Discimus ut serviamus: We learn so that we may serve.
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Turning the Table on Hunger, sponsored by the Knights Table Food Pantry with the support of the Student Association, Health Services Center and Queens College, is holding its first event today, Tuesday, December 8, from 11 am to 2 pm. Bags of holiday food will be distributed from the Queens College shuttle bus at Kissena Park, at the corner of Kissena Boulevard and Booth Memorial Avenue. Flu shots and personal health care products will also be available. CUNY students are eligible for one bag per family; RSVP required. Students must wear masks and practice social distancing. Subsequent giveaways will take place in Corona on December 15 and in Jamaica on December 22. For details, write Knightstable@qc.cuny.edu.
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Local Job Forecast: Fair This Week |
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The Queens Borough President’s Office is holding its twelfth virtual job recruitment fair tomorrow, Wednesday, December 9, from 2 to 3:30 pm. The fair is being held in partnership with CAMBA Inc., Child Center of New York, Chinese-American Planning Council, Commonpoint Queens, Council for Airport Opportunity, Empire Vets, Forest Hills Financial Group, Metro One Loss Prevention, New York City Children’s Center, New York City Fire Department, New York City Transit Authority, New York Life, R.A.I.N. Total Care Inc., U.S. Census Bureau, Watch Guard 24/7, Westhab, and Workforce1 Career Center. RSVP today to participate in the webinar.
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Student Services
The usual end-of-semester stresses may seem greater this year. Students should be aware of the extensive services at their disposal, such as academic advising, tutoring, counseling, and the food pantry. Detailed information about all services is available here.
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Student Town Hall This Week
The final strategic plan town hall of the semester—an open forum for students—will take place on Thursday, December 10, from 2:30 to 4 pm. Students may reserve a place until 5 pm today, Tuesday, December 8. RSVP here. A Zoom link will be emailed to attendees the morning of the event.
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Virtual Exhibition Celebrates Bicentennial of the Greek Revolution |
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In advance of the 200th anniversary of the Greek War of Independence—which began in 1821—QC’s Hellenic American Project (HAP) has mounted the virtual exhibition Ode to the Greek Light and Landscape: Works by Dimitris Diamantopoulos. The show juxtaposes 21 paintings that Diamantopoulos created over a 30-year span, beginning in 1990, with poems and other texts inspired by the natural elements he depicts. His use of water-based acrylic, egg tempera, the lazure technique, and lithography enable him to capture the natural landscape and phos (light) of the Northern Peloponnese region with great sensitivity.
HAP Founder and Director Nicholas Alexiou (Sociology) and art historian Tiffany Apostolou co-curated Ode to the Greek Light and Landscape, which was posted to the HAP website in October. This exhibition is the second virtual show HAP has offered this year in response to restrictions on public gatherings during the pandemic.
The opening reception for Ode to the Greek Light and Landscape, featuring a conversation with Diamantopoulos, will be held on Thursday, December 17, 2020, at 6 pm via Zoom. Register here to attend.
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Faculty Selected for Fellowship Publication Program
President Frank H. Wu and Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Elizabeth Hendrey have announced that next semester, QC will be well represented in CUNY’s Faculty Fellowship Publication Program, which assists untenured faculty with the design and execution of scholarly publications. Six members of the QC faculty—Sebastian Alvarado (Biology), Namhee Han (CMAL), Cliff Mak (English), Maral Tajerian (Biology), Natalie Bump Vena (Urban Studies), and Shinjoung Yeo (Media Studies)—have been chosen for the program. They will be mentored by Anahi Viladrich (Sociology).
Previous participants have produced articles for juried journals as well as books for scholarly presses. Congratulations to the faculty chosen for Spring 2021.
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CTL Holds Workshop on Teaching Online |
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Faculty can learn more about teaching online through a virtual program presented next month by the Center for Teaching & Learning. Best Practices for Teaching Online, a five-session asynchronous workshop available from January 4 to 31, 2021, covers effective methods for remote education. Two certifications will be offered.
Full Teaching Online Certification is offered on both Blackboard and Google Classroom. Faculty who successfully complete the Full Teaching Online training will receive a certificate of completion and compensation of $500 for their participation.
Emergency Teaching Online Certification is offered only on Blackboard. Faculty who successfully complete the Emergency Teaching Online training will receive a certificate of completion and compensation of $150 for their participation.
For more information and registration, click here.
Faculty who have already completed an online training course from CTL after May 2020 or from the CUNY School of Professional Studies are ineligible to participate in this workshop. Instructors experienced in teaching online may request exemption from online training by completing this form: https://forms.gle/xRR7a8HFWmVwVApT8.
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Alumnus Pursues Dual Career as Writer-Librarian
From early on—very early on—it was apparent that books would play a significant role in the life of Tejas Desai.
“I’ve been writing fiction since I was eight years old,” he says. “I can remember writing stories and having my friend in elementary school draw the pictures. I started reading even younger than that. My mom would take me to the public library and she would read to me, and so I’d say that’s where my love of books started.”
Some three decades on, that love pretty much defines his life: Desai is an independent publisher and author of three novels (two are #1 Amazon bestsellers) and a collection of short stories. He’s also a librarian for the Queens Public Library. His pursuits as both an author and a librarian were facilitated in part by QC, from which he received both an MFA and an MLS. He did his undergraduate work at Wesleyan where he was an English major and had the opportunity to study with Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket).
