ment. InNovember, theUniversity willlaunch its first uni-versity-wide capitalcampaign to raisefunds for its arrayof academic initia-tives, scholarships,and for special pro-grams like theHonors College.

In the upcominginformation pro-gram, Isaacs is pairedwith scholarshiprecipient SofiyaAkilova, a QueensCollege/HonorsCollege scholar andtheater and Englishmajor. Akilova came to this country at age7. A graduate of Performing Arts HighSchool, she wavered between a career inthe theater and one in medicine. “I realizedI am more passionate about the humani-ties,” says Akilova, who expects to graduatein 2006 and work towards a Ph.D.

Other alumni-student pairs to be fea-tured include:• Steve Weitzner, Executive VP and COOof CMP Media LLC, a 1972 York College

When novelist Susan Isaacs went toQueens College, it was during the headydays of civil rights marches and theKennedy era. Civil rights activist AndrewGoodman, a member of her class of 1965,was murdered in Mississippi.

Like others in that era, Isaacs was cap-tivated by what was going on around thecountry. But while excited by the politicalturmoil outside the classroom, Isaacsappreciated the value of what was inside.“I had a wonderful education,” she says.

The author of nine novels, includingthe just-published Any Place I Hang MyHat, Isaacs is investing in the future ofthe CUNY, giving time and money to heralma mater. She is one of several promi-nent alumni donors to be featured alongwith students in an upcoming informa-tional program publicizing outstandingalumni and students.

The program is called “Investing inFutures @ City University.”

Isaacs likes what is happening atQueens. “The college is getting fantasticstudents,” she said.

Isaacs laments that many students havea hard time meeting tuition costs. But inher own very significant way she is play-ing a role in offsetting the burden.

CUNY is grateful for such involve-

cuny.edu/news C I T Y U N I V E R S I T Y O F N E W YO R K F O U N D E D 1847 November 2004

AT A GLANCEUsing ePortfolio,Students Showcase TheirAchievements

New York CityCollege ofTechnology stu-dent Javed K.Ellis is one ofhundreds of stu-dents puttingexamples of theirwork, as well as

audio and video related to their pro-fessional development, onto theInternet. Students say employers areimpressed. See page 12.

Dominicans are aGrowing Force in theCity and at the University

The Dominicancommunity hasbecome a politi-cal and culturalpowerhouse inthe city, with anexplosive popu-lation growth.City College’s

Dominican Studies Insitute, where Dr.Ramona Hernandez is director, is thenation’s principal research body study-ing this important ethnic group. Seepage 10.

Professors DonateSix Figures to a CollegeThey Love

Medgar EversCollege received a$100,000 dona-tion from one ofits professors, Dr.Umesh P. Nagar-katte, who teachesmathematics, andhis wife Dr.

Shailaja U. Nagarkatte, who teachesmathematics at QueensboroughCommunity College. Why? Becausewe love the college, the Nagarkattessay. See page 5.

Continuing EducationPrograms Expand andImprove

Across theUniversity,increasingnumbers ofstudents arepicking up skillsand sharpeningtheir minds in

Continuing Ed programs. EditaGialanella gets hands-on training asshe takes the blood pressure of apatient, in one of KingsboroughCommunity College’s Continuing Edclasses. See page 2.

View works by some of the 20thCentury's most important artists, tourstate-of-the-art science laboratories, learnhow women influenced jazz great LouisArmstrong and take a fresh look at MaryShelley and her classic novel Frankenstein.

Those are just a few of the events dur-ing CUNY Month, the annual smorgas-bord of educational, cultural,artistic and career-orientedactivities beginning onNovember 1st at the 19 colleges throughout New York City.

This year’s edi-tion of what has become the largest outreach program in CUNY's history will also celebrate the exemplary alumniwho have devoted their time and resourcesto students through scholarships, mentor-ing, internships and other support. A spe-cial highlight of this year's CUNY Monthwill be the launch of the new FundraisingCampaign for the CUNY Colleges onNovember 9th.

“The CUNY Month celebration at ourcolleges has become a celebration of thegreat city and state we proudly serve,” saidChancellor Matthew Goldstein. “We inviteprospective students to visit all CUNYcampuses and participate in educationaland cultural events and activities.”

Governor George E. Pataki and Mayor

Michael Bloomberg are each officially pro-claiming November CUNY Month in NewYork.

CUNY Month’s outreach to prospectivestudents, their parents and New Yorkers ofall ages and interests includes college openhouses showcasing academic offerings,facilities and cultural riches. There will beconcerts and recitals, poetry readings, the-

ater, art exhibits, sports events,faculty lectures, financial aid

workshops, campus toursand career information.

CUNY Month willinclude informa-tion about theacclaimedHonors College,College Now,affordable tuition,and more than1,400 degree

programs. There will be pro-grams and workshops targeted to specialaudiences, such as adults, returning stu-dents, freshmen, transfers and studentswith disabilities. Some activities will beoffered in languages other than English.

Among the CUNY Month highlights isan exhibit entitled “An American Odyssey:1945-1980,” at QueensboroughCommunity College's beautiful newOakland Art Gallery, showcasing works byAndy Warhol, Jim Dine, George Segal andother major 20th century artists. Mean-while, the relationship between politics,media and film in American life is the sub-

ject of a screening and discussion at NewYork City College of Technology (Nov. 2).

City College will showcase “Franken-stein: Penetrating the Secrets of Nature,” anexhibit accompanied by films based on theFrankenstein story, along with a lecture andpanel discussion (Nov. 1 - 30). HunterCollege will offer job seekers instruction onhow to write effective resumes (Nov. 1),together with advice about “What's Hot andWhat's Not” (Nov. 2).

A searchable listing of the month’s activ-ities can be found at www.cuny.edu/cuny-month. Visitors can also choose to receivetheir own e-mail alerts about open housedates or other activities of special interest.Trained counselors at 1-800-CUNY-YEScan also answer questions about the col-leges’ highly ranked undergraduate andgraduate degree programs.

To help spread the word about CUNYMonth, Con Edison will include informa-tion about it in bills being sent to 3.1 mil-lion customers, including 500,000 copiesin Spanish. A special CUNY Month mes-sage has been included in municipal work-ers’ pay stubs. And a DVD about CUNYMonth, produced by CUNY-TV/75, alongwith a 24-page brochure, has been mailedto over 100,000 public and private highschool students in the five boroughs andsurrounding suburbs. Filled with informa-tion about the University's programs andfeaturing segments from CUNY-TV’sacclaimed “Study With the Best” news-magazine, the DVD introduces collegeseekers to student success stories.

A Month-Long Celebration of CUNY Offerings;Prospective Students and Public Welcome

graduate; and ChericeWalker, a YorkEnglish/journalismmajor, who is businessmanager and news edi-tor of the campuspaper, Pandora’s Box.• Daniel Donnelly, a1987 graduate ofQueensboroughCommunity College,president of theExecutives Associationof Greater New York

and a principal ofDonnelly Mechanical, acommercial air condi-tioner contractor. He ispaired with MonikaKaur, a Queensborough

freshman scholarship recipient and nurs-ing major, who immigrated from Indiathree years ago.• Lowell Hawthorne, a member of BronxCommunity College class of 1984 andpresident and CEO of Golden KrustCaribbean Bakery and Grill, Inc., a multi-million-dollar business. He is paired withEvelyn Cardona, a third year paralegalstudent at BCC and the recipient of anOutstanding Student Scholarship and aUniversity Student Senate Scholarship.

Novelist SusanIsaacs issupporting heralma mater,Queens College.

Queens College/Honors Collegescholar SofiyaAkilova is pairedwith Isaacs innew campaign.

Alumni Invest Money and Time in Students

2 CUNY MATTERS — November 2004

Some years ago, when I was taking atour of the just-finished Newman Libraryat Baruch College, a group of studentsstopped me to give their assessment of thisnew center for learning that had onceserved a powerhouse for streetcars. Isteeled myself. Then one of the studentssaid, “This building is so beautiful. It’smore beautiful than where any of us live.”I replied, “You know what? It’s more beau-tiful than where I live, too.”

I have always believed that our studentsand faculty need campuses that are beauti-ful, spaces that inspire learning, places forreflection, companionship and community.The need for fostering community is espe-cially great at CUNY where nearly all ofour students commute to class, often fromthe workplace.

New York City presents the ultimatechallenge for those who seek to createexcellent spaces for learning.Available land is at a premium,and the rules that govern itsuse are complex. Employinginspiring architecturaldesigns that are at ease inan urban environment isno simple task. Theseobstacles present a daunt-ing challenge, one withgreat risks, and greatrewards.

This chal-lenge hastaken on a newurgency as theUniversity’s enrollment isat its highest level in 30years, and as we move forward with a capi-tal construction program that will provideto our campuses over the next five yearsthe largest infusion of dollars for facilitiesin the University’s history.

The scope of recent efforts at CUNYdemonstrates that inspiring destinations canbe created throughout New York City:from Baruch College’s “vertical campus,” a17-story building that covers almost anentire city block; to the academic buildingunder construction at Medgar EversCollege to support its growing programs inBrooklyn; to the restoration of the GreatHall and the landmark exterior at CityCollege. John Jay College of CriminalJustice will in a few years have a space thatwill be in keeping with its position as thenation’s pre-eminent college for the studyof criminal justice and related disciplines.

Consider, also, the newly expanded

library atBrooklynCollege.The projectcombines arespectfulrestorationof this neo-Georgian-colonial gem, additional space tohouse the collections amassed over thedecades, and new technology that is with-out peer. A second project for the collegewill expand the quadrangle to the propor-tions contemplated by its original designers.

In these and many other projects, thearchitectural teams have responded cre-atively, emphasizing through visual detailand scale that these are places of inspirationand import, not merely pass-through points.

Attending college is much more thandashing into a building, sitting at a desk foran hour, and then leaving. Just as good

design has many inspi-rations and influences,a good educationdoesn’t happen simply

by sitting in a class-room. It happens when

a student feels the sense of own-ership, confidence, and ease aninspired setting can offer.

Spaces of light and connec-tion and purpose—when

designed well—inspire us tobelieve in

the power ofour own creativity.Educational environmentsshould stir the imagina-

tion, communicating to students that theyare capable of being the “architects” oftheir future, through whatever field theyhave chosen.

With its 19 colleges and professionalschools spread throughout the five bor-oughs of New York City, CUNY is trulypart of the fabric of the City. Its distin-guished alumni have helped shape the city;its students reflect the city’s racial and eth-nic diversity; and its campuses reflect thephysical diversity of the city’s neighbor-hoods.

That’s why we at CUNY are suchbelievers in creating strong civic and aca-demic spaces. Our students, the future ofNew York City, deserve them.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Chancellor Goldstein wasthe recipient in October of the New YorkFoundation for Architecture’s PresidentsAward.

The works of some of America’s greatest20th century artists—iincluding AndyWarhol, Jim Dine, Mark Rothko, RoyLichtenstein, Frank Stella, Willem deKooning, Larry Rivers, Sol Le Witt andRobert Motherwell—are on display at theexquisitely renovated QueensboroughCommunity College Art Gallery.

