Discimus ut serviamus:
We learn so that we may serve.
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Heartfelt statements were shared worldwide in the wake of the horrific attack on innocent victims in New Zealand last week. Here in New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo denounced "this disgusting act of bigoted violence, which appears to be rooted in Islamophobia. . . ." President
Félix V. Matos Rodríguez
stated that "The CUNY and Queens College community grieves for the victims . . . . the effects of hatred and bigotry are harmful to us all." Deepest condolences are extended to all those grieving around the world.
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QC alum and former adjunct Henry Gold (SEES) presented “Wasteland of Opportunity,” the inaugural lecture in the Energy and Environment Lecture Series sponsored this semester by Con Edison, on Monday, March 11, in Science Building C-201 (now known as Con Edison Lecture Hall in honor of its recent renovation, also sponsored by the energy company). Gold is a senior consultant of WCD Group and former vice president of Environmental Specialty Claims Consultants at AIG.
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“Race, Identity and Liberation”—the first conference presented by QC’s Center for the Improvement of Education—was a learning experience for all, featuring keynote speakers John Kuo Wei Tchen (right), Yolanda Sealy-Ruiz, Cheryl Matias, and Nolan Cabrera, and a conversation between award-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas (left) and Queens resident and recent Harvard graduate Jin Park (center), the first DACA recipient to win a Rhodes Scholarship. The conference was organized by Judy Yu, director of the college’s Teacher Opportunity Corps Program.
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Dressed for success and with resumes in hand, QC students and alums met prospective employers at the Student Union during the Career and Internship Fair on Wednesday, March 13, from noon to 2 pm. The fair, sponsored by the Center for Career Engagement and Internships, included representatives from dozens of companies, such as Green Mountain Energy, Macmillan Publishers, and New York Community Bank, a corporate sponsor of the fair.
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A panel of four experts—(l to r) Sara Radicati, founder of the Radicati Group; Kathryn Cole, commercial litigation partner at Farrell Fritz; Thomas Hull, CIO of QC; and Judith Massis-Sanchez, QC counsel—tackled the legal and technological issues in business communication on the morning of March 15 at the college’s first Business Forum Breakfast of the semester.
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Homecoming isn’t restricted to the fall! Former Queens College President James Muyskens and his wife, Alda, stopped by campus last week.
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President and Chancellor-designate
Félix V. Matos Rodríguez
talked with WNYC’s Brian Lehrer on Thursday, March 14. The interview is posted on the
radio station’s website
.
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Those who missed the Excellence in Teaching and Service Awards Ceremony—held in LeFrak Hall on Wednesday, March 5—won’t have to miss out. Thanks to the efforts of QC’s digital video productions team, a videotape of the complete event is available on the president’s page.
Excellence in Teaching and Service Award Ceremony 2019.
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Softball Opens Season with a Trip
to Florida
After seeing its first six dates of the season canceled due to weather, the QC softball team finally got the season underway with a slate in the Sunshine State. The Knights found themselves at a disadvantage, facing southern teams that had already played nearly 30 games each. But QC held its own, picking up two wins on the trip.
On March 12, the Knights got their first win in dramatic fashion, edging Ave Maria, 5-4, in an extra inning. Overcoming an early 4-0 deficit, QC tied the game in the seventh inning thanks to Noelle Bryggman’s RBI single with one out. Having sent the game into extra innings, the Knights held Ave Maria scoreless in the top half of the eighth; then Katherine Gallagher brought home the winning run in the bottom half with an RBI single. Emma Wimmer tossed 5.2 innings of scoreless relief to earn the victory.
The Knights’ next success came on March 14 in a 6-3 win over Barry University. QC jumped out to a 6-3 lead thanks to a two-run second inning and a three-run frame in the fifth. Bryggman—who finished the week batting .444—was 3 for 3 with three runs scored, and Rachel Katz and Gallagher each had two RBIs. Wimmer once again earned the victory, going seven strong innings, allowing three earned runs and striking out six batters.
QC headed home with a record of 2-7 and will return to action tomorrow, Wednesday, March 20, with a home doubleheader versus Pace University at 2:30 pm.
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Guggenheim Opens Doors to QC
Last week, QView informed readers about a limited supply of free passes to the Museum of Modern Art. This week, we share news of another artful arrangement: QC students, faculty, and staff enjoy free admission to the Guggenheim Museum, at 1071 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, a Frank Lloyd Wright landmark that showcases modern and contemporary works. No museum passes are required and there’s no expiration date to this offer, extended to QC—as well as Brooklyn College, the College of Staten Island, Hunter College, and Lehman College—through the generous support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, a philanthropic organization created by its namesake, a Greek shipping magnate. To visit the Guggenheim, stop by the admissions or membership desk with your QCard, which entitles you to two tickets for that day. (For groups of ten or more, please contact the group sales office
groupsales@guggenheim.org
or call 212-423-3636.) Nearly 300 people associated with QC have taken advantage of this program since it began on August 27, 2018.
