“Liberty Partnership Program”;as well as $287,054 to WilliamBailey and Rodriguez-Dorestantfor the “MEC Science TechnologyEntry Program”; and $188,562to John Brown and Rodriguez-Dorestant for the “Science, Mathand Robotics ScienceTechnology Entry Program.”Peter Mertens of HostosCommunity College has beenawarded $293,484 from the U.S.Social Security Administrationfor “Work Incentives Planningand Assistance”; and the NYState Education Departmenthas awarded two grants,$197,794 to Mertens and MoiseKoffi for “STEP/ProyectoAccess”; and $170,719 toMertens and Koffi for “CSTEP.”President Jeremy Travis of JohnJay College served as chair of aNational Research Councilcommittee dealing with “TheGrowth of Incarceration in theUnited States: Exploring Causesand Consequences.”

Butts Simmons CarpiWheelock Rodriguez-Dorestant

Brown

Koffi

GRANTS & HONORS


NOTES ALUMNI

Police and Minority Communities

John Jay College of Criminal Justice wasawarded a competitive, three-year, $4.75

million grant to launch a National Initiative forBuilding Community Trust and Justice, it was

announced by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. John Jaywill lead a team including Yale Law School, UCLA, and the

Urban Institute as principal partners. The National Initiative isdesigned to improve relationships between, and especially, racialand ethnic minority communities and the police and other arms ofthe criminal justice system; and advance the scholarlyunderstanding of, and the public conversation on, those issues.“This is one of the most ambitious and important steps the federalgovernment has taken during my career in criminal justice,” saidJohn Jay College President Jeremy Travis. “Addressing the brokenrelationships between the police and communities of color acrossthe nation is a fundamental challenge facing ourdemocracy.” The initiative will be directed byJohn Jay professor David Kennedy as part of thecollege’s National Network for Safe Communities,which works in troubled communities nationallyand has been driving innovative practice in racialreconciliation.

Brain Waves of 16 Predict Market Preferences

Media and marketing experts have long sought a reliablemethod of forecasting responses from the general population

to future products and messages. According to a study conductedat The City College of New York, it appears that the brainresponses of just a few individuals can be a remarkably strong

predictor. By analyzing the brain waves of 16 individuals asthey watched mainstream television content,researchers were able to accurately predict thepreferences of large TV audiences, up to 90 percent in

the case of Super Bowl commercials. The findings appearin a paper, “Audience Preferences Are Predicted byTemporal Reliability of Neural Processing,” published July

29, 2014, in “Nature Communications.” Jacek Dmochowski, leadauthor of the paper and a postdoctoral fellow at City Collegeduring the research, said that brain signals measured usingelectroencephalography (EEG) can provide immediatephysiological responses, and that “our findings show that theseimmediate responses are in fact closely tied to the subsequentbehavior of the general population.”

For-Profit vs. Nonprofit Home Care Costs

For-profit home health agencies are far costlier for Medicarethan nonprofit agencies, according to a nationwide study

published in the August issue of the journal Health Affairs.Overall cost per patient was $1,215 higher at for-profits, withoperating costs accounting for $752 of thedifference and excess profits for $463. Yet thequality of care was actually worse at for-profitagencies, and more of their patients requiredrepeat hospitalizations. Researchers at the CityUniversity of New York School of PublicHealth analyzed detailed Cost Reports filedwith Medicare by 7,165 home health agenciesin 2010-2011, as well as data for 22 quality measures fromMedicare’s Home Health Compare database covering 9,128agencies. Compared to nonprofits, operating costs at for-profitagencies were 18 percent higher, with excess administration (at$476 per patient) accounting for nearly two-thirds of the $752difference in operating costs. For-profits also did many moretherapy visits, which are often highly profitable under thecomplex Medicare payment formula. Despite their higher costs,for-profit agencies delivered slightly lower-quality care.

RESEARCH

John Jay Alumni AwardsThe Outstanding Young Alumnus Award of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, created in 2013, waspresented to Andrew Schweighardt (M.S. ’99, Ph.D. ’12), a criminalist with the Office of the New YorkCity Chief Medical Examiner. Schweighardt spoke of his good fortune to be working in “one of thegreatest labs in the world,” where some 30 John Jay alumni are on the staff of his department. “JohnJay is the Ivy League of criminal justice, and I’m so proud to say that.”