The gallery is showing off its expandedspace, which includes a theater and aresearch library, with agroundbreaking exhibittitled “An AmericanOdyssey, 1945-1980[DebatingModernism].”

Many of the works inthe show, which fea-tures more than 100pieces by some 65artists, have never beenpublicly exhibitedbefore. “It’s a freshshow,” says curatorStephen Foster. “Andthis is its only U.S.stop.”

“This is the first timethat we have ever hadan exhibit of this level,”says Queens boroughCommunity CollegePresident EduardoMarti. “I see the galleryas a laboratory for ourart department and theexhibits as a textbook for students to expe-rience world-class art. Forty-five percent ofour students are immigrants and I’m aCuban immigrant, and I believe that stu-dents deserve high-quality educationalopportunities. We want to create an acces-sible resource for our students and inspirethem with the power of art.”

The critically acclaimed show, which

opened at the prestigious Circulo de BellasArtes in Madrid, Spain, examines the mid-century avant-garde art movements in theUnited States after WWII, when the centerof the art world shifted from Paris to NewYork. “This is an exhibition that respectful-ly rubs against the grain,” Foster says.“Instead of representing the works in atime-period continuum, it takes a morecritical approach by illustrating how theseAmerican artists who inherited the mantle

of European 20th cen-tury modernism ques-tioned the validity andpolitics of that traditionand moved away fromit. This period was avery important turningpoint in the history of20th century art.”

The great dividebetween America andEurope and old andnew is best representedby Jim Dine’s “HatchetWith Two Palettes, No.2,” a painting thatdepicts an artist’spalette brutally bisectedby a bar of wood inwhich a chained hatch-et is buried. “It is quitea powerful image,”Foster says. “And it’s anallusion to a directattack on conventionalmodernism. This paint-

ing is incredibly famous but is almostnever seen. It’s like hauling out the MonaLisa. It’s an icon of 20th century mod-ernism.”

Artist Audrey Flack adds feminist per-spective to the American Odyssey with“Wheel of Fortune,” from her vanitas or“vanity” series of the 1970s. In this largepainting, a fetching skull, virtually over-shadowed by a lipstick-red necklace of

Board of TrusteesThe City University of New York

Benno C. Schmidt Jr.Chairman

Valerie L. Beal Randy M. MastroJohn S. Bonnici Hugo M. MoralesJohn J. Calandra Kathleen M. PesileWellington Z. Chen Carol Robles-RománKenneth Cook Nilda Soto RuizRita DiMartino Marc V. ShawJoseph J. Lhota Jeffrey Wiesenfeld

Chancellor Matthew Goldstein

Vice Chancellor for UniversityRelations and Secretary of the

Board of Trustees Jay Hershenson

University Director of Media RelationsMichael Arena

Editor: Ron HowellWriters: Rita Rodin, Gary Schmidgall

Photographer: André BecklesDesign & Layout: Gotham Design, NYC

Articles in this and previous issues are available atcuny.edu/news. Letters or suggestions for future storiesmay be sent to the Editor by email to Mediarelations@mail.cuny.edu. Changes of address should be madethrough your campus personnel office.

Susan O’MalleyChairperson,Faculty Senate

Agnes M. AbrahamChairperson,Student Senate

THECHANCELLOR’S DESK

Our Buildings Are Much MoreThan Halls and Classrooms

College, to Qi Gong at Kingsborough.But, now, a sea change is on the way. A

quarter century in, CUNY’s continuingeducation system is experiencing growingpains, the good kind, due to growth: In ten

Continuing Education Looks Call it the “dream team” of speakers: InSeptember 2002, Bill Clinton, VaclavHavel, and Elie Wiesel joined a CUNYpanel exploring political second acts—aswell as what these wildly popular ex-presi-dents and respected philosopher plannedto do next. It was a stellar evening, to besure, and it happened on the watch of theGraduate Center’s Continuing Educationprogram.

Yet the event was hardly unique. TheGraduate Center this year has had animpressive lineup for its Continuing Edpublic programs, including former UNHigh Commissioner for Human Rights,Mary Robinson, Up the Down Staircaseauthor Bell Kaufman, physicist BrianGreene and spiritual guru Ram Dass.

The Graduate Center of course offersmany smaller-scale intellectual and hands-on education courses, as do 16 otherCUNY campuses. Students can train asparalegals at Medgar Evers, as medicalrecords technicians at Bronx Community,or as web designers at City University, orthey can immerse themselves in esotericaranging from Kabbalah at the College ofStaten Island to comedy writing at Hunter

Jim Dine’s “Hatchet With TwoPalettes, No.2,” a painting that is a“direct attack on conventional mod-ernism,” curator Stephen Foster says.

Student finishes sculpture in art class atKingsborough’s Continuing Ed program.

As MoMA Leaves Queens,

Sketch of Baruch College’saward-winning “vertical campus”

College of Technology. Each summer, 400to 500 young immigrants entering ninthgrade study English five days a week forsix weeks—and do it with incredible zeal.“You can’t get them out of the computerlab,” says coordinator Leslee Oppenheim.

Also unique to CUNY is its emergencymedical technician/paramedic training,

CUNY MATTERS — November 2004 3

grape-like beads, admires itself in afancy gilded mirror as the blood-redsands of time, captured in a curvaceoushourglass, quickly run their course. “Thework is saturated in cultural politics,”Foster says, “and is committed to critiquingthe issues of modernism and gender.”

Other pieces take a more whimsicalapproach to reproach. Charles Bell’s “TheJudgment of Paris,” which takes its cuefrom Greek mythology, turns the goldenapple tale into an Atlantic City-like beautycontest, where a buffed-up Ken has tochoose between two scantily drapedBarbies (one brunette, one blond) and asexy Marilyn Monroe.

Mel Ramos, on the other hand, aimsstraight for the heart of American democ-racy with “Miss Liberty—FrontierHeroine,” which gives our country’s spirit aruby-red Superman cape, a Tonto mask, astars-and-stripes form-fitting pantsuit andtakes her on a midnight ride on a snorting,snow-white steed, which kicks up red dust

in its wake.In addition to Andy Warhol’s iconic

“Jackie” and “Marilyn” portraits, whichmerge pop culture and art, “An AmericanOdyssey” also includes George Segal’s“Man Stepping Off a Bus,” KennethNoland’s “Summer Plain,” a signatureassemblage by Louise Nevelson and LarryRivers’ “Dutch Masters and Cigars,” whichis from a series inspired by the cigar boxesthat hawked the smokes. Several youngerartists, including Carole Feuerman andCarol Ross, as well as lesser-known mastersof the period, including Knox Martin andRichard Anuskiewicz, also are represented.“There are so many great works in thisexhibit that I don’t know where to stop,”Foster says.

It is an honor for the college to have

such a show, he says, adding that “the exhi-bition hasn’t been duplicated in the UnitedStates in decades or in Europe ever.”

Queensborough Community College iscommitted to holding other exhibits of thesame caliber, Marti adds, because with theMuseum of Modern Art leaving Queens,“it is important that there be a place in theborough where our students can practiceteaching high school and elementaryschool students about art and where thewhole community can enjoy a world-classexhibit.”

For more information on “An AmericanOdyssey, 1945-1980 [DebatingModernism],” which runs Oct. 24-Jan. 15,call 718-631-6396 or visit www.qccart-gallery.org.

years, system-wide enrollment has nearlydoubled, from 148,500 in 1994-95 to247,700 last year. And the number of non-credit courses and certificate clusters across18 campuses has skyrocketed. As a result,CUNY’s system is impa-tient to jump to the nextlevel. For ContinuingEducation, that’s going tomean educational collabo-rations among campuses,aggressive marketing ofprograms, a centralizedweb site, and more.

Continuing Ed directorsand their deans have beendiscussing these changesfor over three years. “Theidea was we needed to ele-vate [the system’s] statuswithin the university in order to elevate itsstatus within the city,” explains DavidLevine, continuing education director atthe Graduate Center. “We’re at a newmoment for continuing education withinCUNY, in terms of its recognition, accep-tance and embrace by the University as anintegrated unit”—meaning integrated withCUNY’s academic side. Levine adds that

another factor prompting change is theuniversity’s unique relationship with itsurban environs: “Continuing Ed serves areally important role...as a bridge to theUniversity…the first entry point,” Levine

says.He is echoed by John

Mogulescu, senior universi-ty dean for academicaffairs, who himself cameout of CUNY ContinuingEd. Mogulescu is particu-larly proud of the rolethese programs fill asgrantees and governmentcontractors responsible forreaching low income andimmigrant New Yorkerswith free adult literacy,GED, and ESL classes; pro-

grams for youth; technical education pro-grams and classes for the deaf and hard ofhearing. “We serve children throughseniors; and unlike some of the privateschools, while we do a lot of the samethings they do, we are very responsive tothe educational needs of New York Cityand low income New Yorkers,” Mogulescusays. “You wouldn’t think of a university

being heavily involved in adult literacy, forexample; but we probably have 20,000students enrolled in classes in that area.”

For New Yorkers who want to startclimbing the ladder of learning, there isThe Summer Intensive English LanguageProgram, annually taught at City College,LaGuardia Community, BronxCommunity and the New York City

Queens College MuseumHolds Art Treasures,Ancient and Modern

Recent acquisitions, including worksby such artists as Albrecht Dürer, MaxErnst, Romare Bearden and GeorgesBraque, will be exhibited throughDecember 15 at Queens College’sGodwin-Ternbach Museum.

The more than 100 works wereselected from over 500 donated to themuseum since 1998. Other works in theshow include a 15th-Century gothichead of the Virgin Mary, textiles fromPre-Hispanic Peru and two totem polesfrom New Guinea depicting ancestralbird spirits. Paintings, drawings and printsfrom Spain and Latin America, selectedfrom a group of 53 artworks donated in1998 by the Lannan Foundation, are alsofeatured in the exhibition.

A series of seven lectures, beginningOctober 27 and running throughDecember 8, accompanies the show.Amy Winter, the museum’s directorand curator, will give a director's tourto open the series, and will follow onNovember 17 with a lecture on MaxErnst’s 1926 portfolio, HistoireNaturelle, which is represented in theexhibition by several prints.

The Godwin-Ternbach is the onlymuseum in Queens with a comprehen-sive collection of art and artifacts fromancient to modern times. Its permanentcollection of over 3,500 works includesancient Egyptian amulets, Greek andRoman sculpture and hand-blownglass, paintings from the workshop ofPeter Paul Rubens, court-inspiredobjects from all parts of Asia and theNear East, masks and carvings fromAfrica, and drawings and prints by suchold masters as Dürer and Rembrandt,and modern virtuosos such as Whistler,Miro, Picasso, Matisse, and AndyWarhol.

to a Bright Future of Strong Growth and Public Service

Queensborough President Eduardo Martin and gallery director Faustino Quintanilla, in theQueensborough Community College Art Gallery.

Audrey Flack’s “Wheel of Fortune,” whichadds a feminist perspective to the exhibit.Her vanitas, or “vanity,” series of the1970s is “saturated in cultural politics.”

