“Open the doors to all—let thechildren of the rich and the poor

take their seats together andknow of no distinction save that of industry,

good conduct, and intellect.”

— Townsend Harris, founder

SPRING 2007

The New KnowledgeEconomy

CUNY is training the key players in aglobal economy that demands increasingnumbers of degree holders.

YoungEntrepreneur

Hunter College’sMusic Man, AnthonyVolodkin, has createda music blog thatdraws many thou-sands of visits dailyand is a source ofincome also.

CUNY’sBlack Pioneer

Triumph and painmarked the life ofWilliam H. Greene, whoin 1884 became thefirst African-American tograduate fromCity College.

Decadeof Science

Chancellor MatthewGoldstein’s initiativeto strengthen scienceeducation andresearch is in fullswing, with profes-sors carrying outprojects that couldsave lives.

City Tech’sTop Chef

Top chefs at theWhite House inWashington and atGracie Mansionhere in New Yorkare products ofCity Tech’s culi-nary arts program.

Grad Center’sDissertation Room

So many theses reflecting years of studyand passion sit in this scholarly place,with stories about animals, artists, histori-cal personalities, and much, much more.

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Inside

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Coming on the heels of a two-year-long program to showcase Rhodes,Truman and Goldwater scholars

and other outstanding student stars,Chancellor Matthew Goldstein hasannounced the next phase of The CityUniversity of New York's outreachefforts—a comprehensive program tospotlight CUNY's faculty.

The new campaign, “Look Who'sTeaching at CUNY!” features faculty whoare winners of the most prestigious prizes inacademia and the arts: the National Medalof Science, the American Physical SocietyBuckley Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, theAcademy Award, the National Arts Medaland the Bancroft Prize, among others.

They are among the more than 1,000new faculty who have come to teach atCUNY in the last seven years.

“When you start digging deep and look-ing at the faculties that we have across thisUniversity, you are absolutely stunned bythe depth of talent,” said ChancellorGoldstein.

“We want to get that talent to be betterknown in the marketplace. This is going tobe a multifaceted approach at multiplelevels of teaching and scholarship at thisUniversity.”

The Chancellor noted that the facultyprogram is designed to build upon the suc-cess of earlier efforts. “We spend time, right-ly so, talking about our very successful stu-dents,” he said. “We talked about TrumanScholars and Goldwater Scholars andRhodes Scholars and some of our studentsgoing on to the most coveted Ph.D. pro-grams and the best medical schools and lawschools and business schools and the greatjobs that they are getting and we will con-tinue to do that as more and more CUNYstudents win highly competitive awards.

“Now, what we really want to do is tocelebrate the extraordinary work of a verydedicated faculty,” he said.

Detailed information and sample televi-sion and newspaper announcements aboutCUNY’s outstanding faculty is available at:www.cuny.edu/lookwhoisteaching.

“While CUNY is rich in scholar talentin many fields,” the Chancellor noted, “ofparticular interest are the first-class scien-tists, mathematicians, and engineering fac-ulty that now are teaching at CUNY dur-ing what we have called ‘The Decade of

Science.’CUNY's

reputation, linked inextricably to NewYork City's attractiveness as a place ofemployment and cultural cornucopia, hasplayed an important role in rebuilding theranks of our full-time faculty—an ongoingpriority in our work with state and cityofficials.”

Among the distinguishedfaculty who are teaching atCUNY are:

Dennis P. Sullivan,Distinguished Professor ofMathematics and AlbertEinstein Chair in Science atthe CUNY GraduateCenter, received theNational Medal of Science;Professor of ChemistryParis Svoronos of Queens-borough CommunityCollege was namedCarnegie/CASEOutstanding CommunityCollege Professor of theYear; Maribel Vazquez, Associate Professorof Biomedical Engineering at CCNY, isstudying brain cancer infiltration underNIH and NSF grants; DistinguishedProfessor of Mechanical EngineeringSheldon Weinbaum of CCNY has beenelected to the National Academy ofEngineering, the National Academy ofSciences, and the Institute of Medicine ofthe National Academies.

Distinguished Professor of PhysicsGodfrey Gumbs of Hunter is a recipientof the American Physical Society's 2005Edward A. Bouchet Award; Michio Kaku,the Henry Semat Professor of Physics atCCNY, is a co-founder of String FieldTheory; Charles Liu, Assistant Professor ofAstrophysics, College of Staten Island, isAssociate in Astrophysics at the HaydenPlanetarium; Assistant Professor ofAstronomy Timothy Paglione of YorkCollege is Co-Director of the NASAScience, Engineering, Mathematics &Aerospace Academy; DistinguishedProfessor of Physics Myriam P. Sarachik ofCCNY is a member of the NationalAcademy of Sciences and past President ofthe American Physical Society.

Professor of Physical Sciences GregoryAizin of Kingsborough CommunityCollege is conductingresearch to developminiature electro-magnetic radi-ation detec-

tors; Daniel Akins, Distinguished ServiceProfessor of Physical Chemistry andProfessor of Chemical Engineering atCCNY and the CUNY Graduate Center,heads the Center for Analysis of Structuresand Interfaces; Hunter’s Jill Bargonetti,Professor of Biological Sciences, and

Derrick Brazill,Associate Professor ofBiology, both won thePresidential EarlyCareer Award forScientists andEngineers.

Carmen Boullosa,Distinguished Lecturerin Foreign Languagesand Literatures atCCNY, was honoredfor the best novel inMexico in 2005, forReforma; DistinguishedProfessor of MusicJohn Corigliano of

Lehman College and the Graduate Centerwon the Pulitzer Prize for his SecondSymphony, and an Academy Award for BestScore for The Red Violin; Roy DeCarava,Distinguished Professor of Art at Hunter,and Gregory Rabassa, DistinguishedProfessor of Hispanic Languages andLiteratures at Queens and the GraduateCenter, both received the 2006 NationalMedal of Arts; Distinguished Professor ofHumanities Isaac Goldemberg of HostosCommunity College is Director of theLatin American Writers Institute and aninternationally renowned Latino poet, play-wright and fiction writer; Michael Wallace,Distinguished Professor of History at JohnJay College and the Graduate Center, wasco-winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Gotham:A History of New York City to 1898.

David Nasaw, Distinguished Professor ofHistory and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Chair inAmerican History at the CUNY GraduateCenter, is author of the acclaimed newbiography, Andrew Carnegie; novelistElizabeth Nunez, Distinguished Professorof English at Medgar Evers, won theAmerican Book Award for Bruised Hibiscus;June O'Neill, the Wollman DistinguishedProfessor of Economics at Baruch’s ZicklinSchool of Business and the GraduateCenter, is former Director of theCongressional Budget Office; David S.

Reynolds, Distinguished Professor ofEnglish and American Studies at

Baruch and the Graduate Center,won the Bancroft Prize for WaltWhitman’s America: A CulturalBiography.

LEGISLATIVE

SPECIAL EDITION

cuny.edu/news THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK • FOUNDED 1847 AS THE FREE ACADEMY

Look Who’s Teaching at CUNY!

‘When you start…looking at the

faculties that we haveacross this University,

you are absolutelystunned by thedepth of talent,’says Chancellor

Matthew Goldstein.

Professors John Corigliano, Ruth Stark, Jill Bargonetti and Daniel Akins

CUNYMatters LG-07:CUNYMatters LG 3/05 3/19/07 9:47 AM Page 1

studies the chemistry of elements such astechnetium, with a goal of developing thechemistry as it relates to the medicinaluses of their radioisotopes.

• Professor Steve Greenbaum,Professor of Physics at HunterCollege, performs spectroscopicinvestigations of solids by mag-netic resonance and synchrotronx-ray absorption, applied mostlyto materials for electrochemicalenergy storage and conversion.Professor Greenbaum received a2002 Presidential Award forExcellence in Science, Mathe-matics and Engineering

Mentoring.• Professor Christine Li is a developmen-tal neurobiologist studying how communi-cation is established between cells in thenervous system. She is Professor of Biologyat City College and earned her Ph.D. fromHarvard University.• Professor Elli Wurtzel, a researcher onprovitamin A carotenoid biosynthesis incereal crops, was elected as a Fellow of theAmerican Association for theAdvancement of Science in 2006. She isProfessor of Biology at Lehman College.• Professor Alex Couzis is the Herbert G.Kayser Professor of Chemical Engineeringat City College. His research on the adsorp-tion of organic material from solution ontosolid surfaces impacts critical areas such asfood science and packaging, microelectron-ics, optics and delayed drug release.• Professor Cathy Savage-Dunn studiesthe roles and mechanisms of cell signalingduring animal development. Dr. Savage-Dunn is Associate Professor of Biology atQueens College and received her Ph.D.from Columbia University.• Professor Harry Gafney has recentlyassumed the Directorship of the CUNYCenter for Advanced Technology (CAT) inPhotonic Applications. Professor Gafneyworks closely with New York-based com-panies such as Corning Inc., and is also aguest scientist at Brookhaven NationalLaboratory. He is Professor of Chemistryat Queens College.• Professor Richard Magliozzo has consis-tently received funding from the NationalInstitutes of Health for research studyingthe structure and function of a bacterialheme enzyme responsible for activation ofan antibiotic used to treat tuberculosis,and another bacterial enzyme that cat-alyzes radical reactions. He is Professor ofChemistry at Brooklyn College and theGraduate Center.

These scientists represent a small sam-pling of the individuals at CUNY—faculty,staff, students, and alumni—who are dedi-cated to making our Decade of Science asproductive as possible. I thank you all foryour support.

Last month I traveled to Albany to tes-tify on the State Executive Budget ata joint hearing of the New York State

Assembly Ways and Means and SenateFinance committees.

There I spoke aboutmany CUNY initiativesand programs currentlyunderway, and emphasizedhow much we rely on theState’s continued invest-ment in order to recruitadditional full-time facultyand provide the studentservices required to maxi-mize their effectiveness.

Part of my testimony (available in itsentirety at www.cuny.edu/statetestimony07)focused on our “Decade of Science” atCUNY. It’s no secret that our country’sstrength, security, and advancement dependon scientific literacy. An acknowledgeddecline in student participation and profi-ciency in the science, technology, engineer-ing, and mathematics fields imperils ourcompetitive advantage in science and tech-nology. The need for our multi-facetedDecade of Science initiative, launched in2005 and profiled previously in CUNYMatters, could hardly be more pressing.

I spoke at length about this work inAlbany. But words only go so far. Thevitality of our Decade of Science effortwas driven home for the Albany legislatorsby the presence of 15 faculty scientistsdrawn from the extraordinary talent weare privileged to have recruited to CUNY:• Professor Daniel Akins, Director of theCUNY Center for Analysis of Structuresand Interfaces, studies the synthesis of semi-conductor and magnetic oxide nanoparti-cles, as well as the fabrication of carbonnanotubes within various matrices. He is aprofessor at City College and received hisPh.D. from UC Berkeley.• Professor Hiroshi Matsui, AssociateProfessor of Chemistry at Hunter College,was recently elected as a Frontier Memberof the National Academy of Engineeringand is recognized for his work on non-lithographic fabrications of devices suchas sensors, by fabricating peptide-basednanotubes (antibody) and functionalizingthem with various recognition components(antigen).• Distinguished Professor Ruth Stark,Director of the CUNY Institute forMacromolecular Assemblies at the Collegeof Staten Island, uses NMR techniques tostudy the molecular structure and organi-zation of fatty acid binding proteins aswell as plant biopolymers.• Professor Derrick Brazill received thePresidential Early Career Award forScientists and Engineers in 2005 for his workon cell sensing and control of cell growthduring development. He is AssociateProfessor of Biology at Hunter College andreceived his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley.• Professor Lynn Francesconi, AssociateProfessor of Chemistry at Hunter College,

Putting Faces on the Decade of Science

2 CUNY MATTERS — Spring 2007

Prepared byThe City University

of New YorkOffice of University Relations

535 East 80th StreetNew York, NY 10021

(212) 794-5317

Published byThe Legislative Gazette

PO Box 7329Albany, NY 12225

518-473-9739www.legislativegazette.com

How’s this for a reality series?Contestants compete for jobsand income based on their edu-

cation, and their home towns survive ordie based on how much brain powerthey can generate.

That’s the Darwinian game that’sbeing played out now across the UnitedStates. Back in 1970, the number ofpeople with at least bachelor’s degreeswas small—eleven percent—and spreadfairly evenly around the country. Buttoday, cities have more than twice asmany college graduates, and educatedpeople are continuing to gravitate tointellectual centers like New York,Seattle, San Francisco and Raleigh.

Much has been written about themigration to these intellectual and cre-ative hubs. Less well known, perhaps, isthe extent to which the economic andintellectual lives of these great centerslike New York City are so intertwinedand so dependent on their respectiveinstitutions of higher learning.

And in this respect, CUNY stands out.It is the largest public urban university inthe nation, and its campuses are likestreams spawning the life that keeps thecity great.

Selma Botman, the Unversity Provost,noted that CUNY enrollment has been ris-ing in recent years as New Yorkers, includ-ing the newest of New Yorkers—its immi-grants—realize that the surest way up theladder of the Knowledge Economy is toobtain a degree. “The fortunes of this cityare linked to the richness of thisUniversity,” Botman said. “And both residents and out-of-towners are seeing thatCUNY degrees are thebest educational bar-gains in the country,without question.”

Frances Horowitz,formerly president ofthe Graduate Center,said, “City University isthe social engine ofNew York. It’s ubiqui-tous and at every level.There are very few citiesthat are as saturatedwith educational oppor-tunities as New YorkCity is.”

Soaring Percentages of DegreeHolders

A third of the city’s residents age 25 andover have bachelor’s or advanced degrees,and their number surged by an eye-pop-ping 20 percent between 2000 and 2005,growing by 280,000 to 1.72 million, theCensus Bureau says. More astonishing,almost two-thirds of Manhattanites in thatage bracket are college grads.

Other cities had higher percentages in2005, but of course no one matches NewYork in absolute numbers. In San

Francisco, half of the residents age 25 andover had college degrees, some 281,000people. In Seattle, the nation’s best-edu-cated city, some 210,000 people—justover half in that age group—had at least abachelor’s degree.

With enrollment at 223,000—the high-est in 31 years—CUNY has grown to meetdemand and has been competing success-fully with some of the most aggressive pri-vate universities in the country. Now on23 campuses, it has a new GraduateSchool of Journalism, a new TeacherAcademy and expanding business pro-

grams that are increasingly international intheir focus.

The Down SideIt must be said also that the burgeoning

knowledge economy is leaving in its tracksa class of men and women marginalizedfor their lack of skills and education. Thisslide down the economic ladder hasharmed whole regions of the country, aswell as communities within otherwisebooming cities.

In February the Community ServiceSociety, an advocacy agency, reported thatthe strongest job market in decades hasleft the city’s youngest minority workersbehind. Just 4.9 percent of all workerswere unemployed last year, but unemploy-ment remained high among blacks andHispanics, especially men.

