Discimus ut serviamus:
We learn so that we may serve.
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Fair Offers Opportunity To Learn about Study Abroad
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Want to see the world this summer while earning academic credits? Students can learn how at the Study Abroad Fair, taking place tomorrow, Wednesday 27, from noon to 3 pm in the Summit Apartments’ James Muyskens Conference Room. Lunch and refreshments will be served.
This summer, QC is offering options in Brazil, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Morocco, the Netherlands or South Korea. Courses run the gamut from business, history, literature, and service learning to a variety of languages. Each program lasts four to eight weeks and will earn a student anywhere from three to six academic credits. Financial aid may be applied toward costs, and scholarships and grants are available.
Some 400 students participate annually in these programs, according to Education Abroad Director Mohamed Tabrani (above), with about 50 percent coming from QC.
For those who can’t make the fair, information sessions—with lunch and refreshments—will be held on March 4 and 20 from 12:15–1:30 pm in Kiely Hall, Room 258.
The deadline to apply to summer study abroad is Friday, March 29. For an application and complete program information,
click here
or call 718-997-5050.
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Black History Month Enters Week Five
QC’s celebration of Black History Month is concluding with three events that explore different aspects of a diverse community.
The common portrayal of white, cisgender, gay men as the sole pioneers of the Gay Liberation Movement overlooks the contributions of many others. Stonewall 50: Remembering Transpeople of Color, a panel discussion being held tomorrow in the Student Union Ballroom East from 12:15 pm to 1:30 pm, will highlight trans identities, specifically those of color. The panel—sponsored by the Black History Month Steering Committee, the Office of Student Affairs, the Office of Student Development and Leadership, and the New York City Council—will also talk about the current realities for transgender and gender nonconforming people.
Later the same day, the Black Business Expo, open from 5 pm to 9 pm in the President’s Lounge/Q-Side Lounge-Dining Hall, will bring black business owners to campus to network with students, promote their goods and services, and share how they built their companies. Light refreshments will be served at the expo, which is sponsored by the Black Student Union and the Office of the Provost.
On Thursday, February 28, from 9 am to 5 pm, the Student Union Ballroom will be the location for “Our Story,” a showcase of artists, poets, musicians, and historians whose work is linked to the people of the Caribbean. The Caribbean Students Association and the Office of the Provost are sponsoring the all-day event.
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Vote for the City You Want
Attention all registered voters: New York City’s special election for public advocate is being held today. Go to
www.voting.nyc
to learn about all the candidates and find your polling place. Poll sites are open until 9 pm.
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Observe Open Data Week on Sunday
New York City
Open Data Week
commemorates the city’s 2012 Open Data Law, which created a free public resource
www.nyc.gov/opendata
for sharing information published by city agencies and other partners. In conjunction with this annual event, the Tech Incubator at Queens College will present Stories Told by NYC Open Data—a showcase of interactive tools built by QC and CUNY students—on March 3, 2 pm to 4 pm, at Campbell Dome. The workshop, which demonstrates potential uses of NYC Open Data, is free; reserve seats
here.
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Repair to the Library Next Month for Mending Monday
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If you have damaged clothing or gadgets you’d like to salvage, bring the items to the
Makerspace
in Benjamin Rosenthal Library, Room 101, on Monday, March 4 from 9 am to 4:30 pm. “On Mending Mondays, our priority is mending, fixing, repairing,” says Nick Normal, head of the QC Makerspace. “We focus on teaching participants the
how
of repair—we have some tools and facility, but they do the actual ‘art’ of the repair. We hope to demystify the ‘black box’ electronic device, make apparel wearable again, or breathe new life into an expired appliance.” The Makerspace is open to all members of the QC community; if you have questions, contact its staff at
makerspace@qc.cuny.edu
.
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More than 60 employers will be scouting talented QC students and alumni on Wednesday, March 13, from noon to 2 pm, when the
QC Center for Career Engagement and Internships
presents a Career and Internships Fair on the fourth floor of the Student Union. In particular, New York Community Bank, a corporate sponsor of the event, will be recruiting for positions in multiple areas, including human resources, information technology, accounting, finance, loan administration, and retail banking. To learn more about other employers and opportunities,
register here
.
To help attendees get the most out of the fair, the Center for Career Engagement is running a Boot Camp for Internship/Job Fair Prep: Resume & Networking. There will be two boot camp sessions, on March 6, 12:15 pm to 1:30 pm, and on March 11, 6 pm to 7 pm; both dates will take place in Kiely Hall, Room 150.
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SEES Colloquium Enhances Academic Environment on Campus
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Since the beginning of the spring semester, prominent climate scientists have been participating in a colloquium sponsored by Consolidated Edison, the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and the EES Doctoral Program. February events included presentations by Queensborough Community College’s Paul Marchese, who discussed the effect of global warming on hurricane energy in the North Atlantic, and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory’s Sidney Hemming, who talked about the greater Agulhas current system in the Indian Ocean. On March 6, the guest speaker will be Andrea Goddard (Rowan University), who combines thermochronology, geochronology, and sedimentology to study tectonic processes. Upcoming dates will feature Dianne Greenfield (SEES); QC alumnus Jonathan Pershing, program director of Environment at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, formerly a special envoy for climate change the U.S. State Department and lead U.S. negotiator to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change; and James Hansen, director of the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. Most sessions are held at 12:15 pm in the Science Building, D-135 SB; the complete schedule is available
here
.
