CMwinter13 r4 CM Spring 09 2/4/13 2:47 PM Page 1 ... · grant is directed by Gregory Mantsios, who heads the Murphy Institute. CUNY, the lead institution on the grant, is part-nering

c u n y . e d u / n e w s • T H E C I T Y U N I V E R S I T Y O F N E W Y O R K • F O U N D E D 18 4 7 W I N T E R 2 0 1 3

CUNYMattersGRANTS&HONORS

RecognizingFacultyAchievement

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THE UNIVERSITY’S renownedfaculty members continual-ly win professional-achieve-

ment awards from prestigiousorganizations as well asresearch grants from govern-ment agencies, farsighted foun-dations and leading corpora-tions. Pictured are just a few ofthe recent honorees. Brief sum-maries of many ongoingresearch projects start here andcontinue inside.

The U.S. StateDepartment has awarded a$1.5 million grant to CUNY’sJoseph S. Murphy Institute forWorker Education and LaborStudies to help establish thefield of labor relations as agraduate program in China. Thegrant is directed by GregoryMantsios, who heads theMurphy Institute. CUNY, the leadinstitution on the grant, is part-nering with Harvard Universityand UCLA to offer courses tofaculty and graduate students atShanghai University and willwork with other Chinese univer-sities to develop labor relationsprograms at their institutions.

Robert Dottin and JesusAngulo of Hunter College havereceived a $2,610,673 grantfrom PHS/NIH/Division ofResearch Resources for a“Research Center in MinorityInstitutions: Center for GeneStructure and Function.” AmyDalsimer of LaGuardiaCommunity College has beenawarded two grants: $598,901from the New York StateEducation Department for“Workforce Investment Act” and$153,841 from the New York CityOffice of the Mayor for an “AdultLiteracy Program.” BrooklynCollege has received $341,475in grant funding from theNational Institutes of Health forresearch concerning“Carbohydrate Appetite, FatAppetite and Obesity,” directedby Anthony Sclafani. The U.S.Department of Energy hasawarded $105,000 to JamalJalilian-Marian and AdrianDumitru of Baruch College for aresearch project entitled “HighEnergy QCD in Heavy-IronCollisions.” Michel Hodge of

‘The experiment is to be tried…whether the children of the people,the children of the whole people,

can be educated; whether an institution of learning,of the highest grade, can be successfully controlledby the popular will, not by the privileged few, but by the privileged many.”

— Horace Webster Founding Principal, The Free Academy

Non-Profit OrgU.S. Postage

PAIDPermit # 153

New Haven, CT

Office of University Relations535 East 80th St.New York, NY 10075

CUNYMatters

Dalsimer

Mantsios

Delamater

Bateman

Zakeri

Sclafani

Jalilian-Marian

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2 Growing the STEM of theFuture

How One HR Office Is Upgrading

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10

Xiao

Dottin

Naddeo

EFORE HurricaneSandy had blownout of the city lastfall, CUNYstudents werealready springinginto action to help

fellow New Yorkers deal withdevastation. They soon spreadthrough hard-hit areas offer-ing food, labor and compas-sion.

Now the University is tak-ing steps to channel such stu-dent enthusiasm via a newwide-ranging service corpscalled CUNY HELPS, anacronym for CUNY HigherEducation Links to Programsand Services.

CUNY HELPS will “mobi-lize students and faculty towork on projects thatimprove the short-and long-term civic, economic andenvironmental sustainabilityof New York City, itsresidents and communities,”Chancellor Matthew

Goldstein said.He noted

thatalthoughthe con-cept paper

presentedto the Board

of Trusteesremains to be fleshed out, theidea “draws inspiration fromsuch longstanding federal

programs as the Peace Corpsand AmeriCorps; it seeks tomake use of some of theunique assets of CUNY andits crucial place within thelife of New York City.”

The concept paper offersfour potential thematic areas:• A HEALTHIER CITY — encom-passing community and pub-lic health issues from chronicdisease management to vio-lence prevention and foodsecurity.• A MORE RESILIENT AND GREEN-ER CITY — including ecology,architecture, urban planning,design and urban studies.Projects could address post-Sandy infrastructure needs.• A BETTER-EDUCATED CITY —assisting students of all ageswith services ranging fromtutoring to mentoring toclassroom support.• AN ECONOMICALLY STRONGERCITY — in which studentsdrawn from business, law andIT/computer scienceprograms could work on pro-jects serving distressed com-munities. In a disaster, thiscould include helping stormvictims complete tax returnsand FEMA claims. More gen-erally, it could provide busi-ness, legal and technicalexpertise.

While our city’s communi-ties will be the principal bene-ficiaries of the program,

CUNY HELPS also will rein-force participating students’altruistic impulses, infuse edu-cation with real-world experi-ence and, perhaps, earnacademic credit. In addition,there would be an hourlywage. The leap from the purevolunteerism seen post-Sandyto a salaried program acknowl-edges economic reality.

For faculty members whoengage students in projects,CUNY HELPS offers avenuesto apply their expertise tocritical challenges facing thecity. And for those New Yorkresidents who receive directassistance or who benefit

indirectly fromimprovementsto their neigh-borhoods or theentire city, the ser-vice program aims to revivedreams, livelihoods and quali-ty of life.

The concept paper calls forCUNY HELPS to begin in Fall2013 and grow to 1,000 stu-dent participants by the endof the 2013-2014 academicyear. Colleges wishing to havetheir students participate willbe asked to submit proposalswhich, among other things,

B

More details on volunteer and

recovery efforts at:www.cuny.edu/

cunyhelps

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Volunteer spirit following Superstorm Sandy hasinspired a far-reaching University service corps.

Hands-On Training

Students from several

CUNY colleges cameto Far Rockaway

to help Sandy victims.

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6Day of theDeluge:Gains andLosses

INSIDE

CMwinter13_r4_CM Spring 09 2/4/13 2:47 PM Page 1

2 CUNY MATTERS — Winter 2013

For years, I’ve called our country’stepid proficiency in science, tech-nology, engineering and mathemat-ics, or STEM, a national securityproblem.

That’s not an exaggeration. Our nation’sborders may not be in imminent danger. Butour ability to produce a workforce capable ofleading a global economy is compromised bythe gap between the projected need for morescientists, engineers and technically profi-cient workers and our ability to prepare adiverse workforce with the requisite skills.

According to the National ScienceFoundation, over the past quarter century,the science andengineering work-force has more thandoubled in size andSTEM-relatedemployment is onlyexpected to grow.

But the U.S.pipeline toadvanced study is aleaky one. Far toofew students whomay be interestedin the STEM fieldsat a young age ulti-mately earn adegree in these dis-ciplines.

America musttake action to rein-vigorate our commitment to STEM educa-tion, research and commercialization whileinvesting in the necessary infrastructureand human capital.

Five areas are truly critical:• Ensure that more students are

prepared for college-level STEM study. Toomany lack the necessary academic skills. Asthe National Science Foundation reports,relatively few K-12 students reach grade-specific proficiency in science; meanwhile,the Business-Higher Education Forum findsthat almost half of STEM-interested 12th-grade students do not have the requisiteskills in mathematics or science. We need toutilize summer and after-school programsmore fully to supplement coursework.

• Encourage interest and aptitude at alllevels of post-secondary study, particularlyby students underrepresented in thesciences. While graduate degrees, whetherPh.D.s or science master’s degrees, are a bigpart of the equation, we need technicallyproficient workers at all levels: certificateholders, associate degree graduates andbachelor’s degree earners. Increasingly,every field needs workers who are STEM-

literate and can operatecomputers, readblueprints, analyze data and run sophisti-cated equipment. Across our universities,we need to provide targeted undergraduateresearch opportunities, summerinternships, faculty mentoring and modernfacilities.

• Ensure that students at every level aretaught by creative, effective teachers edu-cated in the STEM disciplines. PresidentObama announced a plan this summer tocreate a national STEM Master TeacherCorps, with highly effective educators men-toring other teachers and advocating for

strong STEM educa-tion and well-preparedstudents. Good teach-ers are critical to stu-dent success and weshould consider how toincentivize their work,whether through meritpay or differentialsalaries.

• Embrace the tal-ents of foreign studentsand workers by reform-ing our immigrationpolicies. In ouradvanced degree pro-grams, we rely on for-eign-born students: 50percent of our coun-try’s engineering and

math/computer science doctorate holdersare foreign-born. But because of tight visalimits, foreign-born graduates must leave thecountry or face significant delays for a per-manent visa. We must reform our immigra-tion policies and create clear paths to greencards for these international graduates.

• Establish stronger links with businessand industry to ensure that students areprepared not only to participate in today’sworkforce but to lead the innovation anddiscoveries of the next generation. No onedoubts that curriculum must be developedby faculty. But particularly in the STEMfields, where new advances and approachesare always being developed, we need to takeadvantage of the wealth of knowledge in thebusiness community.

There is no greater investment in thefuture than an investment in education —and that starts with a commitment to devel-oping the skills necessary for a knowledge-based economy. After all, tomorrow’sprogress depends on today’s students.

THECHANCELLOR’SDESK

After a six-and-a-half-year investigation,federal officials said CUNY had worked toensure that all University communicationsand materials concerning BMI programsmake clear that all can take part. “None ofthe BMI programs or activities excludespersons who are not black and/or male fromparticipating,” wrote Erin Gimbel, compli-ance team leader for DOE’s Office for Civil

Rights (OCR), Region II, in a Nov. 23, 2012letter to Chancellor Matthew Goldstein.

CUNY’s communications and discussionswith the OCR confirm that “all programsand activities of the Black Male Initiativeare open to all academically eligiblestudents, faculty, and staff, without regardto race, gender, national origin, or othercharacteristic,” the letter said.

Growing the STEM of the Future

Kafui Kouakou Terrence F. MartellChairperson, Chairperson,University Student Senate University Faculty Senate

Philip Alfonso BerryVice Chairperson

Hugo M. MoralesBrian D. ObergfellPeter PantaleoKathleen M. PesileCarol Robles-RománCharles A. ShorterJeffrey Wiesenfeld

Benno SchmidtChairperson

Valerie L. BealWellington Z. ChenRita DiMartinoFreida D. FosterJudah GribetzJoseph J. Lhota

Matthew Goldstein Jay HershensonChancellor Secretary of the Board of Trustees and

Senior Vice Chancellor for University Relations

Michael ArenaUniversity Director for Communications and Marketing

Barbara Shea Managing Editor

Rich Sheinaus Director of Graphic Design

Charles DeCicco, Ruth Landa, Neill S. Rosenfeld Writers

Miriam Smith Issue Designer

André Beckles Photographer

Articles in this and previous issues are available at cuny.edu/news.Letters or suggestions for future stories may be sent to the Editor by e-mail [email protected]. Changes of address should be madethrough your campus personnel office.

