Discimus ut serviamus: We learn so that we may serve.
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QView #131 | June 1, 2022
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President Frank H. Wu was among the executives designated as Power Professionals 2022 by Schneps Media. The honorees were invited to a reception on May 19 at the Mansion at Oyster Bay in Woodbury, New York. Proceeds from a raffle held that evening were donated to the Jamaica YMCA.
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Student Association leaders made a special presentation to Christopher Rosa on May 25. |
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On Wednesday, May 25, QC celebrated former Assistant Vice Chancellor for Student Inclusion Initiatives Christopher Rosa ’89 in the best possible way: by inaugurating a scholarship in his name for student-athletes with a disability. With his family, he contributed $25,000 to the scholarship fund, to be disbursed in $5000 increments over each of the next five years.
Rosa left CUNY in January to become president and CEO of the Viscardi Center, a network of nonprofit organizations providing a lifespan of services that educate, employ, and empower children and adults with disabilities (see QView 113). The celebration was organized by the Office of Student Affairs. Rosa received the President’s Medal, QC’s highest administrative honor, from President Frank H. Wu at Baccalaureate on Tuesday, May 31.
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(Above and below): President Frank H. Wu and Interim Associate Provost of Innovation and Student Success Nathalia Holtzman met with representatives of experiential programs at the college, including Big Buddies and the CUNY Recovery Corps. |
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Dramatic Choice for Gaspar Award
Recognizing outstanding performance in a supporting role, Drama, Theater and Dance (DTD) presented its Raymond Gaspar Award to Officer Annette Beckford at the department’s graduation reception on Wednesday, May 25.
“Officer Beckford’s energy in the morning, whether it is raining, miserably cold, or delightfully sunny, sets a welcoming tone as people swipe their ID card to access campus,” said Acting DTD Chair Edisa Weeks prior to the event. “Her spirit is in keeping with Professor Raymond Gasper, whom the award is named after. He was a team player who often had motivating words for people, championed the underdog, and encouraged people to never give up on their dreams.”
Gaspar taught at DTD and directed campus plays for 52 years; he also directed plays in Off-Off Broadway theatres.
A few years ago, the Office of Communications and Marketing produced a highly popular video featuring Officer Beckford.
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Fulbright Futures for Two from the Class of ’22 |
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QC students Michael Amrami and Zainab Farooqi, who are graduating this week from Macaulay Honors College, have been awarded prestigious Fulbright scholarships for study and teaching abroad.
“The Fulbright program offers some of the most highly desired—and most competitive—awards in the country,” says Queens College President Frank H. Wu. “We are extremely proud of these two students and their embrace of cross-cultural learning. We know they have a lot to offer the world.”
Amrami received a Fulbright study/research award to seek a master’s in public health at the University of Haifa in Israel; he hopes ultimately to become a physician. He already has extensive experience as a medical assistant and an EMT. He majored in neuroscience-biology and psychology and minored in chemistry, health sciences, and biology.
“I am very much excited for this unbelievable opportunity,” says Amrami, “and am so glad for having the Queens College community behind me through the entire process.”
Farooqi received a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Award, which is sending her to Korea to assist English-language teachers in the classroom. She majored in psychology and media studies and minored in Korean and English; her goal is to pursue a master’s in psychology and conduct research on child development.
Currently, Farooqi teaches kindergarten at Al-Iman School in Jamaica, Queens. She is looking forward to experiencing “how different cultures approach different subject matters and how that affects the way the child learns.”
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Three teams finished in the money last week at the conclusion of the college’s first Blackstone LaunchPad Pitch Competition, in which students presented their business ideas to judges. |
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Mohamed Hakeem, Kennedy Harrison, and Krunal Parikh took the $10,000 first prize for their app, PortaVolt. Designed to address range anxiety—the concern that electric vehicles will run out of juice between charging stations—PortaVolt would enable users to charge their own cars or perform peer-to-peer charging.
Rebecca Oppenheimer, Lior Sanilevich, and Nicole Haller won $4,000 for ClassiFiles, an app that could speed up real estate transactions. Through ClassiFiles, parties in a sale will be able to access documents securely and easily.
Luca Schad, Chloe Certain, and Thomas Espero received $2,000 for CampusConnect, an app that could help reduce waste by establishing hyper-local resale markets. Students moving to or from a college would be able to use CampusConnect to buy and sell items they don’t want to transport themselves.
Five three-person teams took part in the first round of the contest, from February to April; each team worked on an app and a “pitch deck” to describe the product and factors such as its likely market, competitive advantage, and business model. After feedback from the judges, the teams chosen for the final round refined their business models and prepared 10-minute presentations to deliver online.
Competition participants were mentored by alumnus Gerry Marotta, Karl Mitchell (Economics), and entrepreneur Deepti Sharma. Steve Leventhal (BALA), Schiro Withanachchi (Economics), Jian Xiao (Accounting and Information Systems), and James Smith, senior director of accounting shared services at the Finance and Accounting Division of Canon U.S.A. Inc., served as judges at different stages in the competition, which alumnus and ecommerce expert Sabir Semerkant helped organize.
“Students learned a lot and they understand that it is only the beginning,” observes Luc Marest, campus director for Blackstone LaunchPad. “A lot of them will still be here next year. It is a valuable learning process for their entire life.”
“Congratulations to all the winning teams,” says Ying Zhou (Tech Incubator). “The incubator is open to them if they'd like to bring their ideas to the next level.”