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Hot Summer Classes
Living in New York is an educational experience. Summer is a great time to build on that knowledge! The History Department is offering a cluster of classes on the history of New York City and other urban areas, taught by Kara Schlichting. Sociology is offering a senior seminar in the Sociology of New York City, which will focus on how people draw neighborhood boundaries. And anyone who has waited for a bus or a subway will be interested in another Sociology senior seminar: The Future is Now with Transportation, which will explore the ways technology may change how we travel. For more information about these and other programs, visit
www.qc.cuny.edu/summer
.
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Building Futures Profile: Francesc Ortega
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Francesc Ortega, the Dina Axelrod Perry Professor of Economics, is a prolific scholar of both immigration and climate change, two topics very close to home for New Yorkers. Describing himself as pragmatic and data-driven, he analyzes big data sets that can illuminate real-world patterns and, by extension, paths for public policy.
By exploring what undocumented workers added to the U.S. economy, Ortega was able to quantify their workforce contribution at “about 3% of GDP, which is not a small chunk.” In debates over DACA and the DREAM Act, he saw a need for cost-benefit analysis. Research by Ortega and his collaborators (including Amy Hsin in Sociology and Ryan Edwards at University of California, San Francisco) has shown that by offering legal work, DACA raised Dreamers’ annual economic contribution to society by $7,000, but also distorted their life decisions: Because their earnings are crucial to their families’ financial survival, these young people chose temporarily legal jobs over college. He estimates that passage of the DREAM Act would instead encourage them to finish college, which would have a lasting positive effect on their careers and roughly double their economic contribution to society.
Ortega has also become interested in climate change or more precisely, the economic impacts and policy implications of sea level rise for coastal cities, especially New York. Since Hurricane Sandy, he and Süleyman Taspinar (Economics) have determined that homes in affected areas have lost value—indications that today’s housing market reveals growing awareness of climate change. Ortega’s current research concerns the National Flood Insurance Program, which has “contributed to getting too many people to choose to live too close to the water.” He is studying businesses in flood zones, too.
A native of Spain, Ortega completed his BA at the University of Barcelona, MA at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and PhD at New York University. A Queens College faculty member since 2012, he is intent on not only teaching his students the discipline, but also helping them develop a core competence of their own, with a research portfolio to show graduate schools and employers. “If you’ve developed your own research and you’ve spent a semester working with a professor here on that topic, you’re going to know more about that than the person interviewing you,” he observes. “That’s going to look very good.”
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In Memoriam:
Doris L. Wethers, ’48
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Today, all 50 states require hospitals to test newborns for sickle-cell anemia—a potentially lethal hereditary condition seen not only in black people, but also in individuals of Caribbean, Central American, East Indian, Mediterranean, and Southeast Asian descent. Those regulations, as well as improved treatments for individuals diagnosed with the disease, are the legacies of Doris Louise Wethers, who died of complications of a stroke last month at the age of 91.
The daughter of a doctor and teacher, Wethers found her calling during her childhood in Passaic, New Jersey. “When I was growing up my dolls were always in sick beds,” she told the
Gartner Pediatric History Center
—a project of the American Academy of Pediatrics—in 2002. “I’m sure a lot of it had to do with my father, because he was so beloved by all of his patients, and he obviously loved medicine.”
When her parents broke up, Doris moved with her mother and sister to Manhattan, where she graduated from George Washington High School. Next stop was QC, where she received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1948; four years later, she was the third black female to graduate from the Yale School of Medicine. Wethers did her internship at the District of Columbia General Hospital, but that institution, which had just desegregated itself, would not accept black residents. Instead, she completed her training at Bellevue Hospital in New York and subsequently became the first black attending physician at St. Luke’s Hospital.
In a long and distinguished career, Wethers served as medical director for Speedwell Services for Children (later absorbed by another agency), and director of pediatrics at Knickerbocker Hospital and Sydenham Hospital (which no longer exist). Then she held the same title at St. Luke’s, the precursor of today’s Mount Sinai St. Luke’s. At each of these hospitals, Wethers launched sickle cell programs. Recognized as an authority in her field, she chaired the 1987 National Institutes of Health (NIH) panel that recommended universal sickle-cell screening for newborns, and lived long enough to see this practice adopted across the country.
“She was on the front line of patient care long before any federal funding for sickle cell disease,” said Clarice D. Reid, former national director of the sickle cell illness program of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute at NIH. “She played a key role in many of the clinical advances of the ’80s and ’90s.”
Wethers retired from St. Luke’s in 1999 as director of its sickle cell program. Her husband Garvall H. Booker, a dentist, passed away in 1996. Their sons Buddy and David Boyd Booker survive her, as do three grandchildren.
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Heard Around Campus:
Joel Daness
, environmental science student, SEES Club member, and podcaster, conducted an interview with New York City Council Member Rafael Espinal, a QC alumnus. The results are posted
here
. . . . A paper
Yoko Nomura
(Psychology) wrote on the temperament of babies born to pregnant women who suffered depression during Superstorm Sandy was highlighted in
SUM
, the website for sharing the research of CUNY faculty . . . .
Robert Ranaldi
(Psychology) received a four-year, $460,000 grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences—part of the National Institutes of Health—to explore novel behavioral strategies for treating opioid addiction . . . .
President and CUNY Chancellor-designate
Felix V. Matos Rodriguez
was included on the “Power 100” list published yesterday by City and State. He is #62 jointly with CUNY Board of Trustees Chairperson William Thompson .
. . . The latest breast cancer study by
Susan Rotenberg
(Chemistry and Biochemistry), published in
Cellular Signalling,
got
SUM coverage
. . . .
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Q View
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Office of Communications and Marketing.
Comments and suggestions for future news items
are welcome.
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