“The shift is toward jobs that requiremore education, more literacy, more math,more ability to interact with customersand coworkers,” Mark Levitan, a seniorpolicy analyst with the CommunityService Society, told The New York Times.

The youthful unemployed include the20,000 teens who drop out of high schoolhere each year, although the city says thatthe dropout rate is steadily declining andthat the Class of 2005 had the highestgraduation rate on record at 58.2 percent.

Robert Ramos, Jr. Manfred PhilippChairperson, Chairperson,Student Senate Faculty Senate

Benno C. Schmidt, Jr.Chairman

Valerie L. Beal Randy M. Mastro

Philip Berry Hugo M. Morales

John S. Bonnici Kathleen M. Pesile

Wellington Z. Chen Carol Robles-Román

Rita DiMartino Marc V. Shaw

Freida Foster-Tolbert Solomon A. Sutton

Joseph J. Lhota Jeffrey Wiesenfeld

Matthew GoldsteinChancellorJay HershensonSecretary of the Board of Trustees andSenior Vice Chancellor for University RelationsMichael ArenaUniversity Director for Communications and MarketingRon HowellEditorGary Schmidgall, Rita RodinWritersAndré Beckles Gotham DesignPhotographer Graphic Design

Articles in this and previous issues are available at cuny.edu/news.Letters or suggestions for future stories may be sent to the Editorby email to Mediarelations@mail.cuny.edu. Changes of addressshould be made through your campus personnel office.

BOARDOFTRUSTEESThe City University of New York

THECHANCELLOR’SDESK

10.61%

17.31%

22.98%

27.42%

32.24%

In New Knowledge Economy, New Yo

Huge growth in number of New Yorkers with degrees

Source: Queens College Professor Andy Beveridge’s Social Explorer data onNew Yorkers over age 25, who are college graduates

CUNYMatters LG-07:CUNYMatters LG 3/05 3/15/07 3:54 PM Page 2

those 100,000 students.“Although there was a lot of controver-

sy about the terrible, low graduate rates ofthese open admission students, who werenot thought of as college material, in facttheir graduation rates were as high as theywere nationally”—if you follow them formore than eight years, Lavin said.

The women graduates were more likelyto raise their children in stable two-parenthouseholds and to earn more, which areboth factors in increasing their children’seducational success. Moreover, collegegraduation “changed the way they behavedas parents,” Lavin said. They tended tospend more time on “literacy, reading tokids, taking them to cultural events in thecity. They were better able to be advocatesfor their children, feeling comfortablegoing into school to deal with issues thatmay have come up.” Their children didbetter in high school and had higher ratesof college enrollment.

And that, he says, also helps explainwhy New York City is getting smarter.

CUNY MATTERS — Spring 2007 3

• Taking another approach, LaGuardiaCommunity College will soon hit the roadwith CUNY on Wheels—a specially built,Internet-equipped bus. Financed with$250,000 secured by Queens BoroughPresident Helen Marshall (who earned herbachelor’s degree from Queens College),CUNY on Wheels aims at spreading theword about CUNY’s array of educationaland job-training programs. The target is theimpoverished and isolated RockawayPeninsula, said LaGuardia President GailO. Mellow.

Changing Labor ForceThe evolution of an increasingly educat-

ed labor force has profound implicationsfor New York City. It’s an old story thatmanufacturing jobs are vanishing, havingplummeted by 40 percent between 1990and 2005, according to the Bureau ofLabor Statistics. Less visible are changes inwhite-collar jobs that require education—the nine percent shrinkage in the FIREsector (for finance, insurance and realestate) and the 17 percent surge in theICE sector (for intellectual, cultural andeducational fields).

Terrence Martell, director of the BaruchCollege’s Weissman Center forInternational Business, said the loss ofFIRE jobs reflects consolidation amongfinancial institutions and outsourcing ofback-office operations. “Look across theHudson. There are 15 or 20 buildingsfilled to a large degree with financial serv-ices people who historically would havebeen in Manhattan.” As for ICE, Martellcites new jobs in areas like biomedicine, aswell as routine expansion as New York“has become a more desirable place to be.”

Why Such Brain Power in NYC?But why do college-educated people

concentrate in certain cities? Theoriesabound, but one of the most sensiblecomes from Thurston Domina, whoreceived his doctorate in sociology fromthe CUNY Graduate Center last year, isnow doing research at Princeton and nextfall will teach at the University of

(Another 27 percent of that classremained in high school for a fifth year,the city says.)

In furtherance of CUNY’s mission tobring educational opportunity to marginalgroups, Baruch College hosted an educa-tional summit about the dropout epidemicon Feb. 23. Baruch President KathleenWaldron told participants that New YorkState has the nation’s highest dropout ratefor black and Hispanic students, that onlyone in ten graduates on time with a highschool diploma.

“The result is intense unemployment,crime and illiteracy for these young peo-ple, their families and their communities,”Waldron said.

With high school graduates earning, onaverage, $9,245 more per year, “each year’sclass of dropouts will cost the countryover $200 billion during their lifetimes inlost earnings and unrealized tax revenue,”while illiteracy costs another $224 billiona year, she noted. Meanwhile, dropouts aretwice as likely to become parents by theirsenior year of high school, and they die onaverage at younger ages than those with atleast a year of college.

“All these grim statistics point to awaste of human talent and potential,”Waldron said. “Apart from the economicand social costs to society, we will neverknow the contributions that potential doc-tors, artists, scientists, bankers, and businesspeople could have made.”

Rescuing Those Left BehindTo help tackle the problem, in recent

years CUNY has launched a range of pro-grams designed to bring new members intothe fold of those who can fend for them-selves in the new knowledge economy.• It has put in place a University-wideBlack Male Initiative, which aims atrecruiting, retaining and graduating black,Latino and other at-risk groups of malesinto college.• A new ASAP program—enthusiasticallybacked to the tune of almost $20 millionby Mayor Michael Bloomberg—is recog-nizing the importance of community col-leges in delivering job-related skills tothose who lack them, providing enhancedcounseling and other assistance to groupsof men and women most in need.• The John Jay College of Criminal Justiceis reaching out to ex-convicts, who have aparticularly hard time finding employment.• CUNY Preparatory High School,launched in the fall of 2003, has been giv-ing teenage dropouts a second shot at suc-cess, as scores of them annually completehigh school or earn a GED, and then goon to college.

When LaGuardia Community College President Gail O.Mellow says that she knows what her students gothrough, she speaks from experience.

The first person on either side of her family to go to college, shewas midway through her first year at the University of Michiganon a scholarship when her father went bankrupt. He was an inde-pendent claims adjuster, and New York had just switched to no-fault auto insurance, so there simply wasn’t enough work. (His for-tunes later revived because even no-fault requires adjusters.)

“We lost our house,” Mellow recalled. “I had enough moneyfrom working in the summer to get by, but I had to go home andhelp my father earn money to take care of rest of the kids.”

Home was Jamestown, south of Buffalo. She worked full-timeselling advertising for local newspapers while attendingJamestown Community College nights and weekends, and shekept her books in the car to study between appointments.

“If it had not been for that community college, I could neverhave continued. That incredible faculty saved my intellectual life.”

Mellow finished her associate’s degree in two years—the onlyCUNY president to have earned one—and then faced a commonroadblock.

“SUNY Albany wouldn’t take nine credits, three of my class-es,” she recalled. “I was so angry, I took classes that I had alreadypassed.” But Mellow graduated Phi Beta Kappa in a year and twosummers, and then went on to earn her doctorate in social psy-chology at George Washington U. She remained deeply grateful

for the community college experiencethat had rescued her years before, andoutfitted with her fresh Ph.D. shebegan teaching at community collegesin Maryland, Connecticut, New Jerseyand upstate New York. She laterserved as president of community col-leges in Connecticut and New Jersey.

Mellow relishes the variety of herexperiences at LaGuardia. She’s a bigbooster for CUNY on Wheels, anInternet-equipped bus that this springwill begin expanding CUNY’s contactwith the neglected RockawayPeninsula, and she’s proud of the LaGuardia-supported business“incubator” that has helped local small entrepreneurs.

“Queens is the most ethnically diverse county in the U.S., ifnot the world,” the President said. About 10,000 people a yeartake English as a Second Language (ESL) at LaGuardia. Somehave advanced degrees from other countries; and others—like theAfghan who works in Mellow’s office as her first PresidentialHonors Fellow—are studying English as their third language (healso speaks Pashtun and Farsi).

“Their lives are so inspiring. You see the power of education tomake a better life and a better city. When I look at these stu-dents I realize I haven’t gone through anything,” Mellow said.

California at Irvine.“When you put smart

people together, they bounceideas off one another. Theyget better at doing whateverthey do,” Domina said.

In short, smart peoplewant to be with smart peo-ple and that breeds creativity.

Educated people earnmore than those aroundthem do, too, he said, thanksto “a multiplier effect. Highschool graduates who live inplaces with a lot of collegegraduates earn more thanthose who live in areaswithout a lot of collegegraduates.” College gradsspend more on services thatemploy those less well edu-cated, and “the work that isavailable tends to be betterwork. And when you con-centrate human capital,schools get better becausethere are more people tobecome teachers and peopleare more willing to spendon education.”

In contrast, students whogrow up in places with fewcollege graduates are morelikely to get stuck education-ally. “Educational segregation is a zero-sumgame. For every booming human capitalhub, there are dozens of brain drain commu-nities, and for these communities education-al segregation can be disastrous,” Dominasaid.

Future GenerationsGraduate Center sociologists Paul

Attewell and David Lavin have found thatwhen college education is easily available, asit is at CUNY, it pays off in the lives ofunderprivileged students—and their chil-dren. In April the Russell Sage Foundation ispublishing their latest research, “Passing theTorch: Does Higher Education for theDisadvantaged Pay Off Across the Genera-tions?” Two former doctoral students shareauthorship, Domina and Tania Levey, who isnow an assistant professor at York College.

For thirty years Lavin followed the firstthree classes of CUNY’s “open admissions”freshmen, who started between 1970 and1972. In the year 2000, the researchersinterviewed 2,000 women drawn from

Helen Marshall, Borough President of Queensand alumna of Queens College, sponsoredCUNY on Wheels, an Internet-equipped busthat will travel through the impoverishedRockaway Peninsula, encouraging residents toseek degrees at LaGuardia CommunityCollege and other CUNY institutions.

Top Jobs for Degree Holders in N.Y.BACHELOR’S DEGREE HOLDERS NUMBER MEDIAN

IN JOB INCOME

Total 805,143 $35,000Accountants and Auditors 46,878 $41,000Elementary and Middle School Teachers 39,554 $28,700Financial Services Agents 23,904 $60,000Marketing and Sales Managers 23,182 $45,000Managers, All Other 20,465 $45,000Secretaries and Administrative Assistants 18,282 $26,000Designers 17,919 $35,000Registered Nurses 17,299 $46,000Computer Programmers 15,713 $50,000Financial Managers 15,021 $50,000Computer Scientists and Systems Analysts 14,703 $50,000

MASTER’S DEGREE HOLDERS NUMBER MEDIANIN JOB INCOME

Total 218,768 $42,000Elementary and Middle School Teachers 28,283 $38,000Accountants and Auditors 9,417 $55,000Computer Software Engineers 7,131 $64,000Postsecondary Teachers 6,463 $16,000Social Workers 6,347 $33,300Secondary School Teachers 6,318 $40,000Managers, All Other 6,170 $60,000Marketing and Sales Managers 6,118 $64,000Financial Services Agents 6,034 $100,000Computer Programmers 5,859 $60,000Financial Managers 5,163 $78,000SOURCE: John Mollenkopf, Political Science Professor and Director of the Center for UrbanResearch, at the CUNY Graduate Center. Data is for persons age 18 to 34 in the N.Y.metropolitan area and is from the U.S. Census.

ew Yorkers are the Key Players, and CUNY is the Big Training Ground

Gail Mellow, President ofLaGuardia CommunityCollege

A President Who Knows What It’s Like to Struggle for a Degree

CUNYMatters LG-07:CUNYMatters LG 3/05 3/15/07 3:54 PM Page 3

When Anthony

Volodkin was in hisearly teens, he

would often listen to music oncollege radio stations. Musicmoved him, in ways that feltgood.

“They used to have coolstuff in the mornings, mostlymetal, and interesting special-ty shows, all kinds of genresin the evenings,” saidVolodkin.

More recently, after hisfamily got a high-speedInternet connection, Volodkinbegan looking for his favoritepieces on the Web, so he coulddownload them. And he soonbegan taking note of a newway of connecting to music,and to other music lovers.

He discovered music blog-gers popping up across theWeb, with sites like Music forRobots, Fluxblog andStereogum. He was fascinat-ed by them.

“These were people whoaren’t doing it for themoney,” said Volodkin, now 21 and a sen-ior at Hunter College.

“They only wrote about these songsbecause they liked them.”

Through such blogs, Volodkin discov-ered jazz greats like Nina Simone, folkrockers like Arthur Lee, and an eclecticarray of contemporary groups, includingMetronomy, Kid Loco, RJD2 and CatPower. This explosion was so intense,Volodkin said, that “I realized I had toshare my experience with others.”

So in the spring of 2005, he launchedThe Hype Machine, a Website (http://hypem.com) that now aggregates morethan 1,000 music blogs—those personal-ized, Web-based pages on which creatorsshare interests with others far and wide—attracting about 50,000 visits a day.

“I love it. I use it all the time,” said FredWilson, a partner of Union SquareVentures, a Manhattan-based venture capi-tal firm that invests in young informationtechnology companies.

“It’s one of the best music discoverysites on the Web,” said Wilson, one of sev-eral venture capitalists tracking Volodkin’swork. “I think what he’s done is fantastic.”

Many students try to find an outsideactivity that generatesincome even as it pleasesthem and satisfies socialneeds. But an undertak-ing like The HypeMachine is “highlyunusual,” said VirginiaTeller, chairwoman ofHunter’s Computer Science Department,even among smart, risk-taking studentslike those at Hunter.

So far, The Hype Machine, which costabout $5,000 to run last year, remainsroughly a break-even venture, Volodkinsays. But it has begun to generate income.Through links to iTunes and Amazon.com,the site allows users to buy tracks theylike—and Volodkin gets a 5 percent com-mission on the sales. The Hype Machinealso carries a modest amount of advertis-ing. “Overall, I could be making a ton morewith ads at the expense of the user experi-ence,” Volodkin said.

But “that’s not the goal.” A NationalScience Foundation Scholarship recipient,Volodkin is no newcomer to computersand the Internet. His father, Iouri, is acomputer programmer for FriendshipDairies, the well-known cottage cheesemanufacturer. “His work inspired me,

4 CUNY MATTERS — Spring 2007

read what they had to say about the music.But others jumped in to defend—and

applaud—Volodkin’s creation.“I see it as free hype, and I appreciate

it,” wrote blogger nuclearbeef.com.Another said all music bloggers should behappy because “HM [The Hype Machine]is bringing them traffic to read (their) arti-cles.” The only person not happy, accord-ing to that blogger, is his wife, for his“spending all this money on records.”

