QView #150 | March 21, 2023

Rathaus Hall To Get a $1 Million Makeover

From left: Queensborough Community College President Christine Mangino; Queens College President Frank H. Wu; Queens Borough President Donovan Richards; LaGuardia Community College President Kenneth Adams; and York College Executive Director of Government Relations and Strategic Initiatives Earl Simons. (Photo by Michael Dorgan)

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards announced $1 million in capital funding for Queens College at a press conference on Tuesday, March 14, as reported by the Flushing Post. For fiscal 2023, the four CUNY colleges are collectively receiving $5.5 million from the borough president’s office. “Investing in our colleges is a direct investment in not only the leaders of tomorrow, but the well-being of their families, our economy and our communities,” said Richards. “We’re talking about real, tangible investments in our communities.”

The allocation for QC will support renovation of Rathaus Hall, home of the Drama, Theatre and Dance Department. “Thanks to Borough President Richards, Rathaus Hall’s old classrooms are being transformed to meet the needs of the Queens College School of Arts, launched last spring as the most comprehensive arts school in CUNY,” said President Frank H. Wu. “I look forward to collaborating with him on many programs, finding new ways to make Queens an even better place to live, work, and get an education.”

The Future of Accounting event on Wednesday, March 15, focused on Crypto Assets Reporting, Auditing and Risk Management—timely topics after the collapse of crypto exchange FTX and the recent failure of several banks that served the digital asset industry. Future of Accounting is a series presented by the Queens College Business School and the Department of Accounting and Information Systems.

In a conversation with UMass-Amherst biologist Ana Caicedo on March 15, QC’s John Dennehy discussed his experience as a biologist and professor who happens to be deaf. Dennehy promotes disability pride and writes for The Mind Hears, a blog by and for academics with some degree of hearing loss. Caicedo is a member of the team that produces the blog.

Pamela Sugiman, professor and dean of the arts faculty at Toronto Metropolitan University; Lin Reed, executive director of the Queens College Global Student Success Program; Interim Associate Provost for Academic and Faculty Affairs Meghan Healey; AVP of External and Governmental Relations Jeffrey Rosenstock; and VP for Communications and Marketing and Senior Advisor to the President Jay Hershenson joined President Frank H. Wu on Thursday, March 16, for a Taiwanese-style breakfast. Blake Egbert, director of Marketing and Recruitment for QC Navitas, not seen in the photo below, was part of the discussions, too. Also on the menu: the president’s presentation on Asian Americans at a crossroads, which he previously gave at the international Navitas conference.

From left: Sugiman, Healey, Rosenstock, Hershenson, Reed

The scaffolding—known in construction parlance as a shed—around Kiely Hall was taken down on Saturday, March 18. Removal was scheduled over the weekend to minimize disruption.

Scaffolding had been erected in connection with the repair of Kiely’s façade. QC thanks the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York (DASNY) and Buildings and Grounds for their work on this project.

Baseball and Men’s Tennis Teams Undefeated Last Week

The Queens College baseball and men’s tennis teams each were perfect last week as they continued the strong starts to their respective seasons. 

The Knights baseball team went 5-0 last week, defeating Felician University on Thursday and then sweeping a four-game set from Bloomfield College over the weekend. Liam Pulsipher threw 7⅓ innings of shutout baseball to earn the win against Felician. Anthony Fontana led the Knights’ bats, going 10-for-16 (.625) with three home runs and nine RBIs over five games. The Knights improved to 10-4 on the season. 

The men’s tennis team went 4-0 last week to push their winning streak to eight. QC dropped just two matches during the week, defeating Chestnut Hill College, Bluefield State University, and University of the District of Columbia, 7-0, before closing with a 5-2 win over Division I Merrimack College. Lucas Demuth won three singles matches to push his win streak to five. QC has a record of 9-2 this season.

Women’s tennis also picked up a win in its lone match last week, a 5-2 triumph over Bluefield State to improve to 7-2 on the season.