Students at Kingsborough Community College’s Continuing Ed program are absorbed in theirbooks, under instructor’s supervision.

Queensborough Begins to Fill the Void

“Continuing Ed servesa really important

role…as a bridge to theUniversity…the first

entry point.”— David Levine,

Continuing EducationDirector at the CUNYGraduate Center

Continued on page 10 ➞

4 CUNY MATTERS — November 2004

Environmentalists have been trying foryears to restore life to the Gowanus Canal.Although there has been some progress, arecent expedition yielded little reason torejoice. Two weeks of searching for livingthings resulted in a slew of worms and onetiny fish floating in the murkiness of theBrooklyn waterway.

Where oxygenshould have been,mercury, nickel,arsenic and leadabounded.

But significantprogress may be onthe way. More than250 environmental-ists from around thecountry met at theBrooklyn CollegeStudent Center thissummer, assessingthe situation andcoming up withplans to rescue thelegendary channel.

The ultimate goalof those who attend-ed the daylong gath-ering was to restoreclear water andwildlife to the his-torically industrialand thus heavily pol-luted canal, whichextends through theneighborhoods ofCarroll Gardens, Park Slope and RedHook.

At its most glorious, when it firstopened in the 1860s, the two-mile-longstretch of water was home to giant lob-

sters, seals, jellyfish and a variety of fish.But decades of environmental neglect—caused by unlawful disposal of raw sewageand industrial spills from the surroundingcoal yards, tanneries, and paint factories—slowly took a toll and transformed the areainto a biological desert.

The experts who met at BrooklynCollege presented data from their research

and, together withcommunity lead-ers, they issuedcalls for morepublic and privatefunding to revital-ize the canal.

“There is asense of opti-mism,” becausepeople at last arecoming togetherto discuss whatthe problems are,said MartinSchreibman,director ofBrooklynCollege’s AquaticResearch andEnvironmentalAssessmentCenter.

The center,along with theU.S. Army Corpsof Engineers andthe GowanusCanal

Community Development Corporation,sponsored the June conference.

Schreibman’s optimism is shared byothers who say there has been a renais-sance of sorts taking place along the

shores. A planned 56-room hotel is about to riseon an empty lot on UnionStreet, Lowe’s HomeCenter has opened a store,and owners are convertingproperties into apartmentsto make way for new resi-dents.

The effort to return theGowanus to a semblanceof its remote past goesback a century. In 1911the Flushing Tunnel wasconstructed with a hugepropeller that pulled cleanwater from the neighboring ButtermilkChannel into the canal.

In the 1960s, however, the propellerstopped working due to mechanical failureand the canal recaptured its fetid odor andreturned to its polluted condition.

Community activists and environmen-talists have been demanding that some-thing be done; and in 1999 the relentlessadvocacy prompted the Department ofEnvironmental Protection to reactivate theflushing system. In addition to that, 2,000tons of contaminated sediments weredredged from the bottom of the waters.As a result the water quality improvednotably and realtors began to show astronger interest in nearby properties.

Conference participants made it clearthat much more needs to be done.

Among the interested environmentalistswith sound ideas about what to do were anumber of CUNY students.

One student, Chester Zarnoch, 25, rep-resenting both the Graduate Center andBrooklyn College, presented his thoughts onhow best to clean the waters of the canal.

His plans were based on research about

Jamaica Bay, where he had proposedrestoring oysters that would serve as livingfilters. Oysters—the “filter feeders,” as hecalled them—have the ability to take inwater and remove plankton and algae,thereby cleaning the surrounding water.Zarnoch discussed the potential applica-tion of his plan to the Gowanus, althoughhe warned the canal is currently too dirtyto support an oyster population.

This, however, does not mean that thereis no hope.

“There are a lot of people committed toimmediate changes…People are not think-ing of the canal as a dumping ground any-more,” Zarnoch observed.

While residents are skeptical about thecommercial boom that may intensify asthe canal becomes more alive, BrooklynCollege’s Schreibman believes there willultimately be a healthy balance of industryand nature.

“The kind of unmonitored heavy indus-trial activity won’t happen here again, withthe pollution and illegal spills,” Schreibmansaid. “This is a mixed community with agood balance of industrial and residentialelements, and it’s a healthy mix.”

Adapted here is a segment from “Study Withthe Best,” the 30-minute TVmagazine, now entering itsfourth season, that highlightsCUNY’s wide array of out-standing faculty, remarkablestudents and alumni, andmajor University academicinitiatives. The lively, fast-paced series(CUNY-TV Channel 75) is aimed particu-larly at prospective CUNY students.

When the award-winning film “Frida”was released in 2002, it turned the little-known Mexican painter Frida Kahlo intoa pop icon.

And it’s all because of the biographywritten by CUNY Graduate Center alumHayden Herrera.

Herrera’s book, “Frida Kahlo,” whichwas published some two decades beforethe movie was filmed and which was listedin its credits, was her dissertation. “I wascompletely surprised” by all the attentionthe film brought to the book, she says,adding that in the 1980s, when she wroteit, she didn’t think many people wouldread it because her subject was so obscure.“I thought, no one’s heard of Frida, somaybe a few people will read it in the artworld, especially the feminists and myfriends.”

When Herrera began researching Frida’s

life, she became so fascinated with thestory of this forgotten political and sexualrevolutionary that “I began to feel asthough I had gotten inside her head.”

The story of the feminist Kahlo, whosehaunting self-portraits were overshadowedby the celebrated work of her philanderinghusband, Rockefeller Center muralistDiego Rivera, and whose personal life was

filled with physical and emotional pain,took on new meaning when Herrera visit-ed her Blue House in the suburbs ofMexico City. It was at the house museumthat Herrera was able to put Kahlo’s lifeinto perspective and then onto paper.

At 6, Kahlo had polio, and at 18, a busaccident left her with injuries so numerousand severe that her body was encased in acast for a month. It was while she was con-fined to bed with the injuriesthat would plague her the restof her life that she beganpainting, and it was her paint-ing that would sustain herthrough some 30 more oper-ations. In 1953, her work wasfinally exhibited in MexicoCity for the first time, and in1954, suffering after herright leg was amputatedbelow the knee because ofgangrene, she committedsuicide at age 47.

“The house had suchan atmosphere, it was asthough Frida had justleft,” Herrera says. “Andthere were all her things,all her dolls, all herclothes, her bedsidewith her plaster cast onthe bed with the thumbtacks in

it. It was extremely vivid. And one did feelher presence quite strongly there. And Ithink a lot of people come away feelingthat she’s there, you know.”

The tequila-chugging Kahlo, whodressed in traditional Mexican costume,expressed herself in four-letter words andentertained guests at her wild parties bysinging off-color songs, cut a colorful fig-ure. When Rivera had an affair with hersister, for instance, Kahlo, who was bisexu-

al, countered withrelationships witha number ofwomen and men,including commu-nist leader LeonTrotsky.

Herrera says thatKahlo’s life and herpaintings, which detailher pain brushstrokeby brushstroke, are aninspiration to all.

“It’s the strengthand that insistence onallegria – joy – that iswhat makes peoplelove Frida and whyshe’s been turned intosort of Santa Frida,”Herrera says.

Hayden Herrera, CUNY Grad Centeralumna and author of book on Frida Kahlo.

The Gowanus Canal, courtesy of the Gowanus CanalCommunity Development Corporation.

Martin Schreibman (Right), director ofBrooklyn College’s Aquatic Research andEnvironmen-tal Assessment Center, in the labwith student Chester Zarnoch, doing researchusing oysters as living water filters.

Students and Experts Share Goal: Restoring Life to Canal

Who Would Have Thought It? My Book about Frida Became a Movie

BROOKLYN COLLEGE

“Our mission is to establish links tobuild bridges between Latin American

writers living in the United Stateswith their Latino counterparts” inother parts of the world, saidGoldemberg, who is aDistinguished Professor ofHumanities at Hostos CommunityCollege and is the general editor ofthe Review.

With plans to publish severalissues a year, the Hostos Review, orRevista Hostosiana, will presentsome of the finest writers andscholars in Latin America as well ashere in the United States. Forexample, one of the authors in thecurrent issue is Julio Ortega, a pro-fessor at Brown University and a“foremost” scholar on LatinAmerican literature today,Goldemberg said.Dr. Isaac Goldemberg, editor of the new Hostos

Review of Latin American literature.

Scientists Get to theHeart of Trans Fatty Acids

Countless news articles and TV adshave bellowed a seeming truism: that solidfats found in margarine, microwave pop-corn, fast-food French fries and cookieshave been linked to high cholesterol andheart disease. But so far no study hasestablished that they do, indeed, causethese health problems.

Research by City College BiochemistryProf. Horst Schulz and post-graduate stu-dent Wenfeng Yu may eventually answerthis vitally important question.

“There’s still no definite answer, but thisresearch opens up new possibilities forexploration,” said Schulz, who has beenresearching fatty acids for 35 years. Yu, whojust earned his doctorate in biochemistryfrom CUNY with research done at CCNY, isnow doing post-graduate work at the AlbertEinstein College of Medicine in New York.

Schulz and Yu isolated mitochondria,sub-cellular power plants that manufactureenergy, from rat livers and added a dietarytrans-fatty acid to see how rapidly it brokedown. They discovered that the trans-fattyacid is metabolized so slowly that it leaksout into other parts of the cell.

“This slow metabolizing may contributeto the negative health effects attributed tothe acids,” Schulz said. He cautioned, how-ever, that what occurs in rats may not nec-essarily hold true for humans.

Although Schulz and Yu studied only onetrans-fatty acid, they expect others to behavesimilarly.

City College Biochemistry Professor HorstSchulz and post-graduate student Dr.Wenfeng Yu have done critical research ontrans fatty acids. Photo, Bill Summers.

CUNY MATTERS — November 2004 5

Employees Can Save as TheyUse Public Transportation

City University employees who com-mute by city trains or buses may be able tosave more than $200 a year by participat-ing in CUNY’s TransitBenefit program.

The program doesn’t offer a direct dis-count on subway or bus fares. Instead, itallows workers to pay for MetroCards withpre-tax earnings – meaning that theamounts paid for commuting costs nevershow up as part of gross earnings, and thusaren’t taxed.

Participants choose how much to con-tribute from each paycheck to aTransportation Spending Account based onhow often they use city public transporta-tion. Each is issued a TSA debit card thatcan only be used at MetroCard vendingmachines to purchase rides with fundsfrom the spending account.

Contributions can be suspended duringthe summer, while employees are on leave,or anytime an employee decides to sus-pend participation. In the latter case, how-ever, the normal administrative fee of$1.80 a month charged by JPMorganChase, who oversees the plan, will contin-ue to be deducted from the employee’spaycheck.

The TransitBenefit program can’t beused to buy tickets on Metro North, theLong Island Railroad or New JerseyTransit, nor can it be used to pay for park-ing costs. It can be used on express busesin the city.