The Hype Machine has created a kindof online mall in which music lovers shop,chat and buy. And it’s the kind of mallthat expands without zoning approvalfrom local authorities. So Volodkin knowsthere a good future in it.

Looking to that future, Volodkin says heplans to continue running The HypeMachine part-time while attending gradu-ate school. (He’s applied to MIT’s MediaLab and New York University’s InteractiveTelecommunications Program.) But he hasplans to make it bigger.

“I’m looking to build a team to grow it,to help me bootstrap it,” Volodkin said.“I’m constantly re-evaluating whether Ishould actively pursue raising capital.Right now, while I’m in school, it doesn’tseem worthwhile, but as things move on,this can change, of course.”

Volodkin also recognizes that despitehis efforts to facilitate buying, rather than“stealing” copyrighted music, The HypeMachine still operates in a legal gray area.It’s difficult to monitor materials offeredon the MP3 blogs listed on his own site, heconcedes. And whether record companieswill eventually choose to make an issue ofillegal downloading of tracks from suchsites remains unclear.

“I hope people recognize it for what itis—a really great music discovery site… agreat way for bands to be discovered,” saidventure capitalist Wilson.

As for Volodkin, it’s about music morethan money.

Recently, he spent a few hours in thecold, trying to get into sold-out perform-ances by The Arcade Fire, the indie rockband, at Judson Memorial Church inManhattan’s Greenwich Village.

“I was successful, and the shows blewmy mind,” he said.

For their last song on a Thursday night,the band “got off the stage with their gearand played right in the center of thecrowd on the floor. Whoa!”

Now that was worth a million bucks.

although I went in a different direction,”said Volodkin, who emigrated fromMoscow to Brooklyn with his parentswhen he was 12.

“I’m interested in computer technology,but how it can be useful to the ordinaryperson.”

Since he was 14, Volodkin has workedas an intern at Brainlink International, Inc.,a Queens-based company that provides awide range of computer systems consult-ing services.

“Anthony has done an amazing amountof stuff for me,” said Raj Goel, Brainlink’schief technology officer. Volodkin hasworked on “several large-scale projects,everything from network administration todisaster-recovery scenarios,” ” Goel said.

When Volodkin walks into a meetingwith people “twice his age,” Goel added,“he knows how to speak appropriately andintelligently. Within an hour, age is nolonger a factor. He’s their peer.”

A few months ago, Volodkin presentedThe Hype Machine at a “Mashup Camp”in Boston, attended by about 250 softwaredevelopers, programmers, technologyproviders and venture capitalists.(“Mashups” are applications that combine

software or con-tent from severalsources in cre-ative and usefulways.)

The camp wasdesigned as an“un-conference,”

an informal program of discussions andevents focusing on the topic at hand.There, Volodkin’s entrepreneurial talentswere recognized.

Attendees had a chance to briefly pitchtheir work to small groups of others, andcompetitors who pleased their audiencesreceived a wooden nickel as a sign ofapproval, and the one with the most nick-els won. That was The Hype Machine,chosen the “Best of Camp.”

About 75 percent of the site’s traffic—including “lots of visitors” from universi-ties—comes from the United States, therest from Western Europe, Volodkin says.

Though he has received copious praise,Volodkin acknowledges that not all of theearly blogging about his blog was laudatory.

Some complained that the design ofVolodkin’s site was marginalizing theirwriting—enabling users to easily downloadsongs from their sites without bothering to

Hunter College student Anthony Volodkin, who’s become a blogging star of sorts with his Hype Machine, a com-pilation of blogs that also directs visitors to official music downloading sites.

Loving What You Do, and Making Money from It, TooFirst Romona Moore Award

Kelle Jacob, a Hunter Collegemedia studies major, was awarded

the first Romona Moore Scholarshipat last month’s annual scholarshipbanquet of the New York Associationof Black Journalists at ColumbiaUniversity.

The scholarship was established bythe Hunter College Foundation inhonor of Moore, a black Hunterstudent brutally murdered in 2003.Her murder came with accusationsthat it was treated lightly by police,because she was black.

BC Mom goes to China

At 18, Pangeline Edwards became amother. Today, with her children

grown, the Brooklyn College studentis living the dream of many stu-dents—studying abroad—as a recentwinner of the prestigious Benjamin A.Gilman International Scholarship.

Enrolled at Yangtze InternationalUniversity, Edwards is studyingChina’s new market economy—andthe social costs of the nation’s rapiddevelopment. “It is so important tostudy abroad to understand diversityand globalization,” said Edwards, whomajors in business management, witha minor in religious studies. Edwardsfirst witnessed the extraordinarychanges taking place in China aftertaking a course there last summerthrough Brooklyn College’s StudyAbroad program.

Five Students Win Kaplans

Five community college students atCUNY have been awarded a

Kaplan Educational Foundation schol-arship—the highly competitive andunusual award that provides studentswith financial support, as well aca-demic support, such as individual andgroup tutoring.

This year’s scholarship winners areKwesi Blackman of KingsboroughCommunity College; Aaron Hudson ofLaGuardia Community College;Veronica Nunez of QueensboroughCommunity College; Sharrise Simmonsof Borough of Manhattan CommunityCollege; and Levald Thomas ofKingsborough Community College.

Hudson, a U.S. Marine Corps vet-eran, plans to pursue a bachelor’sdegree in information managementsystems or business information.Nunez, a liberal arts major who alsoworks full-time as a legal assistant,came to Queens from the DominicanRepublic two years ago after graduat-ing from high school. She plans topursue a bachelor’s degree in child-hood psychology.

Biomed Students Honored

Four Hunter College seniors werehonored for outstanding research

at the Annual Biomedical ResearchConference for Minority Students(ABRCMS) in Anaheim, Calif.Competing with more than 1,100undergraduates, the students—MazinBabiker, Luz Sanchez, Leslie AnnAlexis and Silvia Caballero—eachwon $250 awards for presentations invarious disciplines of the biomedicaland behavioral sciences.

The Conference is the largest onefor biomedical students, with morethan 2,500 students and facultyattending last fall from universitiesnationwide.

STUDENT HONORS

REACHINGFOR THE ST RSA N O C C A S I O N A L S E R I E S

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NOTED&QUOTED

Hostos Library:Top of the Shelf

The Association of College andResearch Libraries (ACRL) has select-

ed the library at Hostos CommunityCollege to receive its Excellence inAcademic Libraries Award.

How impressive is that? Well, saidHostos’ chief librarian, Dr. Lucinda Zoe,“In the library world, this high honor is theequivalent of winning an Oscar or theWorld Series.”

The organization singled out Hostos forputting the “community” into communitycollege, for its commitment to preservingunique collections about Eugenio Maria deHostos, and for creating and preservingrecords about the founding of the college.

Frances Maloy, chair of the 2007Excellence in Academic Libraries SelectionCommittee and Division Leader of AccessServices at Emory University, said: “TheHostos Library staff demonstrate[s] exem-plary partnership and leadership with fac-ulty in developing new curricular designand revitalization through the develop-ment of new courses designed to teachinformation literacy, critical thinking, com-puter literacy, and also by creating bilin-gual online learning environments.

“The library staff has absorbed themeaning of the life of the person for whomthe institution is named through their bilin-gual, multilevel, and curriculum integratedinformation literacy program. Their effortsto produce the bilingual student literaryand art magazine, Escriba!/Write!, and tocreate an inviting and bilingual student-focused environment in the library are alsonoteworthy,” Maloy said.

Each year ACRL presents these awardsto outstanding libraries at a community col-lege, a senior college, and a university, there-by honoring the accomplishments of librari-ans and library staff as members of a teamthat supports the mission of their institu-tion. The award, sponsored by Blackwell’sBook Services, consists of $3,000 and aplaque, to be presented at a ceremony oncampus. The library also will receive specialrecognition at the ACRL President’s Pro-gram during the American Library Associ-ation (ALA) Annual Conference in June.

Lehman Finds Asthma andDirty Air Links in NYC

The Bronx has one of the highest hospi-talization rates for asthma in the United

States and contains many of New YorkCity’s major air pollution sources, includingtruck routes, highways and seven facilitiesthat use, store and emit toxic materials.

Now, researchers in Lehman College’sGeographic Information Sciences program,led by Dr. Juliana Maantay, have used com-puterized mapping and spatial analysis toshow a definite link between asthma hospi-talizations and air pollution in the Bronx.

Bronx children with asthma are hospi-talized at a rate 70 percent higher than inthe city as a whole and 700 percent higherthan the rest of the state (excluding thecity), the city Health Department said.The asthma death rate in the Bronx (6 per

City Tech Prof Says:Hygienists Save Lives

We might not think of dentists and den-tal hygienists as saving lives, but Dr.

Gwen Cohen-Brown would beg to differ.An assistant professor of dental hygiene

at New York City College of Technology(City Tech), she is on a mission to educateher students and health providers about theneed to conduct periodontal evaluationsand screenings for oral cancer and diseases.

“The mouth is the portal to the bodyand a reflection of general health,” she said.

“We as health providers need to be ableto recognize things like a yeast infectionthat doesn’t go away or specific tumorsand be able to bring up such subjects withour patients.”

Since joining the City Tech faculty in2004, Dr. Cohen-Brown has been teachingthe College’s dental hygiene students tohandle tricky situations.

“We’ve had cases where we picked upon medical or dental problems that otherplaces didn’t,” she explained.

She said students have uncovered situa-tions that merited biopsies or high bloodpressure medication, and oral cancers andother tumors. Hygienists can’t make diag-noses, but they need to know how diag-noses are arrived at for their licensing, sheadded. And since City Tech students rou-tinely pass their licensing exams, theirpatients are getting the best care., she said.

According to the American DentalAssociation, only about seven percent ofdentists offer the mouth and neck examsthey should. Dr. Cohen-Brown says thismust change.

Dr. Cohen-Brown’s advanced studies inoral and maxillofacial pathology led her fromdental practice into teaching. She works withthe AIDS Institute, the New York StateDepartment of Health and the Departmentof Corrections, lecturing on mandated clean-liness standards and other topics.

On April 19, Dr. Cohen-Brown andstudent members of the Student AmericanDental Hygiene Association and the CityTech Student Veterans Club will collectdonations, sending toothbrushes and other items to soldiers in Iraq,especially those withties to the City Tech community.

Dr. Juliana Maantay

CUNY Tackling Diabetes

Confronting a rising epidemic, CUNYhas launched “The Campaign to Stop

Diabetes,” a disease that afflicts 500,000New Yorkers, 300,000 more who don’tknow they have it and another millionwho are at risk. Diabetes and the relatedproblem of obesity can cause heart diseaseand blindness, and lead to amputation,particularly of feet and legs.

“As the largest urban public university inAmerica, we hope to work against thesescourges,” said Chancellor Matthew Goldstein,who recently announced plans for a CUNYSchool of Public Health whose doctoral pro-gram will dramatically expand the University’simpact in the urban public health field.

Dr. Shadi Chamany, director of the CityHealth Department’s Diabetes Prevention

100,000) is double that of the city.Based on analyses of asthma hospitaliza-

tions in the Bronx between 1995 and 1999,Lehman’s team found that people living inclose proximity to a major pollution sourcewere 25 percent more likely, overall, to behospitalized for asthma than those livingelsewhere. For those living near two or moremajor pollution sources, the increased risk ofhospitalization jumped from 25 to 34 per-cent. The affected area varied with thesource of the pollution and the likely dis-tance the pollutants would travel.

“Regardless of whether the high asthmahospitalization rates are primarily due toenvironmental causes or also result fromthe effects of poverty and other socio-demographic factors,” Maantay said, “thefindings point to a health and environmen-tal justice crisis.”

CUNY MATTERS — Spring 2007 5

York College Cardinals celebrate in top photo, after senior guard Teron Simpson (number23, above and at bottom left) made an exciting three-pointer at the buzzer. Staten Islandplayer Sean Weismuller (bottom right) shows the agony of defeat.

Dr. Gwen Cohen-Brown, City Tech AssistantProfessor of Dental Hygiene.

and Control Program, praised CUNY’sdiabetes campaign. “CUNY’s enormouspresence and positive impact in New YorkCity is a big plus for us,” she said.

As part of CUNY’s campaign, studentvolunteers with special training will forma Diabetes Awareness Corps, which willreach out to other students and communi-ty members. CUNY will help developcommunity-based patient support andself-management programs.

CUNY will also use technology tospread the word about the dangers, riskfactors, and treatment of diabetes—e-mailblasts to students, faculty and staff; a spe-cial Web site: www.cuny.edu/stopdiabetes;and an upcoming television program thatwill be webcast on the site, shown oncable at CUNY-TV/75, and shared withall CUNY campuses.

York College senior guard Teron Simpson etched his name into the annals of CUNYAthletic Conference history as his long three-pointer at the final buzzer gave the

top-seeded Cardinals a dramatic 56-54 victory in the title game of the 2007 CUNY-AC/Con Edison Men’s Basketball Championship.

The Cardinals had taken a 49-48 lead with 2:56 to go after a free throw by seniorforward Dennis Echols, but the Staten Island Dolphins tied it up, 49-49, when seniorguard Mike Jones hit a free throw with 1:01 on the clock. York regained the advantage,50-49, nine seconds later when senior forward Jeffrey Boone swished a free throw. ThenStaten Island freshman guard Kyle Yocum split the defense for a layup, free throw, and52-50 advantage with 31 seconds remaining.

Boone nailed one free throw to cut York’s deficit to one point, 52-51, with 15 secondsleft, but the Dolphins inched further ahead as sophomore center Sean Weismuller putdown two free throws for a 54-51 lead a second later. Echols pulled the Cardinals to 54-53with a putback off the glass as the clock hit six seconds. Staten Island junior guard RobertMesjasz missed two free throw opportunities, then came Simpson’s shining moment.

“We gave the game back to CSI at the 30-second mark,” said York bench boss RonaldSt. John, who in his 19th season was named CUNYAC Coach of the Year. “But likeevery battle with Tony Petosa’s Staten Island teams, it came down to the last second.”This year York made its fifth NCAA Tournament appearance.

Simpson earned CUNYAC Tournament MVP honors thanks to his game-winning shot.Echols led all players with 21 points and 11 rebounds to join Simpson on the CUNYACAll-Tournament Team, along with Weismuller, Mesjasz and two players from semifinalistteams, Phil Schatz and Taleek Norman of Baruch and City Colleges. Boone was namedCUNYAC Player of the Year for his outstanding performance throughout the season.

York President Marcia V. Keizs said, “We’re very proud of our Athletic Departmentand the positive examples of competitiveness they exhibit to all our students.”

At Buzzer, York Snares Men’s Hoops Title,Upsetting College of Staten Island

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been termed the Plight of the Black Male.

Breaking BarriersGreene, slight of build, standing five-

foot-seven and weighing only 132 pounds,according to a June 1884 issue of TheCollege Mercury campus newspaper, hadlong wanted to be in the U.S. SignalCorps. In The Mercury, he listed hisfavorite person as “Uncle Sam” and hisfavorite course of study as astronomy.