It’s another busy week ahead for the Knights’ spring sports. Baseball will visit Adelphi University on Tuesday at 3 pm and then battle the College of Staten Island in a four-game series over the weekend.

Softball will travel to Goldey-Beacom College for a doubleheader on Thursday at 2 pm and visit Mercy College on Saturday at noon. On Sunday, they return home to take on D’Youville University at noon.

Men’s tennis welcomes St. Thomas Aquinas College on Friday at 1 pm, and the outdoor track and field team will host the Queens College Season Opener on their new outdoor track on Saturday, March 25 at 10 am. 

Be sure to visit queensknights.com for the latest athletics news.

Networking for Early Birds

Debra Sabatini Dwyer ’89, a policy analyst specializing in health care and labor issues, will speak at the next QC Business Breakfast, taking place tomorrow—March 22—from 8:30 to 10 am at the QSide Lounge. A light kosher breakfast will be served. Business Breakfasts are free to QC students, faculty, staff, and alumni.

All’s Fair for Job-Hunters

The Center for Career Engagement and Internships’ two-part Career and Internship Fair, open to QC students and alumni, concludes on March 22 from noon to 2:30 pm in the Student Union Ballroom. Click here for details of the fair and a list of its more than 30 participating employers.

Raising a Racquet

More than 50 years after its invention, pickleball—which USA Pickleball, the sport’s governing body, describes as a combination of tennis, badminton, and table tennis—is netting new fans. Students can find out why during the college’s first pickleball intramural on Wednesday, March 22; Monday, March 27; and Wednesday, March 29, from 12:15 to 1:30 pm at the Tennis Bubble. Paddles and balls will be provided. No previous experience is required, but sneakers and a Queens College ID are. Click here to register. 

Musical Fusion in Concert

Accomplished performers from two genres—Irish traditional music and Indian classical music—will collaborate on Monday, March 27, at 7:30 pm in LeFrak Concert Hall. The west-meets-east program, Intersections, features Sameer Gupta on tabla, Jay Gandhi on bansuri, Arun Ramamurthy on violin, and Jerry O'Sullivan on Uilleann pipes. Ethnomusicologist Colin Harte—a QC adjunct—will play keyboard and bodráhn, and sing.

Alumni Entrepreneurs Build on College LaunchPad

Reginald Wills

Sujen Wu Wu

Reginald Wills ’22 and Sujen Wu Wu ’22 have big plans for their small start-up business.

In December, Wills and Wu Wu finished first in the network round of the national Blackstone LaunchPad Business Ideas Competition, under the category of Social and Climate Impact. (They advanced to the national contest upon winning the same category in the Queens College tier of the competition.) Now, with their prize—a $10,000 grant from the Blackstone Charitable Foundation—they’re developing the company they pitched, Collabiversity. Envisioned as an intermediary between brands and colleges, Collabiversity will create a merchandise and digital assets marketplace for students and alumni and raise scholarship funds for students. Wills and Wu Wu came up with the concept after casual wear brand Kith released a limited QC collection (QView 134) and donated a portion of sales revenue to the college.

Unbeatable Undergraduates

“I have always wanted [Wills and Wu Wu] to be on the same team. They would be unbeatable on the national level,” says Karl Mitchell (Economics), who taught both students in his Introduction to Business Writing course, encouraged them to work together, and mentored them through the competition. “Mr. Wills and Ms. Wu Wu put CUNY and Queens College on the map. They beat 45 other universities/colleges, including but not limited to Cornell University, NYU, UCLA, University of Texas, Baruch College, and Syracuse, in only Queens College’s second year of competing. It’s a huge deal.” 

Wills and Wu Wu came to QC with impressive back stories.

Born in Montgomery, Alabama, where his father was the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama—Dr. Martin Luther King’s former pastorate, now known as Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church—Wills spent most of his childhood in Richmond, Virginia. He graduated from high school at 16. The next year, inspired by his grandfather, an Army veteran, and the church members he saw in uniform at Veterans Day services led by his father, Wills joined the Coast Guard Reserve. After four years as a reservist, he continued his service on active duty for an additional seven years.

