Discimus ut serviamus: We learn so that we may serve.
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QView #132 | July 26, 2022
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Current COVID Protocols
With new COVID-19 variants in circulation, President Frank H. Wu and QC PSC Executive Committee members David Gerwin and Kevin Birth recommend that members of the QC community mask up, particularly indoors.
CUNY is still conducting random testing. If you’re selected, but can’t visit a university test site within the prescribed 14-day time period, please get tested at any CUNY test site as part of preparations to return to campus this fall. Information about CUNY’s random testing program is posted here. Zeco Krcic (Facilities, Planning and Operations) is overseeing campus access; for questions, contact him at zeco.krcic@qc.cuny.edu.
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Should you be exposed—or develop symptoms—free COVID testing and antiviral pills are available at locations throughout New York City. To find a site near you, click here. If you test positive but don’t have a health-care provider, call the city’s hotline at 212-COVID-19.
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Celebrating the ADA
The Committee for Disabled Students of Queens College and the CUNY Coalition for Students with Disabilities are cooking up a party today—Tuesday, July 26—to mark the 32nd anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Everyone is welcome at the barbecue, taking place outside the Student Union from 11 am to 3 pm.
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President Wu stopped at Colden Auditorium last semester with New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and Queens Borough President Donovan Richards. |
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Interim Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Patricia Price had a busy first day on campus. |
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CUNY students picked up T-shirts (above) and had the chance to ask questions (below) during College Discovery/SEEK Welcome Day, July 12. The event was hosted by Queens College. |
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Hostos Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Shiang-Kwei Wang (third from left) visited campus, meeting (from left) AVP for External Affairs and Governmental Relations Jeffrey Rosenstock, President Frank H. Wu, Interim Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Patricia Price, Interim Associate Provost for Academic and Faculty Affairs Meghan Healey, Interim Associate School of Arts Appointee Julia del Palacio, and Arts and Humanities Dean William McClure. |
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The Queens County Farm Museum, a Floral Park property in cultivation since 1697, threw itself a gala fundraiser on July 14. The evening’s menu included live music, guided tours, and of course, food grown on the premises. The first-time-ever event was organized by Executive Director and CEO Jennifer Walden Weprin, who has assisted QC students for several years with Knights Food Pantry donations of food collected from farm museum visitors. NY1 General Assignment Reporter Roger Clark—seen here flanked by President Wu and Assemblymember Khaleel Anderson ’19—emceed the event. |
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Passages: Sculpture by Liu Shiming, featuring work by a celebrated Chinese artist, opened at the Godwin-Ternbach Museum earlier this month. President Wu and Patricia Price, at right, were among the attendees at a reception for the show on July 19, held in collaboration with Macaulay Honors College and the Liu Shiming Art Foundation.
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Hector Cordero-Guzman, President of the Research Foundation of the City University of New York came to QC last week. He toured the campus and met with President Frank H. Wu and college officials. |
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Mariachi Real del Mexico attracted an audience of about a thousand people on July 19 for the second date in Live at the Gantries presented by the Kupferberg Center for the Arts. The free series runs on Tuesday nights through August 16.
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Tips on Tech Recruitment
Students interested in technology careers can learn more about internship and job opportunities at a virtual information session presented by the Center for Career Engagement and Internships on Monday, August 1, from 12 noon to 1 pm. To attend, reserve a place. A confirmation email with information about joining the meeting will be sent to everyone who registers. For more information, email qc_career@qc.cuny.edu.
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Marvin Milich Retires
Alumnus and faculty member Marvin Milich (Accounting and Information Systems), age 76, retired last spring after accumulating nearly half a century on campus. “I was at Queens College for 48 out of the 85 years it existed,” he says.
Ironically, given his druthers, he would never have matriculated at QC.
The son of European Jews who immigrated before World War II—his father left Poland in 1932, his mother escaped Germany in 1939—Milich was born in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. In 1955, “one week after the Dodgers won,” he recalls, his family moved to Forest Hills. Educated at PS 220 (“I was a member of its first graduating class”), Halsey Junior High, and Forest Hills High School, he would have preferred to leave the city for college. However, he says, “European parents don’t like their children going to school out of town.”
Car Condition
Milich agreed to attend Queens College on the condition that he would get a new car and be allowed to lead an independent life. Early on he returned home in his 1964 Mercury Comet Caliente at 1:30 am and found his mother waiting up for him. “I told her that if she ever did that again, I would give back the car and go to school out of town,” he says.
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Sadhoo To Lead Honors and Scholarships
Sadhoo came to QC in 2019 as campus director of the CUNY Service Corps. Last September, she moved over to Experiential Education. But that wasn’t her first job on this campus: She previously served as an academic advisor. Her resume also includes eight years at UNICEF USA.
