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EDITOR'S NOTE: Summer's winding down, but there's plenty to look forward to this fall at Weissman. Here's a preview of a few of the cool things we're hearing about.
 Meet the Harman Writer-in-Residence for Fall:
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, author of the acclaimed book The Undocumented Americans, joins WSAS as the next Harman Writer-in-Residence. She'll be teaching a course here this fall on creative nonfiction.

Cornejo Villavicencio grew up undocumented in New York City and graduated from Harvard in 2011. Her op-ed on Latinx colorism recently appeared in The New York Times.

The Undocumented Americans was a finalist for the National Book Awards. It was the first book by an undocumented person ever to receive that honor. Barack Obama included it among his favorite books of 2020.
BLS News: 30 Days of Latinx Heritage,
Open House, and a Podcast
The Department of Black and Latinx Studies plans to feature "30 Days of Latinx Heritage," hosted on the BLS Community Page and on Instagram, during National Hispanic Heritage Month, September 15-October 15. The effort is a collaboration between BLS, Baruch Student Life, the Black Male Initiative, and the Initiative for the Study of Latin America (ISLA). The theme for the initiative is "Unidos: Celebrando la Cultura" (United: Celebrating Our Culture). 

A BLS open house is planned for September 9, at 1 pm (register here). And on September 14, at 6 pm, the department will hold a conversation between students and faculty with this theme: "Latino, Latina, Latinx: What’s in a Name?" (register here).
Also this fall, BLS Professors Rojo Robles and Rebecca Salois plan to launch a podcast called Latinx Voices. Follow @latinxvisions on Twitter to get links to episodes as they drop; we'll also include a link to the first episode in a future newsletter. In the meantime, read about (and listen to) the podcasts produced by Salois' students for her survey course on Latin America and for another class called "Latinas: A Social and Cultural Survey."
Introducing New Media Artspace's Next Visiting Artist
The New Media Artspace and Sandra K. Wasserman Jewish Studies Center will welcome kate-hers RHEE as NMA's Fall 2021 Visiting Artist. She is a transnational feminist and interdisciplinary visual, performance and social practice artist, working mostly in the U.S., South Korea, and Germany. We look forward to learning more about her work this fall. In the meantime, check out her website. (Photo ©popcon, image courtesy of the artist.)
New Climate Action Themes: Art, Health, Housing, NYC
Four events are planned this fall for the "We Are Climate Action" speaker series. The programs will take the series in innovative new directions with themes ranging from art to housing. The events are being organized by WSAS Psychology Professor Mindy Engle-Friedman, who chairs the Baruch College Task Force on Sustainability.

The series kicks off October 7 at 4 pm with a look at strategies for how New York City can flourish while adapting to climate change impacts. Speakers will include Alice C. Hill, senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The final program for the fall series, planned for November 18, will explore how public art emotionally engages and enriches public discourse on environmental challenges including climate change. Speakers will include Anina Gerchick, an outdoor installation artist, landscape designer, and creator of BirdLink sculptures, which are living plant habitats for birds (pictured here). Also joining the panel will be Julie Reiss, an art historian and author of Art, Theory and Practice in the Anthropocene. Both are CUNY alumnae: Reiss has a PhD from The Graduate Center and Gerchick got her architecture degree from City College.

The speaker series will also include events looking at climate change and health, and at the impact of climate change on housing, insurance, and flooding.
Faculty in the News ... and a Query
QUERY FOR WEISSMAN FACULTY: We're putting together a list of WSAS professors who are CUNY alumni for a social media campaign. Send names, department, degree and alma mater info to baruchwsas@baruch.cuny.edu. ... And while we have your attention, here's an update on our faculty photo project: We've uploaded more than 100 of your beautiful new profile photos to the WSAS website. Another 50 photos still need replacing; you've been emailed if you're in that group. (PS, thank you, BLS, for being the first department where every faculty photo looks spiffy!)

WEISSMAN FACULTY IN THE NEWS:
  • WSAS History Professor Charlotte Brooks spoke to NPR about the history of big-city mayors perpetuating anti-Asian hate.
  • WSAS History Professor Johanna Fernandez spoke about her book The Young Lords on the podcast By Any Means Necessary (starting at minute 19:25).
  • WSAS Professors Ted Henken and Katrin Hansing (Sociology/Anthropology) continue to be in demand as experts on Cuba. Henken was quoted recently in The Guardian and Columbia Journalism Review among other publications and Hansing's research on Cuba was cited in a story in The Washington Post.
  • WSAS Journalism Professor Andrea Gabor spoke to Bloomberg Opinion Radio about pandemic funding and K-12 schools (starting at minute 26:28).
  • The CUNY Graduate Center recently profiled WSAS alumna Yelena Dzhanova, who's pursuing a master's degree at the GC. The GC also wrote about research by Natural Sciences Professors Jamal Jalilian-Marian and Adrian Dumitru, who are on both the GC and WSAS faculties. Both GC stories were picked up by the CUNY Briefs, which gets emailed to several hundred thousand people.
Alumni Spotlight
VANESSA SANTANA, RISING STAR AND DEI CHAMPION
Event Marketer magazine recently featured Vanessa Santana as one of "10 rising Black and Brown leaders" working toward a more "diverse and equitable future," and quoted her as saying: "It means having a conversation—you and me, completely different backgrounds, but learning about what we’re passionate about and why."

She graduated from WSAS in 2017 with a degree in communications and a minor in journalism. She's been working for General Mills for four years, most recently as senior brand experience planner, but is about to take on a new role as assistant brand manager for Dove Haircare at Unilever. "My experience at Baruch was so awesome and certainly influenced where I'm at now," she said.
High Rankings for WSAS Actuarial Science and I/O Psych
Baruch Weissman's actuarial science program has been ranked #6 in the nation by College Values Online, which evaluates schools and degree programs by looking at tuition, return on investment, and career options. Another organization, CollegeChoice, ranked the WSAS actuarial science program 11th nationally.
For the third year in a row, the doctoral program in industrial/organizational psychology run by Baruch and the CUNY Graduate Center has been ranked #8 nationally by Organizational Psychology Degrees as well as #5 among public institutions. The program was praised for its “collaborative culture of faculty and student support in research excellence” and its focus on diversity as a “core value.” The ranking also noted that “the program attracts some of the top talents in the field" with faculty "widely recognized for their contributions to I/O psychology.”
Got news, questions, or feedback? Email baruchwsas@baruch.cuny.edu.
Past newsletters here. Next newsletter: August 30.