And so two months before his gradua-tion, Greene, just 19 years old, applied tobecome the first black member of the U.S.Signal Corps, the highly competitive U.S.Army unit that tracked weather patternsand was the precursor to the NationalWeather Service.

The Signal Corps required that appli-cants pass written examinations, and in

May Greene scored highly on it.But he was rejected, bluntly told by the

Signal Corps Commander, Gen. WilliamHazen, that, according to Hazen’s inter-pretation of the 1866 ArmyReorganization Act, blacks were restrictedto four regiments set aside for them, in theinfantry and cavalry.

Young Greene turned to his collegepresident, Alexander Webb, for help. And

Webb, a formerarmy generalwho had been ahero at theBattle ofGettysburg,responded rightaway. He dashed off a letter to Secretaryof War Robert Todd Lincoln (son of assas-sinated President Abraham Lincoln), writ-ing: “This young man is the first coloredstudent who has ever passed beyond thesophomore class of this college. He is thefirst colored graduate and is, by election,the secretary of his class, composed ofsome of the finest young men of this city.”

Webb said he believed Hazen waserring in his interpretation of the ArmyReorganization Act.

Lincoln not only agreed but in harshterms ordered Hazen to acceptGreene or any other black per-son who met the qualificationsfor the position.

Thus Greene effectivelywrote his name on a bit of mil-itary history. He went on toattend the Signal Corps train-ing camp at Fort Myers inVirginia, where newcomerswere instructed in the special-ized skills of the Corps, whichin those days had to do withtelegraph communications andthe tracking of cloud and windpatterns. Greene must have feltwell prepared for the tasks athand, given his background atCity College.

Sure enough, he receivedthe second highest grade in hisclass of eight trainees (two ofwhom were dropped for poorperformance), and he was soonsent to head up the SignalCorps station in Pensacola,Florida.

In his 1974 book Blacks andthe Military in AmericanHistory, (published by Praeger),

historian Jack D. Foner wrote that Greene“opened the way for the acceptance of ahandful of black enlisted men into othertechnical branches, such as the HospitalCorps, the Ordnance Corps, and theQuartermaster and Commissary depart-ments.”

But Greene’s story did not end withthat happy achievement.

Perhaps he might have sensed a hint of

For decades now, William HallettGreene has existed as a distant figurein CUNY’s history, with that quality of

distance pertaining not only to the passing oftime, but to the inscrutability of the eyesgracing his comely image in photos taken forhis graduation more than a century ago.

They were eyes that suggested a certaintenacity, even as they conveyed a sadnessthat was perhaps appropriate for a manlost in the dustbin of time.

Greene received his bachelor of sciencedegree along with other members of hisgraduating class, on the evening of June26, 1884, at the Academy of Music, notfar from their beloved City College, thenlocated at Lexington Avenue and 23rdStreet.

An article in the following day’s NewYork Times noted the presence of Greene,remarking that he was “the firstcolored boy who has ever grad-uated from the college” andthat he’d “made a good record”while a student.

“The audience applaudedhim liberally last night,” theTimes wrote.

It was a day of triumph forGreene, as it was for othermembers of his class, who likehim were men of great prom-ise, schooled in a strict, classicalway of study that left themwith feelings of camaraderieand high ambitions.

Known affectionately as“Greeny,” Greene was popularand highly respected. He hadbeen voted recording secretaryof his class and he was a cabi-net member of the literarysociety known asPhrenocosmia.

But many months ofresearch—including searches ofrecords in the NationalArchives, old city directories,ancestry.com and old newspa-per articles—have led to a con-clusion that Greene was, at the moment ofhis graduation, like a flashing starapproaching its apex.

By all accounts uncovered so far,Greene soon fell victim to the racism thatwas so prevalent in his day, even as he,perhaps, also fell to inner demons thatoften grip young men, then, as now.

His story could even be called a 19th-century foreshadowing of what today has

6 CUNY MATTERS — Spring 2007

lingering ill feelings right there on hisenlistment papers, where it said, near thesection “Scars and Marks found upon theperson,” the notation: “A colored man,Enlisted for the Signal Corps, U.S. Armyby order of the Secretary of War.”

The papers were signed by 2nd Lt. B.M.Purssell, a recruiting officer who had strong-ly disapproved of Greene’s enlistment.

Sure enough, soon after his posting inPensacola, there came a series of demo-tions and transfers that ended two yearslater, in June of 1887, when he was dis-honorably dismissed from the Signal Corpsand the army. His superiors charged thatGreene gambled, falsified reports and wasin debt.

A TargetBut a close reading of scores of docu-

ments at the National Archives inWashington, D.C. suggests that a numberof white Corpsmen had targeted Greene,and did so with impunity following a keytransitional event in the nation.

In March of 1885, the Republicanadministration of Chester Arthur turnedover the presidency to Democrat GroverCleveland. Gone now were two men—ex-President Arthur and ex-Secretary of WarLincoln—who were among the nation’sstrongest supporters of civil rights forblacks. Not only had Lincoln proven him-self a believer, like his father before him,in extending rights to people of color, butChester Arthur had a record on that issuesurpassing any president before him, per-haps excluding Lincoln.

It was Arthur who in 1854 represented aManhattan black school teacher, ElizabethJennings, after she was forcibly ejected froma “whites only” omnibus (horse drawn pub-lic coach) near the current police headquar-ters building. The case, which Jennings andArthur won, was considered by many to bethe first one overturning “Jim Crow” trans-portation practices.

And so, a number of African Americansexpected changes for the worse in Marchof 1885, as the Republican Party ofLincoln handed over the reins of govern-ment to the Democrats, who in the minds

This article was written by Ron Howell, editor of CUNY Matters. He benefited from advice andassistance given by Hunter College African-American History Professor Joanne Edey-Rhodes, agenealogy expert. Some research also was done by Charles DeCicco, editor of The Alumnus, CityCollege’s alumni magazine. At the City College Archives, Professor Sydney Van Nort made availablerelevant archival materials from the 19th-century.

I KNEW HIS EYES WERE TELLING A STORY.

WHEN I BECAME SECRETARY OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES back in the summer of 2004, Ifound a number of photographs buried in a closet here at CUNY’s Central Office, including one of a

young man, William H. Greene, who was believed by officials of The City College of New York (includingtheir archivist, Professor Sydney Van Nort) to be the first black graduate of City College, in 1884.

The look in his eyes was sad and somewhat haunting. I had the sense that there was a hidden story ofstruggle and strength behind them.

We dusted off the photo and it now graces the wall of our Trustee Lounge, along with photos of JonasSalk, A. Philip Randolph, and other alumni luminaries.

In the months after the discovery of the photo, I began asking various people about Greene and learnedthat he had applied to the elite United States Signal Corps but had been rejected solely based on his race.Eventually he became the first African-American to enter the Signal Corps, an extraordinary achievement. AsI learned more about his struggle to overcome discrimination, my curiosity grew even stronger and I askedRon Howell, editor of CUNY Matters, to see what he could learn about this person from our past who soenchanted me.

What you will read on these two pages is the result of that effort. We are honoring the memory of a “stur-dy son” of City College in trying so diligently and with such persistence to uncover and tell his story.

— Jay Hershenson, Secretary of the Board of Trustees and Senior Vice Chancellor for University Relations

continued on page 11 �

Photo of William H. Greene, taken for his graduation from City Collegein 1884, when he was nineteen years old.

Photo of City College as it was in 1884 when William H. Greene and oth-ers graduated. The college was located at Lexington Avenue and 23rd Street.

William H. Greene was the First Black CUNY Graduate and

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SO IMPORTANT IS SCIENCE and academic researchto the society in which we live that we have declared 2005-2015 the“Decade of Science” at CUNY. We have affirmed our commitment toopening the pathways for serious advancement in the areas of science,mathematics, technology, and engineering—training students to teach inthese areas, and encouraging young people, particularly women andpeople of color, to study these disciplines.

Our country’s strength, security, and advancement depend on scientific literacy. The decline in student partici-pation and proficiency in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields imperils this country’s competi-tive advantage in science and technology. Our Decade of Science initiative could not come at a better time:

The Business Roundtable recently led a call to double the number of science, technology, engineering, andmathematics graduates by 2015. The National Academies convened a panel of experts that recently made anurgent plea to increase this country’s scientific competitiveness.

The New York State Business Council has called for an increase in students receiving postsecondary educationin science, math, and engineering, as well as the education of new, highly qualified teachers of math and science.

Governor Spitzer has emphasized the importance of investing in the high-tech, high-wage, strategic industriesthat will create the jobs and businesses of tomorrow in order to revitalize New York State’s economy. In focusingon the need for a concentration on math and science, Governor Spitzer has stressed that from grammar school to

in the laboratory sciences, leading to newinvestments in graduate student supportfor highly competitive students, Ph.D.degree-granting authority for selectedcampuses, and an expansion of master’sprograms.

We will encourage enrollment inCUNY’s math, science, and engineeringdegree programs, which over the last fiveyears, has increased by 26 percent (com-pared to total enrollment growth of 12percent) and included more than 11,000undergraduate and graduate students inFall 2005.

We will continue to run summer sci-ence programs and expand summer pro-grams in mathematics through CUNY’sextensive College Now program, which

S P E C I A L S E C T I O N

prepares students in the public schoolsfor college enrollment. As part of theCollege Now program, the University isalso introducing a new “Science Now”program for middle and high school stu-dents. CUNY will work with the NewYork Academy of Sciences and New YorkCity’s Department of Education to fosterinterest in the sciences through after-school and summer courses and work-shops; an annual science competitionthat extends existing competition modelsto students who have not traditionallyparticipated in such contests; and aninteractive television program featuringscience activities and innovations.

As this special section of CUNYMatters, “The Decade of Science” demon-strates, science is not made in a laborato-ry; it is made when a young person getsthat initial spark of inspiration, that flashof exhilaration. Through the University’sDecade of Science, we hope to encourageand sustain that sense of excitement andcuriosity, whether in budding scientists orseasoned researchers.

Tracking MosquitoesAnd Preventing Epidemics

EVEN AS the mosquito flies, it’s along way from CUNY toChittagong. Yet this Bangladeshi

commercial and manufacturing centerwas the subject of malaria-mappingresearch at City College, supported bythe National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration’s Cooperative RemoteSensing Science and Technology Center.Chittagong, which borders the infamous

our universities, we must all do a betterjob a preparing our young people for the21st Century economy and workforce.

Over the next decade, the Universitywill invest in science in the several ways.We will expend about $1 billion acrossthe University on the construction andmodernization of science facilities, mostnotably the CUNY-wide AdvancedScience Research Center—which willconcentrate on emerging disciplines suchas nanotechnology, biosensing and remotesensing, structural biology and macromol-ecular assemblies, and neuroscience—andscience facilities at Brooklyn, City,Hunter, Lehman, and Queens colleges.

We will revitalize our Ph.D. programs

‘NANO-GOLDEN’Dr. George John,professor ofChemistry at CityCollege and his postdoctoral colleaguePraveen KumarVemula (in gogglesand lab coat)examine gold nanoparticles. See Page 9.

Research

Foundation award

activity to CUNY

principal investi-

gators exceeded

$360 million, in

2006, a record.

OFERTCHERNICHOVSKI,CITY COLLEGE

The best way tounderstand the

research of CityCollege AssociateProf. OferTchernichovski isto listen to the birds.By tracking differentareas of their brainsas they learn to sing,he says, scientistsstand to gain a fullerunderstanding ofhow humans learnto talk. That’s whyevery twit andtweet is music tohis ears.

Decade of Science

CUNY MATTERS — Spring 2007 7

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opium-producing area called the

Golden Triangle, is known for itsmosques and minarets. It’s also knownfor its mosquitoes and a high incidenceof malaria. As for the oceanic administra-tion, part of the federal Department ofCommerce, it is known for the vastamounts of climate data collected by itspolar-orbiting satellites.

The sum of what they learned gave CityCollege Prof. Leonid Roytman and gradu-ate student Atiqur Rahman of Dhaka,Bangladesh, the idea to use the satellitedata, collected via remote sensing, to try topredict where and when outbreaks ofmalaria were likely to occur so the cash-strapped subtropical country could makebest use of its limited resources to attackthe outbreaks effectively.

“It’s hard to predict how widespreadthe epidemics will be,” says Roytman,adding that he was looking for new waysto use the agency's data. “It’s like pre-dicting the stock market. By the time themarket crashes, it’s too late. Because ofour study, we are able to predict threemonths ahead when, where and whetherthere will be an epidemic.”

This is crucial, he says, because the so-called vector-borne diseases—malaria,dengue, dog heartworm and yellow

fever—increasingly have become globalpublic-health concerns. “We studiedmalaria, the most widely spread, whichis coming back in a lot of poor coun-tries,” Rahman says. “But our techniquemay be used on the others.”

Roytman and Rahman focused on thewestern third of Chittagong, where thepopulation is most dense, because 60 to80 percent of Bangladesh’s malaria casesoccur there. “The people who live thereare indigenous, tribal peoples,” Rahmansays. “They are in rural areas, where theyare most susceptible to mosquitoes, andthey are not very educated.”

Through the federal agency, Roytmanand Rahman had access to two decades’worth of remote data measured by itsearth orbiting satellite. The satellitereports information in grids of 4 kilome-ters by 4 kilometers, about the size of aBangladeshi village, and highlights areasof lush vegetation by detecting chloro-phyll in leaves and reflecting theirimages. “We also had people on theground reporting on the quality of vege-tation so we could come up with amodel,” Roytman says.

Since mosquitoes feed on vegetation,“In the areas where there is less vegeta-tion, there are fewer mosquitoes and

fewer cases of malaria. We also couldmeasure the temperature from thereflection.”

Thanks to Rahman, they also hadmalaria statistics collected from theDirectorate General of Health of theBangladesh Ministry. “I’m an engineer,and I know the son of the directorbecause we were in the same profession-al organization,” Rahman says. “It was hewho helped us get this data. It wouldhave been difficult if not impossible forus to do this study without the help ofthe government.”

This ground data, says Felix Kogan, aphysical scientist at the U.S. agency, whois collaborating with Roytman andRahman, was crucial to the study’s suc-cess. “The satellite data is remote—notdirect—and has to be verified from theground. With the data Rahman collect-ed, we found correlations and developeda methodology. Without the grounddata, we could not say anything aboutthe malaria.”

Abdur Rahman Khan, chief ofBangladesh’s health department, calls thestudy “a valuable contribution,” addingthat it “will be helpful in monitoringmalaria epidemics” and in preventionand control.

Because Bangladesh experienced anincrease in malaria cases in the 1990s, theresearchers looked at the data and thentargeted certain years in that time frame.“We chose the years 1997 and 1998because they represented extremes,”Rahman says. “The smallest percentage ofcases—18 percent—occurred in 1997and the largest percentage—24 percent—occurred the year after.”

Roytman and Rahman correlated epi-demiological and environmental data ofBangladeshi malaria cases with the satel-

S P E C I A L S E C T I O N

HIROSHI MATSUI,HUNTER COLLEGE

For Hunter CollegeAssociate Prof.