BOARDOFTRUSTEESThe City University of New York CUNYMatters

Far too few students who may be

interested in the STEM fields at a

young age ultimately earn a degree

in these disciplines. America must

take action to reinvigorate our

commitment to STEM education,

research and commercialization

while investing in the necessary

infrastructure and human capital.

.

.

.

.

.

Tutoring,U.S. Department of Education’sOffice for Civil Rights ApprovesUniversity’s Black Male Initiative

CSI President William

J. Fritz and studentvolunteers unload

turkeys donated forStaten Island storm

victims.

A Volunteer Spirit Following S

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rightshas closed discrimination complaints against CUNY’s BlackMale Initiative programs, saying the campus mentoring

and support programs comply with federal laws.The action resolves complaints filed against the University in

2006 by the New York Civil Rights Coalition and its executivedirector, Michael Meyers, claiming that the Black MaleInitiative (BMI) – begun in 2005 to boost the educational andemployment prospects of underrepresented groups, particular-ly black males – segregated them while excluding those whowere neither black nor male.


“The determination finds that, in allregards, the CUNY BMI program is legallycompliant,” Chancellor Goldstein reportedto the Board of Trustees at its Nov. 26 meet-ing. Characterizing the federal action “a bigdeal,” he said: “Although long overdue, this isa great result for the CUNY BMI and themany students it has served and continuesto serve.”

OCR’s decision, he noted, makes it possi-ble for BMI programs to seek grants fromthe Department of Education and other fun-ders. He thanked the Trustees for their longsupport of BMI, saying that while the initia-tive may have been “somewhat controver-sial,” it was “the right thing to do.” He alsothanked CUNY attorneys and BMI DirectorElliot Dawes for their “outstanding work” onthe protracted matter.

The Chancellor established a UniversityTask Force on the Black Male Initiative in2004, charging it with developing recom-mendations leading to projects to help blackmales overcome inequalities that lead topoor academic performance, school reten-tion and graduation rates.

Senior Vice Chancellor Jay Hershensonsaid the BMI “was not created to promote

race-exclusive programs but instead to helpblack males and others compete more effec-tively in higher education through mentor-ing, internships, and other support services.”

Meyers, who has contended that BMIprograms segregate and stigmatize blackmales, said he would challenge OCR’s action.

The complaints filed in 2006 alleged vio-lations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of1964, which bars institutions receiving fed-eral funds from discriminating on the basisof race, color or national origin; and of TitleIX, which bars sexual discrimination by edu-cational institutions. In response, OCRopened 18 investigations – two to probe thediscrimination charges, and 16 for eachCUNY campus that had a BMI program as ofJanuary 2008.

The BMI cases spanned two presidentialadministrations. The initial New York CivilRights Coalition complaint, filed May 23,2006 during the Bush administration,sought elimination of the BMI programs asalleged violations of Title VI's ban on the useof race to exclude or segregate; it chargedthat the programs stereotyped black malesand treated them differently on account oftheir race, a Title VI violation, and gender,violating Title IX. An amended complaintfiled July 26, 2006 added an allegation thatCUNY colleges improperly used “race, color,ethnicity and/or sex” in selecting andassigning teachers and staff to run BMI pro-grams.

“The complainant contended in his May23, 2006 letter that ‘Title VI and Title IX donot sanction ‘Black Male Initiatives’… ”OCR’s Gimbel wrote in the Nov. 23 letterdismissing the cases. “It is not, however, aper se violation of Title VI or Title IX for apostsecondary institution to operate a race-themed and/or gender-themed mentoringand support program.”

OCR’s determination relied heavily uponguidance issued in 2011 by the U.S.Department of Justice and OCR that clari-fied the kinds of actions higher-educationinstitutions could legally take to promotediversity, including race-themed mentoringand support programs.

“Many institutions operate mentoring,tutoring, retention, and support programsfor enrolled students who may need addi-

tional assistance in academic or other areasto succeed at the institution,” DOJ and OCRsaid, explaining that such programs couldinclude content “of particular interest to agroup targeted for retention… A race-themed or gender-themed mentoring andsupport program would fall within this cate-gory of approaches if it does not excludestudents on the basis of their race or sex anddoes not use race-or sex-exclusive recruit-ing.”

“Based on the information already pro-vided by CUNY, and an additional assess-ment of the current status of the BMIprograms, OCR has determined that theallegations are not appropriate for furtherinvestigation and resolution. OCR is thusadministratively closing these 18 cases asmoot, consistent with OCR’s case processingprocedures,” its letter said, noting, “Weregret the substantial delay in resolvingthese complaints.”

At the November Trustees meetingCUNY Deputy General Counsel Jane Soverndescribed the OCR cases as “lengthy,exhaustive,” and said “the BMI directors atthe campuses were tireless” in providingdocumentation and interviews requested byOCR. She also recognized the outstandingwork of BMI Director Elliott Dawes;Deborah Douglass, executive director ofeducation and training opportunityprograms at the University’s Office ofAcademic Affairs; and Associate GeneralCounsel Heather Parlier.

During the Bush years, she said, CUNY“worked with OCR to negotiate a resolutionagreement,” which was not finalized. Butafter Barack Obama’s election in 2008,“there was silence [from OCR] for manyyears,” Sovern said.

Then came the joint guidance issued byDOJ and OCR, clarifying permissible uses ofrace. It “read as if they were describing ourBMI program,” said Sovern. CUNY counselthen contacted OCR and “provided themwith additional information,” and OCRclosed the cases, she said, “essentially vindi-cating the approach of the BMI.”

CUNY’s Black Male Initiative has beensupported by the CUNY Board of Trustees,the New York State Board of Regents andthe New York City Council.

York College has been awarded a $2 milliongrant from the Port Authority for the “REDTAILS:Tuskegee Airmen Exhibit at York College.” The“Collegiate Science and Technology EntryProgram” at Kingsborough Community College,directed by Gary Sarinsky, has been awarded a$105,226 grant from the New York StateEducation Department.

Congressman José E. Serrano announcedthat Hostos Community College has beenawarded nearly $1 million from the NationalScience Foundation: $610,135 from theAdvanced Technological Education program toRees Shad and Catherine Lewis for “DesigningFuture for Games: Games for Multi-Media”; also$299,079 for “Project SEED (STEM EducatorsExpansion Directive) for Candidates inChemistry and Environmental Science,” fromthe Robert Noyce Capacity Building Project,directed by Sarah Church. Hostos PresidentFélix V. Matos Rodríguez said the grants vali-date “the quality and depth of our faculty, par-ticularly for STEM, and the commitment Hostoshas in helping to improve educational outcomesin Bronx K-12 schools.” In addition, TheCarnegie Foundation for the Advancement of

Teaching and the Council forAdvancement and Supportof Education have namedRees Shad the 2012 NewYork State Professor of theYear from a group of nearly300 top educators in theU.S. He was the driving

force behind the creation of Hostos’ MediaDesign Program, which introduces students toprofessional media design via five AAS special-ized degrees.

Bronx Community College hasreceived $1,346,990 from the New York StateDepartment of Education for “InstitutionalImprovement,” directed by Carin Savage. Inaddition, BCC’s Childcare Center has beenaccredited by the National Association for theEducation of Young Children (NAEYC), theworld’s largest organization working on behalfof young children. President Carole M. BerotteJoseph noted that the Childcare Center is theoldest in CUNY and said: “This is a real testa-ment to the excellence of our staff underJitinder Walia’s leadership.” The NationalScience Foundation has extended $611,205 ingrant support to Elizabeth Cardoso of HunterCollege for the “MIND Alliance for MinorityStudents with Disabilities in Science,Technology, Engineering & Mathematics.”Delaram Kahrobaei of New York City College of

Technology has received$448,962 from the Office ofNaval Research for “NewApproaches to InformationSecurity Based on GroupTheory.” A $348,750 grant toJin Fan of Queens Collegefrom the National Institutes

of Health will support research concerning“Uncertainty, Cognitive Control, and the Brain.”

Loretta Brancaccio-Taras, professorand chairperson of the department of biologicalsciences at Kingsborough Community College,has been named a Vision and ChangeLeadership Fellow by The Partnership forUndergraduate Life Sciences Education, a jointinitiative of the National Science Foundation,the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and theNational Institutes of Health. Fellows will con-sider how to eliminate barriers to systemicchanges needed to improve undergraduate life

CUNY MATTERS — Winter 2013 3

Continued from page 1

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GRANTS&HONORS

Shad

Jin Fan

Retentionand Support

will spell out if and how they will awardacademic credit. By this April, theUniversity expects to be recruiting stu-dents and seeking project sponsorsamong local organizations and govern-ment agencies.

Two types of projects are foreseen. Inone, a city agency, union, business, non-profit or other organization would beexpected to host several CUNY HELPSparticipants at a time, provide them withsignificant supervision and bring themtogether for meetings where they coulddiscuss their experiences. Alternatively,faculty members could sponsor projectsand provide supervision and, if relevant,coordination with client organizations.

According to the concept paper, stu-dents would need to meet a minimumgrade point average, be at least midwaythrough a program of study and demon-strate financial need.

The concept paper was drafted bySuri Duitch, University Dean ofContinuing Education and deputy to theSenior University Dean for AcademicAffairs, and by Kara Heffernan, Directorof Internship Programs, under the aegisof John Mogulescu, Senior UniversityDean for Academic Affairs and Dean ofthe School of Professional Studies.


g Superstorm Sandy

( )“all programs and activities of the

Black Male Initiative are open to all academically eligible students, faculty,

and staff, without regard to race, gender,national origin, or other characteristic.”— Ruling by U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights



AN EARLY FIRST: Sometimes history’s“firsts” are hard to verify, but thanks to theUniversity’s Dominican Studies Institute,the world now knows that the first immi-grant to spend a night in New York City wasone Juan Rodriguez, a merchant/sailor whoin 1613 left his native Dominican Republicand settled in the Big Apple. According toinstitute Director Ramona Hernandez,Rodriguez holds title to several other firsts:He was the city’s first non-Indian, firstDominican, first Latino and first person ofAfrican blood to become a permanent resi-dent. To honor him, the city recently decid-ed to rename the mostly Dominican area ofupper Broadway, from West 159th Street inWashington Heights to West 218th Street inInwood, Juan Rodriguez Way. And in May,the city will hold a celebration to mark the400th anniversary of his arrival.