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The Godwin-Ternbach Museum (GTM) is marking Pride Month by displaying My Pride Story in the Lobby Gallery from June 1 to 31. The multi-part exhibition, a joint effort of the CUNY LGBTQI+ Consortium, Queens Public Library (QPL), Queens Memory Project, and GTM, features historic and contemporary documents as well as photographic panels. During CUNY Pridefest 2022—taking place on campus Friday, June 10; see following article—drag performers will lead tours of My Pride Story every half-hour.
Members of the public are invited to share their own Pride stories by leaving signed or anonymous writings and drawings at GTM and Queens Library branches. All entries will be archived at the QPL.
My Pride Story is also part of the inaugural season of Queens Rising, a multidisciplinary arts celebration that, like Pride Month, runs throughout June.
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Campus Salutes Pride
After two years in remote mode, CUNY Pridefest will return to the Queens College campus on Friday, June 10, from noon through 4 pm. Students, faculty, and staff from all 25 schools will gather on the Quad to celebrate the university’s diverse LGBTQIAA+ community.
The program will include a parade, live performances, arts and crafts activities, face painting, and more. Attendees will be able to dance to a mix cued up by DJ Unico and refresh themselves with drinks from a lemonade stand; beverage sales will support the AIDS Center of Queens County. In the case of rain, the party will move to the Dining Hall. Valid CUNY ID and proof of vaccination required for all; register here.
The 2022 CUNY Pridefest at Queens College is made possible through the generous support of LaGuardia Community College/CUNY and the New York City Council. Past supporters have included former Speaker Corey Johnson and former Finance Committee Chair Daniel Dromm.
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Writing and Talking about New Yorkers
Craig Taylor, author of the award-winning New Yorkers: A City and its People in Our Time, and Godwin-Ternbach Museum Co-Director Louise Weinberg, one of the 75 individuals he interviewed for the book, will discuss that project and his nonfiction writing process on Friday, June 3, at 8 pm. Kara Murphy Schlichting (History) will moderate the conversation, presented by the Kupferberg Center for the Arts and the Godwin-Ternbach Museum.
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The event, which is free, will be held in the Music Building’s Chorus Room 264; reserve seats in advance .
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Workshops for the Hire Minded
Seniors and recent graduates who are looking for a job will benefit from a pair of workshops offered by the Center for Career Engagement and Internships.
How to Stand out at Virtual Employer Events, presented over Zoom this Friday, June 3, 11 am-noon. will teach participants how to introduce themselves professionally, get interviews, and engage with employers. To attend, register here.
That workshop provides the recommended preparation for I've Graduated, Now What?, on Thursday, June 9, from 11 am to 12:30 pm. During this session, representatives from GEICO, Google, New York Community Bank, Northwell Health, and other featured employers will discuss entry-level, internship, and experiential career opportunities. To attend, register here.
For each workshop, registrants will receive a confirmation email with information about joining the meeting.
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Danielle Abrams, an artist whose genres included performance, installation, drawing, and collage, died in April at age 54.
Abrams, who grew up in Flushing, earned a BFA at Queens College and MFA at the University of California, Irvine. Identifying herself as a queer woman from a mixed-race family, she used art to explore issues of ethnicity and gender.
“I’ve spent my life vacillating between white, Jewish, and Black access, privileges, speech, and cultural codes,” she told Boston Art Review. “Because of my racial ambiguity, I frequently bear witness to racism and antisemitism. I am grateful for this evidence. It is fodder for my work.” She performed and exhibited at the ICA Boston; Detroit Institute of the Arts; Bronx Museum of the Arts; the Jewish Museum, New York; Queens Museum; Grand Central Art Center; and at the Live Arts Biennial at the University of Southern California Roski School of Art and Design.
Abrams taught at University of Michigan, QC, and York College CUNY before becoming a professor of the practice in performance at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston. She is survived by her parents, Stephanie and Eddie Abrams; sister Lauren Abrams; and brother-in-law, Israel Zapata.
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Jack Orbach, a long-term psychology professor who retired to Providence, Rhode Island, passed away in March at the age of 94.
Orbach joined the QC faculty after working as an experimental psychologist at the Yerkes Laboratory, a primate research center in Florida. Drawing on his experience playing violin, viola da gamba, and recorder, among other instruments, he explored the impact of music on emotion and reason in a book, Sound and Music, and subsequently designed a course on the psychology of music.
Orbach is survived by his wife, Hilary Ryglewicz Orbach, and a large extended family, including his children, stepchildren, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
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Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the
Soviets, by Elissa Bemporad (History), was cited in “Rehearsal for Genocide,” an article in the New York Review of Books . . . . Edward Hardy, an ACSM alumnus, composed a song cycle, Born Free, that will premiere July 1 at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, DC. As reported in Broadway World, the work was commissioned by the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts . . . .
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the Corona ceremony in which a street was named for late NEA Jazz Master Jimmy Heath, who taught at ACSM, was covered by the Queens Chronicle, Queens Daily Eagle, Jazz Times, and QNS. Jazz Times and QNS also mentioned the concert that raised funds for an eponymous music scholarship at QC . . . . Holly Reed (Sociology) has been appointed editor of International Migration Review, published by the Center for Migration Studies of New York https://cmsny.org/ . . . .
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This is the last issue of QView for the semester. The newsletter will be published once over the summer and resume its usual schedule for Fall 2022
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The Q View is produced by the
Office of Communications and Marketing.
Comments and suggestions for future news items are welcome.
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