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May 2, 2022
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Weissman Faculty Excellence Award Winners
Dean Jessica Lang has announced the winners of the first-ever Weissman School of Arts and Sciences Faculty Excellence Awards.
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Excellence in Service and Institutional Leadership: Mindy Engle-Friedman (Psychology)
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Excellence in Mentorship: Mary McGlynn (English)
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Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activity: Bridgett Davis (Journalism) and Louis-Pierre Arguin (Mathematics)
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Excellence in Teaching (full-time): Els de Graauw (Political Science)
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Excellence in Teaching (part-time): Yuliya Cheban (Psychology)
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Join Us Tuesday for Weissman Happy Hour!
Please join Dean Jessica Lang and your colleagues for an end-of-the-year celebratory Happy Hour for Weissman faculty and staff. Co-sponsored by the WSAS Dean’s Office and the WSAS DEI Alliance. TOMORROW, TUESDAY, MAY 3, from 5 pm to 7 pm. Room 750, Baruch Library Building.
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Mindy Engle-Friedman Heading CUNY Climate Scholars Fellowship Effort
CUNY is funding fellowships for Climate Scholars from Baruch, Bronx Community College, Brooklyn College, and Hunter College. The $142,000 initiative will prepare students for careers in green energy, climate change mitigation, and climate resilience efforts.
“CUNY students are New York’s future leaders,” said Professor Mindy Engle-Friedman (Psychology), who is spearheading the project. “This program will prepare our students to take leadership roles in green energy. They will help protect our city from the impact of climate change.”
The application deadline is May 13 and the program starts Aug. 22. Participants must commit to 20 hours a week for six months, with half the time spent on research and half on an internship. Students will receive a stipend of up to $8,400 each. All majors are eligible; please help spread the word. Application information is here.
The green energy effort builds on Baruch’s Climate Scholars program, which launched two years ago and is already sending students to internships, jobs, and graduate school in fields related to climate policy. Read more here.
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Faculty Publications, Fellowships & Media Mentions |
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RACE AND IDENTITY: Professor Shelly Eversley (Interim Chair, Black and Latino Studies) was quoted by The Associated Press about a study that found most Black Americans believe race shapes their identity.
MONUMENTS, MUSEUMS, AND COMMEMORATIVE ARCHITECTURE: Professor Karen Shelby (Fine and Performing Arts) has published three articles:
CUNY AWARD AND SCHOLAR OF THE MONTH: CUNY has given the Feliks Gross and Henry Wasser Award recognizing outstanding research by assistant professors in the humanities or sciences to Professor Steven Swarbrick (English). Swarbrick was also honored by the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment as the April 2022 Scholar of the Month.
Swarbrick specializes in early modern literature, literary and cultural theory, and the environmental humanities. He is the author of the forthcoming book, The Environmental Unconscious: Ecological Poetics from Spenser to Milton, which he says "brings psychoanalytic theory to bear on ecological problems and asks why, despite our current fluency in new materialism, we are still unable to address environmental catastrophe." He's working on two new book projects: Destituent Ecology: Libidinal Politics for the Environmental Left and Negative Life: The Cinema of Extinction (coauthored with Jean-Thomas Tremblay).
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COVID AND IONESCO'S RHINOCEROS
Professor Debra Caplan (Fine and Performing Arts) composed a Twitter thread comparing anti-mask sentiment to the mentality depicted in Ionesco's play Rhinoceros. The tweets received 35,000 likes, 11,000 retweets, and millions of impressions.
"In 1959, Eugene Ionesco wrote the absurdist play Rhinoceros in which one by one, an entire town of people suddenly transform into rhinos," she tweeted. "At first, people are horrified but as the contagion spreads, (almost) everyone comes to accept that turning into a rhinoceros is fine. Rhinoceros is a play about conformity and mob mentality and mass delusion, about how easy it is for people to accept outrageous/unacceptable things simply because everyone else is doing it."
In an interview with AlterNet, she said: "Ionesco’s protagonist faces the same moral conundrum many Americans are now facing amid the ongoing pandemic. It’s crazy to turn into a rhinoceros. His protagonist feels crazy when he doesn’t. It’s crazy to take your mask off. Yet you feel crazy when you don’t."