MAKING HISTORY: Bronx CommunityCollege has become the first community col-lege in America to be designated a NationalHistoric Landmark. The status was awardedto five Beaux-Arts buildings designed by

architect Stanford White: The GouldMemorial Library, The Hall of Fame forGreat Americans, the Language Hall, thePhilosophy Hall and Havemeyer Lab.

A MATTER OF DEGREE: More than 600people turned out recently at HunterCollege to see the Dalai Lama receive anhonorary doctorate in liberal humanities.The degree was awarded in recognition ofhis work for world peace. Afterward, hejoined a panel with Hunter professor MingXia and associate professor Ho-Fung Hungthat was moderated by professor PeterKwong.

RED FOR GREEN: In the quest to build a“green” lithium-ion battery, City Collegeprofessor George John and postdoctoralresearcher Subbiah Nagarajan have turnedto the ruby-red dye extracted from rosemadder, which since ancient times has beenused to color textiles. The two say that thedye, whose molecules are similar to elec-trodes and are a good match for lithium, canbe substituted for the ores in the batteries,which run practically every electronicdevice in everyday use. They believe that acommercially viable alternative will be avail-able within a decade.

BREAST CANCER GRANT: Debra Auguste,associate professor of biomedical engineer-ing at City College, has received a $1.5-mil-lion grant from the National Institutes ofHealth to study personalized therapies toinhibit breast cancer. Her work will focus onfour populations: black women, white

women, womenolder than 40and womenyounger than 40.Her goal is to usebiological infor-mation to deliverdrugs that cantarget an indi-vidual patient’stumor.

OFF TOENGLAND:NicolasMontano, asenior in theCUNYBaccalaureateprogram at JohnJay, is the col-lege’s first recipi-ent of the BritishMarshallScholarship tostudy in theUnitedKingdom. Afterhe graduates thisspring, he willbegin graduateprograms inLiverpool andLondon.Montano, whosestudies havefocused on youthand communityjustice, plans toearn a doctoratein research andacademia.

HAVE YOU HEARD? What community college is the nation’s first to be desig-nated a national landmark? How you can lose more weight — enjoyably?

Which CUNY institution has started an academic press?

NEWSWIRE

HISTORYLESSON

WE SHALL OVERCOME: Martin Luther King Jr. speaks at a 1965 votingrights march in Alabama. This picture was part of a photo essay by StephenSomerstein, now a physicist and documentary photographer, who covered thecivil rights protests as student editor in chief and photo editor of the CityCollege evening newspaper, Main Events.

FROM ITS BEGINNING 165 years ago, The CityUniversity of New York has always had adual mission: Deliver high-quality

education — and serve the citizens of the city.Today, CUNY’s 6,700 full-time faculty carry on

this legacy, contributing in ways that trulytransform our city, benefiting the lives of millionsof New Yorkers every day. Many provide criticaltraining for the city’s diverse workforce. Theyteach young scientists to explore new fields likephotonics, biodiversity and nanotechnology; theytrain municipal employees in emergencypreparedness for large-scale disasters; theycreate programs that teach health industryprofessionals how to detect early incidence oforal cancer and better care for people withdevelopmental disabilities.

In the following months, you’ll find thecompelling stories of such CUNY faculty — justa few of the remarkable men and women whoseservice reflects the unique, historic bond betweenthe University and its city.

AFTER LAW SCHOOL and an internship helpingprotect undocumented Mexican immigrants,

San Diego native Allan Wernick headed for NewYork — eventually arriving at Hostos CommunityCollege, where he helped organize a Women’s and

Immigrants’ RightsCenter in 1990.

Little did Wernickrealize that hisCalifornia internshipdecades earlier wouldeventually lead to aniconic CUNY programcombining free legalservices, educationand volunteerism thathas become the mostcomprehensive

university-based immigration service in thecountry.

Now a professor of law at Baruch College,Wernick is director of Citizenship Now! whichincludes nine centers in New York City whereimmigrants can go for forms, educationalactivities and confidential consultations withparalegals and attorneys. Over the past 10 years,the annual Citizenship Now! Call-In — co-sponsored by the New York Daily News — hasanswered almost 110,000 calls from New Yorkersseeking help with immigration questions.Thousands more have been helped by theNYC/CUNY Citizenship Now! Volunteer Corps,which provides free, in-person counseling onweekends. Several years ago, Wernick started theUniversity’s unique Immigration Law Certificate

Program, which offers courses for those workingwith immigrants or their employers and families.

Such efforts are especially significant in NewYork City, where 47 percent of the residents areforeign-born and 54 percent live in a householdwith a foreign-born member. Some 800,000 of anestimated 11.5 million undocumentedimmigrants nationwide live in the area.

Citizenship Now! was conceived by JayHershenson, Senior Vice Chancellor for UniversityRelations and Secretary of the Board of Trustees,and was launched by Wernick in 1997 to addressthe need for citizenship and immigration servicesamong the University’s foreign-born students,faculty and staff. (More than 60 percent of CUNYstudents are immigrants or the children ofimmigrants.) The University soon expanded itsmission to cover New Yorkers beyond CUNYcampuses.

Over 15 years, Citizenship Now! has steadilygrown into the city’s largest immigration-aidorganization. The 1,800-plus members of itsVolunteer Corps have assisted more than 95,000people at its seven full-time immigration centersand two part-time centers — in Spanish,Mandarin, Creole and many other languages.Citizenship Now! also collaborates with the U.S.Citizenship and Immigration Services, makingUniversity campuses available for naturalizationceremonies.

In the last five years, the organization has heldmore than 200 community events in partnershipwith local officials and organizations. In theaftermath of the 2010 Haitian earthquake,Citizenship Now! — in collaboration with theAmerican Immigration Lawyers Association —helped more than 900 undocumented Haitians inthe U.S. obtain Temporary Protected Status. Thecity’s Haitian community is America’s largest, withsome 6,000 students of Haitian descent studyingat CUNY.

The weeklong CUNY/Daily News Call-In is ahigh-profile campaign each spring when some350 volunteer counselors answer thousands ofphone calls from city residents with immigration-related issues. The event is frequented by astring of notable public figures that last yearincluded Sens. Charles Schumer and KirstenGillibrand.

Six years ago, Wernick helped create a newImmigration Law Certificate Program at theSchool of Professional Studies that offersgraduate-level courses. “It’s where the nextgeneration of immigration law advocates arecoming from,” says Wernick, who is author ofU.S. Immigration and Citizenship: Your CompleteGuide and writes a weekly syndicated columnabout immigration issues for the Daily News.

PROFESSORSATWORK

Mr. Citizenship Now!

NAME:Allan Wernick

COLLEGE: Baruch

TITLE: Author, columnist,professor of law anddirector of the city’slargest immigration-aid organization,Citizenship Now!

FOCUS: Help people get U.S.citizenship ortemporary protectedstatus and to offerfree, in-personcounseling.

Over 15 years,

Citizenship Now!

has steadily grown

into the city’s largest

immigration-aid

organization.


FOOD FOR THOUGHT:Bronx CommunityCollege and Lehman stu-dents are getting a tasteof healthy eating througha community-supportedagriculture program thatbrings fresh produce toBCC’s school cafeteria.The program is designedto be affordable for cash-strapped stu-dents: Sharesare boughtweekly insteadof monthly, andparticipants cansuspend member-ship when budgetsare tight. The siteis run by CorbinHill Farm, aHarlem-based orga-nization that getsfruits and vegetablesfrom a network of 14upstate farms. Thingsalso got greener at LaGuardia when it hosteda greenmarket during Food Celebration Dayin November. The event, which was attend-ed by hundreds, also included student visitsto classrooms, cooking demonstrations anda table that charted the sugars and fats inpopular snack foods and soft drinks.

LOSE MORE: If you want to lose weight,find a partner for your crunches and calorie-crushing crusade. So says Baruch assistantprofessor Angela Pinto. According to her lat-est study, which followed 141 overweight andobese adults in three randomly assignedgroups, commercial weight-loss programsand clinical programs carry equal weight –as long as the participants buddy up. Shefound that the support people got carriedgreat weight: Although the total weight lostwas about the same in each group, those whowere enrolled in the Weight Watchers pro-gram lost 10 percent or more of their start-ing weight compared with the others.

WASTE NOT: Lehman has gotten down anddirty about composting ever since it addedThe Rocket to its arsenal. The device, manu-factured by Tidy Planet in the UnitedKingdom, composts the 120 pounds of wasteproduced daily from the college’s on-campusfood preparation. Before Lehman got TheRocket, it was only composting gardeningwaste because the food waste was attractingsmall animals. The waste decomposesquickly in The Rocket’s odor-free closedcontainer, and the compost is used to fertil-ize the campus soil.

‘RAIN GARDENS’: Queens College got intothe environmental act by opening three raingardens that will help divert almost 1 milliongallons of stormwater annually and helppreserve water quality in Flushing Creek.They were built with $386,000 from theNew York City Department ofEnvironmental Protection’s GreenInfrastructure Grant Program.

WINGING IT:Mothers do all sorts

of clever things to keep their chil-dren under their wings, but the Australianfairywren starts the protection processwhile its chicks are still in the egg. Accordingto a new study by Hunter College professorMark Hauber, the mother bird begins teach-ing its unhatched chicks a secret passwordto chirp so she can identify them as herseven before they emerge — essential becausethe opportunistic cuckoo often lays eggs inanother bird’s nest hoping it will hatchthem, too.

3-D VISION: NYDesigns, an economicdevelopment program at LaGuardia, is tak-ing a leading role in New York’s Next TopMakers, a city contest to develop productsusing the 3-D printing technology ofShapeways, the Dutch company that recent-ly moved to Long Island City. The contest,which runs through September 2013, is setup to choose six products – five by the cityand one by the public – that will be furtherdeveloped. NYDesigns is providing equip-ment and mentorship as well as studio spacefor the contest.

GET IN THE PICTURE: Brooklyn College isusing family photos to tell its rich historythrough a new campus project called theDigital Diaspora Family Reunion. The pic-tures, from students, faculty, administratorsand alumni, are online athttp://ddfr.tv/?s=brooklyn+college.