Hiroshi Matsui, thebiggest ideas are theones on the smallestscale. He hopes thathis work, whichinvolves using thebody’s biologicalbuilding blocks tofabricate electroniccircuits that arethousands of timestinier than microcir-cuits, may lead tothe design andengineering ofdevices in electronics,communications,solar cells, photonics,drug delivery, tissueengineering andmedical imaging.

SAVING LIVESCombatingmalaria andother airbornediseases in SouthAsia is the workof scientists atCity College whoseek to predictwhen epidemicswill erupt.

KARYL SWARTZ,LEHMAN COLLEGE

International pri-mate behavior

expert Karyl Swartzis taking the old“monkey see, mon-key do” approach toget new insightsinto reaching andteaching peoplewho cannot speak.The Lehman Collegepsychology profes-sor records thethinking processesand behavior ofrhesus monkeys asthey respond tocognitive tasks.

8 CUNY MATTERS — Spring 2007

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VIRTUAL ‘SHEPARD’Hunter CollegeAssociate ProfessorIoannis Stamos, left,and City CollegeProfessor GeorgeWolberg with their3D Leica HDS 2500camera that scannedShepard Hall (inbackground).

CUNY MATTERS — Spring 2007 9

lite-based vegetationhealth indices—vegeta-tion condition index, tem-perature condition indexand vegetation healthindex—to make reason-able forecasts.

“I wanted to do thisresearch because I wantedto try to save people’slives,” Rahman says,adding that the data canbe used to help othercountries with otherproblems. “In addition tomalaria, we could predictfloods and droughts andair pollution,” he says.Already, Roytman says,they have applied forgrants to conduct a moreextensive malaria studyon Bangladesh and the World Bank hascontacted the ocean and atmosphericagency to possibly do a similar study forthe South American nation of Colombia.

The ultimate goal for Rahman, who isa research associate for the agency andan engineering consultant for a privateU.S. company, is to set up aCUNY/National Oceanic andAtmospheric Administrative office inBangladesh as a joint operation with theUniversity of Dhaka.

“The center would be a great advan-tage for CUNY,” Roytman says. “Becausethe global economies are so interwoven,it is important for us as a university togive our students exposure and skills todeal with an international market. A cen-ter like this would be invaluable. Itwould be a win-win situation for us.”

Practical ApplicationsOf Nanoparticles

CITY COLLEGE AssociateProfessor George John struckgold this summer: His recent

research, synthesizing gold nanoparticlesin a urea-based gel, not only made thecover of the May 24, 2006, edition ofthe prestigious Royal Society ofChemistry journal, ChemComm, but itsaccompanying iconic cover art alsosaluted the City of New York.

Under an electron microscope, the gelthat John synthesized was stacked in ver-tical sheets reminiscent of an aerial viewof the city’s skyscrapers. The magazinesuperimposed the two images to create apiece of cover art that was every bit asarresting as the research itself.

The study, titled “Smart Amphiphiles:Hydro/organogelators for In SituReduction in Gold,” was one of the mag-azine’s most accessed articles online.

Chemists have long beeninterested in developingways to create nanoscalesolid or semi-solid gels fromliquids so that they can beused as templates for drugdelivery, cosmetics, separa-tions and biometrics, butthere have been few studieson functional use.

John and postdoctoralfellow Praveen KumarVemula wanted to knowhow the gold nanoparticleswould arrange themselves inthe gel and how stable theywould be.

“We wanted to answerthese questions: Are they dis-tributed all over the gel? Orare they aligned in a particu-lar orientation along with thegel microstructures? This is

especially interesting in building alignedarrays of gold nanoparticles for possibleapplication in optical devices,” John says.

From June to December 2005, hesynthesized various mono-substitutedurea derivatives, and the study showedthat the amphiphiles—so-called becausethey have both a hydrophilic andhydrophobic nature—were efficient gela-tors for water and various organic sol-vents and carry a free terminal aminegroup that may reduce the gold to formthe nanoparticles.

As is often the case, the details of thescientific research that he carried outmight cause a certain numbness in theeyes and mind of a casual reader, butJohn says that there are very practicaland, he would dare say, hoped-for resultsfrom this tinkering with amphiphiles andcreating of nanoparticles.

“The most important thing,” Johnsays, “is that after the nanoparticles arereduced, they retain their gelatin proper-

S P E C I A L S E C T I O N

NANOPARTICLESDr. George John,professor ofChemistry at CityCollege, seen herewith a rotary evapo-rator, hopes to usebyproducts likeindustrial waste asan alternate feedstock for organicsynthesis.

JEFFERY M. HALPERIN,QUEENS COLLEGE

In his latest study onchildhood attention

deficit/hyperactivitydisorder, QueensCollege psychologyProf. Jeffrey M.Halperin is followingmore than 200preschoolers, one-third of whom showno signs of AD/HD,for five years.The findings fromneuropsychologicaland academictests will provide along-range body ofobjective data thatwill help parents,teachers and doctorsmake informeddecisions aboutappropriate treatment.

ties and trap the gold nanoparticles inthe supramolecular assemblies. Thesegels should help us develop nanostruc-tured-advanced materials from the gelsand metal nanoparticles, which may beused in the promising field of supramol-ecular devices.”

Ultimately, John hopes to use byprod-ucts like industrial waste as an alternatefeedstock for organic synthesis.

“My basic interest is the design andsynthesis of amphilic molecules frombio-based materials,” he says. “That way,we can make the amphiphiles andassemble them so we can make what weneed in a bottom-up fashion.”

But this, he says, “is still only a dream.”

Walking, Virtually,Through Shepard Hall

LET’S SAY you’re going to aYankees game. But you want tosee the seat and the view it will

provide before you buy the ticket. Whatdo you do? If City College ProfessorGeorge Wolberg and Hunter CollegeAssociate Professor Ioannis Stamos haveanything to say about it, you will simplyenter the Stadium’s website and click onthe seat to obtain a virtual 360-degree3-D view of where you’ll be rooting forthe home team while eating yourpeanuts and Cracker Jacks.

Using multiview geometry, coupledwith digital photos and data from laserrange scanners, Wolberg, in a joint effortwith Stamos, is working on an automaticsystem that will create photorealistic 3-D models of buildings like the Stadium.

“You can do this manually now, butit’s very labor intensive,” Wolberg says.“And even when it is done, you sacrificedetails. Right now, this work would takea week; with this system, it would be amatter of minutes.”

As Wolberg and Stamos envision it,the automatic modeling system—whichwould be a boon to architects, urban andmilitary planners, designers of 3-D car-navigation systems, video-game makersand even Hollywood movie-makers—would be much more efficient than pre-vious methods.

To illustrate the process, Wolberg andStamos chose Shepard Hall, the 1907neo-Gothic historic landmark that hasbecome City College’s hallmark. Theyand their team spent a day taking 24 3-Dlaser range scans of its rich architecture,which includes pairs of iconic gargoyles,and then spent a few minutes shooting24 2-D digital photos of the building.“The laser scanner, which weighs about80 pounds, is on a tripod,” Wolberg says.“With the current technology, it takes 10to 15 minutes to get each scan.”

The 2-D images or textures wereautomatically mapped or registered withthe 3-D scans and projected onto a pairof models, a process Wolberg likens todraping wallpaper. “We generate a pair of3-D models of the scene,” he says. Theresult is a Shepard Hall visible in all itsglory, right down to the detailed markingof every stone and the eye of each loom-ing gargoyle. His complete explanationof the complex process is available bygoing to Google video and typing, "CityCollege Shepard Hall."

“There will come a time when therewill be 3-D digital cameras,” Wolberg says.“And laser range scanners will get evenfaster, and someday soon we will be ableto get the dense 3-D images in the time ittakes to walk around the building.”

Or the time it takes to select the bestseat in Yankee Stadium.

Prof. John’s recent

research, synthesizing

gold nanoparticles

in a urea-based gel,

made the cover

of the May 24 edition

of the Royal Society

of Chemistry

Journal ChemComm.

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feet, you would have beachfront propertyin Pennsylvania and every coastal city inthe world would be under water. And at230 feet, the Statue of Liberty would beunder water almost up to her shoulders.Even 40 feet destroys every coastal city,and Queens and Brooklyn would be underwater and Manhattan would be tinyislands.”

The changes that global warming willbring should be viewed as challenges andopportunities, Solecki says, adding thatthere will be tradeoffs. “There will be lessice to shovel off the sidewalk,” he says.“The energy demand in the winter willdecrease, but it will be offset by theincrease in electricity demand in the sum-mer. The use of more fossil fuels will sendup more pollutants and will increase sum-mer asthma attacks. Some parts of theworld, like Canada, will benefit agricultur-ally because of longer growing seasons.

The bottom line, Pekar and Solecki say,is that global warming is a part of thefuture. “We will be forced to re-

evaluate societal structure,” Solecki says.“We need to adapt to

these newrealities,

and whatwe do will

makesociety more

resilient.”

Global Warming:A City Under Water?

LONG BEFORE Al Gore’s “AnInconvenient Truth” made globalwarming such a hot topic, CUNY

researchers were taking the temperatureof the New York metro area to try to fore-cast the phenomenon’s effect on the cli-mate.

Hunter College Professor Bill Solecki,interim director of the CUNY Institute forSustainable Cities, is using the city as a labfor his work, and Queens College AssistantProf. Stephen Pekar is studying historicalsalinity changes in the Hudson River dueto runoff or discharge from precipitationto throw light on the dynamics ofAntarctica ice sheets.

According to Solecki, the city is a per-fect lab for understanding how urban envi-ronments can respond to and mitigate cli-mate change. “CUNY, as an urban univer-sity, is doing some important work, and itsrole will grow. There are few examples oflarge, extended metro areas, and New Yorkis one.”

Global warming, both researchers say,ultimately may be linked to a variety ofchanges, including stronger storms, flood-ing, intense heat waves, increased air pol-lution and even an influx of asthmaattacks.

“There have been significant changes inclimate throughout history,” says Solecki.“But the rate of change in terms of speedand the extent of the current change overa short period of time are unparalleled inearth history.”

In and of themselves the changes thatoccur during global warming may notseem catastrophic, Pekar says, but theireffects can be wide ranging. “Sea surfacetemperatures increase, and the magicnumber for hurricanes is 80 degrees. ByAugust 7, 2006, for example, there hadbeen three Category 5 hurricanes in theGulf of Mexico, and the temperature inthe water in New York City that same daywas high—78 degrees.”

Likewise, in the next century, the globalsea level is likely to rise three feet. “Thismeans the shoreline will retreat signifi-cantly,” Pekar says. “And it means thecoastal communities will be more suscep-tible to flooding.”

According to Pekar’s local research,which looks at climate data in New YorkCity for the last 6,000 years, warmer mayalso mean drier. “My studies suggest thatthe last time it was warmer, which was5,000 years ago, the salinity was muchhigher than today, which means that therewas was less discharge and less precipita-tion and my thoughts are that there weredrier summers.”

Pekar’s research on the Antarctica icesheets offers further suggestions regardingNew York City’s future. “The ice sheets aremuch more susceptible to climate changethan we thought,” he says. “If the east andwest sections melt, sea level will rise 210feet, and if the ice sheets in Greenlandmelt, it will raise sea level 230. At 210

Hurricanes, The BernoulliEffect, and Other Killers

WHILE KATRINA has focusedthe eyes of forecasters on thefuture, Queens College

Geology Professor Nicholas K. Coch hasput himself in the eye of the hurricane bypeering into the past.

The self-described forensic hurricaneol-ogist is studying historic hurricanes, and hesays that if history repeats itself, New YorkCity, which was hit in 1821, 1893 and1938, will really find itself struggling whenthe next one hits. “No major hurricane hashit a major coastal city except for NewYork in 1938,” he says. “When a hurricanehits a city, it’s a whole other ballgamebecause the subterranean infrastructure,including the subway system, will beaffected.”

Northern hurricanes are “uniquely dan-gerous,” he says, “because they are infre-quent and move two times as fast asSouthern ones and the wind fieldenlarges.”

He points to the hurricane of 1893,which made a direct hit on New York City.

“This was the first record of a hurri-cane’s hitting skyscrapers,” he says. “Whenthe wind goes between two skyscrapers, itwill suck the windows out, and when itgets to the end of the corridor they form,the Bernoulli Effect occurs, and the windspeeds up and the windows will beknocked inward.”

The city’s unique geographi-cal position makes it particular-ly vulnerable to damage. “Thereare only three coasts that haveright angles in the UnitedStates,” Coch says. “The FloridaPanhandle, Mississippi, and thearea of New York and NewJersey. A right angle is a killersituation for a hurricane, andthe right angle formed by NewYork and New Jersey is themost dangerous in the country.No matter where the hurricanehits, New York City gets flood-ed because we’re the rightangle.”

By studying hurricanes ofthe past, Coch says, it’s possibleto predict the course of futurestorms. Coch, for instance,recently was able to chart adeadly colonial hurricane of1635, supplying extensive dataso a computer model could bemade.

“None of this is hypothesis;all of this is record,” he says,adding that he hopes hisresearch saves lives.

S P E C I A L S E C T I O N

DERRICK BRAZILL,HUNTER COLLEGE

The simple socialamoeba, Dictyo-

stelium discoideum,may be the key toadvances in woundhealing and organregeneration and tounderstanding andhalting cancerprogression inmammals, accordingto Hunter CollegeAssociate Prof.Derrick Brazill, whoselab is studying howthe density of theamoeba’s cellschanges with theamount of theprotein called conditioned mediumfactor.

SEAN AHEARN,HUNTER COLLEGE

What do deadcrows, Bengal

tigers and the BigApple have in com-mon? They all havebeen “mapped” byHunter CollegeGeography Prof. SeanAhearn.Unlike conventionalroad maps, whichare static, Ahearnsays his maps, whichare extensions of thefield of geographicinformation science,allow him to modelthe world “as adynamic, spatiallycorrelated phenome-non that is influ-enced by processesacross space, timeand over differentscales.”And they have takenhim all over the map,including Nepal andThailand, where hehas tracked Bengaltigers and riddenelephants with hislaptop, seen below.The health depart-ments in the City ofChicago and theState of Californiaare using his modelsto predict the risk ofinfection from WestNile virus that issignaled by dyingcrows, and in NewYork, he is helpingbuild a digitalbase-map of thecity’s infra-structure.

Sea LevelOn aWarmerEarth

HURRICANE HISTORY Prof. NicholasK. Coch studies past hurricanes suchas a 1938 hurricane shown herethrashing along a seawall on theNew England coast, which killed 10people in New York City and causedmillions of dollars in damage.

10 CUNY MATTERS — Spring 2007

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of many were still associated with racesegregation and oppression of blacks.

Signal Corps records show that later in1885, there commenced a series of puni-tive actions against Greene that lasteduntil he finally agreed to being dischargedfrom the service.

In October of 1885, officials of theSignal Corps issued an order demotingGreene from his position in Pensacola,Fla., where he was in charge, and placinghim under a white corpsman who, likeGreene, was a First Class Private.