The savings are greatest for higher-paidemployees who use public transportationoften. For a “frequent rider” (10 or moretrips per week) making about $55,500 ayear, annual savings would amount tobetween $283 and $300. Riders usingmore expensive express buses could savemore, but there is an upper limit on con-tributions of $100 per month; additionalamounts can come from post-tax earnings.

New Hostos Review FeaturesLatin American Writers

The Hostos Review, a compilation ofarticles, stories and poetry, is out in printand ready to be devoured by lovers ofLatin-American literature. Its editor saysthe publication is an attempt to “buildbridges” between Latino writers aroundthe hemisphere and the world.

The current 353-page issue is inSpanish, but the next one will be devotedto Puerto Rican literature and many ofthose pieces will be published in English,the editor Dr. Isaac Goldemberg said.

this fall working on adegree in architecturaltechnology. Previously,she studied furnituredesign in Californiabefore relocating toNew York City inAugust 2001.

In the process ofsearching the Internetlooking for furniture-design training oppor-

tunities in New York, Crisp came acrossinformation about City Tech’s architecturaltechnology program. “I was impressed bywhat I read and the opportunities the pro-gram provides to do hands-on design pro-jects, both in the classroom and throughinternships,” she says.

She adds, “I’m so happy to be back oncampus.”

NOTEDAND QUOTED

When people askCity Tech architec-tural technology stu-dent Jessica Crispwhat she did on hersummer vacation, shecan regale them withstories from Athens,where she competedin windsurfing in the2004 Summer Olympics.

The 35-year-old, an Australian nationalwho now lives in Brooklyn Heights, com-peted with the Australian Olympic teamin the Mistral class of the sailing event, fin-ishing sixth in a field of 26. “The competi-tion was very tough,” she admits.

Crisp, a sophomore, took a leave ofabsence from City Tech for a year and ahalf to prepare for the games, but is back

Jessica Crisp, City Tech student andOlympic windsurfer.

CUNY Professors Donate $100,000 ForScholarships at Medgar Evers College

Teachers have been known to speak of “giving back” as a motivation for choosingtheir profession, but few have used the phrase as literally as Drs. Umesh P. andShailaja U. Nagarkatte.

Umesh Nagarkatte, a mathematics professor at Medgar Evers College, and hiswife Shailaja, a professor in mathematics and computer science at QueensboroughCommunity College, recently gave $100,000 to Medgar Evers for scholarships to be

awarded to two students eachyear, beginning with the fallof 2005.

“It’s a good use of money,”the soft-spoken Nagarkattesaid of the gift. “It’s from ourhearts. There are a number ofstudents who do not have anyother (financial) help and thiswill be quite useful for them.”

An immigrant from India,Nagarkatte said he loves beingat Medgar Evers College,where the student body islargely black and PresidentEdison O. Jackson has beenstruggling to boost donationsfrom all corners of the bor-ough of Brooklyn. He has beenteaching there since 1978.

Another $100,000 giftcame to Medgar Evers recent-ly in the name of the lateBrooklyn Councilwoman

Mary Pinkett, whose husband William gave the school $50,000 this past summerwith a promise of another $50,000 early next year.

Pinkett said he hoped his donation would inspire other middle-class Brooklyn res-idents to do the same. “I hoped that maybe other people as well will start doingthis,” said Pinkett, who works with an association of retired school supervisors andadministrators in downtown Brooklyn.

Medgar Evers has been struggling over the decades against political and socialodds to educate a population that is at risk in society, Pinkett said. “These are thethings that inspired me as an individual to support it,” he said. “When people dosomething like this, maybe it can focus attention on the need…Other institutionshave people to support them, but to my knowledge, although Medgar Evers doesget some donations, they do not get a large number of substantial donations.”

But at the college’s Fourth Annual Legacy Awards Gala held in early October atthe Marriott Hotel in downtown Brooklyn, college president Jackson boasted of thesupport, financial and otherwise, he’s been receiving from some high-powered peo-ple, including John Esposito, president and chief executive officer of Schieffelin andCompany, and Frank Comerford, president and general manager of WNBC.

Jackson presented distinguished alumni awards to several graduates, including Dr.Carol DeCosta, a physician who offered strong words of thanks to the Medgar Eversfaculty.

A current student, April Mojica, spoke of her experiences at the college, sayingshe took heart from words that Jackson repeats often when he’s speaking to stu-dents: “If your mind can conceive it, and your heart can believe it, then surely, surelyyou can achieve it.”

Dr. Umesh P. Nagarkatte of Medgar Evers and hiswife Dr. Shailaja U. Nagarkatte of QueensboroughCommunity College, as the Nagarkattes give$100,000 to Medgar Evers College. With them, onfar left, is Dr. Edison O. Jackson, president of MedgarEvers College, and behind them is Fred Gilbert, exec-utive director of corporate relations for Medgar Evers.

City Tech Windsurfer Is Sixth in Olympics

1787 1870 1912 1931 1954 19

Hamilton Grange,

Alexander Hamilton’s

country estate near CityCollege’s campus. Hamiltonwas a leader at 1787’sConstitutional Convention,which established the wayCongress and the President areelected. Under the convention’s“Three-Fifths Compromise,”five slaves counted as threepeople to determine a state’srepresentation in Congress.

Thomas Nast’s cartoon

(circa 1870) attacks ballot-boxcorruption by William Marcy“Boss” Tweed’s Tammany Hall.Boss Tweed and Tammanysymbolized corrupt big-city“political machines” of the19th century. Party organiza-tions offered immigrants help— patronage jobs, money orfood in times of distress — inexchange for political support.

A suffragist parade on NewYork City’s Fifth Avenue in 1912.An 1848 women’s rights conven-tion declared that “all men andwomen are created equal.” In1878 a women’s suffrage amend-ment was debated nationally andsuch suffragists as Elizabeth CadyStanton and Susan B. Anthonyused civil disobedience —attempting to vote — to gainattention for their cause.

Judge Samuel Seabury (left)interrogates New York City

Mayor Jimmy Walker duringan investigation into municipalcorruption that eventually forcedWalker to resign. Reformsweakened big-city politicalorganizations, but few reformerswon elections. It took the NewDeal’s welfare state — and theservices it provided — to wreckthe political machines.

Mississippi native and civilrights champion Medgar

Evers established local chap-ters of the National Associationfor the Advancement of ColoredPeople (NAACP) throughoutthe Mississippi Delta. Evers’saccused killer stood trial twicein the 1960s, but all-white juriesdidn’t reach a verdict. He wasconvicted and sentenced tolife in prison in 1994.

Student No

Coordinat

activists aworth lunch Carolina in 1Freedom Sumvolunteers whelp Black vChaney of MYorkers AndMichael Schdered by Ku

6 CUNY MATTERS — November 2004

There was perhaps no more appropriatesetting in which to hold the unveiling ofthe CUNY Voting Rights and CitizenshipCalendar than the New-York HistoricalSociety, where New Yorkers lately havebeen learning about the life and times ofFounding Father Alexander Hamilton.

The calendar, a one-of-a-kind documentthat will be used around the country andin New York City publicschools as an valuabletool in curriculum devel-opment, spans 17 monthsbetween September ofthis year and January of2006, but it is far morethan just a document formarking important futuredates, CUNY officials say.

The CUNY VotingRights and CitizenshipCalendar is a tangiblereminder of the strugglesthat went into the evolu-tion of the democracythat is called the United States of America,and of men and women who foughtracism, sexism and xenophobia so theU.S.A. could honestly lay claim to its dec-

laration of more than 200 years ago: Thatits people have a right to life, liberty andthe pursuit of happiness.

“The calendar, website, and curricula willreach millions of people in New York City,across the country and around the world,”said Chancellor Matthew Goldstein. “It willcreate a common thread for readers tounderstand how suffrage began as a privi-lege for the few and then became a rightfor all citizens. Most importantly, we hope

to emphasize the importanceof the exercise of those rightsthrough the electoral processso that voices can be heardand every vote can be count-ed.”

Speaking at the unveilingon a weekday evening inOctober, Louise Mirrer, pres-ident and chief executiveofficer of the HistoricalSociety, noted that the calen-dar came about because of a“visionary leader” whoshowed singular energy in

spreading it far beyond the boundaries ofCUNY. That person was Jay Hershenson,CUNY Vice Chancellor for UniversityRelations and Secretary of the Board of

Trustees. ViceChancellorHershensonasked the NewYork Timesthrough itsKnowledgeNetwork to beCUNY’s partnerand obtain sup-port from TIAA-CREF andJPMorgan Chase,who agreed to bethe foundingsponsors.

But ifHershenson con-ceived the calen-dar and oversaw

its development, the implementation fellto Richard K. Lieberman, Director of theLaGuardia and Wagner Archives atLaGuardia Community College.Lieberman had the massive task of locatingand acquiring hundreds of old photos,sketches and tapes, and of putting historyinto readable snippets to go along witharchival material.

At theOctober 6thunveiling cere-mony,ChancellorGoldstein andPresident GailMellow pre-sentedLiebermanwith an awardrecognizing hiswork on thecalendar andhis “32 years ofexemplary ser-vice” to theUniversity.

For his part,Lieberman said the calendar will achieveits goal of a more perfect democracy overtime. “The battle continues,” he said, not-ing that controversies over the allegeddenial of voting rights appear in thenation’s news pages even in 2004.

The calendar has a companion website(www.cuny. edu/votingcalendar) thatmakes use of audio, video and links to fur-ther information, which together willhopefully inspire greater civic participationand a deeper appreciation of the Americanway of life.

The calendar is the only easily accessiblelocation on the web to hear PresidentLyndon B. Johnson and the era’s key gov-ernment and civil rights figures discuss the1965 Voting Rights Act. Many young stu-dents are simply not aware of the great sig-nificance of that act, which was a watershedmoment in the development of Americandemocracy, a dividing line between a new

era of more open participation in thenation’s electoral system and an old erawhen Americans of dark hue, and theirwhite sympathizers as well, were harassed,beaten and even killed for demanding thateveryone have the right to vote.

Full copies of all LBJ telephone record-ings are available from the LBJ PresidentialLibrary and the Miller Center for Public

Affairs, but nei-ther site allows lis-teners to selectcalls about specifictopics. The calen-dar contains themost significantexcerpts of thePresident’s conver-sations on thismatter, framedwith scholarlycommentary toprovide contextfor the issues athand. In thissense, someonewith no back-ground other than

a desire to learn more about this criticalpiece of legislation can use the VotingRights Calendar recordings to gain insightinto the origins, progress, and passage ofthe act—as it appeared at the time in theOval Office.

The Calendar: An OverviewThe Voting Rights and Citizenship

Calendar highlights critical events andthemes that shaped America’s voting histo-ry: civil rights, big city voting in the mid20th century, the Constitution, suffrage,contested elections and the electoral college.

Specially illustrated sections explorehow Native Americans, Chinese-Americans and women obtained the rightto vote. The rich companion website offersrare streaming videos of civil rights leaderMedgar Evers, the Johnson audio tapes,and more.