Sadhoo earned a BA in psychology at QC and a master’s in higher and post-secondary education from Teachers College, Columbia University. The college will conduct a search for her interim replacement at Experiential Education.
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Fitness Center in Top Condition
After a $200,000 renovation, the Queens College Fitness Center is in better shape than ever before, with new treadmills, ellipticals, training bikes, free weights, and more. During the summer, the fitness center is open Monday through Friday, from 10 am to 3 pm. To make a reservation, click here.
In other news, Athletics has appointed Cesar Osses—already known at QC as assistant men’s basketball coach—as coordinator for the intramural program. Flag football, volleyball, basketball, and soccer tournaments are among the programs that will be offered. Registration for each program will go live in the fall semester.
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Initiating Support for Immigrant Students
The campus’s Immigrant Student Support Initiative, soft-launched last spring under the leadership of Vice President for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management Jennifer Jarvis, helps undocumented students make the most of their college experience. For example, immigrant students may be eligible for New York State financial aid and qualify for in-state tuition. To learn more about services, resources, and scholarships available to the immigrant community, students can join the Immigrant Student Support Initiative email list by completing this form. For assistance, email ImmigrantSupport@qc.cuny.edu.
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Passport to Broadway
CUNY faculty, staff, and students can purchase theater tickets at a discount through the TDF Broadway Passport Series. “Passports” are free. After joining, members have access to Broadway shows at $20 or $40 a ticket, plus a $4-per-ticket service fee. Aladdin, Hadestown, The Lion King, and Wicked are among the productions participating in the program; members receive regular email updates about available shows. Learn more about the TDF Broadway Passport Series. If you have additional questions about joining, write engagement@tdf.org.
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Landmark Project Acquaints Teens with QC History
Students at Townsend Harris High School learned about the Civil Rights Movement—and the namesakes of QC’s most recognizable landmark—in a multimedia project led by their history teacher, Frank McCaughey.
“When I started at Townsend back in 2019 as an AP U.S. History teacher, a parent (who is a QC alum) reached out to me to share the story of the clock tower and Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner,” recalls McCaughey. “With our school’s connection with the college and the importance of the Civil Rights Movement, I knew then that I wanted to include their story in my curriculum.”
Although the year was shortened by COVID-19, he was still able to act on his idea. “After the AP Exam, I had students view the PBS documentary Freedom Summer and invited David Goodman (Andrew’s brother and vice chairman of the Andrew Goodman Foundation’s board of directors) to Zoom in with my class, which he graciously did. This was a tremendously powerful experience, especially since it was just weeks after the murder of George Floyd.”
McCaughey subsequently created a Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner module, assigning it in spring 2022 to all five sections of his U.S. History classes (four AP U.S. History and one Honors). “We viewed primary sources and videos on the Freedom Summer Project in the days leading up to a visit to the campus on June 7 to take photos and draw inspiration from the clock tower,” he says. “Additionally, I assigned the recorded Zoom from David Goodman’s 2020 visit.” Expressing their reactions through prose, poetry, photography, and art, the students produced “Clock Tower Exemplars.” Their work, which they shared with the Andrew Goodman Foundation, can be viewed here.
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Prior to the project, the Townsend Harris students knew nothing about Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner; nor were the teens aware that the clock tower—which they saw almost every day—was dedicated to volunteers who were slain for trying to register African American voters. McCaughey saw tremendous value in teaching classes about these activists and the importance of the civic duty to vote. “Throughout our studies, we learned about the struggles that many Americans have experienced related to voting rights,” he notes. “The opportunity to creatively express their learning through the clock tower project was a great success.”
In a fitting coda to the project, McCaughey worked with one of his students to get 75 Townsend Harris juniors preregistered to vote. Going forward, the Chaney-Goodman-Schwerner material will remain part of his curriculum.
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Carol Plaine Fisher ’48
Carol Plaine Fisher, co-founder of Wildcat Publishing, died in June at her home in Westport, Connecticut. She was 94.
Graduating from Queens College at 19, Fisher—nee Plaine—worked in book and magazine publishing, eventually becoming an acquisition editor at Pyramid Books. In that capacity, she brought in and edited a book by artist Peter Max and helped secure the U.S. rights to titles by best-selling British romance novelist Barbara Cartland.
At 50, Plaine married Milton Fisher, a lawyer, banker, and teacher, settling with him in Westport.
Together, they launched Wildcat Publishing, which released notable books such as Nechama Tec’s Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood, a Holocaust memoir that served as the basis for the film, Defiance; The Fall of Japan by historian and novelist William Craig; and the mystery Murder Most Puzzling by Lillian Robinson.
Deeply involved in the cultural life of her new hometown, Carol Fisher organized programs for the Westport-Weston Arts Council, the Westport Library, and the Westport Senior Center, which in 2013 gave her its Service to Seniors Award. She also served as executive director of the Renee B. Fisher Foundation, creating among other initiatives Books for Teachers, which has built thousands of classroom libraries across the country.