The recipient of John Jay’s annual Distinguished Alumna Award, LaBrenda Garrett-Nelson (B.A. ’75),who recently retired after a distinguished legal career, was saluted for her work as a prominent taxa-tion law specialist. She has worked for the blue-chip law firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacob-sen, served on the staff of the Joint Congressional Committee on Taxation, founded the boutique lawfirm of Washington Counsel PC, and concluded her career as a principal forthe accounting firm of Ernst & Young LLP.

Thermos CEO Alex HuangAs the CEO of Thermos, Alex Huang (Baruch Ph.D. ’01) travels theworld to run a multinational corporation whose vacuum-insulatedcontainers are iconic enough to be in the Smithsonian Institution’sNational Museum of American History. Huang began working at Thermosin 2001, first as the company controller, next as CFO and then COO. In2005 he became CEO, running worldwide operations from the company’s U.S.headquarters in Chicago. “Baruch has a good reputation in Taiwan,” Huangsays. He was also persuaded to study here by Stan Ross Professor of Accountancy Joseph Weintrop, wholater became his dissertation adviser. What he learned in his doctoral program continues to influencehis business style, Huang says. “I follow logic tremendously; I don’t get emotional in decision making.”

Brittany Hodak, Co-Founder of ZinePak Co-founder of startup CD packaging company ZinePak, Brittany Hodak (Baruch M.S. ’10) remembersbeing fascinated with her dad’s record collection as a child. “I remember looking at the pictures and

touching them; I remember the way they smelled. I fell in love with physicalmusic.” That early memory helped inspire her idea for musicpackaging for “superfans” that incorporates a magazine plusexclusive merchandise and digital features. Hodak startedZinePak in 2011 with partner Kim Kaupe, and its impressiveroster of clients includes Katy Perry, KISS, the Beach Boys, and

Taylor Swift. What Hodak says she loved about Baruch was “theemphasis on real-world education that you can apply the next

day on the job.” She says of her master’s program: “If I could have taken30 more hours of classes for the degree, I would have. I learned so much and met so many fantasticpeople.” The Baruch education “really helps me reframe the way I thinkabout everything we do at ZinePak.”

Mark Weber, DKNY CEODKNY International CEO Mark Weber (Brooklyn College ’72) wel-comed nearly 30 Brooklyn College students and graduates to thefashion firm’s headquarters in the summer and shared some careeradvice. “You may not get everything you want in your first job ... butin every job there’s always something of value that you’ll learn, even ifit is patience or discipline,” he said. “So it is important that you find yourown niche because what we think we want to do is not necessarily the best, orwisest, choice.” After finishing a B.A. in psychology at Brooklyn College and trying different jobs,Weber landed a position with Phillips-Van Heusen, starting in retail as a merchandising assistant andmoving up to become the company president and CEO, which is the subject of a new book, Always inFashion: From Clerk to CEO — Lessons for Success in Business and in Life (McGraw Hill), to be re-leased in January 2015. “The truth is that the education I received at Brooklyn College was not onlygood — it was better than the one you get in many of today's private schools,” Weber said.

Hockey Maven Stan FischlerStan Fischler (Brooklyn College ’54) recently finished his 100th book, Behind the Net: 101 IncredibleHockey Stories, with most of the anecdotes coming from his many years of personal hockey experience.

It was quick to follow book No. 99, We Are the Rangers, an oral history of the NewYork team, in which Fischler has collected stories about the team and luminaries ofthe Rangers organization from its beginning to today. His own history is well docu-mented in the book, starting as a New York Rangers employee out of college, movinginto the world of journalism at the New York Journal-American, Hockey News and theToronto Star, then on to broadcasting for other teams, including the HartfordWhalers, and for the MSG Network.

