Discimus ut serviamus: We learn so that we may serve.
#4
What’s News
80th Anniversary
Website Goes Live
The first classes at Queens College were held on Oct. 11, 1937. To celebrate our history, we have created a website ( qc.cuny.edu/80 ) highlighting the achievements of the college and its many remarkable alumni. On the website you will find a video celebrating our college, a timeline of notable events in QC’s history, 80 Wow Points on the accomplishments--serious and otherwise--of faculty and alumni, exciting events happening in our anniversary year, and much more. Be sure to visit the website often as we will be updating it throughout our anniversary year.

Wow! #69
Fran Drescher, Ray Romano, and Jerry Seinfeld ’76 all starred in
hit comedy series that ran for years. Carol Leifer ’78 won four Emmy Awards for her scripts for Seinfeld .
Exploring the Lost Continent of Zealandia
The lost continent of Atlantis, a myth dating back to the days of ancient Greece, continues to assert its power over the human imagination even though Atlantis never existed. Perhaps that explains the international sensation caused by an article, “Zealandia: Earth’s Hidden Continent,” published in February in the scientific journal  GSA Today .
Attracting Stars to the Campus

A government building in Angola; a border crossing checkpoint in the former Soviet Union; a sidewalk café in Marseille; a political campaign headquarters in Iowa. Four far-flung places that shared one thing in common: They could all be found on the grounds of Queens College.
More accurately, the college provided locations that, in the jargon of the film industry as explained by Venue Rentals Director Dale Nussbaum, “could be cheated” into appearing to be those other places. Venue Rentals has been involved in quite a bit of cheating the past few years--as in the aforementioned instances for the television shows Madame Secretary, The Americans , and Saturday Night Live.

The significant growth in rentals for film and television (including commercials) came about when Nussbaum--whose office was already doing a fair amount of rentals for photo shoots, seminars, corporate events, and church and community groups--noticed that other CUNY campuses were doing a lot of rentals for film and TV shoots. Determined to learn more about location shooting in New York City, she attended a breakfast sponsored by Crain’s New York Business where the featured speaker was the head of the Mayor’s Office for Film, Theatre and Broadcasting. In attendance was the producer of the television show Elementary .

“I told him Queens College was available for location shooting, gave him my card, and within a week he came to visit the campus. That sparked the idea that if I could get one producer to come, I could get more if I just reached out to them.”
Some online research turned up contact information for location scouts and managers who focused on New York City. Nussbaum invited them to campus and learned what it was that they looked for in a location. “Our list of contacts began to grow and grow, and soon we were on their lists as a film-friendly school,” she says.

Having sold the film and television industry on coming to QC, Nussbaum next had to work on the reverse: selling the college on bringing the film and television industry to campus.
“I had to reach out to the departments and convince them,” she says, “that even though we’re invading your space, with your assistance, we’ll try to do it in the most minimally invasive way possible.”

What was most persuasive in getting cooperation was an incentive: For each day a department would be used for a location shoot, it would receive $1000. This was in addition to payment made to any department--such as OIT, Public Safety, Buildings & Grounds--whose personnel are taken away from their regular duties to facilitate a shoot. After these payments, the remaining money generated by these rentals goes to the President’s Office, which uses it for a variety of things, such as infrastructure repairs and special programs.

A recent occasion found Annette Bening, Samuel L. Jackson, Mandy Patinkin, and Olivia Wilde doing scenes in the library and at other campus locales for Life Itself, a movie due in theatres next year. If you look closely enough, you just might notice that the delivery taking place in a hospital room is actually occurring in a room in the Summit Apartments.

Not quite “life itself,” but close enough.
Building Futures
Edward Smaldone (l.) and fellow Copland School faculty member Donald Pirone at the Classical Recording Foundation awards ceremony last November.​
Edward Smaldone
What makes a great musician? As a guitarist, pianist, composer, professor, and the longest-serving director (2002–16) of the Aaron Copland School of Music (ACSM), Edward Smaldone has an opinion. “A musician--whether composing an original work, performing, writing a concert review, or putting together a lesson plan--has to think critically,” he says. “Our students learn all aspects of music, including theory, history, music analysis, and performance.”