‘A’ FOR ACTIVITIES: Many CUNY studentshave outside jobs and interests, but AmarChugg certainly has to be one of the busieron any campus. The Baruch College student,who is pursuing a degree in finance, is also

an entrepreneur, CEO, disc jockey, model,music producer, web developer, tech bloggerand social media guru. His startups — so far— include Chugg Search, the technology blogSpruse, Srt.im and the online shopping siteShopallo.com. He also finds time to swim,dance, play billiards and network. And pre-sumably do his homework.

REMEMBERING VIETNAM: Queens Collegecelebrated its 75th anniversary with“Posters as History: Teaching History,Politics and Art with Primary Sources,” anexhibition of more than 30 Vietnam Warposters donated and created by alumni. Theexhibit, which also included photos andarchival materials, was inspired by profes-sors Jack Zevin and Michael Krasner, whoreceived a grant from the Library ofCongress for the project. Their idea was toshow how objects depict history and stimu-late conversation.

A MEMORIAL: When CUNY alum and EastHarlem activist Carmen Villegas died onDec. 5, more than 100 friends, family andfans held a memorial outside the lockeddoors of Our Lady Queen of Angels, theRoman Catholic church she tried unsuccess-fully to save from closing during a 37-hourprotest in 2007. Villegas, an adjunct profes-sor at Touro College, was a longtime mem-ber of Community Board 11.

BY THE BOOK: The CUNY Graduate Schoolof Journalism, in partnership with indepen-dent publisher OR Books, has launched anacademic press that will release three to fivejournalism-related books a year. Fighting forthe Press: The Inside Story of the PentagonPapers by former New York Times chiefcounsel James Goodale is one title slated for2013.

Get daily Newswire reports at

cuny.edu/newswire. To download the free app foryour mobile device, search The CityUniversity of New York at the Appleor Android online stores. Or snapthe nearby box with your smart-phone to subscribe to Newswire.

Continued from page 3sciences education. Hunter CollegeDistinguished Professor of English ElizabethNunez, an award-winning author of sevennovels, has received a Lifetime Literary Awardfrom the National Librarysystem in Trinidad, whereshe graduated from highschool. Shelly Smith of NewYork City College ofTechnology has received athree-year $877,322 grantfrom the National ScienceFoundation’s Advanced TechnologicalEducation Program to establish a “Fuse Lab”to enable students earning specialty associatedegrees to work on real-world problems. DavidKennedy of John Jay College has been award-ed a $600,000 grant from the John D. andCatherine T. MacArthur Foundation for a“Project that Aims to Significantly ReduceSerious Violence in the City of Chicago” and a$291,340 grant from the U.S. Department ofthe Interior-Bureau of Indian Affairs Office ofJustice Services for a “Project Designed to

Adapt ViolenceReduction.” LaGuardiaCommunity College hasreceived $420,549 fromthe New York StateEducation Department for“English Language/CivicsEducation,” under the

direction of John Hunt. TheU.S. Department ofEducation has awarded$250,000 to Peishi Wang ofQueens College for“Culturally Aligned andResponsible EarlyIntervention.”

Barbara Ann Naddeo of City Collegehas won the American Philosophical Society’sJacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History forher book Vico and Naples: The Urban Originsof Modern Social Theory. The award honorsdistinguished works in American or Europeancultural history. Herman L. Bennett of theGraduate Center has received the 2012 EquityAward from the Committee on MinorityHistorians of the American HistoricalAssociation. He is the author of Africans inColonial Mexico and Colonial Blackness: AHistory of Afro-Mexico.

Lehman College has received$1,328,155 from the U.S. Department ofEducation for “Gaining Early Awareness andReadiness for Undergraduate Programs —Bronx GEAR UP,” under the direction ofHerminio Martinez. Andrew Delamater ofBrooklyn College has been awarded $392,500in grant support from the National Institutesof Health for “SCORE (SC1): A Multi-Component Approach to Extinction inPavlovian Learning.” The New York City Officeof the Mayor has extended $107,355 in grantsupport to Kitty Bateman of QueensboroughCommunity College for an “Adult LiteracyProgram.” Victoria Luine of Hunter Collegehas received $1,418,439 fromPHS/NIH/National Institute of General MedicalSciences for the “Research Initiative forScientific Enhancement (RISE) Program.” TheNew York State Education Department hasawarded $1,064,427 to Bonne August of NewYork City College of Technology for “PerkinsIV.” Christina Tortora of the College of StatenIsland has received a $236,626 grant from theNational Science Foundation for “CollaborativeResearch: A Syntactically Annotated Corpus ofAppalachian English.”

GRANTS&HONORS

Smith

Hunt

Wang


MEETING OFINSPIREDMINDS

POWERING THE CITY’S FUTURE. Chancellors Dennis Wolcott of NewYork City Public Schools, left, and CUNY’s Matthew Goldstein spoke at a Decembersummit on STEM education, produced by U.S. News & World Report in associationwith CUNY and the Daily News and held at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.STEM – science, technology, engineering and math – also is at the heart of theUniversity’s 2013 calendar, “Inventing the Future,” produced in cooperation withLaGuardia Community College, the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives and TheNew York Times (see www.cuny.edu/inventingthefuture).


FLAGS FLEW at half-staff at University campuses in the days fol-lowing Hurricane Sandy, honoring three students and a recentgraduate who died during the superstorm.

Lauren (Lola) Abraham, 23, who had transferred to LaGuardiaCommunity College from Lehman College, was electrocuted by asnapped power line as she went out to take photographs.

John Filipowicz Jr., 20, a baccalaureate candidate at Collegeof Staten Island, died embracing his father as the tide surgedthrough their home.

Jessie Streich-Kest and her friend since middle school, JacobVogelman, died when a tree fell on them as they walked her dogduring the storm. She graduated last summer with a master’sdegree in special education from Hunter College’s UrbanTeacher Residency Program. He was a second-year MFA stu-dent at Brooklyn College.

Chancellor Matthew Goldstein voiced his “profound condolences tothe families and friends” of these four victims, as well as his “deepestconcern and strongest support for those who may have suffered per-sonal or property loss during this difficult time.”

Lauren Abraham

LAUREN ABRAHAM, 23, who was known as Lola, hadtransferred from Lehman College to LaGuardia

Community College. Although she ran a home businessas a makeup artist and worked for several professional

agencies, she had hoped to become a teacher.Her boyfriend, Ernst Alvarez Jr., said that one of the last

memories they shared was creating spooky facemakeup designs for Halloween. “She was just one ofthose people who once she was in the zone, you

couldn’t slow her down,” he told DNAInfo.com.At about 8 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 29, when a neighbor said the

weather was fierce and power was out, she left the home in RichmondHill, Queens, where she lived with her parents and walked down therain-drenched street to take photographs. She appears to have come incontact with a downed, sparking power line, and died.

More than 100 mourners attended her service at the ChristianCultural Center in the Flatlands section of Brooklyn, according toDNAInfo. “Most of us are either smart or creative,” her brother, CoreyAbraham, said at the service. “She was fortunate enough to be both.”

Relatives told DNAInfo that Abraham had put her education on holdto pursue cosmetology. But her mother, Kim, said she was planning onultimately becoming a mathematics professor like her idol and stepfa-ther, who died in 2009.

Abraham was also described as a devoutly religious person who

T 3 A.M. ON OCT. 30, G. ScottAnderson looked out a win-dow of Borough ofManhattan CommunityCollege and saw theHudson River churningand swelling just 100 feetaway. It was only minuteslater, in the first darkhour of the assault ofSuperstorm Sandy, thatthe suddenly ferocious

river came surging across the West SideHighway, heading straight for BMCC’s four-block-long building on West Street.

“We saw the water cross the highway andcome at us in one motion,” recalls Anderson,BMCC's vice president. “The first onslaughttook out all our cars, and it just kept risingand getting closer until it was just us and theriver.”

The building’s staff had worked round-the-clock for five days, girding for the flood-waters with sandbags, plastic sheeting andmiles of duct tape — “as if we put the entirewestern face of the building in a giant fish-bowl,” Anderson says. But it wasn’t enough --the water slamming the building, seepingthrough the seams of windows and doorsuntil the college was three feet under water.

Anderson used his cellphone to call CUNYExecutive Vice Chancellor Allan Dobrin. “Ijust lost BMCC,” he told Dobrin. “We’re inthe river.” And in the dark. As he recalls, “Itwas pitch-black, eerie, almost like a post-apocalyptic movie.”

Grim as it was in the moment, Anderson’scall marked the beginning of a remarkablyagile response by the University and many ofits campuses to a storm of unprecedenteddestruction and disarray. In BMCC’s case,painstaking preparation prior to the stormand a well-planned and organized effort inthe aftermath allowed the college to reopen aweek later — the same day as campuses farless impacted.

In fact, University officials and campusemergency managers say the storm’s conse-

quences would have been farworse, in big and small ways, ifnot for the University’sheightened focus the last fewyears on its response to emer-gencies of all kinds. Whetherit is a violent storm or a vio-lent student, a chemical spillin a science lab, an attack onthe University’s computersecurity or a threat of swineflu, CUNY has put in place ameticulous, highly collabora-tive system to minimize themany threats to health, safetyand smooth operation thatany large university in themodern world might face onany given day.

Led by Dobrin and HowardApsan, director of environ-mental health, safety and riskmanagement, campus opera-tions managers have created aUniversity-wide culture thatembraces the high value ofbeing ready for anything. “Theone thing you can be sure of isyou’re going to have emergen-cies,” says Dobrin. “You justdon’t know what they’re goingto be. So it’s very important tohave processes in place thatcover everything you can imagine, and tomake constant improvements.”

Dobrin and Apsan preside over meetingseach month where health, safety and opera-tions managers from every campus gather toshare information, experiences and lessonslearned. One of the meetings is devoted to apost-mortem of a recent event — “the crisis ofthe month,” as Dobrin puts it. “If there was afire or an explosion or someone with a gun,we bring in the key people and say, ‘Okay, tellus what happened, take us through it step-by-step from the moment you heard about it.’ Nomatter how well they handled it, there’salways something you can do better and

lessons to be shared with the CUNY commu-nity.”

Sometimes experts from police agencies orcounterparts from other universities areinvited in to discuss their own experiencesand best practices. It’s part of an overallapproach that preaches the importance ofdeveloping and maintaining relationshipswith agencies and people — from the localpolice precinct commander to contractorsand suppliers — who can become instantlyvital in an emergency.