Huang

Weber

46 W I N T E R 2 0 1 5


W I N T E R 2 0 1 5 47

Ruby Dee, an alumna ofboth Hunter College High

School and Hunter College,died June 11 at age 91. Theactress, poet and civil rightsactivist made several Broad-way appearances with HarryBelafonte, and in both the filmand stage versions of “ARaisin in the Sun” with SidneyPoitier. She continued to workin later years, playing oppositeher husband, actor OssieDavis — who died in 2005 —in Spike Lee’s 1989 film,

“Do The Right Thing.”She was a member of

the Congress ofRacial Equality,

the NAACP,the Student

NonviolentCoordi-nating

Committee,and theSouthern

ChristianLeadership

Conference.

“If I don’twant to gosomeplaceall I have tosay is, ‘Nothank you,I’m 101 yearsold!’ Terrificexcuse. It’s such aliberating experienceto say nothank you.”

— Bel Kaufman

Al Feldstein, the BrooklynCollege alumnus who put

the “mad” in Mad magazine,died on April 29 at age 88. Aseditor from 1956 to 1985, itwas Feldstein, a writer and il-lustrator of comic books, whomade the iconic cartoon char-acter Alfred E. Neuman thesatiric magazine’s mascot, andit was he who turned the humorpublication into a pop-culturesensation. After his retirement,he pursued his first love –painting – specializing inwildlife and landscapes.

AL FELDSTEIN

RUBY DEE

Paul Gibson Jr., 86, a City Col-lege graduate and New York

City’s first black deputy mayor,died on July 11 at his home inJamaica, Queens. Gibson was avice president of American Air-lines when Mayor Abraham D.Beame appointed him deputymayor. Mr. Gibson had earlierbeen general counsel and hous-ing chairman in the stateNAACP, a board member of theDemocratic Club in Jamaica anda social worker in Brooklyn,

among other positions.

PAUL GIBSONBEL KAUFMAN

Bel Kaufman died in herManhattan home on July

25 at age 103. The 1934Hunter College graduate wasbest known for her 1965novel, Up the Down Staircase,inspired by Kaufman’s years asa New York City public school-teacher. Kaufman retired fromthe school system more thanhalf a century ago, but shenever stopped teaching, and in2011 she taught a seminar onJewish humor at Hunter.

ELAINE M. BRODY

Elaine M. Brody, 91, died July9 at her home in California.

A 1942 graduate of City Col-lege, she became a socialworker and researcher whosework helped to found the fieldof gerontology. She wrote sixbooks, including Women in theMiddle: Their Parent Care Yearsand scores of academic pa-pers. She was associate direc-tor of the Polisher ResearchInstitute in Philadelphia, whereshe spent 31 years, and estab-lished a group residence forelderly women who needed as-sistance but not full-time care,a forerunner of contemporaryliving arrangements.

Claire Tow, 83, co-founderwith her husband of the

cable television company Cen-tury Communications Corp.and the cellular telephonecompany Centennial CellularCorp., died July 7 after a 14-year struggle with Lou Gehrig’sDisease (ALS). She was born inBrooklyn and graduated fromBrooklyn College, where shemet her husband, Leonard, in1949. She was president of TheTow Foundation, the charitablefoundation she and her hus-band founded in 1988. Throughgrants from the foundation,she offered opportunities forpersonal success and helped toalleviate pain and suffering forcountless individuals.

CLAIRE TOW

Ernesto Butcher, 69, a HunterCollege graduate, was a

soft-spoken Panamanian im-migrant who effectively tookover management of the PortAuthority of New York and NewJersey after the attacks of Sept.11, 2001, as its most experi-enced surviving operations of-ficer. He died on May 15 in

Maplewood,N.J. Beforebecomingchief operat-ing officer,Butcher wasmanager ofthe George

Washington Bridge, director ofbridges and tunnels and headof several other departments.

ERNESTO BUTCHER

WE REMEMBER

“The kind ofbeauty I wantmost is thehard-to-getkind thatcomes fromwithin —strength,courage, dignity.”— Ruby Dee

Dee

Feldstein

Kaufman

Tow

Butcher


THREE YEARS AGO, while on theway to class, New York CityCollege of Technology seniorYevgeniy Babkin got off on thewrong floor and discovered theMechatronics/Robotics

Technology Center. “I’m really passionate about electronics and

robotics so when I found this place it was like adream. I like to get my hands on everything,and with the tools and material available in themechatronics club I was able to do anything myheart desired,” says Babkin, a computer engi-neering technology major who recently tookhome the top prize at the Digilent DesignContest — an international tech competition.