Music Notes
Choral Society Holding Open Audition

The QC Choral Society is seeking new members for its upcoming season, which will feature such works as Mozart’s  Requiem and Benjamin Britten’s  War Requiem . Auditions for new members will take place on Wednesday, September 13, in Room 246 of the Music Building from 6 to 7:15 pm. Rehearsals are held on Wednesdays from 7:30 to 9:45 pm. Auditions consist of basic singing skills--no preparation is necessary.
Concert in Memory of
Andrew Saderman

Senior College Lab Technician Andrew Saderman passed away on June 18 after a brief battle with cancer. Andy was a QC graduate (BMus, 1978) and later received a master’s degree in collaborative piano from the New England Conservatory. He then trained as a piano technician (working at Steinway) and became a registered piano technician and a member of the Piano Technicians Guild. Andy joined the Copland School as a full-time piano technician in 1989, and was deeply beloved by his colleagues and by generations of students.

A memorial concert will be held on Monday,  September 25, at 7:30 pm   in LeFrak Concert Hall to launch the Andrew Saderman Memorial Scholarship Fund. It will feature performances by faculty, students, and alumni; remembrances by family and colleagues; and a reception. Anyone who wishes to make a contribution to this fund can do so by writing a check to the Andrew Saderman Memorial Fund and mailing it to Prof. Edward Smaldone, Associate Director, Aaron Copland School of Music, 65-30 Kissena Blvd., Queens, NY 11367. All donations are tax-deductible. You can also make a donation at https://qccommunity.qc.cuny.edu/pages/funds/andrew-saderman
Heard Around Campus
Ammiel Alcalay  (CMAL) has won an American Book Award in recognition of his work as the founder and general editor of  Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative , a chapbook series that features genre-bending writing. The American Book Awards, given annually by the Before Columbus Foundation, honor outstanding achievement and contributions to diversity in American literature. Recipients are chosen by other writers in a process that involves neither nominations nor categories. “It’s an alternative to the East Coast awards, and they’re often way ahead of the curve,” said Alcalay. “To me, it’s the most meaningful award in the country, and I’m very honored to have won it.” The American Book Awards will be presented this October in San Francisco . . .
Ziva Bakman-Flamhaft (Political Science) recently published War Widow: How the Six-Day War Changed My Life (CreateSpace) . . . The Forward --the oldest Jewish newspaper in the country--recently put out a college guide listing the top schools for Jewish students in the country. QC is number 15, and is the top public school on the entire list. In a ranking of the top colleges for Orthodox students, the college placed sixth, right behind Harvard . . .
Joshua Freeman (History) recently appeared on WNYC’s “The Brian Lehrer Show” [ http://www.wnyc.org/story/50-years-public-employees-unionizing/ ] to discuss 50 years of public employees unionizing . . .
Bobbie Kabuto (EECE) is the co-author (with Denny Taylor) of Teaching without Testing: Assessing the Complexity of Children’s Literacy Learning (Garn Press). “I really wanted to address what is happening in today’s political climate, and looking at how we are treating children in terms of testing and assessment,” she says.
Kabuto is also the senior editor for the Garn Press Women Scholars Series. “It was really important for me as a woman scholar to focus about Women Scholars. . . . The question is why are female scholars publishing far less than male scholars, when the majority of elementary education teaching population is female. It was important for me to go back and look at how women scholars have made an impact in elementary education” . . . 
Marc-Antoine Longpre (SEES) was awarded two years of funding from the National Science Foundation for his project Trigger Mechanisms of Compositionally Zoned Explosive Eruptions: Insights From Cosiguina Volcano, Nicaragua . . .
Talia Schaffer (English) received the North American Victorian Studies Association’s Best Book of the Year Award for Romance’s Rival: Familiar Marriage in Victorian Fiction (Oxford UP) . . .
Assistant Athletics Director for Student Athlete Performance/Senior Woman Administrator  Lydia Travis  has been selected to participate in the 2017 NCAA Pathway Program. She is one of just 25 senior-level athletics administrators across all NCAA divisions to be selected for the yearlong experiential learning opportunity, and is one of only five from NCAA Division II. Travis will be mentored by a current NCAA athletics director and university chancellor or president . . .
John Waldman (Biology) received the American Fisheries Society’s 2017 Carl R. Sullivan Fishery Conservation Award. This prestigious award, known as the “Sully,” is awarded annually to an individual or organization for outstanding contributions to the conservation of fishery resources. 
The Queens College Athletics Department cordially invites all Queens College faculty, staff, and students to participate in the Annual Golf Classic and Hall of Fame Dinner on Friday, October 13 at Harbor Links Golf Course in Port Washington, New York. 
 
For more information, please contact Kevin Williams at kevin.williams@qc.cuny.edu   or Ginna Neira at  ginna.neira@qc.cuny.edu .
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Comments and suggestions for future news items and the 8Oth Anniversary Website are welcome.