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Even More Hot Summer Classes
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Summer is a great time to diversify your bookshelf, with the help of Comparative Literature classes, such as Global Literatures II, which extends from 1500 to the present day, and Modern Literature. Wondering what made people laugh back in the middle ages? Humor in Medieval Literature has some of the answers. If you think tell-all memoirs are a purely contemporary phenomenon, Exploring Memory, Exposing the Self: Autobiographical Writing after the Enlightenment, will demonstrate otherwise. To read about these and other programs, visit
www.qc.cuny.edu/summer
.
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2+2 Program Multiplies Opportunities for Shanghai Students
This spring, Weilin Tong—the first student to fulfill the requirements of QC’s new 2+2 Program—will receive both a BA in Economics from QC and a BA in English from The University of Shanghai for Science and Technology (USST).
2+2 emerged from the Joint Program, which was launched in 1997 and graduated its first cohort in 2000. That program enables English majors at USST’s College of Foreign Languages to take economics and Gen Ed courses, taught by professors from QC and other CUNY schools. “We work with a small sub-group [of USST students] who have been admitted to a special program that allows them to major in English and also specialize in business,” says Howard Kleinmann (d
irector of the Academic Support Center, College English as a Second Language Program, and China Program)
.
Taught in English, Joint Program courses are scheduled during summer session and the winter intersession so as not to interfere with the American faculty’s regular teaching schedules in New York. An average of 100 students graduate from the Joint Program each year, receiving a bachelor’s in English from USST and a certificate from QC, attesting that they completed a series of ten to 12 core courses in business.
By contrast, the new 2+2 Program, explains William McClure (dean of the Division of Arts and Humanities, formerly interim associate provost) tests the strongest Joint Program students after their second year and brings those who qualify to QC for their final two years. “Here, they focus on finishing a degree in economics and they take a whole bunch of our Gen Ed courses. They get one degree from their home university in China and one from us. That’s what 2+2 is.” This year, five new students joined two who began last year, for a total of seven USST students on campus.
As with the Joint Program, 2+2 came about at the urging of the Chinese, McClure says. “They use this to market to their students because it’s an advantage for them to have access to an American college degree. It’s good for us because they come here as full-paying international students, and it’s great to have these kinds of students in our programs.”
“Chinese universities across the board have been looking for 2 plus 2 agreements because it’s something their government wants. [These programs give] their students a leg up based on the American educational system. Having access to graduate school in the United States is easier if they can show they have experience in the United States,” McClure observes.
“Programs like this are successful because both sides see advantages and positive qualities,” says Kleinmann. “From the Chinese point of view, students are graduating with a degree in English and with a very strong foundation in the business world, which makes them able to get jobs at multinational companies and large companies in China. It also qualifies them to apply for graduate studies.” From our perspective, he says, this kind of international collaboration fits in with the strategic plan of the college.
For Weilin Tong, 2+2 is helping fulfill her ambition to become a financial analyst; it has already led to her acceptance into graduate studies at John Hopkins. “Actually, it’s my dream school. In order to go to Johns Hopkins, I came here,” she says, adding that she would not have received the offer to earn a Master’s in Financial Management at an American university if she had studied only at her home university in Shanghai.
Tong readily acknowledges, for instance, the important role QC’s Career Counseling Center played in helping her write her resume and apply for internships. She interned last summer at HSBC. She also cites Luc Marest (Economics), with whom she had the opportunity to study at both USST and QC, as being particularly supportive with her application to Hopkins. “He wrote the recommendation letter for me.”
Tong is also particularly appreciative of the enriching experiences QC facilitated outside the classroom, mentioning, for example, the many events that Study Abroad arranges for exchange students. “It’s a good opportunity to make friends with a different background, from Japan, from Europe. . . We went to the Brooklyn Bridge, to Central Park, to Broadway shows. It’s a good chance to experience American culture.”
Tong has been showing her appreciation by giving back to the QC community: A Dean’s List student in Fall 2017 and Spring 2018, she tutors students in Economics 101, 201, 102, and 202.
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Opera Studio Makes
Magic
This Week
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The Queens College Opera will light up the stage of LeFrak Hall Thursday, March 21, through Sunday, March 24, with one of the last works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s short but prolific life,
The Magic Flute
.
This comic opera in two acts with libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder is being staged by Elizabeth Hastings (Music) with costumes by Carolyn Coe and lighting design by Michael Celentano (who is also in the cast). Keith Chambers will conduct the orchestra for all performances, except Sunday’s matinee, which will be led by Hastings.