Once or twice a year, CUNY brings peopletogether for an exercise in What If: day-long“table-top exercises,” in which a specific cri-sis is simulated and managers practice their

responses to layers of possible scenarios, withexperts evaluating their actions. Most recent-ly, the scenario was a complete and mysteri-ous loss of Internet and phone connection atLehman College that lasts three days, extendsto York College and includes a scene of angrystudents at the registrar’s office.

Apsan’s job is as close to 24/7 as it gets. Heis in the loop on every sort of incident ormishap on every campus, and spends much ofhis time on the go, visiting campuses andmeeting with their safety and emergencymanagers. When something major happens —such as last year’s shooting outside theEmpire State Building, across the street fromthe Graduate Center — Apsan is there.


Fine-tuned readiness and response plans prepare the University for virtually any emergency — even an unprecedented superstorm and its aftermath.

MOURNING OUR HURRICANE LOSSESINMEMORIAM

Day of the Deluge

A Executive Vice Chancellor Allan Dobrin inspects damage from Hurricane Sandy atKingsborough Community College. At right, Sandy uprooted dozens of trees on the campus.

Abraham


“We have half a millionpeople we have to be con-cerned about,” he says,“and there’s no end towhat can possibly happenon any campus on any giv-en day. What’s the linefrom ‘The Hunger Games’?

‘May the odds be ever in your favor.’ We try toimprove our odds by getting people to thinkabout these hazards in an organized way toavoid them and, if they do happen, to mini-mize the effects.”

“The breadth of issues is incredible,” saysRobert Santos, City College’s vice presidentfor campus planning and facilities manage-ment. “Whether it’s health, safety, environ-mental or business continuity, everychallenge has a set of reactions that are dis-tinct but overlapping. Howard is uncanny inhow he blends them and in the people hebrings in. He always seems to be ahead of thecurve.”

It plays out in many unseen ways. The

safety and integrity of oil tanks, for instance,is a prime concern, especially on campuseswith older buildings. Apsan’s office instituteda peer-review approach to ensure that everycollege is meeting government regulations.“We used to go through the checklist on ourown and we were good,” says PeterJayasekara, environmental, health and safetyofficer at LaGuardia Community College.“Now we do internal audits on a regular basiswhere a team from one campus will go withHoward’s office to another campus.”

Some might think the University’s sizewould make it unwieldy when it comes toemergency management, a challenge to thekind of “integrated university” that hasbecome part of the fabric under ChancellorMatthew Goldstein. But Dobrin sees it differ-ently. “Compare us to SUNY. All our campus-es are close together so we have theopportunity to work together, moving assetsand marshaling resources. We have a com-munications system that no other universitysystem in the United States has: A number

anyone can call from any campus in any situ-ation and the right person will be alerted.”

The response to Superstorm Sandy in lateOctober was considered by many a triumphof just that sort of unity and collaborationacross the boroughs. “What we were facingthe morning after the storm was three cam-puses underwater and 10 that were turnedinto city shelters,” said Dobrin, who is bothexecutive vice chancellor and chief operatingofficer. “I told everyone, ‘This is going to be amarathon.’ ”

Indeed, dealing with the aftermath of astorm that canceled the actual marathonmeant weeks of grinding 16- and 20-hourdays for hundreds of administrators, facilitiesmanagers, electricians, plumbers and main-tenance workers on the campuses hardesthit. Many put CUNY first, volunteering tostay as the storm approached the waterfrontcampuses — BMCC and Hunter College’sBrookdale campus in Lower Manhattan andKingsborough Community College on ConeyIsland — and working in the dark when the

floodwaters came. Uptown and inland, meanwhile, staffs at

10 colleges quickly transformed gymnasiumsand dining halls into emergency shelters,rolling hundreds of cots into place and set-ting up makeshift kitchens and infirmarieswith supplies from the city’s Office ofEmergency Management. The Universityprovided refuge to nearly a third of the 9,000people who used the city’s emergency shel-ters after the storm.

“What we learned from [2011 TropicalStorm] Irene was that we needed to be incharge of the shelters, instead of the citysending people in to run them as they did lasttime. We said, ‘These are our campuses, weknow them, there has to be a CUNY personwith ultimate authority.’ They agreed to that,and it worked very well for us. Everything atthe shelters was pre-positioned—food, medi-cal supplies, all the cots were waiting whenpeople came in,” Dobrin said.

constantly nagged them to go to the non-denominational Christianchurch for services that resounded with gospel songs and poetry read-ings by her friends and relatives.

John Filipowicz Jr.

ON STATEN ISLAND, John Filipowicz Jr., a junior at theCollege of Staten Island, died in the arms of his

father, a retired corrections officer as water reached 10feet high in the basement of their home.

“When I found them they were in an embrace,” JohnSr.’s brother, Neil Filipowicz, said in a narrative here com-piled from DNAInfo.com and dailymail.co.uk. “I crawledthrough a hole in the wall that the water had made. Ishone my flashlight from right to left and then I saw ahand, to my left. I was praying it was a doll’s hand ....

My nephew was holding my brother and my brother was clutching himinto his chest as if they knew they were dying.”

The elder Filipowicz had stayed in the evacuation zone to watch overhis house, as he had done after weathering Hurricane Irene last year

and previous storms, the Daily Mail reported.Neil Filipowicz related that John Jr.’s twin brother, Joseph,

had spoken with his twin that day and “tried to get him toleave. He told him: ‘I’m not leaving Daddy.’”

“It was a bond how it’s supposed to be with your kids,between a son and a father,” Neil Filipowicz said. “They lovedeach other so much.”

Filipowicz, whom DNAInfo called a star athlete, and hisfather were big sports fans. They were buried wearing theirJets jerseys; John Sr. wore Joe Klecko’s #73, John Jr. DustinKeller’s #81.

Jacob VogelmanJessie Streich-Kest

JACOB VOGELMAN and a friend from middle school, Jessie Streich-Kest, both 24, tragically were in the wrong place at the wrong time

with her 2-year-old mutt, Max, which she had rescued from a shelter.As they walked through the Ditmas Park section of Brooklyn, hurricane-force winds toppled a tree, crushing them and sending the dog to aveterinary hospital with minor injuries.

The friends, not romantically involved, were buried in separate cere-monies.

Just five weeks later, her grieving family suffered the death fromcancer of her father, Jon Kest, executive director of New York Committeefor Change, which advocates on behalf of poor and low-wage workers


Continued on page 8 ‰

Continued on page 8 ‰Filipowicz Jr.


— causes that also drew his daughter.Jessie Streich-Kest, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania,

had earned an M.A. in special education last summer with a 3.9 GPAat Hunter College’s Urban Teacher Residency Program, a partnershipwith New Visions for Public Schools. She was in her first year of teach-ing at Bushwick High School for Social Justice.

Previously, The New York Timesreported, she had done activistwork with New Yorkers forClean, Livable & Safe Streets

and had protestedthe city’s horse-

drawn car-riages.

“Jessiewas veryfriendly

and laid back, but she was also driven,” Tom Salgo, who was Max’susual dog-walker and had gone to high school with her, told theTimes. “She went to school in Bushwick every day with students whowere difficult. She had some sort of drive to help them, despite theobstacles in the way. She got along with anybody.”

In a blog post at my.hsj.org, John Faciano, her communication artsteacher at Murrow High School, from which she graduated in 2006,recalled her working on the yearbook and participating in the SeniorAdvanced Placement Seminar he ran. “Jessie spoke freely, arguedlogically, had strength and conviction in her opinions, yet never domi-nated a discussion. She viewed the class as a team working togethertowards a goal of understanding.”

Jacob Vogelman, known to friends and family as Jake, had earneda bachelor’s degree in theater design at SUNY/Buffalo in 2010. He hadnot let dyslexia stop him from graduating cum laude and was study-ing lighting design in Brooklyn College’s MFA program.

“Jake was a positive and upbeat student,” said TheaterDepartment chair Kip Marsh. “He always had a smile on his face and

enjoyed his studies and Brooklyn College.”“He brought people together,” said Mary Beth Easley, one of

Vogelman’s professors. “He was willing to show and teach others. Hereached out. Everybody knew him.”

Vogelman was lighting designer for the play “The Altruists,” byNicky Silver, and was scheduled to fill the same role for Rajiv Joseph’s“Gruesome Playground Injuries.”

“He was an amazing individual,” recalled fellow MFA student BrianKafel. “He was very talented and had big dreams.” In an article abouthis death on the University at Buffalo’s website, a college friend, ErinWeaver, says, “It’s just amazing the overwhelming amount of love onhis Facebook wall – everybody has a story with him….”

Another Buffalo friend, Nicole Benoit, recalled how he continuedworking on shows even when an injury temporarily caused him to walkwith a cane. The injury “never impeded his agility or spirit – you wouldstill find him in the depths of the jungle of a backstage props/scenecloset or working on the grids high above the stages, joyful asalways,” Benoit said.


MOURNING OUR HURRICANE LOSSESINMEMORIAM

Streich-KestVogelman

In all, the University took in 2,700 displaced cityresidents, including 1,000 from hospitals and nursing homes— and, for one night, guests of the Parker Meridien hotelwho were evacuated when a construction crane snapped anddangled 70 stories above West 57th Street. They were busedto the nearest city emergency shelter — the Nat HolmanGym at City College. Some of the 10 shelters were still run-ning when classes resumed a week later; the last of the dis-placed didn’t go home until the Thanksgiving weekend amonth later.

“I think we got through it wonderfully,” Dobrin says.“We’re an educational institution, and for campuses to goweeks running hospitals and homeless shelters at the sametime was very taxing.” York College alone took in nearly1,000 people, including many who needed medical care orwere mentally disabled. “There were remarkable heroes,many working 20 hours a day. We got students back in class-rooms; even the campuses that were underwater didn’t missmuch.”

East 80th Street was the central command but Dobrinand Apsan each also visited several campuses a day in theweek after the storm. They were struck not only by the dedi-cation of the staffs to their own campuses, but to helpingothers. “We were moving clothing from one place to anotherto get to Kingsborough,” Dobrin says. “At one point Hunter

asked if they could get 45 volunteers for the next day — engi-neers and plumbers to help get Brookdale back. And peoplereally rose to the occasion. “You saw the absolute best of theintegrated university. If this were 10 years ago it would havebeen chaos.”

There may be no better a case in point than BMCC. “Weprepared our building for five days round-the-clock,” sayscollege vice president Anderson, “but when I made that call

to Allan I thought it had made no differ-ence. We got socked by the surge comingacross the highway and it took out thebasement and first floor. But what I did-n’t realize yet was that our precautionsheld it off enough to prevent sustainedflooding. The plastic created a fishbowlaround the western face of the building,and that saved us.”