Curricular and lesson plans, drawn fromthe calendar’s scholarship and research

"The calendar…will reach millions ofpeople in New York

City, across thecountry and around

the world.”— Chancellor

Matthew Goldstein

Chancellor Matthew Goldstein with Dr. Richard K. Lieberman, directorof the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives, who did the massive researchfor the calendar. With them is Dr. Gail O. Mellow, President ofLaGuardia Community College.

CUNY Voting Rights and Citizenship Calendar,

Three suffragists voting in New York City (circa 1917).

60 1965 1974 1977 2004

Violent

ng Committee

a sit-in at a Wool-unter in North

60. During 1964’smer, three youngo were working toers — Jamessissippi and Neww Goodman anderner — were mur-ux Klan members.

The Rev. Martin Luther

King, Jr. with President

Lyndon B. Johnson. In 1965lawmen using tear gas and night-sticks stopped the first Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march.Dr. King led a second march, butturned the marchers around toprevent a confrontation. Over32,000 marchers made a thirdmarch safely under a court orderof protection.

Representatives Bella Abzug,left, and Edward I. Koch listento an address by Shirley

Chisholm, the first African-American woman elected toCongress. A Brooklyn Collegegraduate, she was an author oflegislation establishing SEEK(Search for Education, Elevation andKnowledge), provides disadvantagedyouths the chance to attend college.

Herman Badillo, a path-breaking Puerto Rican politi-cian and CCNY alumnus, hasbeen Bronx borough president,a congressman, deputy mayorand chairman of the CUNYBoard of Trustees. The JonesAct of 1917 made PuertoRicans U.S. citizens, allowingthem to migrate freely to themainland – and to vote uponarrival here.

A voter registration

drive in New York City’sChinatown. The Hart-CellerImmigration Act of 1965opened the door to immigrantsfrom Asia, Latin America andthe Caribbean. These newvoices would transform thepolitical landscape in the U.S.,especially in New York City,which was 36 percent foreign-born by 2002.

underpinnings, are in development for ele-mentary, middle and high school studentsand teachers in the New York City publicschools and throughout the New Yorkmetropolitan area and beyond.

The calendar is distributed free ofcharge by CUNY and The New YorkTimes Knowledge Network. It is sponsoredby JPMorgan Chase and TIAA-CREF.Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos atHunter College/CUNY is preparing aSpanish translation of the printed calendar,and the University is planning translationsin other formats and languages also. Morethan 170 CUNY faculty, staff and studentshelped with research, editing and the iden-tification of resources and links. UniversityDirector of Media Relations MichaelArena and Daniel Shure, managing editorof cuny.edu, worked closely with Dr.Lieberman and his colleagues to establishthe calendar website.

A Month by Month Journey to DemocracyBelow are listed some of the importanthistorical topics dealt with in the Calendar.At the end of each section printed here, inparentheses, the reader will find the monthand year of the calendar discussing thatparticular topic. Please note that the belowlist is not all-inclusive.

• The Civil War, which resulted in AbrahamLincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, pas-sage of the 13th Amendment to theConstitution abolishing slavery, and theFourteenth Amendment, which granted cit-izenship to former slaves. (January 2005)

• Reconstruction, which was the periodafter the Civil War including the ratificationin 1870 of the Fifteenth Amendment to theConstitution, which enfranchised formerslaves. A combination of enduring racismeventually stripped African-Americans ofpolitical, social, and economic power andresulted in racial segregation in the formerConfederacy. (February 2005)

• Women’s Suffrage and Women Get theVote, which are the sections recountingthe struggle for women’s voting rights. TheSeneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention

CUNY MATTERS — November 2004 7

in 1848 issued a Declaration of Sentimentsstating, “All men and women are createdequal.” (March and April 2005)

• The “Jim Crow” era, when Southernwhite supremacists used poll taxes, literacytests and violence to prevent African-Americans from voting. The U.S. SupremeCourt upheld segregation in Plessy v.Ferguson (1896) and endorsed state lawsdisenfranchising African-Americans inWilliams v. Mississippi (1898). (May 2005)

• President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s NewDeal, which was put into place during theGreat Depression as the country sufferedthrough a painful and sustained economicdownturn that cut across racial lines. Theimportance of the vote took on a newimmediate meaning. The National LaborRelations Act in 1935 spurred millions ofworkers to organized into unions, whichused their strength to elect candidates sym-pathetic to labor’s interests. (June 2005)

• Big-city political machines, which wield-

ed enormous power over the lives of resi-dents in New York and other large citiesthat grew rapidly in the mid-19th century,fueled by immigration and an increase inmanufacturing. Party organizations—knownas political machines—offered immigrantshelp in exchange for political support.They sometimes fixed elections by stuffingor destroying ballot boxes. (July 2005)

• The Civil Rights movement, includingthe Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Boardof Education ruling, which outlawed racial-ly segregated schools. This calendar monthalso deals with the Montgomery, Alabama,bus boycott led by the Rev. Martin LutherKing, Jr. The use of attack dogs, tear gas,and clubs against nonviolent demonstratorshorrified millions of Americans and led tothe 1963 March on Washington, where Dr.King delivered his famed “I Have a Dream”speech. (September 2005)

• Additional calendar months are devotedto: The murders of Medgar Evers and civil

rights workers in the south, events that ledto the Voting Rights Act of 1965; PuertoRican Voters; and Mexican-Americans.(Respectively, October 2005, November2005, and January 2006)

Shining History’s Light into ClassroomsVoting Rights and Citizenship curricula

are in development for the fourth, eighthand eleventh grades. Students using thosematerials will survey American historybeginning with the construction of theConstitution, taking an educational jour-ney through the Civil War and on to thestruggles for women’s suffrage. They willalso learn about civil rights and the labormovement. Finally, students will examinethe struggles of today’s immigrants for vot-ing rights and political empowerment.

The Archives has amassed a collectionof primary source documents that willassist CUNY professors in preparinglessons. The LaGuardia and WagnerArchives and CUNY faculty are collaborat-ing with teachers from the New York CityDepartment of Education and the CityHall Academy, who will bring their peda-gogical skills to the project.

Document-based learning, a require-ment of the New York State Departmentof Education, will help students prepare forstandardized tests, broaden their knowledgeof U.S. history and government, and buildtheir critical thinking skills. This materialwill be presented using a combination ofprinted materials and the computer.

The LaGuardia and Wagner Archiveshas produced curricula for the New YorkCity public schools for more than fifteenyears. Earlier topics have included publichousing, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, publichealth and the Erie Canal. Since 2003 theArchives has focused on civics, includingits most recent curriculum “Keeping NewYork City Streets Clean Since the 1800s,”which dealt with waste management.Voting rights will build upon the Archives’efforts, educating students about this fun-damental right as they march through themajor moments of American history.

A Blueprint for the Learning of History

Cover page of the CUNY Voting Rights and Citizenship Calendar.

8 CUNY MATTERS — November 2004

The late Eileen Egan’sname would not trip easilyfrom the tongue of a typi-cal American history stu-dent. But the 1933 HunterCollege grad was a prolificauthor and human rightsactivist who was passion-ately involved in the burn-ing moral issues and eventsof the twentieth century.

A radical pacifist, shewas honored by the post-World War II governmentsof France and Germanyfor her work withEuropean refugees. Shelater marched with theRev. Martin Luther King,Jr. and was arrested with Mexican-American farm workers inCalifornia. She authored the firstdefinitive biography of the lateCatholic missionary Mother Teresa.

Egan comes to our attention byway of Dr. Susan Kopp, director ofthe veterinary technology programat LaGuardia Community College.Earlier this year, Kopp was honoredby the Catholic Press Associationfor articles she wrote for a smallCatholic monthly magazine, LivingCity. The articles were about theAIDS crisis in Uganda and theaward was called the Eileen EganJournalism Award, a name that at firstmeant nothing to Kopp.

“But right away… I went and lookedher up and I realized that she was thisamazing person and that her life had beenfor others,” Kopp told CUNY Matters.

Born in Wales to Irish par-ents, Egan immigrated as ateenager to New York Citywith her parents and siblingsin 1926. She enrolled a fewyears later at Hunter Collegewhere, according to collegespokesperson MeredithHalpern, she was presidentof the “Make-Up Box”—thetheater club—and was a fea-ture writer for The Bulletin.

Egan’s commitment tothe theater group foreshad-owed the manner in whichshe would later relate to the wider world.“Sometimes we would come home andour living room furniture had been bor-

rowed for the stage,” recalls Eileen’s sister,Kathleen Egan, a nun who lives in Kansas.

Like other immigrants the Egan familyhad it rough in the 1930s, the era of theGreat Depression. Each evening the Egans’mother would set a bowl of fruit on the

table for the next day’sbreakfast, one piece foreach child. Worse hard-ship followed: Withinseven years of the fami-ly’s arrival in New York,both parents died, leavingEileen as the head of thehousehold.

But her years atHunter were halcyonones for Eileen, her sur-viving siblings said.“What an extraordinaryeducation they got at

Hunter,” said her sister Mabel Egan Gil,82, who lives in the Albany area in upstateNew York.

After Hunter College ,Egan attended theUniversity of London on ascholarship and returned toNew York to teach at CurtisHigh School in StatenIsland. In the early 1940s, asGermany began to extermi-nate the Jewish populationsof Europe and unleashedwar over the whole conti-nent, Egan embarked on ahuman rights career thatwould span the rest of herlife. She worked to resettlePolish survivors of theSiberian exile and expelledethnic Germans. She did sothrough Catholic ReliefServices, the agency thatwas to become her long-

term employer. Over the coming decadesshe would travel through Latin America,Asia and Europe, aiding victims of violenceand natural disaster.

In 1955, while on assignment in India,Egan met a then-obscure Albanian-bornnun whose days and nights were spentwith destitute and dying men, women andchildren. Egan would come to knowMother Teresa as a friend and travelingcompanion. Her 1986 biography ofMother Teresa, who died in 1997, wastitled Such a Vision of the Street.

“She wrote what I would call the defini-tive biography (of Mother Teresa). It is thebasis from which all others have been tak-

ing quotes, in some cases with-out attributing, but that’s okay,”her sister Kathleen said.

As a committed pacifist,Eileen Egan had strong ties toU.S. labor and anti-war activistswith whom she sometimes par-ticipated in acts of civil disobe-dience. “She was arrested maybefour times, with Dorothy Day(founder of the Catholic Workernewspaper), and with the farmworkers striking in California”during the United Farm Workersboycotts of the late ’60s andearly ’70s, her brother Jeromesaid.

For all her world travels,Eileen Egan remained a NewYorker in fact and in heart. InAugust of 1992, at the age of

72, she was the victim of a brutal muggingafter attending mass atSt. Monica’s Churchon East 79th Streetnear her home.

“She was near arestaurant and lookingat the menu, her backwas to the street, whenthis crazed personcame up behind her.He went to grab hershoulder bag andcouldn’t get it” and sohe got rough with her,said Jean Gartlan, whowas a personal friendof Egan’s and nowlives in Baltimore.Egan suffered a brokenhip, broken ribs andhad to spend twoweeks at Lenox HillHospital.