A popular work staged by opera companies the world over,
The Magic Flute
follows Prince Tamino who,
chased into a strange land by a giant serpent, ends up on a quest with his new friend, Papageno, a bird-catcher. As they seek enlightenment and romance, they find that it is difficult to tell the good guys from the bad.
Hastings, director of the Opera Studio at QC, says the cast is composed of undergraduate and graduate students with one role sung by a returning alumnus (Tito
José
Gutierrez ’18) and the previously mentioned Michael Celentano, who plays Prince Tamino.
Cast will speak dialogue in English while performing their arias in the original German; supertitles will allow audience members to see translations of the lyrics. It’s a best-of-both-worlds scenario. Says Hastings, “For the singers, we’re singing in German; for the audience, we’re speaking in English.”
Describing the process of staging an opera within the academic year, Hastings says all of the roles were cast the first week in September. She completed staging of the first act before “the nice, long winter break, which is just enough time for the cast to forget most of everything” before moving into the second act, which has more scenes and dialogue, while also reviving everyone’s memory of act one.
Hastings has conducted for the Toledo Opera, Washington Opera, Sarasota Opera, Harrisburg Opera, and the New York City Opera National Touring Company. Since coming to QC five years ago, she has directed Queens College Opera's
Die Fledermaus
and
The Marriage of Figaro
. She is also on the faculty of NYU Steinhardt. This summer she will conduct
La
Bohème
with Union Avenue Opera in St. Louis.
The Queens College Opera, she notes, participates in The New York Opera Alliance,
a consortium of New York alternative/independent opera companies and producers established to enhance and support the visibility and viability of their organizations, both individually and collectively.
NYOA lists members’ productions on its website, nyoperalliance.org.
Advance tickets for
The Magic Flute
are available at the Kupferberg Center for the Arts Box Office, 718-793-8080, or online at
Kupferbergcenter.org
.
For information about other performances presented by the Aaron Copland School of Music, see the listings on
qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/music/
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QC Students’ Poster Design Highlights Women in Tech
Three QC students took part in the Ambient Belonging Project poster design contest held by Women in Technology and Entrepreneurship in New York (WiTNY), and their submission was selected for display throughout Cornell Tech and CUNY campuses.
QC’s Yasmeen Munasser, an aspiring software engineer, along with fellow QC students Amanda Gomez and Jessica Brigandi and a student from Hunter College, created an entry titled “Women in Tech: Making Strides Then & Now” (pictured). Their poster features a colorful design with 14 images of women of different backgrounds working in tech.
“Our design highlights and prioritizes women’s rights, as well as the differences we have,” says Munasser. “Instead of seeing this as a negative circumstance, we bring it into a positive light.”
A collaborative initiative of CUNY, Cornell Tech, and industry partners, WiTNY, launched in 2016, hopes to double the number of computer science-educated majors in the workforce.
The program offers community outreach, summer guilds, and winter internships, and propels women—from high school through graduate school—into rewarding tech careers.
Toward that end, WiTNY’s Ambient Belonging Project aims to increase women’s sense of belonging t
hrough art installations in physical environments
at Cornell Tech and CUNY. The project was inspired by research suggesting
that simply changing the objects in a computer science classroom—from items considered stereotypical of computer science to those that aren’t considered stereotypical—was sufficient to boost female undergraduates’ interest in computer science
.
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The entire college community grieved to learn that Andrea Li, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology, passed away on the evening of Friday, March 15. Andrea earned her doctorate at the University of Rochester. A QC faculty member since 2004, she served as deputy chair of her department, where she studied visual perception. She is survived by her children Emma, Alex, and Kira, and her husband, Andrew. A memory service in her honor is being planned.
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Heard Around Campus:
Junyong Choi
(Chemistry) won a National Institutes of Health SCORE grant—the first in his department—awarding him $154,000 a year for three years to research allosteric modulators of kinases, work that holds potential for developing cancer treatments. . . .
GSLIS students
working toward either the Certificate in Archives and the Preservation of Cultural Material or the MLS/MA History dual degree are eligible for a two-semester fellowship offered by the Citi Center for Culture and the Queens Library at 89-11 Merrick Boulevard in Jamaica.
Applications must be filed by March 25
. . . .
Ariel Francisco Henriquez
, a student in QC’s MFA program in literary translation, has a poem published in The New Yorker this week:
Along the East River and in the Bronx Young Men Were Singing
”: . . . .
Judy Krinitz
, formerly associate director of Student Development and Leadership at QC, has transferred to the college’s Academic Advising Center, where she holds the same title.
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Q View
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