A newspaper article from those daysnoted that whites in Pensacola had beenvery unhappy with Greene’s being placedthere.

Soon after the October demotion, onNov. 14, 1885, there came a special ordertelling Greene to proceed to Rochester,New York, to report for duty as an assis-tant to Sgt. Edward W. McGann, who wasin charge of that station.

A Strange AccusationGreene’s most difficult period would

come in the ensuing months, through 1886and 1887, as he worked there in Rochester.

One claim against Greene seems espe-cially unlikely, given that he had excelledin the militaristic environment of CityCollege, where there was a strict code ofconduct and punctuality in those years.With rules that were later deemed exces-sive, the college gave out demerits for badconduct or lateness, and would dismissstudents who accumulated a hundreddemerits in a semester, according a 1907book The City College: Memories of SixtyYears, by Philip J. Mosenthal (Class of ’83)and Charles F. Horne (Class of ’89).

Given that background, the accusationof August 22, 1886 would seem out ofcharacter for Greene.

On that day, SecondLieutenant F.M.M. Beall,a Signal Corps inspector,charged that Greene hadfiled a false report of hisweather observations.Beall was effectivelyaccusing Greene of lyingby several minutes aboutthe time on the report.

Beall says that at 2:59p.m. he went to the officewhere Greene was sup-posed to be completinghis three o’clock report,but that Greene was notin the office. Beall main-tained that Greene hadtherefore lied about filinga three o’clock report andput this in a letter of rep-rimand to higher-ups.

In his written defense,obtained also from theNational Archives, Greenemaintained that he hadheard a three o’clock bellas he was leaving theoffice to file the reportand believed that was in fact the time; healso maintained that he had completed thereport no earlier than 2:56 p.m.

Given the tone of Beall’s threateningletter, Greene apparently felt compelled toadd a plea that “I may be given a chanceto prove myself, by the strictest obedienceto orders and faithful performance of dutyin the future, worthy to remain in theservice.”

In the coming months, the sergeantwho was Greene’s immediate supervisor,Sgt. McGann, would go on to compile alist of people to whom Greene owed

money, passing that information on tohigher-ups.

(Curiously, that accusation seems to becontradicted by an August 23, 1886“Inspector’s Confidential Report” in whichBeall explicitly stated that Greene was“not in debt.”)

Nonetheless, a coup de grace came ninemonths later, as Sgt. McGann asserted thaton the morning of May 19, 1887, Rochesterauthorities had arrested Greene “in a lowcolored gambling resort…bringing disgraceon this office and the service …”

Signal Corps authorities said at thetime that Greene admitted the offensesand agreed that he was not fit to remain inthe service.

Racial Code WordsThe final official document in the mat-

ter was written May 21, 1887 by the newSignal Corps Commander, Gen. AdolphusW. Greely.

The letter, addressed to the AdjutantGeneral, is extraordinary in that it statesits case against Greene even while openingthe door to a belief that Green’s race mayhave been a factor.

Greely wrote that his predecessor (Gen.Hazen, who had died the previous January)had been afraid to take action againstGreene because, having opposed Greene’senlistment in the first place, Hazen fearedhe would be accused of race bias.

“The present Chief Signal Officer hasno such fears,” he wrote, referring to him-self in the third person and adding that he“believes that his four years service as anofficer of colored troops renders it certainthat any recommendation which he makesin this case cannot be considered as ema-nating from an officer prejudiced againstthe colored race.”

It’s worthy of mention that Hazen him-self, three years earlier, had said virtuallythe same thing—that his own experience

commanding “colored” troops precludedany accusation of racism.

Explaining his position back thenagainst Greene’s enlistment, Hazen hadwritten: “I have never had prejudice onaccount of color…and was one of the firstofficers in the regular army commissionedto command regular colored troops.” (Thatletter of July 23, 1884 to then Secretary ofWar Lincoln is in a compilation puttogether by Scholarly Resources ofWilmington, Delaware, titled Blacks in theMilitary: Essential Documents.)

In successfully recommending Greene’s

CUNY MATTERS — Spring 2007 11

� � �

After his discharge in June of 1887,Greene returned to live with his fatherHallet, his mother Susan, and his sistersCornelia and Lucia back on W. 31st Street.Then sometime after 1900 he married animmigrant from Guyana named Lillian,with whom he raised at least one child, adaughter named Louise, according toCensus records.

Greene took jobs where he could findthem, but it seems he did not secure any-thing remotely commensurate with thepromise he once showed as a student atCity College decades earlier.

Nineteenth-century Manhattan was anespecially rough place for African-

Americans. And in thedecades after the CivilWar, whites increasinglycame to feel that it “wastime…to come to anunderstanding with theBest Men of the South,end misguided reformefforts, and unite indefense of property,”says the 1999 PulitzerPrize-winning book,Gotham: A History ofNew York City to 1898,written by BrooklynCollege HistoryProfessor Edwin G.Burrows and GraduateCenter and John JayHistory ProfessorMichael Wallace.

Unhappy in New York, most of theGreene family moved to Fairfield, Conn.and William went first to Brooklyn and thento New Britain, Conn. In the early 1920s inNew Britain he worked at the R and EManufacturing company. A 1928 towndirectory lists his job as janitor. By 1931 heand his wife no longer showed up in theaddress listings, and the year and circum-stances of their deaths are unknown so far.

But in Fairfield, a distant relative (bymarriage) is still living in the house thatWilliam Hallett Greene’s parents occupiedin the early 1900’s. Her name is EdithGibson Rodgers. She does missionary workwith the First Baptist Church of Stratford,Conn., and in her younger years had beena psychiatric nurse.

Fascinated when told Greene’s story,Rodgers allowed CUNY Matters to spendhours in the dusty and extremely clutteredattic, where a search turned up a numberof old documents and old correspon-dences, some of which bore WilliamHallett Greene’s name but said virtuallynothing beyond mentioning him.

Among the items at the house was a19th-century catechism of the WestminsterAssembly, bearing William H. Greene’s sig-nature. The book began with the theologi-cal question “What is the chief and highestend of man?” followed by the answer:“Man’s chief and highest end is to glorifyGod, and fully to enjoy him for ever.”

Rodgers said she believes the actionstaken by Army superiors against Greenewere “atrocities” and that Greene shouldbe considered a hero for what he wentthrough, whether he gambled or not.

“The burdens on his shoulders were tentimes greater than anything black soldiersfaced” during World War II, she said.

“The whip might not have been lashingat his back but it was lashing his mind,”Rodgers added. “He had all this educationand they tried to break him. But theycouldn’t break him.”

Greene must have felt somewhat bro-ken, but how much so is a question that hishaunting 19-year-old eyes cannot answer.

First Black Member of U.S. Signal Corps, a Victor and a Victimdismissal in 1887, the new Signal CorpsCommander, Gen. Greely, went on toexplain that he “does not recommend acourt-martial, on the ground of theexpense to the United States and becauseof the experience the Army has once hadin trying a colored cadet, when a degree ofpublic excitement entirely disproportion-ate to the case was engendered.”

The last reference was apparently to thecase of Lt. Henry O. Flipper, who in 1877became the first African-American tograduate from West Point. In 1880 Flipper,serving as quartermaster at Fort Davis inTexas, was charged with embezzlementand court-martialed. Though acquitted onsome charges, he was found guilty of “con-duct unbecoming an officer” and given adishonorable discharge.

For the rest of his lifeFlipper tried to convincethe country he was false-ly accused. In 1999, morethan half a century afterhis death, President BillClinton pardoned him.

Of course, it was aparticular blow to fulldisclosure that Gen.Greely chose not tocourt-martial Greene.That decision had theeffect of preventing thepublic—and history—from judging more fairlythe actions taken againstGreene. A full militarytrial would haverequired both sides toput their cases on the public table.

Little was published about the Greeneaffair in 1887, other than reports in theArmy and Navy Journal and The New YorkTimes citing official statements againstGreene, who was only 22 years old as he leftthe service that he had once so deeply and

patriotically wanted to represent.

Why So Patriotic?Reviewing the Greene case, a

question comes naturally to mind.Why did a young man so talentedand with stellar credentials chooseto enter the U.S. Army as a pri-vate, with relatively scant pay,scarcely more than a dollar a day?

Other members of the Class of’84 had aspirations more conven-tional for the best and brightest ofNew York. One class member,Julius Mayer, would go on tobecome the State Attorney General.Another, Alfred Stieglitz, did notcomplete studies leading to hisdegree, but achieved great renownas a photographer and art collector.

One answer to the questionwhy Greene was obsessed withjoining the army lies in the natureof mid-19th century City College.It was then a virtual “child of WestPoint” with “West Point traditionsof strict discipline and the impor-tance of higher mathematics, ofdrawing, and of thorough training

in English,” says the book, The City College:Memories of Sixty Years. Also, the first twoCCNY presidents—Horace Webster andWebb—were West Point alumni.

Add to the above another fact—thatlarge numbers of City grads not onlyserved during the Civil War, but wereamong the soldiers who put down the1863 Manhattan Draft Riots, in whichmobs of Irish immigrants beat and lynchedlocal blacks—and one can see why servicein the U.S. army would have had a singularappeal for a native black New Yorker likeGreene.

� continued from page 6

CCNY President Alexander Webbinterceded to get Greene into theSignal Corps.

Enlistment papers signed by William H. Greene. A ‘Scars and Marks’ sec-tion (not shown) said: ‘a colored man: Enlisted for the Signal Corps, U.S.Army by order of the Secretary of War.’

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In its six-decade history, the hospitalitymanagement department of New YorkCity College of Technology has earned a

reputation for producing chefs for some ofthe world’s greatest restaurants, but 2007will go down in the review books as a five-star year.

That’s because a pair of chefs with CityTech credentials—one an alumnus, onestill a student—are working in two of themost famous kitchens in the country—atthe White House and at Gracie Mansion.

Bill Yosses, who graduated in 1982 withan associate’s degree, got the sweet job inJanuary when Laura Bush asked him tostep in as the presidential pastry chef. Thenews hit the national wires, serving upscoops of culinary-culled headlines like“Pastry Chef Joining the Upper Crust.”

That same month Feliberto Estevez—who has four more classes to completebefore earning his associate’s degree—alsofound himself in the spotlight. MayorMichael Bloomberg appeared at City Techfor his annual State of the City Address,and His Honor right away let it be knownthat City Tech was close to his heart; thatis to say, his stomach.

Bloomberg told the gathering that stu-dent Estevez was top chef at GracieMansion, and he furthermore remarkedthat City Tech “has one of the finest hospi-tality management programs in thenation.”

The Mayor said, “One of City Tech’scurrent students happens to be the mostimportant man at Gracie Mansion, theexecutive chef, Feliberto Estevez.” ThenBloomberg quipped, “I think I get to eathis final exam, so I hope he does well.”

Estevez has been cooking for mayoralevents ever since Bloomberg was electedin 2002.

The recipe for the successes of Yossesand Estevez? Each gives copious credit toan essential ingredient: City Tech.

Changing Careers, SweetlyFor Yosses, City Tech offered a chance

to change careers in mid-life and, alongthe way, land a cream—that is, dream—job.

The 53-year-old Yosses was born inToledo, Ohio, and growing up there, “din-nertime was sacred,” Yosses said. “Mymother loved to cook and bake recipesfrom magazines.”

There was something about bakingthat touched him pleasantly in hisspirit, Yosses said. But in his twentiesand early thirties, he found himselfworking full-time in the sales depart-ment of Air France.

Then, when those inner connec-tions to the activity he really loved—baking—grew too strong to ignore, aready-bell within him went off andYosses decided to enroll at City Tech.

He came to love the place.Yosses said that, like him, many

other students were career changers.“There were people out of highschool, and there were people olderthan I, people who were lawyers andaccountants,” he said, still in awe atthe diversity of the study body, in eth-nicity and economic background.

He still remembers his instructors.“These people inspire you for life,” heremarked in a telephone interview.

Pretty much right after graduation,Yosses got what he wanted, a chance topractice his newly acquired skills in inter-esting places. “I was lucky enough to get aplacement in Europe, thanks to ProfessorThomas Ahrens, who was a great friendand mentor to many of us,” he recalled.

His career path took him to severalnoted restaurants, including Josephs by

Citarella, Bouley and Tavern on the Green.And then earlier this year—in mid-

life—he reached a career pinnacle of sorts,as he was appointed chef at the WhiteHouse.

Yosses says the presidential palate runstoward healthy fruit and fruit-baseddesserts, although “the Bushes both lovechocolate. Mrs. Bush loves food and lovestalking about menus. She has lots of ideasand is always looking for things that areoriginal, healthy and tasty.”

What Yosses especially enjoys about hiswork is the act of creating. “I enjoy makingpastries because it is precise and it has anarchitectural aspect,” he said.

To the (Gracie) Mansion BornEstevez, who is from the Dominican

Republic, got his first culinary crash coursesin his early teens as he helped his mothermake family meals. “She was a school-teacher, and she came home every day dur-ing the siesta period, from noon to 2, to putthe finishing touches on the beans and rice,

and I would chop things and add garlic andspices to the dishes,” he recalled fondly.

He eventually immigrated to theUnited States, settling in New York. Alongthe way he began working at jobs thatvery much suited his tastes. Estevez waspromoted from cook to banquet chef atthe Four Seasons in only eight years, andwas the executive chef for Manhattan’sChez Louis before he went to Gracie

Mansion.But school always seemed forbidding to

him. “I never was a good student,” said the42-year-old Estevez.

Eventually, he concluded that if hewanted to continue climbing the culinaryladder, a degree would give him a helpfulboost. Besides, he’s recently harboredthoughts of teaching the culinary artssomeday.

And so he enrolled at City Tech, wherehis long-held fears were put to rest, andhis dreams were encouraged.

The courses there, Estevez says, are acombination of practical training and liber-al arts instruction, a blend that he findspleasing. “I’m taking math, English andaccounting along with the food and wineclasses,” he said.

The City Tech classes have helped himdeal more efficiently with his currentduties, which include planning, purchasingand preparing, Estevez says. At GracieMansion, where the mayor often hostsethnic-themed events, Estevez and his staff

of four cooks are called uponto create a variety of melting-pot dishes that celebrate thediversity of the Big Apple’sculinary culture.

“It’s a unique opportunityto work with so many differ-ent cuisines,” he said, addingthat “we reach out to commu-nity chefs, and they help us.Every week is different. I’vedone Irish breakfasts, Italianfoods, and during the sum-mertime, we have barbecues.Every week is different.”

Now Hoping to TeachYosses and Estevez are

looking forward to many moredinners in their respective,famous kitchens. “This issomething I have wanted allmy life,” Yosses said.

“I’ve reached my goal, andI’m happy to stay as long as they want me.”

Estevez can’t wait to get his degree,which he’s hoping to earn in a year.

“I wish I could take a full load of classesin each semester, but it’s not possible. I’mtoo busy in the kitchen,” he said. “One day,I would love to teach cooking, and for thatyou need credibility. That’s why I want tofinish the degree. I want to be prepared forthe future.”