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PODCAST PRODUCER: Professor Gisele Regatão (Journalism) is working with Spotify as executive producer of three podcast pilots by U.S. Latinx creators who are part of their Sound Up initiative. Spotify says the goal of the project is to “raise up the next generation of podcasters through education, workshops and support” and “create a space for new voices, stories and perspectives in podcasting.”
UKRAINIAN REFUGEES: Professor Emily Johnson (Journalism) spent spring break in Warsaw, where she reported on Ukrainian refugees. She's published two audio stories and news features with PRX's The World. Check them out here and here.
CITA FELLOWSHIP: David Milch, director of the MA program in Arts Administration, has been accepted as a fellow in the Experiential Learning CUNY Innovative Teaching Academy (CITA) 2022 Summer Institute. He’ll use the opportunity to improve the Arts Administration capstone project, in which students work as consultants for arts organizations.
GAINES AND MORRISON: An article by Professor Rafael Walker (English), "Ernest Gaines's Brady Sims: A Final Nod to Toni Morrison," was published in the spring edition of Arizona Quarterly.
MAY DAY: Professor Johanna Fernandez (History) was quoted in a Workers World story about May Day.
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WILD ANIMALS AND OYSTERS: Jennifer Zhu, who earned a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center with Baruch as her home campus, was recently hired as the Marine Habitat Resource Specialist at the Billion Oyster Project, which works to restore oysters in New York City waters with the help of students and community scientists. She'll be leading the group's scientific monitoring and data efforts.
"I think it's a good sign our graduates are both getting these jobs and staying local to contribute," said Baruch/GC Professor Stephen Gosnell, her PhD advisor. "My lab at Baruch has been working with the BOP for the past several years on outreach and research. We are currently developing new data collection and storage protocols for the group as part of a long-term plan to enhance our ability to inform oyster restoration in the city. Jenn and I will continue to collaborate in her new position."
Zhu is also the lead author on an article in Restoration Ecology titled "Fear changes traits and increases survival: a meta-analysis evaluating the efficacy of antipredator training in captive-rearing programs."
Her co-authors were Gosnell; Baruch/Macaulay student Micah Goltsman; and Baruch undergrad alumna Laila Akallal, now at Dartmouth in an MPH (public health) program.
The article looked at antipredator training for animals reared in captivity. These animals help replenish diminished wild populations once they are released, and the training is intended to help them survive in the wild. Zhu and the team reviewed over 3,000 papers to find the few that had data on whether the antipredator training works. They found that antipredator training typically leads to changes in prey traits and improves the fitness of released organisms, but further work is needed to understand the links among these changes.
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I/O PSYCHOLOGY NEWS: Three Master of Science industrial-organizational psychology students have won the Organization and Human Development Consulting Club 2022 Human Capital Case competition. Weissman students Ashley Bueno, Theresa Navalta and Kimberly Rechter competed against teams from other schools to present innovative solutions to a business case in the area of human capital management. The Baruch team beat two Columbia teams to win. Details here.
A recent edition of TIP: The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist includes work by Professor Yoshi Cohen-Charash; PhD alumni Manuel Gonzalez and Irina Kuzmich; PhD students Kaitlin Busse and Wiston Rodriguez; and Baruch undergrad alum and staffer Clemente Diaz.
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FROM PRE-MED TO MD: Professor John Wahlert, chairman of the Department of Natural Sciences, received this note of thanks from former student Hanen Yan, now an MD who's starting a career in emergency medicine at Brooklyn's Wyckoff Hospital.
Yan recalled meeting Wahlert when he was researching pre-med programs. "It was such a scary time in my life," he said. "But you assured me that Baruch's science department was really good, and I took your words with blind faith since you were so nice and welcoming. The Department of Natural Sciences really helped set the foundation and prepared me for the hardships of medical school. Part of my success during my pre-med days was due to the supportive atmosphere of the faculty and students. To this day, my foundational classes in biology, chemistry, physics, and microbiology are applicable to my daily life. Thank you so much for developing such an outstanding program and helping nurture all the students who have gone through the program."