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John O’Brien ’59
John O’Brien, a Queens College alumnus who taught history here for 50 years, died in June.
A precocious Stuyvesant High School graduate, O’Brien earned a BA from QC at age 15, an MA from Columbia at 20, and a PhD from the University of Southern California at 24. He began teaching at this campus in 1965, covering courses on medieval Europe, the subject of his doctoral research and early publications. Shifting to ancient Greek history, he wrote Alexander the Great: The Invisible Enemy (Routledge, 1994), interweaving the details of Alexander’s biography with passages of contemporaneous poetry, multiplying the historical perspectives. Translated into multiple languages, the book became the bedrock of a new phase of O’Brien’s pedagogy at the master’s and advanced undergraduate levels. A three-time winner of the college’s Excellence in Teaching Award, O’Brien is also remembered for pioneering the school’s first study abroad program at the University of Leeds in England in 1967.
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Sonia Aguila, who holds an MSEd from QC, wrote a children’s book, First Snow . . . . Ala Alryyes (English), who translated the autobiography of Senegal-born slave Omar Ibn Said, served as an advisor for Omar, an opera inspired by his life. Omar debuted at the Spoleto Festival USA on May 27, receiving coverage from NPR and Wisconsin Muslim Journal . . . . Lisa Cohen, who earned three advanced certificates from the School of Education, is among the recipients of this year’s Big Apple Awards. Issued by the New York City Department of Education, the Big Apples recognize outstanding public school teachers. Cohen teaches physical education at PS 91 Richard Arkwright in Glendale . . . .
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John Dennehy (Biology) published “Supporting scientists who are deaf or hard of hearing” in Nature Microbiology. Born with profound hearing loss, Dennehy was fitted with hearing aids at age three; now he has a cochlear implant. Meanwhile, as reported in a newsletter produced by the CUNY Graduate Center, Dennehy is an author of “Humidity Reduces Rapid and Distant Airborne Dispersal of Viable Viral Particles in Classroom Settings,” a study showing that humidity may reduce COVID-19 transmission. The paper appears in Environmental Science & Technology Letters . . . . Anastasia Difino, a School of Education alumna who teaches at PS 120 in Flushing, was given a FLAG Award for Teaching Excellence. FLAG Awards recognize extraordinary public school teachers. For 2021-22, one FLAG honoree was chosen for each New York City borough. The winners each receive a $25,000 unrestricted cash prize, with another $10,000 given to their respective schools . . . . Lowell Ganz, a QC alumnus, delivered the keynote address at Martin Van Buren High School’s graduation ceremony, held at Colden Auditorium on June 28 . . . .
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Donovan Richards, Rabbi Shur |
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Jerima DeWese, Donovan Richards |
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Rabbi Moshe Shur (History), former executive director of Hillel at QC, gave the invocation at a July 19 reception held by Queens Borough President Donovan Richards to honor 1961 Freedom Riders from Queens. Shur received a certificate acknowledging his service during the summers of 1965 and 1966, when he participated in voter registration drives in South Carolina. At same event, Chief Diversity Officer and Dean of Diversity Jerima DeWese spoke and read a congratulatory message from President Wu, describing the QC civil rights legacy . . . . Anthony Tamburri (Calandra Institute) introduced viticultural expert Sergio Di Loreto, who gave a talk about Frescobaldi at “Tutti giù in Cantina,” il Festival della Cultura del Vino di Velletri (“All Back Down to the Cellar,” the Velletri Wine Culture Festival), held near Rome June 17-19 . . . . Megan Victor (Anthropology) was one of three expert panelists for We Were Always Here: LGBTQ+ History and Colonial America, presented virtually on June 20 by Revolutionary Spaces and funded by the Lowell Institute in honor of Pride Month . . . . President Frank H. Wu has been named to the Law School Admission Council’s Legal Education Program Advisory Committee. The committee will work with LSAC on reliable alternatives for law school admission . . . . Kirsten Beck (CMAL) and Chuixiang Yi (SEES) have received Fulbright U.S. Scholar fellowships for academic 2022-23. Beck will do work in Morocco; Yi in Austria . . . . QC faculty are part of projects that received awards through the University of Illinois Chicago’s new Crossing Latinidades Collaborative, Cross-institutional and Comparative Research Working Groups in Latino Humanities Studies Grant Competition. The program is funded by the Mellon Foundation. Vanessa Pérez-Rosario (English) is among the principal investigators for The Latinx Past: Archive, Memory, Speculation; Sara V. Hinojos (Media Studies) is a P.I. for Latinx Sound Cultures: Belonging, Resonance, Amplifications.
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