While visiting City Tech recently, Mayor Michael Bloomberg proudly let it be known that histop chef at Gracie Mansion, Feliberto Estevez, was a City Tech student.

12 CUNY MATTERS — Spring 2007

Pardlo Wins Book Prize

Medgar EversCollege

Professor GregoryPardlo has won the2007 AmericanPoetry Review/Honickman FirstBook Prize, becom-ing the first writer of color to win theprestigious award.

Pardlo, an Assistant Professor ofEnglish and creative writing, receivedthe prize for his manuscript of poems,Totem, which will be published thisfall by Copper Canyon Press.

Totem was selected from a pool of850 submissions. In addition to publi-cation of the manuscript, theAmerican Poetry Review/HonickmanPrize offers a $3,000 award.

SEEK Director Honored

Professor Frank S. Franklin, directorof the Queens College SEEK

Program for academically disadvan-taged students, was recently honoredby the United Negro College Fund,along with former Presidents GeorgeH.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

At the organization’s 63rd anniver-sary dinner, Franklin received theUnited Negro College Fund/GreaterNew York Inter-Alumni Council’sDistinguished Alumni Award for hisfund-raising service and active partici-pation. (The former presidents werehonored for their fundraising effortsin the wake of Hurricane Katrina.)

Fellowships to Professors

Five Brooklyn College junior human-ities faculty members have received

Whiting Foundation fellowships.The Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation

awards are for non-tenured facultydeemed to be among “the very bestteachers.” The winners are releasedfrom teaching duties so they can pur-sue scholarly interests.

Receiving a full-year WhitingFellowship is Assistant ProfessorCelina Su, of the Political ScienceDepartment.

Receiving one-semester Fellowshipswere: Assistant Professor JillianCavanaugh, of the Anthropology andArchaeology Department; AssistantProfessor Jennifer L. Ball, of the ArtDepartment; Assistant ProfessorRachel Kousser, also of the ArtDepartment; and Assistant ProfessorSaam Trivedi, of the PhilosophyDepartment.

ESL ‘Teacher of the Year’

An instructor who for 20 years hastaught English to speakers of

other languages has been namedESOL (English as a SecondLanguage) Teacher of the Year by TheNew York Times.

Ellen Quish, an instructor and pro-gram developer at LaGuardiaCommunity College’s Adult LearningCenter, was the winner of the city-wide competition.

“The New York Times is delightedto recognize Ellen Quish…in ourfirst-ever ESOL Teachers of the Yearprogram,” said Diane McNulty, execu-tive director of community affairs andmedia relations at the Times.

The winning teachers were recog-nized on February 22 at a special cer-emony where Quish received $2,500and a commemorative plaque.

FACULTY HONORS White House, Gracie Mansion Chefs Praise City Tech Program

City Tech graduate Bill Yosses is the chief pastry chef at the WhiteHouse, where he prepares desserts for the President, First Lady andguests.

ED R

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writes, “is to interrogate, often with theintention of disposing of, the cherishedcommonplaces of his culture.” Thought-provoking contradictions are “at the heartof the poetic vision.” Wittreich even con-sciously echoes Whitman’s famous line—“Icontradict myself,/( I am large, I containmultitudes)”—whenhe writes,“Some con-tradictionsmay achieveresolution inParadiseLost, but notall do, asbefits a poeticuniverse thatis large, thatcontains multi-tudes.”

The frustrat-ing contradic-tions and ambi-guities ofMilton’s threegreat final poems,Paradise Lost,Paradise Regained,

and Samson, are for Wittreich “a goad totruth” and “testify to the enduring value ofdiscussion, debate, dispute, dissent.” Theyalso remind us that easy binaries—Roundhead or Royalist? Democrat orRepublican? Arab or Israeli? Hamas orFatah?—offer a perfect excuse for avoidingserious reasoning: “The temptation isalways to choose sides when the wiserrecourse may be to choose not to choose.”

How, then, to read Samson Agonistes?Applying the poem to the war in Iraq,Wittreich chides the U.S. for its eagerness“to practice the politics of retaliation. ...America has yet to learn from Milton’stragedy that redemption comes notthrough repetition of the Samson storybut resistance to it.” The real lesson ofSamson for Wittreich is that “blood spilledin violence begets more violence”—a les-son now writ in 64-point font in Baghdad.

A corollary point repeatedly empha-sized in Why Milton Matters is Milton’sdedication to individual liberty, the “mas-ter-theme” of his prose works and, espe-cially, of Paradise Lost, which “everywhere

By Gary Schmidgall

As Joseph Wittreich, distinguishedprofessor of English at the

Graduate Center and HunterCollege, approaches the fresh woods andpastures new of retirement, he has chosento answer a simple but large question aboutthe most complex, radical, and political(also politicized) figure in the English liter-ary pantheon: John Milton.

Consisting of just three long, denselyend-noted chapters, Why Milton Matters:A New Preface to His Writings (Palgrave)has a passionate, valedictory “this I believe”quality, capping a long career dedicated tothe poet. If one begins the book dubiousof Wittreich’s view that “most of us agree”Milton (1608-1674) really matters in2007, by the end one is certainly con-vinced he should matter.

Wittreich also mounts a vigorous casefor the surprising assertion that Milton is“an ‘emphatically American’ poet.” Hisquoted phrase is from the pioneer 19th-century feminist Margaret Fuller, and herpraise of Milton is key to Wittreich’s ownview of the poet: “He understood thenature of liberty, of justice,” she wrote. “Heis one of the Fathers of the Age, of thatnew Idea which agitates thesleep of Europe” (a reference tothe libertarian revolutions of1848).

Arguing that “it is high timeto say that Milton is back in sea-son,” Wittreich notes that Hell’sAngels have ridden their heatwith text from Paradise Lost intheir pockets, that Malcolm Xwas ushered into his discoveryof the Muslim religion by read-ing the epic poem while inprison, and that novels likeRalph Ellison’s Juneteenth andToni Morrison’s Paradise res-onate a potent Miltonic context.

And then there was the sud-den celebrity after 9/11 ofMilton’s valedictory poem,Samson Agonistes. Wittreichnotes there were in 2003-4 nofewer than six New York Citypublic readings of the 1,800-line“dramatic poem” based on theBible’s Book of Judges. Why?Wittreich suggests the root rea-son is that Samson perfectlyepitomizes Milton’s supremegift as a poet and polemicist: theability to tempt readers intomutually contradictory interpre-tations of the characters he creates, mostfamously his Adam, Eve, Satan, andSamson.

For a world now clueless in Gaza (andthe whole fractured Middle East), Milton’sSamson, “eyeless in Gaza,” presents twohuge either-or questions. Does his destruc-tion of the Philistian temple represent thenoble “victory of patience and self-repres-sion—the Divine overcoming of evil withgood” (as one critic argues)? Or doesSamson, by turning himself into a humanWMD, figure all those people in historywho “ruthlessly override ethical objec-tions” and take upon themselves the officeof scourge of God (as another criticargues)? Or scourge of Allah (Sunni orShiite Allah?—take your pick). No wonderthat, after 9/11, the Boston Globe ran anop-ed titled “Was Samson a Terrorist?”

For Wittreich, such profoundly contra-dictory but arguable ways to read SamsonAgonistes are precisely why Milton shouldmatter: he forces the reader to think.Wittreich values Milton, finally, as a sub-versive questioner: “Milton’s project,” he

champions moral and political freedom.”Milton was a rebel with a cause—not theGood Old Cause of Cromwell’s republic,but the cause of the individual’s reasonedpursuit of truth. This is surely whyWittreich often refers to Milton as “a sect

of one” and describeshim as an authoralways inviting us to“read rebelliously.”

Wittreich doesnot draw the con-nection explicitly,but clearly hebelieves that atten-tive reading ofMilton wouldstrengthen ourdesire (and abili-ty) to resist thethreats to libertyand justice thathave arisen dur-ing the currentpresidency. Ifyou care aboutAbu Ghraib,rendition,justiceGuantánamo-style orabout gov-ernment

propaganda,surveillance,secrecy, and cen-sorship, Milton’sinterrogatory andresisting habits ofmind shouldmatter.

This is toimagine an idealworld, which, infact, was Milton’sultimate goal.Finding “theearthly founda-tions for a newJerusalem of thespirit,” Wittreichasserts, is “the veryheart of Milton’slast poems.” Theyremain decidedlyau courant,Wittreich saysseveral times,because they

were written “in the future tense.”Back in the real America, I worry. What

really matters here is whether the latestround went to Rosie or Donald agonistes,Paris Hilton’s global positioning, whichbasketball teams will make the Final Four,who will be left standing in “Survivor: Fiji.”I Googled “reality tv” and got more thanfour million links! What matters is stuffthat doesn’t matter one tiny bit.

Why Milton Matters is unlikely to makeit into Oprah’s book club. The author’sdeep immersion in Milton’s works and250 years of critical hue and cry will mostdelight his fellow Miltonists—and doubt-less provoke them to debate.

Still...we clearly need a wake-up callfrom our deep REM sleep of reason, ofwhich reality TV is but one glaring symp-tom. Who better to produce that wake-upcall than Milton, whose “usual haunt,”Wittreich believes, is “the mind, awakeningto more and more reality,” and whose “larg-er project” is always to show “a world awak-ening to new possibilities.” As Wordsworthfamously wrote more than 200 years ago,“Milton! thou shouldst be living at thishour.” The world still hath need of thee.

Poetry, From Rome to NY

Low Italian: Poems, adebut collection by

George Guida of the NewYork City College ofTechnology, conveys thecomic and tragic aspects ofethnic consciousness.

Guida is the Englishprofessor who co-founded theIntercollegiate Poetry Slam (contest) at theBowery Poetry Club in Greenwich Village.One reviewer of his new book calledGuida a “comic genius.”

Another admirer, Michael Palma, who is atranslator of Dante’s Inferno and poetry edi-tor of Italian Americana, said of Low Italian,“Those who never were Italian will be givena rare insight into what it feels like.”

The new book of poems was publishedby Bordighera Press, which specializes inprojects dealing with Italians in the UnitedStates.

Latino Catholics

David Badillo of LehmanCollege believes that to

fully understand the Latinoexperience, one must com-prehend the community’srelationship with theCatholic Church.

In his book, Latinos andthe New Immigrant Church,Badillo does precisely that, examining thehistory of Latino Catholicism in New YorkCity, Miami, San Antonio and Chicago.

Published by The Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, Badillo’s book integratesthe experiences of various Latino groups,including Puerto Ricans (who areAmericans by birth) and immigrantMexicans, Cubans and Dominicans.

Dr. Badillo is Associate Director forResearch at Lehman College’s BronxInstitute, which is dedicated to discussingand analyzing issues in the borough.

Cultural Diversity in Nursing

Marianne R. Jeffreys,Professor of

Nursing at the College ofStaten Island, has writtena book showing how theteaching of nursing mustchange in a new multi-cultural world.

Teaching CulturalCompetence in Nursingand Health Care, published by theSpringer Publishing Company of NewYork, is a 209-page guide providing nurs-ing educators with the “resources andtools” necessary to begin “teaching culturalcompetence.”

Knowledge about various cultures can“make the great difference in promotingwellness, preventing illness…and enhanc-ing the quality of life for all individuals,families and communities,” Jeffreys says inthe preface.

Drugs, Democracy in Brazil

In his book, Drugs andDemocracy in Rio De

Janeiro, John Jay College ofCriminal Justice ProfessorEnrique Desmond Ariastakes an ethnographicapproach to understandingurban violence.

Arias, AssistantProfessor of Government, looks at theongoing problems of crime and politicalcorruption that have led to widespreadmisery and human rights violations, notonly in Brazil but in many new democra-cies in Latin America.

Arias says the challenge is to build newsocial networks committed to controllingviolence. Drugs and Democracy was pub-lished by The University of NorthCarolina Press.

CUNY MATTERS — Spring 2007 13

BOOKTALK

The reallesson

of Samsonfor Wittreich

is that‘bloodspilled

in violencebegetsmore

violence.’

Back to the Future: Milton Regained

Sketch of Samson

A. G

ARTH

JONE

S

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IN THE SILENT sound-proofedroom, knowledge speaks softly.It is in this room that you maysee a spark of a new theory onthe origins of life, feel therhythms of a jazz composition,imagine the swoosh of an exot-ic fish or perhaps shed a tear

for the measured cry of a reformer seekingjustice in post-apartheid South Africa.The volumes that line the walls of theDissertation Reading Room, a library-within-a-library tucked inside CUNY’sGraduate Center, are where the expanseof human experience lies: biology tomusic, languages to zoology—hundreds ofpages for each dissertation, more than 1.3million pages in all.

Fundamentally, the dissertation readingroom honors scholarship.

“By locating it on the first floor, in anelegant room, we pay tribute to the life ofthe mind,” said President William P. Kelly.“This room reminds current doctoral stu-dents of their primary responsibility, toproduce new knowledge.”

A professorial space, the dissertationroom is unlike so much of the outsideworld that has become democratizedbeyond recognition in an emerging digitalage. “The tradition we extend has its ori-gins in the monastic creation of manu-scripts,” President Kelly said. “Like thosescholars, we are intimately involved in thepreservation and generation of knowledge.A room such as this speaks to that genesis,to the title professor—someone whoshares his knowledge with others. It’s thedetermining activity of the doctoral enter-prise.”

This storehouse of doctoral enterprisesalso has practical value; it is the first space,Kelly says, to which he takes potential sup-porters of the Graduate Center. “It is an

SOME DOCTORAL THEMES

VINCENT HENRY, a former New York CityPolice Departmentsergeant, studied thepsychological impactof exposure to deathin contemporary urbanpolicing. He complet-ed his dissertationshortly before the9/11 attack.

THE TRANSITION TO DEMOCRACYin post-apartheidSouth Africa underNelson Mandela wasexamined by AdamHabib in 1998.

FRIDA KAHLO’S LIFEhas been explored inHayden Herrera’s1981 dissertationwhich led to thebest-selling biogra-phy and feature film.

ROBERT CANDIDO’SDISSERTATIONdocumented howmore that 100species of floranative to the wood-lands and wetlandsof a Bronx park havedisappeared in thelast 60 years.

Blasting, Billowing, Bursting Forth with Knowledge,

14 CUNY MATTERS — Spring 2007

objective correlative of what we do so wellhere,” he said.

It is also the embodiment of theUniversity’s most advanced learning, thepursuit of the doctorate, a somewhatrecent phenomenon in the history of pub-lic higher education in New York City. TheUniversity awarded its first Ph.D.s in1965, four years after the GraduateCenter was created by an act of the StateLegislature and more than a century afterThe Free Academy, the forerunner oftoday’s University, was chartered.

The dissertation room’s contents repre-sent the growth of the Graduate Centeritself. More than 648 linear feet of blondwood enshrine the most recent of morethan 6,600 dissertations—those writtensince 1989. The balance is in the regularstacks, snaking through the library’s secondfloor. All but three of 31 disciplines are

represented in the dissertation room.Business dissertations are at BaruchCollege, engineering work is at CityCollege, and criminal justice projects areat John Jay College.