“Everyone won-dered when the mug-ging happened howshe would react, nowthat she was finallyconfronted with vio-lence herself,” Gartlansaid. But according toEgan’s family andfriends, she neveruttered a word ofanger about the man,31-year-old RichardRaimonde, who waseventually caught andsentenced in the crime.

In fact, “she forgavehim and wrote to himwhen he was in jailand got to know his

family,” said Gartlan.In January, 1993, the New York Times

published a feature article on Egan, basedon an interview with her in her third-floorwalk-up apartment, as she was stillwheelchair-bound.

“It was totally anonymous violence,” shetold the reporter Michael T. Kaufman, “thekind of violence that comes in a war, whenyour house is bombed and you don’t knowwho did it or why.” She continued, “WhenI was in the hospital and they told me thatRichard had been caught and that he was apoor white drifter who had done this sortof thing before, what could I feel? I feelcompassion for all people who live by vio-lence or act in violence. To me we are hereeither to heal or to hurt, and for me peo-ple who hurt others are the most tragic.”

At the time of the interview, accordingto the Times article, Egan was working on abook “arguing that with contemporary mil-itary technology it is no longer possible tocling to notions of a just war.” The book,titled Peace Be With You, was published in1999.

In October of 2000, at the age of 88,Eileen Egan died. She is buried in CalvaryCemetery in Queens.

In the western corner of Queens, inLong Island City, veterinary professorKopp said she has been inspired by Egan’slife. Kopp has accomplished quite a bitherself as a veterinarian. Back in the 1990swhen she was chief veterinarian at NewYork City’s Animal Care and Control, shewas interviewed by national radio com-mentator Charles Osgood about the diffi-

culties of placingpit bulls in adop-tive homes. TheAmsterdam Newswrote about herafter one of herstudents wasaccepted toCornellUniversity’sCollege ofVeterinaryMedicine. Koppsaid she is proud ofthe training herstudents get atLaGuardia and oftheir track recordin finding meaning-ful work in the vet-erinary field.

Diligence andpride in one’s craft,as well as an abilityto work with oth-ers, are qualitiesKopp hopes she ispassing on to herstudents. “I reallylike it when some-body uses her tal-ents for others,”Kopp said. “How Ilive my life tiesinto my teaching,the way I treat thestudents. I teachthem that if youdon’t learn to worktogether with oth-ers, with other stu-dents, it’s the ani-mals who suffer.”

Eileen Egan wasactive in the theatergroup and wrote forthe college paperwhile at Hunter.She went on tobecome a worldtraveling humanrights worker andwrote the definitivebiography of MotherTeresa, with whomEgan is picturedbelow in the Bronxabout ten years ago.

In an undated photo, Eileen Egan is in the Mother Teresa Houseof the Dying in India.

Dr. Susan Kopp, director of LaGuardiaCommunity College’s veterinary technologyprogram, recently won the Eileen EganJournalism Award for articles that she wroteabout AIDS in Uganda. Kopp then began toresearch Egan’s life. Below, Dr. Kopp withstudents enrolled in LaGuardia’s veterinarytechnology program.

Recalling a Hunter Grad Who Waged a Battle for Peace

"[W]e are here eitherto heal or to hurt,

and for me people whohurt others

are the most tragic,”— Eileen Egan,

speaking to the New YorkTimes in January, 1993

Personal almanacs for women wereubiquitous in 18th-century England;this one included the tax rates, curren-cy valuations, as well as current taxi(that is, hackney) fares and the latestdance steps. Reproduced fromWomen, Accounting, and Narrative.

Reading about capitalism run amuckcauses one to think immediately of thecollapse of Enron, made possible by severalforms of corporate corruption and govern-ment lassitude. Remember, too, that justabout the only high-up Enron executiveswho emerged from that fetid accountingswamp smelling like a rose were women.Maureen Castaneda revealed thewidespread shredding of documents, andSherron Watkins was the Cassandra whowrote the famous email to her bossKenneth Lay warning that Enron wasabout to “implode in a wave of accountingscandals.”

No CUNY scholar is better poised toenjoy the irony of this than HunterCollege Professor of English RebeccaConnor, who has just published Women,Accounting, and Narrative: KeepingBooks in 18th-century England, the latesttitle in Routledge’s Research in Genderand History series. For she has chosen tofocus on a century that saw the first exten-sive attempts by the patriarchy to intro-duce the joys—and responsibilities—ofaccounting to women. “Account, account-ing, accountable: the words are foundeverywhere from tutelary texts to novels,”Connor writes in her introduction, particu-larly “in literature about and directedtoward women.”

Connor has discovered a remarkablenexus between the ubiquitous ladies’almanacs and pocket-size account booksand English fiction during the 18th centu-ry. The heroines conceived by male authorslike Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson,Connor writes, “seem to be fictional ver-sions of the owners of such almanacs” asThe Ladies’ CompleatPocket Book (1753),The Young Ladies’Accountant, and BestAccomplisher (1771),or The Ladies’ OwnMemorandum Book(1775).

Conversely, Connornotes how a woman,the late-17th-centuryauthor Aphra Behn,

CUNY MATTERS — November 2004 9

BOOK TALKOF THE CITY

China’s Gamble on the Market Economy Heroines with Figures—and ‘Personality’power (gonggong quanli) by occupants ofpublic office (gongzhi renyuan)”—in China.Three of her appendices depressingly list“Worst Construction Failures,” “WorstOffice Sellers,” and “Fallen Gamblers” inthe last decade.

Drawing from a wealth of Chinese-lan-guage studies, jour-nals, and casebooks,as well as English-language materials,Sun devotes chap-ters to: “transac-tional” corruption(involving twoparties, officialsand citizens, usu-ally in the formof bribery); “non-transactional”corruption(embezzlement,misappropria-tion, accountingcrimes, or negli-gence); theregionaldynamics ofcorruption;and thedecline of dis-incentivesagainst cor-ruption.

Amongthe problems

Sun identifies is theshifting of over-concentrated power merelyfrom one class of officials (CommunistParty secretaries) to another (chief execu-tives and elite managers), as well as thefailure to replace or re-create the formerlystrict regulatory mechanisms of the oldcentral-planning hierarchy.

Sun is particularly harsh on the Chineseleadership: “Ideologically and morally, thestate has retreated even more sorrowful-ly… Despite occasional exhortations toremember the party’s tradition of jiankufendou (dilgence and frugality), the partyhas not articulated an alternative valueplatform to balance the onslaught of com-mercialism and consumerism, the aggran-dizement of individual desires and wants,and the legitimization of private ‘life-styles.’”

Not surprisingly, in her conclusion Sunsuggests the answer may ultimately lie inpro-democracy efforts. “The democraticalternative offers promising anti-corruptionpotential, especially in two areas: mediaexposure and periodic removal of corruptofficials through democratic processes.”Though, she warns, striking the cautionarynote: “Even democracy—especially at itsfledgling stage—may not be sufficient toconstrain corruption.”

Then, she takes us back, if not to LasVegas, then to Washington D.C. with aglum reminder that the Chinese “mediaand the electoral process have been influ-enced by monetary contributions, corruptoperators, intimidation… Already inChina, vote buying has emerged as a newform of corruption.” The Chinese, Sun’sbook shows, are proving themselves verybright students of the nation that has per-fected the gladiatorial combat betweencapitalism and democracy.

By fortunate coincidence, Yan Sun hap-pened to be traveling in several Chinesecities during the summer of the bloodyTiananmen Square protests of 1989.

The foreign media had for years beenreporting on budding pro-democracymovements in China, and the world mighthave beenpardoned forassumingthat, at longlast, democra-cy was finallybursting forthin the world’smost populousnation. Sun,now a profes-sor of politicalscience atQueens Collegeand theGraduateCenter, quicklydiscovered thereal reason forthe protests.

“I learned first-hand that mostpublic grievanceswere directed atthe rise of officialcorruption sinceurban reforms in1984.” Two yearsafter the protestsSun recorded herviews in her first professional article, “TheTiananmen Protests of 1989: The KeyIssue of Corruption,” in the journal AsianSurvey. At that time “corruption” referredmainly to profiteering by the children ofpowerful party and government officials.Such corruption largely ended with thedismantling of central planning structuresin the early 1990s.

When Sun returned for another extend-ed summer visit in 1995, she was takenaback by how corruption was “returningwith a vengeance” as China began tolaunch its full transition to a market econ-omy. Contemplating research on the sub-ject, Sun found a “rich reservoir” of materi-als in Chinese book stores, party offices,libraries, and law schools. “My experienceswith the corruption and anti-corruptionrealities of China,” she writes, have result-ed in her new book from CornellUniversity Press, Corruption and Marketin Contemporary China.

Sun begins her study, for very good rea-sons, in Las Vegas, whither high-rollingChinese fat-cats have been flocking in ever-increasing numbers over the last decade.These, she asserts, are often “governmentofficials and CEOs of state firms who haveembezzled public funds and taken hugebribes, or business people who haveacquired huge wealth through smuggling,tax evasion, or other dubious activities.”

Sun quotes a Washington Post reportthat “high rollers from China and theamount they are willing to gamble havecaptured the imaginations of Vegas’s gam-bling industry” and is off and running,exploring the various kinds of corruption—which she defines as “the abuse of public

“deliberately omits precise financialrecords” because in her fiction accounting“symbolizes an encroaching, and corrupt-ing, capitalistic world.”

Connor has the knack for chapter andsub-chapter titles. In her first chapter,“Diary of a not-so-mad housewife,” shesurveys the vast ladies’ accounting litera-ture and explains its popularity. One wasthe rarity of banks: there were none inEngland before 1694 and relatively feweven by 1750. “The domestic documentingof finances was often a necessity ratherthan a choice.” Blank pages in these yearlyalmanacs, Connor points out, were invita-tions to record much more than trivialsums; women began to “tell” their lives.She also has fun with the eagerness of the(male) authors of these almanacs to pre-vent women from the “fatal Precipitancy”of lavish spending.

It was in the 18th century, Connorshows, that the serious work began whichled to a Sherron Watkins. “Arithmetick, orcasting Accounts, as it is called, are verynecessary Accomplishments,” opines TheLady’s Preceptor in 1743. That is doubtlesswhy old Samuel Johnson wrote gently tohis seven-year-old godchild in 1784,“When you are a little older, I hope youwill be very diligent in learning arith-metick.”

Defoe’s novels, Connor concludes,reveal his “confidence in the financial capa-bilities of women.” His female characters“possess elaborate financial ‘portfolios’and manipulate their funds with skill andacuity.” If Defoe wrote feelingly aboutaccounting, it is perhaps because he wasno stranger to debtor’s prison himself.

In her last chapter, Connor focuses onfour fictional heroines—Defoe’s Moll

Flanders and Roxanaand Richardson’sClarissa and Pamela—with personality, butnot in the sense of theold James Van Heusensong. Connor notesthat “a common 18th-century synonym formoveable, or personalproperty” was “person-alty” or “personality.”Here she explores“the intricate connec-tion between thosewomen accountantswho keep track of bothnarrative and finance,and their respective‘personalities’ of proper-ty and individuality.”