The wet-vacs and water pumps cameout when the river receded, and in thedays that followed BMCC was the bene-

ficiary of many helping hands. “We had emergency contrac-tors on call, and whatever we needed our colleagues werethere. That’s where the University shines. We needed foodand water and cots, and we got them from John Jay andHunter when they were in the middle of their own emergen-cies. At one point I said we were running low on fuel for ouremergency generator. They had a truck here in three hours.”

REMEMBER THE WARNINGS?

“IN THE COMING DECADES, our coastalcity will most likely face more rapidlyrising sea levels and warmer tempera-

tures, as well as potentially more droughtsand floods, which will all have impacts onNew York City’s critical infrastructure.”

So said Hunter College’s William Solecki — four years ago.Solecki, director of the CUNY Institute for Sustainable

Cities, was commenting after the release of a seminal reportby the prestigious advisory group that he cochaired. The NewYork City Panel on Climate Change, convened by Mayor MichaelBloomberg, warned that the consequences of rising tempera-tures would be dire and costly without strong action to adapt.Bloomberg described the report as the most detailed climate-risk assessment for any major city in the world and said itwould be the basis for the city’s plans to protect itself.

But the response to the report was something less thanurgent, perhaps because its most ominous projections —rising sea levels of up to five feet — were nearly a centuryaway. Now the question is whether Superstorm Sandy will con-vince policy makers and the public that catastrophic eventsare closer at hand — the wakeup call that Bloomberg and

others say thecity and regionneed.

In themonths sincethe storm,Solecki andother CUNYclimate expertshave beenamong the mostprominent voic-es in what

Bloomberg and others hope will be the wakeup call the cityand region need. Solecki told WNYC that Sandy should be usedas a guide for how new or rebuilt structures in flood zonesshould be designed. But that’s only part of the solution, hesays: Flood barriers are part of the equation — and thatmeans figuring out where to put them. “Who’s inside the barri-er? Who’s outside the barrier?” Solecki told the Daily News.“Midland Beach, for example, would be outside in one design.That’s a very difficult thing to push forward.”

Nicholas Coch, a coastal geologist in Queens College’sSchool of Earth and Environmental Sciences, is another promi-nent expert who has been studying and talking about the city’svulnerability for years. He spent the weeks after the storm infull-alarm mode. The government, he says, needs to take“remedial action now to floodproof ourselves and retreat fromthe shoreline."


City College wasamong CUNYschools that quickly turned gyms into shelters.

Solecki


Apsan


Lyricist WithA ConscienceYip Harburg:Legendary Lyricistand Human RightsActivist, by CCNYhistory professor

Harriett Hyman Alonso, includeshis lyrics for Oscar-winning “Overthe Rainbow” from “The Wizard ofOz,” one of more than 600 songsfor which Harburg provided lyricsover a half-century career. Alonsointerweaves interviews and poemsby Harburg, known as “Broadway’ssocial conscience.” He tells of hisLower East Side childhood, howthe Great Depression opened theway to writing lyrics, his work onBroadway and in Hollywood, andhis blacklisting during theMcCarthy era. Wesleyan University Press.

Big EasyBetrayalIn Driven FromNew Orleans: HowNonprofits BetrayPublic Housingand Promote

Privatization, John Arena exploresthe drastic transformation of pub-lic housing from public to privatethere in the early 1980s, exposingthe social disaster visited on thecity’s black urban poor long beforeKatrina. Arena — assistant profes-sor of sociology, anthropology andsocial work at the College ofStaten Island — reveals the truenature, and cost, of reforms pro-moted by an alliance of a neoliber-al government, nonprofits,community activists and powerfulreal estate interests. University of Minnesota Press.

Starring …Dana AndrewsWorking with dis-tinguished directorsand playing roman-tic leads alongsideearly screen beau-

ties, Dana Andrews was an “actor’sactor” — personifying the “mascu-line ideal of steely impassivity” in1940s classic films. In HollywoodEnigma: Dana Andrews, BaruchCollege journalism professor CarlRollyson relates Andrews’ strug-gles with inner demons whileenjoying accolades of contempo-raries, a term as president of theScreen Actors Guild, and the loveof family and friends who neverdeserted this poor boy from Texaswho made his Hollywood dreamcome true. University Press of Mississippi.

Anarchists’OdysseyLongtime QueensCollege professor ofRussian History andAnarchism PaulAvrich, known as a

preeminent historian of Americananarchism, was working at the timeof his death in 2006 on a biographyof Alexander “Sasha” Berkman.Avrich's daughter Karen completedthis book, Sasha and Emma: TheAnarchist Odyssey of AlexanderBerkman and Emma Goldman,which carries a co-byline with herfather. The highly praised volumetraces the intertwined lives ofBerkman and friend EmmaGoldman, their impact on 20thcentury anarchism and their com-mitment to equality and justice.Belknap Press.

The SaintsAmong UsSaints as TheyReally Are: Voices ofHoliness in OurTime is the thirdbook in a critically

acclaimed series by MichaelPlekon, a professor in theDepartment of Sociology/Anthropology and the program inReligion and Culture at BaruchCollege. In this volume Plekon,also an ordained priest in theOrthodox Church in America,traces spiritual journeys of several“saints-in-the-making,” usingmemoirs and other writings thatshow their doubts and imperfec-tions as these ordinary Americansreflect on their search for God andtheir efforts to lead holy lives. University of Notre Dame Press.

ANDREW J. POLSKY says in theAfterword for Elusive Victories: TheAmerican Presidency at War that hisstudy was born just after the 2003U.S. invasion of Iraq. But it took “a

very different turn” as he wrote it. Instead ofbeing just another liberal lament “aboutexcesses of executive authority,” it came toexpress a view more conservative than hehad intended: “a profound sense of the limitsof power.”

The George Bush-Dick Cheney debacle inIraq spurred Polsky, a professor of politicalscience at Hunter College and the GraduateCenter, to broaden his historical horizon, andhe has chosen seven wartime presidenciesfrom Abraham Lincoln’s to Barack Obama’sfor his analysis. The trend he reveals is dis-couraging: Presidential managementof “wartime leadership challenges ...appears to be worsening over time.”Polsky keeps a full ledger ofpluses and minuses on hisbelligerent commanders-in-chief, and even the two headmires most — Lincoln andFranklin Delano Roosevelt —“made their fair share of miscal-culations and missteps.”

Elusive Victories offers a rubricof six “challenges” facing pres-idents who make war: decidingwhether and when to do so;planning militarily, diplomaticallyand politically for it; clearly identi-fying the war’s ultimate objectives;assuring that the generals and their strat-egy serve these objectives; nurturing sup-port for the war diplomatically abroad; andfinally, sustaining homeland support throughthe duration of the conflict. Polsky adds afinal non-military responsibility that is sel-dom addressed: “presidents have done worstin preparing for peace, the most vexing of allwartime tasks,” he says in his final pages.

Polsky is obliged to set his analysis of warpowers in the context of some huge conflicts(the Civil War, World Wars I and II) and twolocal but protracted wars (Vietnam andIraq/Afghanistan). He has produced remark-ably succinct summaries.

The opening chapter about Lincolnbehind the military scene will nicely comple-ment the Steven Spielberg-Tony Kushner“Lincoln” film. Polsky finds the same rhetori-cal and political skills that saved theEmancipation Proclamation made him aneffective salesman for the war.His “unparalleled rhetoricaltalents” were displayed in hispublic letters (he made fewspeeches during the war andnever addressed Congress).

In his first chapter Polskysets up the binary of “active direction” versus“objective control” Oval Officers — “hands-on” and “hands-off” in layman’s terms. Heconcludes that Lincoln began as the formerbut became the latter when he settled in with Ulysses S. Grant. His challenge began at the start of the war: the Union had “no

professional military

organization” (16,000 in uniform grew to647,000 in a year). Polsky says it took Lincolnjust a year to become “an insightful militaryplanner,” though he faults him for “doing toolittle and waiting too long to lay the founda-tions for Reconstruction.” Luckily, his errorsas a military leader “pale in comparison tothose of Jefferson Davis,” his rival president.

Woodrow Wilson is cast as “the anti-

Lincoln,” dithering for three years beforedeclaring war on Germany in April 1917, thenhappy to leave military leadership to Gen.John Pershing. In his speech to Congress healso sprang on the world a new rationale forwar — “the ultimate peace of the world.”

With this promise, Polskysays, Wilson “vastly over-reached,” almost assuring anisolationist backlash later on.The promise also put him atodds with his allies in Britainand France, who were fighting

to preserve their war-flung empires.Polsky believes the war had a disastrous

effect at home, thanks to Wilson, who sup-ported the persecution of those who opposedit. The erosion of his political capital afterpeace led to the congressional torpedoing ofthe League of Nations. This emphasizes, forPolsky, “how problematic presidents findpeace-building.”

After equivocating for a few years,Roosevelt RSVP’d to the invitation of PearlHarbor and entered WW II. He became “a

highly effective wartime chief executive.”Like Lincoln, FDR was a hands-on lead-

er in the early stages and later becamemore laissez-faire. He too was vastlyout-manned at first, with 15,000troops to 2 million Germans. And aswith Wilson, his domestic programssuffered in war. Also like Lincolnand Wilson, FDR lucked into thechoice of a very able general staff,

most notably George Marshall andDwight Eisenhower.

Polsky also praises how Rooseveltlearned from the League of Nations

demise and shrewdly encouraged biparti-san support for the United Nations, and headmires Roosevelt’s foresight in beginningto plan for peace as soon as he declared war.He also surpassed Winston Churchillbecause he was “the kind of hands-on leaderwho often preferred not to leave his finger-prints on a decision” (he insisted on no min-utes at top-level deliberations to allowleeway for later mind-changing).

The chapter on Vietnam begins on twogrim notes: It is the only war Polsky coversthat was lost, and it brought down two presi-dents: Lyndon Baines Johnson and Richard

Nixon. It did not help that LBJ refused toexplain his decision to escalate troopstrength, or that he placed so much faith inan old-school general (William Westmore-land) unsuited for a guerrilla war. Polskyaccounts his leadership as erratically chang-ing from hands-on to hands-off, and — this isa main theme of Elusive Victories — his deci-sions often constricting his future freedomof action. From 1965 to 1968 Johnson “was acommander-in-chief in name only.”