In the last four years alone, the increasein the number of doctoral students, andthe number of completed dissertations, hasrisen dramatically. Two hundred and fourdissertations were deposited in the libraryduring the 2002-2003 academic year. By2004-2005, the number jumped to 285.And in 2005-2006, the library received334, according to chief librarian JulieCunningham.

The dissertations, organized by year ofcompletion and then alphabetized byauthor, create a candy box of reds (mathand political science) greens (anthropolo-gy, chemistry, earth and environmental sci-ences), blues (music, classics, comparative

literature, urban education), browns (his-tory and speech), blacks (art history andengineering) and oranges (economics).Each colored spine represents an academicdiscipline. Blue binders deposited last yearmark the first dissertations in urban educa-tion, and the newest of the GraduateCenters offerings.

Dissertations line two tiers of walls inthe reading room: a set on the groundfloor adorns shelves wrapped around con-ventional library study tables, and a setabove fills shelves on a walk-around mez-zanine reached by a vintage Victorianstaircase saved from the century-old site,formerly the B. Altman Department Storebuilding.

The works are the product of years,perhaps lifetimes, of study and reflectionby doctoral candidates. They have inquiredinto mice and humans, water and earth,and uncovered some new facet of learningfor the world to consider. Read their pages,study their compositions, peruse theirphotographs, and be reminded that theseare also testimonials of late-night toiling,from the young composers and authors tothe up-from-the-outer-borough master’sstudents seeking greater understandinginto the social fabric of New York City.

In 1998, Adam Habib, a South Africanpolitical scientist who had withstoodimprisonment for his opposition toapartheid, wrote of the rigors of the disser-tation process in his preface to StructuralConstraints, Resources and Decision-Making:A Study of South Africa’s Transition toDemocracy. “Had it not been for the latenight duties he imposed on me in the first14 months of his life,” he wrote in acknowl-edging the “assistance” of his newborn son,Irfan, “this dissertation definitely would nothave been completed as quickly as it was.’’

While many of the topics on the

A RoomWith Purviews

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solving killings and even of seeing fellowofficers slain. And they provided richaccounts of the smells, sights and soundsthat accompanied the deaths they wit-nessed.

His work now has a catchy lay title.Death Work: Police, Trauma, and thePsychology of Survival (OxfordUniversity Press, 2004). Henry also wasthe first American police officer to beawarded a Fulbright Fellowship. He jokesthat he is probably the first publishedauthor-Fulbright Fellow-Ph.D. to directNew York City traffic.

Many dissertations have won awards intheir fields. For example, Soledad Cabezade Vaca wrote her 1993 dissertation,Internal Clock and Memory Processes inAnimal Timing, for the Learning Processesand Behavior Analysis program in psychol-ogy. It won a James McKeen Cattell Awardfrom the New York Academy of Sciences.According to psychology Executive OfficerBruce Brown, Cabeza de Vaca’s researchwith pigeons “led to a new interpretationof the effect of the interruption of timedstimulus … and suggested that memory foraccumulated time decays during the gap.”Confused? Don’t be.

Cabeza de Vaca says her work withpigeons was meant to understand behav-iors as simple as why humans get antsy attraffic lights and seem to have a built-inclock to anticipate when the light willchange. “We do not know much abouthow this remarkable ability to anticipateevents and act accordingly works,” she saidin a recent interview. Cabeza de Vacaselected pigeons for her research, she said,because they’re hearty, live long lives, andare easy to train. Also, human behaviorand a pigeon’s performance are based onthe same basic principles, she said. “Manyanimals, including humans, use time as acue for behaving,” she explained. “So, westudied what happens when the timingcue is disturbed or interrupted.”

Cabeza de Vaca, 56,from Madrid, Spain, isnow an assistant profes-sor studying the neuro-biology of drug abusein the Department ofPsychiatry at NewYork UniversitySchool of Medicine.She says she hasn’tbeen up to the dis-sertation room tosee her workbound there.“But I will. It’ssomething I’vewanted to do,to bring backmy ownmemories,”she said.

Anotherauthorcontem-

plated the bigband halls of New York City.

Consider Composition and Performance inContemporary New York City: Big Bands,1989-1999. Ph.D. author Alexander Stewart,who told his story in 480 pages, went insidethe Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, observing andasking questions about the trumpet section,trombone section, saxophone and rhythmsections of the band known for its presenceat the Village Vanguard every Monday nightfor the past 40 years. He interviewed 38 jazzmusicians from 1998 to 1999 and presentedhis dissertation in April 2000.

More than a few doctoral candidatestake on their Ph.D. work as a secondcareer. Some are past mid-life. Considerthe story of Esther Gitman, 66, wholaunched her Ph.D. in history in 1999 and

shelves seem at least broad enough to berecognizable as the evident work of an his-torian or a student of literature, stumperson what seem extremely narrow subjectsare to be found, as well. Consider, forinstance: The Functional Morphology ofthe Postcranium of Ptilocercus andTupaiines (Scandentia, Tupaiidae):Implications for the Relationships ofPrimates and other Archontan Mammals.Eric Sargis gave good years of research andwriting to this project, which got thestamp of approval in August, 2000. It is317 pages that can grip the attention evenof a generalist, who simply enjoys learningabout living things.

On page 32, Sargis talks about thegrasping capabilities of tree shrews, the tal-ents of which, we learn, have been inquestion since 1927. Then, on page 39, heoffers for our enjoyment pictures of theTupaia minor—many readers might knowthis mouse-like mammal by its more com-mon name, the lesser tree shrew—as itclutches crickets with one hand andreverses its hind feet. On the next page,see tupaia minor with right foot in planti-grade posture—the shrew walking on thesoles of its feet—and its “divergent leftpollex” or innermost digit of the forelimbor thumb grasping a dowel. Readers learnhow versatile is this diurnal, albeit nerv-ous, creature, found only in the wilds ofIndia or Southeast Asia.

Some of the work here has made itsway into popular culture. HaydenHerrera’s 1981 dissertation, Frida Kahlo:Her Life, Her Art became Frida: ABiography of Frida Kahlo upon which the2002 film Frida, starring Salma Hayek, wasbased. Art History Executive Officer KevinMurphy said Herrera’s was the “first schol-arly and definitive biography” of theMexican artist.

Herrera, for her part, described thelabors of writing a dissertation as a life-altering experience. She had planned on alife at work in a museum upon completingher studies at the Graduate Center.Instead, she has becomea biographer and haspublished books onArshile Gorky, HenriMatisse, Mary Frankand Joan Snyder, as wellas another book on FridaKahlo featuring herpaintings specifically.

“It was unimaginable tome that I could write abook, she said. “Writing itgave me a great deal of con-fidence and a sense of inde-pendence.” Currently, Herrerais at work on a biographyabout the sculptor IsamuNoguchi.

Occasionally, a dissertationtakes on an unexpected, andpoignant, timeliness. VincentHenry, formerly a member of theNew York City Police Departmentand now Associate Professor andDirector of the Homeland SecurityManagement Institute at Long IslandUniversity, deposited his criminal justicedissertation in June 2001. His topic: ThePolice Officer as Survivor: The PsychologicalImpact of Exposure to Death inContemporary Urban Policing.

Henry focused on how exposure todeath in the line of duty affects the livesof police officers. He studied the subjectfor 10 years. Fourteen weeks later, he sawhis theories played out during 9/11. Hisdissertation drew on interviews withscores of rookie officers, sergeants, crime-scene investigators and homicide detec-tives. They told tales of murders and sui-cides and accidental deaths; of killings, of

You’ve completed your coursework, chosena dissertation topic and gotten itapproved. You’ve researched it, written it

and defended it before a faculty committee. But,whether you’re a chemist, a classicist or scholarin any of 30 or so other disciplines, you’ve got onemore hurdle on the road to your Ph.D. You mustdeposit your dissertation with Judy Waldman atthe Graduate Center’s Mina Rees Library.

Doctoral candidates receive 13 pages ofinstructions on how to pre-pare their dissertations.Included are specificationsfor margins, fonts, layout,pagination, graphics andmore. As CUNY’s disserta-tion assistant, it’sWaldman’s job to makesure those specificationsare met. In fact, Waldmanis far more than anenforcer; she also consid-ers herself a sort of mater-nal guiding light to stu-dents at the culminationof their Ph.D. programs.

The ease with whichcomputers help to makecorrections to formattingerrors is one reason thatproducing a dissertation isless of a nightmare than itused to be, some recentPh.D.’s say. “By the timeyou get to that point [of depositing your disserta-tion], you’re so euphoric that you’ve finally fin-ished that it’s not really a big deal,” to follow therules, said Edward (Ted) Merwin, a 2002 Ph.D. inTheatre who wrote In Their Own Image: New YorkJews in Jazz Age American Popular Culture.

“I’d heard horror stories about margins,” saidThurston Domina, who earned a Ph.D. in sociologyin 2006 with Brain Drain and Brain Gain:Educational Segregation in the United States.

“I met with [Waldman] for maybe 15 minutes

to go over the format,” he said. “She asked me to change some color graphics

to black and white, I believe. It was painless, andit all came together very quickly.”

But Judy Waldman’s demeanor is another mat-ter. She takes a personal interest in the studentsthat rivals that of an old-fashioned doctor in arural town.

“I like working with people. I love to hear theirstories,” said Waldman, whose office is tucked

away in a corner of thelibrary’s second floor.

“They tell me abouttheir families, their jobs,their children. It’s a reallymixed group of people.”

In her 19 years as dis-sertation assistant, she’smet an engineer whodecided to go to lawschool; a musician andsinger who returned tocollege at age 51, earneda Ph.D. in biology and isnow an adjunct collegeinstructor; a Holocaustsurvivor “who worked in ashop downtown and manyyears ago decided thatgetting a Ph.D. was whathe really wanted to do”;and a U.S. Army colonelstationed in Tooele, Utah,who earned a doctorate in

business and hopes to teach at her alma mater,West Point.

“I’ve seen students ranging from their 30s toretirees over 70 who decided to go back to schoolfor a Ph.D.,” Waldman said, the age spread beingthe notable difference between the graduate andundergraduate experiences, she said.

“You go to an undergraduate graduation andstudents bring their parents and grandparents.But at the graduate level, it’s the reverse. Theybring their children and grandchildren.”

CUNY MATTERS — Spring 2007 15

MATERNAL GUIDING LIGHT

FROM THE STACKS

The Dissertation Assistant Who Eases the Pain

Judith Waldman

wrote her dissertation, Rescue andSurvival of Jews in the Independent Stateof Croatia, 1941-1945 just following thepeak of her career as a successful jewelryentrepreneur. Her multi-million dollarcompany, IEG Sales Company Inc., soldproducts to retail stores nationwide:Macy’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Lord &Taylor. Born in Sarajevo, Bosnia, Gitmanfled to the Italian military zone on theDalmatian coast of former Yugoslavia; sheand her mother escaped to Italy in 1943,after Italy capitulated to the Allied Forces.

She then returned to Yugoslavia in 1945and settled in Israel in 1949. In 1958 sheentered the Israeli army, serving in one ofits most prestigious combat units, and latersupported her family while her husband,whom she married in 1961, pursued aPh.D. in Engineering. Gitman eventuallyearned a B.A. in History and Sociology in1972 at Carleton University in Ottawa. Shewas 32. She then settled in Long Island andearned her M.A. in criminal justice at C.W.Post College of Long Island University. Shemoved to New York City in 1978.

Prompted 10 years ago by questionsfrom her daughter about her family’sexperience during the Holocaust, Gitmandecided to pursue another of manydreams: earning her Ph.D. She enrolledfirst in The Graduate Center’s LiberalStudies Program and then in its Ph.D. pro-gram in history; in 2002-2003, she wasawarded a Fulbright to Zagreb, Croatia.During that year, she spent every working

day poring over original source documents.With special permission from the Ministryof Science and Technology, she says shecopied anything that had to do with therescue or escape of Jews during theHolocaust. She uncovered a story of therelentless, human desire of ordinary peopleto help the Jews survive. She brought backcopies of thousands of documents and cre-ated a database of the names of Jews whowere rescued from Croatia.

“Most people write about the atrocity. Iwrote about the rescue,” Gitman, who liveson the Upper West Side, said in a phoneinterview. “My mission was to show that,even in the darkest hours of human histo-ry, there is the light of human generosity –in this case, the thousands of people whoput themselves in harm’s way to help theJews. Without them, I wouldn’t be heretoday. My Ph.D. is only the beginning ofmy efforts to tell this story of the desire ofordinary people to rescue and save others.”

In fact, Gitman one year ago received asix-month, student-in-residence, post-doctoral fellowship from the United StatesHolocaust Memorial Museum in Washing-ton, D.C. to continue her research.

� � �

The future of the dissertation room?Kelly says the digital age is not apt tomake the room obsolete. “As the palpableexpression of our work and our aspira-tions, it’s not likely to be replaced by digi-tal files or rolls of microfiche.”

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The City University of New YorkOffice of University Relations535 East 80th St.New York, NY 10021

FOR

MORE

, visi

t www

.cuny

.edu

and

click

‘eve

nts.’THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK may be the

biggest stage in the country, if not the world, with musical per-formances, dramatic performances, lectures and conferencesbeing offered year-round on its 23 campuses.

Topics at the conferences can be of the lighthearted variety, butoften they explore topics more typically associated with academicjournals. As an example of the latter, take the symposium sched-uled for April 17 at Hostos Community College in the Bronx.

The college’s Division of Academic Affairs and its LatinAmerican Writers Institute are co-sponsoring the “JewishDiaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

Scholars, artists and writers from across the United Statesand Latin America will present and debate the topic in round-table discussions and plenary sessions.

In the past, Hostos has stood out among U.S. colleges for itsexplorations of the African presence in Latin America, particu-larly in the Dominican Republic.

Serious pursuits, yes. But those of you who want your heartsunburdened should be of good cheer.

On April 23 and 27, at 7 p.m., the Alexander String Quartetis showing off its talent at the Baruch Performing Arts Center,with admission at $25 for the general public, and discountsavailable for those with CUNY ID’s.

On May 6, at 3 p.m., Queensborough Community College ispresenting the musical revue “Five Guys Named Moe,” with tick-et prices beginning at $35. And on May 7, at 7 p.m., vibraphonistBill Jacobs is performing at York College. Admission is free.

But back to the serious happenings. Those interested in top-ics ranging from terrorism to racial profiling can consider lec-tures and conferences being organized by the John Jay Collegeof Criminal Justice.

On May 18, for example, the college’s Prisoner ReentryInstitute will have an expert discussing “Perceived Criminality,Criminal Background Checks and the Racial Hiring Practicesof Employers.”

There’s much more to hear and see at CUNY’s colleges inall five boroughs, much of it free of charge.

Activities and performances can be found by going to CUNY’shome page, www.cuny.edu and then clicking the “events” link.

All of CUNY is a Stage

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