Babkin, along with teammates Bijan Mokhtariand Angjelo Kuka and team adviser Ali Harb, cre-ated TOBiAS, which stands for Tele-Operated Bi-Manual Augmented System, using a 3D printeravailable at the center. TOBiAS is a humanoidrobot that mimics the movement of the personoperating the control unit — a remote controlworn as a glove. The user gets a virtual reality-style immersive experience by wearing a helmetthat receives a live video feed from a cameramounted on the robot.

An increasing number of innovative techcreations such as TOBiAS are being developedin Brooklyn, which is a growing tech hub. TheBrooklyn tech triangle, which encompassesDUMBO, Downtown Brooklyn and theBrooklyn Navy Yard, is home to more than 500startups, computer science research firms anddigital design companies — and City Tech is inthe center of it all.

City Tech is one of the largest public collegesof technology in the state. It was established in1946 as the New York State Institute forApplied Arts and Sciences. City Tech joinedCUNY in 1964 and merged with VoorheesTechnical Institute in 1971.

City Tech offers 27 associate and 24baccalaureate degree programs. Some of itsofferings include Communication Design,Dental Hygiene, Accounting, MechanicalEngineering Technology, BiomedicalInformatics, Radiologic Sciences andHospitality Management. City Tech servesabout 17,000 degree students and 13,000 non-degree students through its Schools ofTechnology & Design, Professional Studies andArts & Sciences. The college also boasts theonly program in Emerging Media Technologyeast of the Mississippi, and an award-winningprogram in culinary arts.

The City Tech campus includes nine build-ings within Downtown Brooklyn. Collegeadministration and offices, the Ursula C.Schwerin Library, the School of ProfessionalStudies, and the School of Arts & Sciences areprimarily based in a complex formed by theNamm, Atrium, General, and the Pearl build-ings in MetroTech Center. A new 350,000-square-foot academic complex is currentlyunder construction on the site that was former-ly occupied by the Klitgord Building.Construction on the $406 million project isexpected to be completed in 2017. The eight-story building, which is currently unnamed, willbe home to City Tech’s expanding programs inhealth care and the core sciences such asphysics, chemistry and biological sciences.

The Student Wellness Center offers a widevariety of free services such as massages,fitness classes, glucose, cholesterol andblood-pressure screenings, rapid HIV test-ing, and vaccinations. The College Learning Center providescomputer labs, tutoring assistance andworkshops for City Tech students. Bookstore, café and two full-servicecafeteriasGrace Gallery showcases the work ofstudents in the Advertising Design &Graphic Arts Departments alongside thework of art and design professionals fromthe metropolitan area. Dental Hygiene Clinic offers free or low-cost dental hygiene procedures forstudents, faculty, staff, alumni andcommunity residents. Vision Care Technology Eyeglass Clinicoffers eye-care services to students, faculty,staff, alumni and community residents. Eye examinations are provided at no chargewith eyewear purchase.Immigration Clinic, staffed by attorneys,paralegals, students and volunteers,provides assistance to students and thecommunity on immigration issues. Our Children’s Center is a licensed earlychildhood education day care facility,providing quality educational programs forchildren of City Tech students.

THE HOTSPOTS AT CITY TECH

48 W I N T E R 2 0 1 5

CAMPUSTOURCITY TECH

By Lenina Mortimer

QUICK FACTS ABOUT CITY TECH• Founded in 1946 as New York State Institute of Applied Arts and Sciences;joined CUNY in 1964

• Largest public, baccalaureatecollege of technology in the Northeast.

• 66 degree and certification programs

• Alumni: 89,700 in tech, engineering,culinary arts, teaching, social servicesand 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


Non-Profit OrgU.S. Postage

P A I DStaten Island, NY

Permit #169Office of University Relations205 East 42nd St.New York, NY 10017


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