Connor’s explorationtantalizingly leaves the

reader at the doorstep of the CPA-in-chief of all English novelists, JaneAusten, but she was only 15 years oldwhen Connor’s chosen century ended.

— Gary Schmidgall

Corruption in China,18th-Century Women Who Tally and Tell

— Gary Schmidgall

On a recent Saturday, up on the hillthat is City College’s Hamilton Heightscampus, several hundred Dominican-Americans gathered to share thoughts onthe progress they have made politicallyand otherwise in recent years.

At one of several morning panels, DaisyCoco DeFilippis, provost of HostosCommunity College, recalled a time notlong ago when she was always the onlyDominican at the various CUNY meetingsshe attended.

But throughout the day, it was clear theDominican community had made substan-tial gains, in the city generally and atCUNY.

Politicians, businesspeople and schol-ars—many announcing proudly that theywere themselves CUNY graduates—spentthe day strategizing about ways they couldshare their own success with tens of thou-sands of other Dominicans reaching afterthe American dream.

During the course of her presentationtouching upon obstacles facing DominicanNew Yorkers, of relative poverty and dis-crimination, Coco DeFilippis summed upher feeling in words that were echoed invarious permutations throughout the day.

“Only education will save us,” she said,

speaking in Spanish.University Chancellor Matthew

Goldstein was one of the featured speakersat the mid-day luncheon event held in themajestic Great Hall, where he deliveredthe message that salvation, in the form ofeducation, has in fact arrived and is alreadycommencing its healing work.

“This university is proud of the morethan 23,000 students of Dominican descentenrolled in degree programs at CUNY,”Goldstein said, as the audience broke intoapplause. “In fact, CUNY has graduatedmore Dominicans than any other academicinstitution in these United States.”

The Chancellor furthermore noted thatthe Dominican Studies Institute, which isbased at City College and served as theorganizational host for the weekend gath-ering, “is the only research initiative at anyuniversity devoted to the Dominican expe-rience.”

The director of the Dominican StudiesInstitute, Dr. Ramona Hernandez, whenspeaking earlier in the day at a panel, hadpresented results of a survey showing theeffects of Americanization on growingnumbers of Dominicans in New York.Dominicans hold on to their culture eveninto the second generation, but display theeffects of acculturation to the U.S. and to

New York particularlyin the way they viewthemselves and intheir aspirations.

The mid-September gatheringat which all thisoccurred was orga-nized by theDominican AmericanNational Roundtable,a Washington, D.C.-based organizationthat advocates for theempowerment ofDominicans in theUnited States. “Ourmain focus is in theareas of education,health, economicdevelopment, andpolitical empower-

This chart shows explosive growth of city’s Dominican communityin percentage terms, compared to overall population and the broadLatino population. Credit: based on data supplied by QueensCollege’s Department of Sociology

ment,” the group says in a 69-page publi-cation it distributed that day.

Among the Dominican political stal-warts at the conference was ManhattanAssemblyman Adriano Espaillat, whoearned his B.S. degree in political sciencefrom Queens College in 1978. At the lun-cheon event with Chancellor Goldstein,Espaillat spoke about the evident achieve-ments of Dominicans and said that strivingmembers of an ethnic group beset withrelatively high poverty rates must be self-less even as they display ambition in reach-ing their personal and professional goals.“There is much more work to be done,” hesaid. “We cannot just say we’re going tomake a lot of money and not be thinkingof the man” who has almost nothing.

Another Dominican official present,Guillermo Linares, recently was appointedby Mayor Michael Bloomberg as commis-sioner of the Mayor’s Office of ImmigrantAffairs. Linares received his B.A. in 1973and his M.S. in 1979, both from City

College. In 1991, he became the firstDominican-American to hold public officein the United States when he was electedto the New York City Council. Over thepast several years he has held varied postsaddressing the broad needs of Latino andother immigrants in the United States.

Linares could be seen chatting thatSaturday with Allan Wernick, the chair-man of CUNY’s Citizenship andImmigration Project. Wernick participatedin the morning panel on legal problemsexperienced by Dominican immigrants.

The day’s emphasis on education hadspecial resonance for young scholars whoattended the panels and other presenta-tions. City College sophomore DanielGuillen took part in a folkloric presenta-tion of music and dance given that eveningfor conference participants. The Sundaysession included welcoming remarks byTrustee Hugo Morales, the first Trustee ofDominican descent to be appointed to theCUNY Board.

which has drawn a stream of young peoplefrom the Caribbean nations Trinidad andTobago and Anguillato LaGuardia. In sev-eral cases, those stu-dents have returnedto their homelands tobe their countries’first certified EMTs.

And to train acadre of New Yorkersto combat home-grown problems likedrug addiction,Hostos is offering thestate’s first bilingualprogram to train alco-holism and substanceabuse counselors.

Barriers are break-ing down fast with

respect to CUNY’s Continuing Ed pro-grams, and collaboration is on the rise: Onemulti-campus model in the planning stages

is one that will promote training in sus-tainable construction skills. Another iswhat Kingsborough’s Linda Nahum calls

an allied-healthconsortium. “For,say, sonogram tech-nicians, we didn’twant each of thecampuses to devel-op its own curricu-lum—which mightnot be standard-ized,” explainsNahum, AssociateDean forContinuing Ed. Foreight months,Nahum says, repre-sentatives from 11campuses haveshared ideas onhow “not to rein-

vent the wheel.” The colleges are trying “tolook at the program so [courses] comple-ment, not compete,” Nahum says.

Another major accomplishment forCUNY’s Continuing Ed system will be acentralized, searchable website, up andworking within two years. “We have a hugeportfolio of products, much more than anyof our competitors around town,” explainsPaul Russo, associate dean of continuingeducation and professional studies atBaruch, who is coordinating this ambitiousproject. “But if you’re someone on the out-side trying to figure out what, where, howmuch, it can be unwieldy; and we recog-nize this.”

Accordingly, Russo and project partnerHugo Kijne of The College of StatenIsland are working to streamline multiple-campus databases. “Our ultimate hope isto have a database-driven website which issearchable,” Russo says.

10 CUNY MATTERS — November 2004

Chancellor Matthew Goldstein talks with Leonel Fernandez, President of the DominicanRepublic, with whom the Chancellor signed a cooperative agreement earlier this year.

President Bill Clinton, on a CUNY Continuing Ed panel with Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.

Continued from page 3

Dominicans Grow in Numbers and Influence, Across

Continuing Education Looks to a Bright Future of Strong

3.6%26.8%

165.4%

9.4% 21.2%

60.1%

13.2%

53.7%

324.9%

CUNY MATTERS — November 2004 11

Guillen, 20, is thepresident of theDominican StudentsAssociation at CityCollege and said he wantssomeday to earn a doctor-ate in music and teach ata college. More immedi-ately, he is working withstudents at other campus-es to create a CUNY-wideDominican Studentsorganization, so they canmore effectively absorband disseminate their his-tory and culture, as theywork to improve condi-tions in their community.

To plan for a CUNY-wide organization,Guillen said, he hadrecently met with MirtaSantana, president ofASEDOM, the Spanishacronym for the Associa-tion of DominicanStudents at BaruchCollege. Further meetings are plannedwith student leaders at Bronx and HostosCommunity Colleges, and John Jay andLehman Colleges, Guillen said.

“In recent years there has been anincrease in Dominican students coming tothe college and registering. I know that,”said Guillen, adding that he marveled at

the caliber of people who attended theDominican American National RoundtableConference.

“Who would ever think that we’d haveDominicans on Wall Street and high inpolitics? Dominican culture is becomingpart of this city and influencing it in posi-tive ways.”

Grants to Improve Instruction ofScience and Math in City High SchoolsTwo grants totaling $21.5 million will fund City University research to help high-school students from poor districts succeed in science and mathematics and to createbiomedical research opportunities for minorities.

The larger grant, $12.5 million from theNational Science Foundation, will fund theMathematics Science Partnership in New YorkCity, a program that will involve six CUNYcolleges in a campaign to improve science andmath instruction in 12 city high schools in Queens,the South Bronx and Manhattan over the next five years.

Hunter College will lead the group, which also comprises Lehman and QueensColleges and Bronx, Hostos and Queensborough Community Colleges. The partner-ship will build on a successful Hunter pilot program that has helped students whofailed state Regents exams in science and math. In 2004, 80 percent of the failedstudents who participated in that program passed their exams.

The other grant, $9 million from the National Institutes of Health to researchersat Hunter College, is aimed at creating research opportunities for minorities in suchareas as molecular neuroscience, nanotechnology and cell regulation and proliferation.

Work on the Mathematics Science Partnership began last year, when NicholasMichelli, the University’s dean for teacher education, convened a working group ofCUNY faculty and representatives from the city’s school system.

The group, which expanded its meetings at times to include top state and cityeducation officials, found “widespread problems…that impact negatively on theeffective teaching and learning of mathematics and science.”

Leading the effort to correct those problems, along with Michelli, will be PamelaMills, chemistry professor at Hunter, along with Hunter chemist William Sweeney,Bronx Community College mathematician Vrunda Prabhu and Hunter mathematicseducator Frank Gardella.

Among other reforms, the program will create a dozen math-and-science “hub”schools, undertake professional development for 84 teachers, organize partnershipsbetween college faculty and high school teachers, start summer camps for studentswho fail science or math exams and work to make all these changes permanent partsof academic-year programs.

Students at hub schools who demonstrate aptitude will be tapped for a “cadetcorps” to encourage them to prepare for careers teaching math and science. Many ofthese students will receive scholarships for teacher education programs at CUNY,Michelli said.

Under supervision from CUNY faculty, high school teachers will be encouraged toembrace a “teacher-researcher” role to broaden their teaching skills while deepeningtheir understanding of method and content.

The grants were among scores awarded to CUNY researchers recently. Among theothers were:

Of course bumps are likely along theway to redefining Continuing Education.Former LaGuardia Continuing EducationVice President Judith McGaugheydescribes “mixed feelings” among CUNYeducators about the credit/noncreditdivide. Because CUNY’s academic depart-ments alone have traditionally grantedcredit, Continuing Ed administrators attimes have felt like “second-class citizens,”McGaughey explains. And so now somecampuses offer a hybrid approach, allow-ing selective Continuing Ed programs togrant credit through academic partner-ships. The new School of ProfessionalStudies, meanwhile, has “reinvigorated” thediscussion, McGaughey says, by offeringcredit-bearing, customized programs.Overall, however, “It is difficult to saywhether or when the structural barriers ofthe various colleges will diminish, allowingContinuing Education to offer certain

types of intensive, quickly mounted, aca-demically viable credit courses.”

Perhaps, in the end, that’s ContinuingEducation’s primary contribution toCUNY—its dynamism. As Mogulescu says,“We can take an idea and run with it; and,within three, six, nine months, we can havea fully-blown program that will meet theneeds of literally any population that isneedy in this city, at the same time that weare doing high-end things for lawyers andmiddle class folks as well.”

As for funding these ambitious plans,Mogulescu estimates $75 million a year, fromall campuses, in tuition, grants, and contracts.