Nixon regained some breathing roomwith his “Peace with Honor” mantra, but hewas finally done in by underestimating (likeJohnson) “the enemy’s determination.” Andhis peace-building efforts were “a mixture ofsecrecy ... and cynicism.” Vietnam proved a“dismal chapter in wartime presidentialleadership.”

The Iraq War, Polsky notes, is his book’sonly war of choice. His “final reckoning”:“The outcome in Iraq exemplifies the conse-quences of misguided wartime leadership.Bush mishandled nearly all of the tasks awartime president faces.”

The chapter on Obama is titled“Inheriting a Bad Hand” and is aptly just adozen pages. That’s because he missed thepart of deciding whether to go to war,because the war in Afghanistan (and also inIraq) is still in medias res, and becauseObama began his wartime presidency “with anarrow scope for action.”

Polsky’s conclusion offers four final ker-nels of wisdom drawn from his research:“exhaust every alternative to military inter-vention”; “aim low ... that is, establish modestgoals”; “plan backward [from] the desiredpolitical outcome”; and, finally, “recognizethat freedom of action declines ... theinescapable dynamic of wartime leadership... is the loss of control or discretion.”

Oh, and one other scary thing. At the endPolsky, who thinks the War PowersResolution of 1973 has proved a failure,reminds us: “No effective check on presiden-tial power to engage the nation in militaryconflict seems in the offing.”


BOOKTALK

NEWTITLES / CUNYAUTHORS

By Gary Schmidgall

—————————————————Elusive Victories:

The American Presidency at WarBy Andrew J. Polsky

Oxford University Press—————————————————

CUNY Matters welcomes information about newbooks that have been written or edited by facul-ty and members of the University community.Contact: [email protected]

Presidents at War: Hands On Vs. Hands Off


ON A RECENT Monday morningat York College, inside theAcademic Core Building,Human Resources ExecutiveDirector Barbara Manuel

reviewed her day’s schedule. 11 a.m. - Meet with a human resources

staff member and a budget officer to plan areview of nearly 1,200 employee records.

2 p.m. - Meet with one of the York Collegedeans to discuss revising job descriptions foremployees in her school.

3 p.m. - Meet with the provost and anoth-er dean to discuss the evaluation process fortenured faculty.

4 p.m. - Meet with IT staff member onimproving the College’s ePAF (electronicPersonnel Action Form) system.

It was a light day, Manuel said with adeadpan look. While Manuel focused on big-picture meetings, York’s human resourcesmanagers – like their counterparts on everyCUNY campus – handled the recruitmentand intake of new employees and tended tothe essential details of benefits, com-pensation, training, facultyappointments and adjunctcontracts that are essentialto those already on the pay-roll.

Need information onyour medical and other ben-efits? See HR. Want to add ahealth care or dependent careflexible spending account? See HR. Curiousabout a tax-deferred annuity? See HR. Wantto cut the cost or commuting? See HR. Needa tuition waiver to further your education?See HR. Want to expand your professionaltraining? See HR. Have questions aboutyour time and leave? See HR.

On hectic days at York College, HR oftenserves 30-plus walk-in appointments thatinclude York College employees and alsolocal Queens residents seeking jobs.

Inside the cramped but sunny HR office,Manuel and her 16-member staff overseeemployment matters for the college’sdiverse 1,200-member workforce — han-

dling issues ranging from recruitment andhiring; benefits and professional training;processing faculty appointments andadjunct contracts; and more recently help-ing employees who needed counseling afterHurricane Sandy.

A day with Manuel and her dedicatedstaff provided a glimpse of the recent trans-formation of the York College humanresources office. Under Manuel’s leader-ship, in a few years it has doubled its staff,reorganized office responsibilities,launched a website and expanded its mis-sion from processing paperwork to puttingmore priority on employee satisfaction.

“Our staff is one of our most importantassets,” Manuel said. “That includes thefaculty and staff, the people who supportthe college’s mission — which is to educatestudents. If their needs are not being met asemployees, and if we’re not doingeverything that we can do to make theirwork experience one of the best, then we’renot doing what we need to do.”

The human resources office at YorkCollege is one of 21 satellite offices

serving the faculty and staff ofCUNY. Across the city’s five bor-oughs, each campus communityhas its own human resourcesoffice to better serve the specific

needs of each school. TheGraduate Center office, located in

midtown Manhattan, handles humanresources for all CUNY’s professionalschools.

In 2009, York College President MarciaV. Keizs conducted a search for an executivedirector of human resources and Manuelwas the successful candidate. Keizs hadalready made dramatic changes bystrengthening academic programs andincreasing full-time faculty. With humanresources, the president signaled a move toenhance the college’s administrative side.

Manuel, a graduate of Baruch College,had been working at CUNY’s central officefor the Human Capital Management team.She was intrigued by the possibility of

working at York, which sits in Jamaica,close to Hollis, where she grew up.

They met at a coffee shop in midtownManhattan, where Keizs gave Manuel hercharge: Turn that office around.

When Manuel first arrived at York’shuman resources office, she was surprisedto find a staff of six: two supervisors andfour office assistants. “There was an HRdirector — and an assistant director whobasically functioned as the assistant direc-tor, the benefits officer, the payroll officerand the disciplinary officer,” Manuel said.

Manuel immediately hired more staff,including an experienced benefits specialistand a labor relations manager. Eventually,the staff almost tripled from six people to 17.

“The office has changed drastically,” saidJeannie Simmons, York’s Human ResourceInformation Systems Unit Specialist. “And Ithink it’s changed for the better.”

In speaking with human resources staff,Manuel also learned that most managersand assistants were unaware of basicemployee policies like limitations on hours


FORYOURBENEFIT

ANEW YEAR prompts reflection with familyand loved ones, CUNY Human Resourcesreminds employees to ensure that benefi-

ciary designations and emergency contact infor-mation are current.

If you have experienced any family statuschange since your start date at CUNY, such asmarriage, birth of child, adoption of child,divorce or death, contact Human Resources atyour campus as well as your retirement plan torequest beneficiary forms. Remember, that inorder for benefits to be paid promptly andaccording to specific wishes, up-to-datebeneficiary designation forms are essential.

Updated emergency contact information is

alsoimportant incase of an illness,injury, urgent situation or disaster.To access your information, log-on to yourCUNYfirst Self Service account by clicking thefollowing link: https://home.cunyfirst.cuny.eduand verify that your emergency contactinformation is current. Updating is fast andeasy!

Time To UpdateBeneficiary Information

York HR ExecutiveDirector BarbaraManuel offerssome pointers tocollege assistantsBibi Ally, left, andNia Challenger.

Work/Life Program Is Here to Help

FOR THOSE CUNY EMPLOYEES emotionallyimpacted by Hurricane Sandy or the recentschool shooting in Connecticut, the CUNY

Work/Life Program administered by CorporateCounseling Associates (CCA) can help. CCA is a freeand confidential service that the University providesto its employees. CCA counselors are availablearound the clock to assist you and your loved ones bycalling (800) 833-8707.

In addition, there are many informationalresources that employees can access online such as:“Coping With Trauma: How Families Can BeSupportive,” “Managing Traumatic Stress: Tips forRecovering From Disasters and Other TraumaticEvents,” and “Tips for Talking to Children and YouthAfter Traumatic Events.”

To access this and other information, includingeducational webinars, go to www.myccaonline.comand enter company code “CUNY.”

ATYOURSERVICE

Reza M. Khanbilvardi of City Collegehas been awarded $3,500,000 from theNational Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration for “Financial Assistance toEstablish Five CooperativeScience Centers at MinorityServing Institutions.”Brooklyn College hasreceived $362,002 from TheNational Institutes ofHealth for a research pro-ject entitled “R01: A Rolefor Amyloids in Force-Dependent Activation ofCell Adhesion,” directed by Peter Lipke. A“Project to Build Research Infrastructure andCapacity (BRIC) that Integrates Public HealthResearch and Criminal Justice Policy Analysis,”directed by Jeremy Travis, Jeffrey Mellow andHung-En Sung of John Jay College, has received$264,811 in grant funding from the NationalInstitutes of Health-National Institute onMinority Health and Health Disparities. TimothyPaglione of York College has received$1,750,814 from the National ScienceFoundation for “AstroCom NYC: A Partnershipbetween Astronomers at CUNY, the AmericanMuseum of Natural History,and Columbia University.”The New York City HumanResources Administrationhas extended $118,147 ingrant support to BarbaraMartin for “StudentSupport” at BronxCommunity College.

Kingsborough Community Collegehas received $6,226,194 from the U.S.Department of Labor for “CUNY PATH,” underthe direction of Babette Audant. Louis Guintaof John Jay College has received $349,571 ingrant support from the New York StateEducation Department for a “VocationalEducation Program (PERKINS IV).” MarcieWolfe of Lehman College has been awardedthree grants, totaling $413,116, from the NewYork City Department of Education and the NewYork City Office of the Mayor for the followingprojects: “Literacy and ProfessionalDevelopment”; the “Lehman College AdultLearning Center"; and “ProfessionalDevelopment for School Leaders and Teachers.”

Paul Marchese of QueensboroughCommunity College has received a $605,449grant from the New York State EducationDepartment for “Carl D. Perkins Career andTechnical Education.” The National Institutes ofHealth has extended $467,732 in grant supportto Zahra Zakeri of Queens College for “MARCUndergraduate Student Training in AcademicResearch at Queens College.” Andrew Poje ofThe College of Staten Island has been awarded$131,243 from the Gulf of Mexico ResearchInitiative for “Consortium for AdvancedResearch on Hydrocarbon Transport in theEnvironment (CARHTE).” Jane Schulman andShannon Bryant of LaGuardia CommunityCollege have received a $1,395,960 grant fromthe New York City Department of SmallBusiness Services for a “Health Sector Center.”City College has been awarded $600,000 fromthe U.S. Department of Transportation for aproject concerning “Intelligent SituationAwareness and Navigation Aid for VisuallyImpaired Persons,” directed by YingLi Tian andJizhong Xiao. Forest Hills Hospital has extended$296,150 in grant support to York College forthe “Bachelor of Science in Nursing RN-B.S.Completion Program,” directed by CynthiaMurphy and Joanne Lavin.