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Calandra Institute and Florida Atlantic University Archive a Family’s Transatlantic Correspondence |
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A chance discovery by an Italian American woman in Brooklyn helped to launch the newly released Vivo-Fruttauro Collection, a series of transatlantic letters between Italian family members from Brooklyn, La Spezia, and Bagnoli in 1947. The collection can now be viewed online thanks to a partnership between the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, led by Dean Anthony Tamburri, and the Italian American Memories Documentary Archive created by graduate students at Florida Atlantic University (FAU).
The letters give a glimpse into the lives of Vincenzo and Giuseppina Vivo, their daughter Rosa, son-in-law Giuseppe Fruttauro, grandson Angelo Fruttauro, and other extended family members in 1947. In the letters, Vincenzo, who is living in Brooklyn, is separated from Giuseppina, who is having issues returning to the United States after a trip to visit family in Italy.
In March 2016, Lisa Giordano of Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, came upon the letters strewn on the sidewalk in front of a brownstone on DeGraw Street, between Smith and Court Streets. Once a significant Italian American community, Carroll Gardens became gentrified over time, with many houses being gutted for renovation by new owners.
“I had gone down DeGraw Street and [the letters] were just all over the sidewalk,” recalled Giordano. “You could just walk through them. It looked like someone had just thrown them from a window or dumped them out in a box. . . These things lived for so many decades, and suddenly they were just out on the street.”
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Aline Pascale Lubin
Aline Pascale Lubin, QC alumna, former head coach of women’s volleyball, and member of the Queens College Athletics Hall of Fame, passed away at her home in Bellerose, New York, on November 10.
Lubin graduated from QC with a degree in elementary education and went on to earn her Master’s in Urban Education from Cambridge College. As head coach of women’s volleyball at QC for 18 seasons (1993-2010), she had 268 victories—the most in the program’s history at the college. Her teams made the East Coast Conference tournament (formerly known as NYCAC) for 13 straight seasons. The 2003 volleyball team brought home the program’s first conference championship and its first NCAA East Regional title. In 2004, the Knights won the NYCAC regular-season championship, hosted the NCAA East regional, and posted back-to-back trips to the Elite 8 to defeat former Dowling College in the final.
Lubin earned Conference Coach of the Year honors in 1993, 1997, 2003, and 2004, and American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) Northeast Region Coach of the Year Honors in 2003 and 2004. She coached numerous All-Conference and AVCA All-region Team players, including conference player of the year Anna Bondarenko (2003 and 2004). While at QC, Bondarenko earned the program’s first AVCA All-American honors in 2003 and 2004; Cassidy Mariano and Masha Mosenzhnik earned ACVA All-American honorable mentions in 2004.
Lubin was inducted into the Queens College Athletics Hall of Fame with the Class of 2015. She is survived by her husband of 32 years, Karl Pierre; daughters Ariel and Kiara; siblings Hansfield, Richard, Jona, Guytele, Dominique, and Alan; and many family members and friends.
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Sydney Schwartz
Sydney Schwartz, a highly respected educator in the field of early childhood education, passed away on Tuesday, November 24, 2020.
Schwartz graduated from Teacher’s College, Columbia University, with an EdD in 1965. One of the first presidents of the New York State Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators, she served as dean, chair, and professor emerita at Queens College, and university director of teacher education for the City University of New York.
Throughout her lifetime, Schwartz influenced both curriculum and policy in the field of Early Childhood Education. Her scholarship focusing on strengthening content in early childhood programs spanned over half a century. Her professional activities included evaluating New York City-funded early childhood programs, co-directing the CUNY Literacy Enhancement Project, and chairing the CUNY task force to redesign the clinical component of teacher education for Middle States.
Schwartz was the author of many articles, book chapters, and books dealing with the early childhood curriculum, most recently, Connecting Emergent Curriculum and Standards in the Early Childhood Classroom. She worked closely with New York City public schools, influencing curriculum and policy for thousands of teachers across several decades. She loved to collect children’s books from around the world, attend ballet productions and concerts at Carnegie Hall, spend time with friends and family, travel, and celebrate the beauty in the world. She will live on through her work and her teaching in the field as well as through the lives of all she mentored.
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Heard Around the Virtual Campus |
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Isabel Cuervo (Commoner Center) is the lead author of a study—published in Qualitative Health Research and featured in SUM—of the value of work among Latinx immigrants and its impact as a social determinant of health. The research was conducted prior to the coronavirus pandemic . . . . Jay Hershenson (Office of Communications and Marketing) and Khaleel Anderson ’19, the newly elected assemblymember for District 3 in southeast Queens, have been named to the transition team advising Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, as reported by the Queens Eagle. Hershenson chairs the education committee; Anderson is a member of the youth committee . . . . Queens College has seen a 56 percent rise in the number of STEM graduates since 2015-16, according to a study by the Center for an Urban Future. QC annually awards STEM degrees to more than 600 students . . . . Natalie Bump Vena (Urban Studies) is quoted in a Queens Chronicle article about the efforts of South Ozone Park residents to get the city to compensate them fairly for sewage damage to their homes . . . . President Frank H. Wu made an appearance on CUNY-TV’s “Urban U,” interviewed by Barry Mitchell ’74, on Thursday, December 3. For additional air dates this month, click here.
This is the final QView of 2020. Happy Holidays to all! QView will be on hiatus until the beginning of the spring 2021 semester.
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