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MENTORING MATHEMATICIANS: A group of students mentored by Professor Adam Sheffer (Math) won a Young Researchers’ Award from Computational Geometry. The award is given for a paper whose authors are under 35 years old. "This is an unusual case," Sheffer said. "The authors of this paper were all undergrads, so probably not even 25 years old."
There were 14 students altogether from schools around the country. The paper they wrote and the list of authors can be found here.
The students were part of the Polymath Jr Program, which Sheffer spearheads. The program provides students an opportunity to do math research. Recruitment efforts are focused on women and other underrepresented groups, and hundreds of students take part each year. Each project is mentored by a professor and graduate students. Sheffer just recently won a $47,433 grant from the National Science Foundation to fund the program.
"Adam is doing amazing work diversifying the discipline of math and advancing many students who otherwise might not have the opportunity to engage more deeply in the field," said Dean Jessica Lang.
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1st PhD: Congratulations to Professor Jean Gaffney (Natural Sciences) and to her very first graduate student, Andrew Guarnaccia, who has just successfully defended his doctoral dissertation. He will be pursuing a postdoctoral fellowship at Rutgers.
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DOLLARS & SENSE HONORED AGAIN
Dollars & Sense, the Journalism Department’s student-run online news magazine, was awarded a Silver Crown from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, its second highest honor. D&S won in the general digital magazine category, which makes it one of the two best online college magazines in the country. In the last 25 years, D&S has won 11 CSPA Gold Crowns and 9 Silver Crowns, including this year's award.
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THE TICKER HONORS ALUMNI AS IT TURNS 90
The Ticker was established in 1932. To mark its 90th anniversary, it's been publishing profiles of Baruch alumni who worked there over the years. Many of them were Weissman majors who have gone on to interesting careers in journalism and related fields. Featured alumni have included Rafael Garcia, who works at Disney; Lia Eustachewich, who works at the New York Post; and Hasani Gittens, from The City.
The Ticker's milestone also coincides with Ticker editor-in-chief Amanda Salazar establishing a chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists at Baruch, with herself as founding chapter president. The SPJ group will host journalism-related events.
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HAPPY HOUR: Tuesday, May 3, from 5 to 7 pm, join Dean Jessica Lang for an end-of-the-year celebratory Happy Hour for Weissman faculty and staff. Co-sponsored by the WSAS Dean’s Office and the WSAS DEI Alliance. Room 750, Baruch Library Building.
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Undergraduate Research & Creative Inquiry Expo, May 12, 12:30-2:30 pm, Room 750, Newman Conference Center.
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Faculty Research Symposium, May 13, 8:30 am-5:30 pm, Room 750, Newman Conference Center. RSVP here.
GRANT WEBINARS: These webinars will provide researchers with information about funding opportunities from four institutions.
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May 11: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (original research and broad-based education related to science, technology, and economics) and Andrew T. Mellon Foundation (arts and humanities). Register here.
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May 25: Russell Sage Foundation (social and living conditions in the US) and W.T. Grant Foundation (strengthening methods, data, and theoretical core of social sciences to better understand societal problems). Register here.
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MISHKIN BRINGS WARHOL TO PORTUGAL
From May 21 through Jan. 31, Baruch’s Mishkin Gallery is partnering with the art center Casa São Roque in Porto, Portugal, to present Warhol, People and Things: 1972–2022. The show places contemporary artists in conversation with Andy Warhol and his contributions to experimental art, media, and critical art discourse. The show includes Warhol’s 38 Polaroids from 1972–1986 and 30 black and white gelatin silver prints from the ’70s and ’80s, which were gifted to the Mishkin Gallery directly by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Mishkin's spring show in New York, Lamin Fofana: BLUES, can be seen at the gallery through Friday, May 6. Kaleidoscope recently mentioned the Mishkin show in a story about Fofana.
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HELP SPREAD THE WORD: UNDERGRAD RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS Undergraduates in all fields are invited to apply to present research projects with students from around the world at the International Conference of Undergraduate Research (ICUR), Sept. 27-29. Project abstracts, 250 words, must be submitted by June 5. Info here. Questions, email katherine.pence@baruch.cuny.edu.
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Past newsletters here. Weissman blog here. Next issue, May 13.
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