GRANTS&HONORS

Lipke

Martin

For services, benefits and contact

information, visit yourcampus human resourcesdirector at www.cuny.edu/campushumanresources

YORK HR OFFICE PLAN: ALWAYS KEEP


AGAINST a national backdrop ofsteadily rising college costs and

soaring student-loan debt, the CityUniversity of New York offers thebest value in U.S. higher education

today — high-quality academics plusa “safety net” of remarkably affordable

tuition, tax credits and financial aid thatmake CUNY students much lesslikely to borrow for their educa-tion. Watch this new video tolearn what you need to know.

www.cuny.edu/value

for adjunct professors and collegeassistants. “That was the biggest thing forme,” she said. “When we started talkingabout the various rules and regulations andguidelines and contracts to some of themanagers, they would say, ‘Oh we neverknew that.’ So, it was a change in direction.It wasn’t just about putting things in place.It was about training. We had to train man-agers on the policies, not only at York, but atCUNY.” Manuel developed a new systemwhere human resources assistants wereassigned as liaisons to specific academicdepartments to ensure faculty receivedaccurate information.

Professor Linda M. Grasso, chair of theEnglish Department, praised Manuel’sefforts. “As a department chair, I appreciateBarbara's attempt to standardizeprocedures, convey information … and mostespecially, to solve difficult problems,”Grasso said. “She has been very helpful inconflict situations, explaining to all partiesinvolved, contractual, university, and col-lege policies and mandates.”

Once the human resources staff hadbecome more knowledgeable on policies,Manuel asked the manager of recruitmentand employee development, StephanieCooper, to start organizing more trainingworkshops and professional developmentfor all York College employees.

In researching the needs of York supportstaff, Cooper found many employees lackedskills in widely used programs such asMicrosoft Word and Excel. In response, sheheld several workshops in computer train-ing. “We found that there were a lot of long-standing employees who said they tookcomputer training more than 25 years ago,”Cooper said. “Seriously.”

Last fall, Cooper worked with benefitsspecialist Janelle Mills-Lawrence to launchthe York College human resources website— where employees now can find informa-tion on benefits, professional developmentand training, job postings and the humanresources staff directory.

More recently, the human resources staffplayed a significant role in communicatingwith other York College employees duringHurricane Sandy. In the storm’s aftermath,York College took in nearly 1,000 evacuees,including 250 with medical or mentalhealth needs. Cots were placed throughoutthe Academic Core Building and in the gym-nasium.

But for many York employees, the sightof evacuees living in their workplace wastraumatic. As employees walked by theevacuees to get to their offices, some staffmembers got to their desks and simplyburst into tears. In response, employeeswere referred to CUNY’s Work/LifeProgram, administered by CorporateCounseling Associates. Others asked if theycould stay home until the evacuees had leftthe campus, Manuel said. “So we advisedthem that they could take a couple of daysoff, if that’s what they needed.”

As the new year approached, Manuelcontemplated the next phase of the trans-formation: an ambitious plan to re-designthe physical layout of the snug office so thatit is more open and welcoming.

“I think we are moving in the right direc-tion,” she said. “What makes you happy asan employee keeps you here… We wantemployees to want to work here.”


MATH WIZARD MILLIE HARTMAN, who graduated fromBrooklyn College at 19 and near the end of her career

taught at the College of Staten Island, died Sept. 14 at age84. Born Millie Levenson, she grew up in Brooklyn with abrother, Manny, and their immigrant parents, Charles andYetta. She became a junior high school math teacher,married history scholar Bill Hartman and with him raisedthree children. Before CSI, she was chairwoman ofPlainview High School Math Department. Her lateryears were filled with travels and grandchildren —the newest named for her shortly before she died.

WHO KNEW WHAT WHEN? While studying correspondence between AlbertEinstein and Erwin Schrodinger, Queens College physics professor emeritus

Alex Harvey recently found that the two famous physicists had an inkling of darkenergy before its discovery. The letters, written between1918 and 1921, focused on Einstein’s “cosmologicalconstant,” the mathematical factor that counteractsgravity to restore equilibrium to the uni-verse. Their discussion, Harvey conclud-ed, hinted at the force known as darkenergy, which is now known to make theuniverse expand at an accelerated rate.

E I N S T E I N ' S T H E O R Y — NO, NOT THAT ONE

THE HEFTY NEW “2 Bridges Review” (191 pages in print,98 online) distinguishes itself by its high-profile con-

tributors, including former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collinsand poets Lorna Goodison, Colette Inez, Sandra M.Gilbert, Kwame Dawes, Mervyn Taylor and WilliePerdomo. “Our journal aims to be international inscope,” explains editor-in-chief KateFalvey, assistant professor ofEnglish, who cofounded the journalwith colleague Monique Ferrell, anassociate professor and poet.

2 B R I D G E S R E V I E W — LITERARY JOURNAL DEBUTS AT C ITY TECH

search.cuny.edu “Dark Energy”

search.cuny.edu “weremember”

search.cuny.edu “2 Bridges Review”

(More)On the Web at cuny.edu

EINSTEIN SCHRODINGER

Start Thinking About a Tax-Deferred Annuity

THOUGH IT MAY SEEM EARLY to bethinking about tax season, now is thetime to submit your annual deduction

changes forTax-DeferredAnnuity Plans.The IRS taxdeferredannuity limitsfor the 2013calendar yearvary accordingto age.

For thoseunder age 50,

the maximum Annuity Plan Limit is $17,500.For those age 50 and older, the maximum

is $23,000.Contact your Human Resources or your

plan representative directly to complete the2013 Salary Reduction Agreement forms.

C U N Y — TOP VALUE IN H IGHER EDUCAT ION

W E R E M E M B E R — MILL IE HARTMAN

P IMPROVING


Feb. 8.Of Ebony Em

bersYork College8 p.m

. Free

Feb. 9NY Piano SocietyBaruch College7:30-9 p.m

. Free (suggested donation$15)

Feb. 16Alex BlakeYork College7 p.m

. Free

Feb. 16China NationalSym

phony OrchestraLehm

an College8-10:30 p.m

.$25-$45; 12 and under,$10M

arch 2Forever Freestyle 7Lehm

an College8-10:30 p.m

. $45-$60

March 8

Step Afrika!College of Staten Island8-8:15 p.m

. $10

March 10

Russian National Ballet's“Giselle”Lehm

an College4-6 p.m

.$25-$40; 12 and under, $10

March 12

Live@365 —

AncientPersia: Songs & StoriesGraduate Center7-8:30 p.m

.$25; $20 m

embers

March 16

CFA's Boogie FeverCollege of Staten Island8-10 p.m

.$25-$35

Through April 5“A Line Around an Area”City College9 a.m

.-5 p.m.

Free

Through Jan. 25“The End of Poverty”John Jay College9 a.m

.-4 p.m.

Free

Through June 27Year of India ExhibitQueens College9 a.m

.-8 p.m.

Free

Jan. 27Afternoon of Staten IslandArtistsCollege of Staten Island3-5 p.m

.$15

Feb. 13South Asia on Film

, Part IIQueens College4:30-6:30 p.m

.Free

March 6-22

Virginia Creighton: PaintingsKingsborough Com

munity

CollegeTim

e VariesFree

Through April 13South Asia on FilmQueens College11 a.m

.-7 p.m.

Free

Jan. 30SAG Foundation Short FilmShowcaseBaruch College7-9 p.m

.Baruch students and facultyfree with ID

\

Feb. 9“W

e're Going on a BearHunt”BM

CC1:30 p.m

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embers, $15

Feb. 14-16Platanos Y Collard GreensBaruch College7-9 p.m

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Feb. 20, 27; Mar. 6

Representing South Asia onFilm

, Part IIQueens College

4:30-6:30 p.m.

Free

Feb. 23The Peking Acrobats

College of Staten Island3-4 p.m

.$18

Feb. 6Religions of IndiaQueens College12:15-1:30 p.m

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Feb. 10Junior Science, Hum

anitiesSym

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e VariesFree

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inism, Science,

Materialism

Graduate CenterNoonFree

March 6

Indian Economics

Queens College12:15-1:30 p.m

.Free

ART/EXHIB

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THEATER

/FILM

>>Go to search.cuny.edu

SurvivingChildhoodHow does one survive thetraum

a of a child-hood full of em

o-tional pain? Forauthor Francine duPlessix Gray, itwas grist for herPulitzer Prize-nom

-inated 2005 m

em-

oir Them, which

chronicles a privi-leged but neglectedupbringing by Russianem

igre parents in 1940sNew York. She discusses itwith Bill Kelly, part of theExtraordinary Lives seriesat the Graduate Center.

Search.cuny.edu“du Plessix”

cuny.edu •cuny.tv •

cuny.edu/radio • cuny.edu/youtube •cuny.edu/events

SPECIAL EVEN

TS

Feb. 2African Children's Choir.A blend of song anddance from

across thecontinent is presented by20 children who havelost one or both parentsto poverty, war or AIDS;proceeds provide forthem

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an College7-9 p.m

.$15-$35; 12 and under, $10

March 2

“Alberta Hunter”M

usical based on the lifeof iconic 20th centuryAm

erican jazz/bluessinger and songwriter.York College3 and 7 p.m

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In the World & on the W

eb

Strategy For IsraelSuperstar attorney AlanDershowitz and politicaljournalist Peter Beinartdebate the topic of Beinart’sprovocative new book, The Crisis of Zionism

, andthe role of Israelis in the creation of the Palestinianstate. “Peter naively believesthat if Israel resolves itsproblem

s with thePalestinians, the threat thatIsrael faces will go away,”said Dershowitz. Listen to their GraduateCenter discussion.

Search.cuny.edu“Dershowitz”

ALEX BLAKE

Imm

igrants In Limbo

While President Obam

a’sdeferred-action program

willgrant thousands of undocu-m

ented imm

igrants a tempo-

rary reprieve from deporta-

tion, it leaves thousandsm

ore in legal limbo. “This is

just the beginning of ourfight,” says Sofia Cam

pos,board chair of a student-ledorganization representingundocum

ented imm

igrants.Hear the discussion spon-sored by CUNY’s M

urphyInstitute.

Search.cuny.edu“Sofia Cam

pos”

Kennedy Secrets“You don’t want m

e to writethis book,” professor DavidNasaw told the lateM

assachusetts Sen. EdwardM

. Kennedy after readingclassified papers to whichthe fam

ily had given himaccess. But he did.HearNasaw, the Arthur M

.Schlesinger Jr. professor ofhistory at the GraduateCenter, discuss that book,The Patriarch: TheRem

arkable Life andTurbulent Tim

es of Joseph P.Kennedy.

Search.cuny.edu“Patriarch”


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CMwinter13 r4 CM Spring 09 2/4/13 2:47 PM Page 1 ... · grant is directed by Gregory Mantsios, who heads the Murphy Institute. CUNY, the lead institution on the grant, is part-nering