“The Coast Guard, and military in general, is great, because advancement is really based on your work ethic and what you bring to the table,” says Wills. “You also gain a lot of applicable skills that are relevant in the public sector, such as time management, attention to detail, collaborating with teams, and leadership traits.”

Stationed at Coast Guard Station New York on Staten Island at the beginning of his active duty, he enrolled at the College of Staten Island. His transfer to Coast Guard Station Kings Point in Great Neck prompted him to transfer to QC, where he majored in corporate finance and economics. Scrolling through LinkedIn led him to Goldman Sachs’ Veterans Integration Program (VIP), which invites veterans to transition into the banking/finance industry. Last summer, his VIP experience positioned him for a summer analyst position in Goldman Sachs’ Asset and Wealth Management Division.

Coming to America

Wu Wu is bilingual and bicultural, born in Venezuela to immigrants from Guangdong, China. With her home country in political and economic turmoil, she moved to New York in 2016. “My mom’s friends, who live here, recommended Queens College as a nice place to pursue a degree in business administration,” she says. “The other reason I chose Queens College is because I liked how diverse the school is. I identify with both Venezuelan and Chinese cultures.”

A first-generation college student as well as the first female in her family to earn a bachelor's degree, Wu Wu majored in finance and economics to expand her professional options. In particular, she wanted to make her resume stand out to employers in investment banking, finance, real estate, and private equity. Her resume includes an internship with Project Destined, which offers training, mentoring, and networking opportunities to students considering careers in real estate.

The success of team Collabiversity delights Mitchell, who gives credit to the winners and everyone who helped advise them. “My mentoring philosophy is that it entails a village to mentor winners,” he comments. “I encouraged them to reach out to key people and pick their brains as they embarked on their victorious journey.” Joan Nix (Economics), Ying Zhou (Tech Incubator), Nix and Zhou’s protégé Stephen Alexander, Luc Marest (Economics), Cristina Price (Economics), and her husband, Jeff Price, chief commercial officer of the Professional Golfers’ Association of America, are among the “villagers” Wills and Wu Wu consulted. In addition, Mitchell wants to thank Zavi Gunn (Center for Career Engagement and Internships), Dean of the Schools of Business and Social Science Kate Pechenkina, and Marest for their leadership of Blackstone LaunchPad at QC.

Like many entrepreneurs, Wills and Wu Wu find themselves building a business while holding down full-time jobs; they are employed, respectively, at Goldman Sachs and a private equity firm. Mitchell continues to work with them in an advisory capacity and hopes they’ll have opportunities to come back to campus and speak to students. He also looks forward to coaching participants in the next LaunchPad contest cycle.

César Castillo

The Queens College community deeply mourns the loss of César Castillo, a treasured member of the Biology faculty who passed away on March 1. Friends got together on campus on March 8 to share their memories of him. 

Castillo and his parents, Nelsy and Roland Echevarria, immigrated to New York from Colombia. His experience at Queens College was transformative, allowing him to recover part of the life he left behind when he was four years old. “My love of natural history probably stems from early memories of being in my grandmother's backyard in Colombia,” he would write in a post for QC’s Facebook page during Hispanic Heritage Month 2020. “Coming to the US took me away from nature until I reached College. My mentors reintroduced me to nature and I was transformed from someone who thought going to forests was for native born citizens to someone who spends a lot of time in nature."

After earning a bachelor’s degree and then a master’s in paleobotany—fossil leaves—Castillo shared his talents with his alma mater. He loved his job as a chief lab technician and lab instructor, but above all he enjoyed going into the field with his close colleague Jon Sperling (Biology) and his students. His life revolved around QC. Continuing to take courses for his own enrichment, he met his wife, graduate student Wendy Perez, in a class on wetlands. He would later tell her that he found her the most beautiful in the field, wearing waders. Not yet having a ring, he proposed by giving her an orchid; they married in 2009. In a touching ritual, they posed for a photo every year in front of one of the campus’s magnolia trees with their growing family—three children, now 11, 7, and 3. 

