 |  | Last week, Sunil Gupta, VP for Adult and Continuing Education, and I went down to Annandale, VA, for an all-day meeting of community college leaders from around the country. Organized by the Project on Workforce at Harvard, Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA), and the Education Design Lab, the event featured panel discussions and workshops on establishing employer partnerships, leveraging labor market information, new technologies, and industrial policy to drive program development, fostering leadership pipelines, and more. (It was a long day.) We met on one of the NOVA campuses. For readers who think LaGuardia is large — we have about 25,000 students — note that NOVA has 75,000 students across six campuses. Oh, and remember the failed Amazon HQ2 bid here in LIC in 2017? Guess where it landed and which community college is today its partner? Desperate for speakers in the waning days of July, my friends at Harvard asked me to run a workshop on financing innovations. As community college enrollment dropped like a stone during the pandemic, many institutions are in difficult financial straits, making attendance at my workshop larger than expected.
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And what did I talk about? I gave an overview of all the innovative things we have been doing thanks to the LaGuardia Foundation and our generous donors. Like the Tomorrow Campaign, Scholarships for ACE Students (those not ready for an associate degree but hungry to learn English or get vocational training), Merit Scholarships, Crossing the Finish Line, Jobs Direct, LaGuardia CARES, internships, and more – innovations in student support, which in turn increases retention and enrollment in ways that strengthen LaGuardia’s bottom line. | |
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Thanks to LaGuardia supporter, Marilyn Skony Stamm, biology majors Jonathan Machado and Suborna Singha have internships this summer at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center (HICCC), the home of cancer research and patient care at Columbia University and New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center in Washington Heights.
This new internship program will give LaGuardia students hands-on clinical research experience at HICCC. Columbia will set aside full-time research study assistant positions for interns that complete the program and earn their associate degrees. HICCC staff will serve as mentors to the students, help them navigate their transfers to baccalaureate programs, offer professional development workshops, and provide guidance for careers in clinical research at HICCC and beyond.
This amazing opportunity came about because Marilyn put the arm on her friend, Dr. Anil Rustgi. Anil is the Herbert and Florence Irving Professor of Medicine and Director of HICCC. He reached out to Dr. Sandra Ryeom, Associate Professor of Surgery, and member of HICCC’s Tumor Biology and Microenvironment Program. Sandra leads efforts at HICCC to recruit researchers of diverse backgrounds. Marylin brought Sandra to campus to meet with LaGuardia students during the spring semester. That sealed the deal. Big thanks to Sandra, Anil, and, of course, our indefatigable friend and connector, Marilyn.
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Professor Ari Richter’s Graphic Memoir Recounts the Holocaust, Family History, Jewish Resilience | |
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Last week, Vera Albrecht, Chairperson of the Humanities Department, and I went to see Fine Arts Professor Ari Richter read from his debut graphic memoir, Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz: A Graphic Family Memoir of Trauma & Inheritance at Books are Magic in Brooklyn Heights. A large crowd packed the popular store, no one deterred by the lack of a/c on a warm July evening. Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz weaves together haunting stories—Richter’s grand- and great-grandparents’ imprisonment in Dachau, Buchenwald, and Auschwitz, and his own awakening to the contemporary rise of authoritarianism and antisemitism. In conversation with Rachel Dry of The New York Times, Professor Richter read excerpts from the book and answered questions before taking out his signing pen. You can view a recording of the event on Books are Magic’s YouTube channel.
Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz is published by Fantagraphics Books. Their description: “At its heart (it) is the intersection of a genocidal political moment in 20th century history and the author’s own family history. Told from the perspectives of four generations of the author’s family, spanning pre-war Germany to post-Trump America, it is both a celebration of Jewish cultural resilience and a warning of democracy’s fragility in the face of the seductive forces of authoritarianism. Part travelogue, part memoir, part historic retelling, author Ari Richter recreates his family’s journey leading up to and extending beyond the Holocaust. It is a rare glimpse into the firsthand stories of both Holocaust survivors and their descendants, told as an intertwined tapestry of faith, grief, and ultimately, survival.”
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All our students have the potential to succeed. Unfortunately, many encounter obstacles that slow their progress. For some, hardships like poverty, homelessness, and hunger derail their LaGuardia dreams. Which is why we are so grateful to the The Carroll and Milton Petrie Foundation for their ongoing support of LaGuardia CARES -- home to the Food Pantry, Housing Services, and Emergency Aid. Recently, The Petrie Foundation gave us an increased grant of $30,000 for the Food Pantry. Over the past six years, more than 16,000 LaGuardia students have benefited from the program.
We’re also grateful to our friends at Petrie for the Petrie Student Emergency Grant program, which helps students, under certain conditions, with pressing cash expenses, such as unpaid medical bills or back rent. Dr. Rhonda Mouton, program director of LaGuardia CARES, explains that helping students with emergency expenses allows them to focus on their studies, earn their degrees, and get the better paying jobs they need to improve their financial situations.
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Elmezzi Career Fellows Program Expands to 45 Internships | |
Thanks to the Thomas and Jeanne Elmezzi Private Foundation, our Elmezzi Career Fellows program will expand to support forty-five student internships. Before their internships begin, students receive orientation and training. Then they’re matched with opportunities that align with their career interests. Dr. Jessica Perez, director of LaGuardia’s Center for Career and Professional Development, says Elmezzi Career Fellows gain valuable world-of-work experience that increases their ability to embark on careers with good wages and potential for advancement. Activities include skill building, networking, resume writing, industry insights, and professional development | |
LaGuardia Athletics Dept. Signs Three New Red Hawks | |
Take a break from watching Olympic Basketball from Paris and note that right here in Queens on July 3 LaGuardia welcomed three new stars to our Red Hawks Women’s Basketball program: Maya Morrison, who graduated from Achievement First High School, will be a combo guard; Goldie Gilbert, from the Mott Haven Educational Campus, will also be a combo guard; and, Renayah Fernandez, from Brooklyn Collaborative Studies High School, is our newest small forward. Come see them tear up the parquet this winter. | | |
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For more than 35 years, LaGuardia has provided work experience and summer fun to high school students and young adults from across the city through our Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP). Jahsani Peters, a 17-year-old senior at Forest Hills High School, thought he was going to be a barista this summer, but when that didn’t pan out, he was thrilled to find SYEP at LaGuardia. A program of the New York City Department of Youth & Community Development, SYEP is the nation’s largest youth employment program, with sites in all five boroughs—LaGuardia’s is (no surprise) the largest in Queens. This summer, Jahsani is working at Community Capacity Development in Woodside. After graduating from high school next June, Jahsani promises he’ll be coming to LaGuardia. We’ll be glad to have him back on campus. | |
Remember the item in the June Newsletter about our Sustainable Urban Agriculture program? We described how students had planted all manner of vegetables, legumes, and flowers in the new LaGuardia Urban Farm and Research Lab. Yes, that’s our new college farm, in the old lot behind the C-Building best known as a staging area for construction equipment. Well, doncha know, I was giving a tour recently and my guests wanted to see what was happening down on the farm, so we wandered down there and discovered that Mother Nature loves Queens! Our veggies are doing great. Turns out that after planting their raised beds in the spring, fifteen students took part this summer in three-week, paid internships, along with some high school students from the Variety Boys and Girls Club over on Northern Boulevard. | |
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All this made possible by Project SEMBRAR, a grant awarded to LaGuardia by the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Shoutouts to Professor Preethi Radhakrishnan and the students in our Sustainable Urban Agriculture program for their dedication and hard work, and to our USDA-LaGuardia liaison, Mina Gomez. See you at the Fall Harvest Festival. | | | | |