Castillo loved wandering through the parks of New York City and encountering its wildlife. He often found remote and little-known places to explore. His wife would always remind him to be careful out there. In turn he would talk about what he had discovered and the friendships he had made, and his knowledge would spread. “César was a lover of learning,” Wendy said. “He was always involved in many organizations—the NYC Audubon Society, Queens County Bird Club, Orchid Board, New York Mycological Society, Adirondack Botanical Society, and Aquarium Society to name a few. Some even met via Zoom from Mexico and Colombia.”

Since Castillo’s death, tributes have poured in from students and colleagues who describe him as a gentle, loving soul who created peace wherever he went, the kind of person who always ended his emails by quoting Max Ehrmann’s “Desiderata”: “You are a child of the universe, No less than the trees and the stars, You have a right to be here." Castillo was celebrated on campus and beyond as a naturalist, birder, and NYC Audubon director who enjoyed helping everyone—particularly people from underserved and diverse New York City communities—appreciate the world around them. Megan Marchica, a student with low vision, recalled that he enabled her to see hummingbirds for the first time, feeding in a patch of jewelweed. Rose Chin-Hong (Biology) noted that in iNaturalist.org, Castillo holds the top position for the most observed bird species in both New York City and New York State; during the pandemic lockdown, he took up urban mothing.

In a metaphor Castillo might have appreciated, Sperling called him a “keystone person” who greatly enriches the social environment he shares with others, the way the presence of a keystone species in small numbers enriches the biodiversity of its environment. “César Castillo was the ‘real thing,’” Sperling concluded. 

A GoFundMe site has been set up to help the bereaved Castillo family.

Andrew Kampiziones ’63

Banker turned educator Andrew Kampiziones passed away on February 23 at the age of 91.

Born in Lamia, Greece, Kampiziones graduated from a teachers college and served in the military in his homeland before marrying and moving with his wife to New York. Employed in the banking industry, he earned a second college degree at QC, majoring in economics. Subsequently, he settled for good in Florence, South Carolina.

Returning to school one more time, Kampiziones earned a master’s in philosophy at the University of South Carolina and joined the faculties of Francis Marion University and Florence-Darlington Technical College. He put his command of finance to good use in the restaurant industry and real estate development and was active in his church. An advocate for the arts in general and Greek culture in particular, he held seats on the boards of the Florence Symphony and the Florence Museum and was appointed to multiple civic committees. This devotion to public service earned Kampiziones many distinctions, including the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, given to Americans who have worked for the betterment of the United States and its citizens, and the Order of the Palmetto, the highest recognition bestowed on a civilian by the State of South Carolina.

Preceded in death by his daughter, Stavroula, he is survived by his wife, Eula, and an extended family of nieces, nephews, and the nieces’ and nephews’ children.

#5

Caroline Rupprecht (Comparative Literature) published "Stahlmann’s ‘Asian Eyes’: Peter Weiss’ Jewish Identity in ‘The Aesthetics of Resistance’ Vol.3” in New German Critique 147 . . . . David Taubman ’08, ’17, vocal music director at Renaissance High School for Musical Theater Arts in the Bronx, will be taking the school’s choir to perform at Disney . . . . President Frank H. Wu was quoted in “Asian Americans say fears linger in Atlanta despite progress two years after shootings,” published by USA Today . . . . QC students Abhinandan Gaba and Natalia Sanchez have been named to the 24th class of Jeannette K. Watson Fellows. Fifteen students are chosen for the fellowship, a three-year program that places undergraduates in funded internships in a range of domestic and overseas sectors. Gaba and Sanchez will be profiled in a future issue of QView . . . . The Village, an opera created by Joel Mandelbaum (Music) and Susan Fox (English), based on the childhood recollections of Stephen Orenstein (Physics), received its European premiere in Hamburg, Germany, on February 17-18. ACSM alumna Kathryn Wieckhorst sang the lead soprano role and produced the opera.