McGaughey, Levine, and other directorsthink the effort to redefine and re-orientContinuing Ed will bear considerable fruit.Continuing Education leads to strongerrésumés and better paychecks. And in verypositive ways, says Mogulescu, “It changeslives.”

Dr. Ramona Hernandez is director of City College’s DominicanStudies Institute, which Chancellor Goldstein says is “the onlyresearch initiative at any university devoted to the Dominicanexperience.”

the Nation and at CUNY

BRONX COMMUNITY COLLEGE

• U.S. Department of Energy to the col-lege’s Center for Sustainable Energy, forstudy of alternative energy sources.($966,000)

BROOKLYN COLLEGE

• National Institutes of Health to LouiseHainline, “Biomedical Research Trainingfor Minority Honor Students.”($475,381)

GRADUATE SCHOOL AND

UNIVERSITY CENTER

• National Science Foundation toKenneth Tobin, “Use of Research toImprove the Quality of ScienceEducation in Urban High Schools.”($304,963)

• Better World Fund to Thomas Weiss,“U.N. Intellectual History Project – PhaseIII.” ($267,165)

• National Science Foundation to theCUNY Institute for Software Design andDevelopment, in partnership with theNew York Software Industry Association,to develop advanced software technolo-gies and engineering methods.($600,000)

HUNTER COLLEGE

• PHS/NIH/National Institute on DrugAbuse to Nicholas Freudenberg, “Impactof HIV Intervention on Adolescent MalesLeaving Jail.” ($602,184)

• PHS/NIH/Institute of General MedicalSciences to Peter Lipke, “Minority Accessto Research Careeers.” ($523,014)

• Ford Foundation to Pedro Pedraza,“National Latino Education ResearchAgenda Project.” ($150,000)

• PHS/NIH/National Institute of GeneralMedical Sciences to David Mootoo,“Synthesis of Stable Galacto DisaccharideMimetics.” ($296,974)

QUEENS COLLEGE

• National Institutes of Health to ZahraZakeri for “Establishment of a MinorityAccess to Research Centers Program.”($244,377)

QUEENSBOROUGH COMMUNITY COLLEGE

• New York State Education Departmentto Mary Anne Meyer, “Tech PrepConsortium of Queens.” ($160,000)

• National Science Foundation to DavidLieberman and Tak Cheung, “RemoteLaboratories and Distance Learning forTechnical Training.” ($296,051)

YORK COLLEGE

• National Institutes of Health to BethRosenthal, “Exposure to ChronicCommunity Violence and itsConsequences.” ($295,053)

NEW YORK CITY COLLEGE OF

TECHNOLOGY

• New York State Department of Educa-tion to Elaine Maldonado, “Math, Writingand Critical Thinking.” ($425,369)

MEDGAR EVERS COLLEGE

• National Aeronautics and SpaceAdministration to Leon Johnson,“New York City Research Initiative.”($148,417)

CUNY and Dominican Republic Foundation Agree to ExchangesTies between CUNY and the Dominican Republic grew stronger this summer

when Chancellor Matthew Goldstein and Dominican President Dr. Leonel Fernandezsigned an agreement vowing cooperation in a number of academic areas.

The pact puts CUNY in an alliance with the Dominican Republic-based FundaciónGlobal Democracia y Desarrollo and its sister organization, Wash., D.C.-based GlobalFoundation for Democracy and Development.

The Dominican organizations and CUNY “will foster technical cooperation on top-ics that will be jointly established as complementary… ” the agreement says. “Thiscollaboration will encompass the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences andtechnology.”

The document specifically mentions the setting up of visiting scholar programs andopens the door for exchanges among students and faculty in a wide variety of fields.Officials at CUNY will hold annual meetings with Dominican counterparts to assessprogress, the document stipulates.

Growth and Public Service

Baruch College’s new president,Kathleen Waldron, announced that sixalumni—one of whom chose to remainanonymous—have contributed a total of$53.5 million to the college.

Included in the total is one of thelargest donations in history to a public col-lege in New York State: $25 million givenby William and Anita Newman in supportof Baruch’s award-winning VerticalCampus facility, which will be renamed intheir honor.

Newman, a 1947 graduate, has fundedgraduate and undergraduate programs atBaruch. He is the founder-chairman of NewPlan Excel Realty Trust, one of the nation’slargest real estate companies, which concen-trates on shopping centers in a portfoliothat comprises more than 400 properties.His wife attended Hunter College.

He noted that his immigrant parentsand his late brother also attended theschool, known familiarly at the time asDowntown City, “earning degrees and set-ting the stage for productive careers inbusiness. I’m grateful for what this school,now Baruch, has given me, and I welcomethe opportunity to do the same for a newgeneration of young people.”

Another son of immigrants who has dis-tinguished himself in the real estate field,Lawrence N. Field, made another of themajor gifts to Baruch with his wife, ErisField. The Fields donated $10 milliontoward future renovation of Baruch’s origi-nal academic building at 17 Lexington Ave.They are also giving $2 million to fund theLarry and Eris Fields Family Chair ofEntrepreneurship, expanding the scope ofBaruch’s Field Center in Entrepreneurship,which they endowed in 1999.

The founder and principal of NSBAssociates, Field has more than threedecades of experience in real estate devel-opment and investment in New York andSouthern California. “For me, this opportu-nity to give back to Baruch College is botha privilege and an obligation,” he said.

Lawrence and Carol Zicklin, whoendowed the Zicklin School of Business in1997 with an $18 million gift, donated anadditional $2 million to fund Baruch’sRobert Zicklin Center for CorporateIntegrity. He graduated from Baruch in1957, and was a managing principal andchairman of Neuberger Berman, an invest-ment management firm.

Zicklin said the inspiration for his sup-port was his cousin, Robert Zicklin, “astickler for ethics and the law…For me hewas the model of integrity.”

Marvin Antonowski, a 1947 graduatewhose long career in entertainment mar-keting involved him in such successfulfilms as “Gandhi,” “Tootsie,” “SteelMagnolias,” “Prince of Tides” and “The BigChill,” donated $2.5 million to support theperforming arts center in the VerticalCampus, which will be named the MartinAntonowski Performing Arts Complex.

“I’m delighted to lend my name to afirst-rate arts center at a college that’shome to the nation’s largest businessschool,” Antonowski said.

William F. Aldinger III, a 1969 Baruchgraduate who is chairman and CEO ofHSBC North America Holdings Inc.,donated $2 million to endow a chair in hisname in banking and finance.

“My professional life has been pro-foundly impacted by the excellent educa-tion I received at Baruch,” Aldinger said.“And I want to make sure the same holds

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Office of University RelationsThe City University of New York535 East 80th St.New York, NY 10021

true for today’s stu-dents.”

Waldron said thefinal gift was $10 mil-lion “from an alumnuswho wishes to remainanonymous.” She cred-ited this “extraordinarilygenerous gift,” and theamounts pledged by theother alumni, withhelping to elevateBaruch’s status and toenhance the outlook forthe college’s futuregraduates.

Noting Baruch’shigh standings innational college rank-ings by such magazinesas U.S. News and WorldReport and Money, Waldron said that “the support of our alumni and donors is the drivingforce behind this explosion of excellence.”

Alumni William Newman (left) and Larry Field (right) are herewith a very happy Baruch President Kathleen Waldron. Both gavemillions to their alma mater.

Imagine a virtual interview that allowsstudents to showcase their work and pre-sent themselves to prospective employersanywhere in the world without leavinghome. Well, that’s the reality of ePortfolio,an innovative web-based program that ishelping students at New York City Collegeof Technology and LaGuardia CommunityCollege.

For example, Antonio Calixto, whorecently earned his bachelor of technologydegree in communication from City Tech,utilized ePortfolio to help land his currentposition as a graphics designer at the news-paper Hoy. Calixto, who arrived fromMexico 10 years ago at age 15, says proud-ly: “My website let me advertise myself:‘Here’s talent, come and get it!’”

Calixto and others are benefiting from afive-year $3.1 million U.S. Department ofEducation Title V collaborative grant tothe two schools that aims to improve edu-cational outcomes. The program is in itsthird year.

ePortfolio enables students to createonline electronic portfolios in multimedia,state-of-the-art computer labs. Using photog-raphy, sound, movement, links, 3-D anima-tion, multi-colored graphics and other tech-nologies, they are able to design their ownwebsites and create portfolios that includeresearch papers, accounts of internship expe-riences and multimedia presentations.

“A student with an ePortfolio can, in asense, interview virtually without leavinghome,” said City Tech program director

Karen Bonsignore. “With a click of themouse an ePortfolio can be sent to poten-tial employers anywhere in the world, whocan see evidence of the student’s creativity,work and academic success.”

Dr. Bret Eynon is director of LaGuardia’sCenter for Teaching and Learning and alsoheads its ePortfolio program. “Approximate-ly 1200 students were involved in the pro-ject last year,” he said, “and we expect anadditional 2000 during the current aca-demic year.” Seventy-five faculty participatein eProfile at LaGuardia.

According to Provost Joann La Perla ofCity Tech, the program has surpassed allexpectations. “This fall, 400 more studentswill begin creating ePortolios, bringing thetotal to 1,600, which is over 10 percent ofour student body.” In addition, 18 morefaculty will join 40 colleagues who have

incorporated ePortolios into their curricula.The beauty of ePortfolio is that even

students who haven’t studied web designor have little or no computer training cancreate an effective electronic portfolio.Expert staff is available, either in person orvia an e-mail help desk. In addition, thereare self-guided tutorials, a template to takethe guesswork out of website design, andtechnological tools including scanners, digi-tal cameras, zip drives and CD burners.

According to Dr. Eynon, “ePortfolio allowsstudents to prepare a self-selected multime-dia presentation that reflects the full scope oftheir learning and development.” The pro-gram places a premium on connecting aca-demic achievement to creative expression asstudents showcase their accomplishments, henoted, ranging from text, such as researchpapers and essays, to projects that incorpo-rate images, audio, and video.

City Tech student Javed K. Ellis, 21,who arrived from Trinidad & Tobago in2000, says his website shows not onlywhat he can create, but also how he hassharpened his skills.

“A design company executive saw mywork online and contacted me to discusswhat sounds like a very promising intern-ship,” he said.

Another user who showed the upwardtrajectory of her skills is Cheryl St. John-Broomes, who emigrated from Barbados in1998 and this past June completed herbachelor of science degree in technologyteacher education, with a 3.90 GPA. “Mywebsite showed samples of my work from

four semesters, so prospective employerscould see how my later lesson plans weremore professional and polished than whenI began,” she said. She shared herePortfolio with potential employers duringjob interviews and landed a full-timeteaching position with the New York CityDepartment of Education.

Kurt McDonald, originally from Jamaica,is a senior majoring in architectural technol-ogy. “Since I am a night student, it’s a greathelp that the lab is open on Saturdays, andthat I can communicate with faculty 24/7via e-mail,” he said. “Having my own web-site, sponsored by my college, also says thatmy college is really behind me.”

City Tech faculty cite many reasons forePortfolio’s success. “Creating an ePortfoliorequires students to develop specific sets ofskills related to critical thinking, writing andself-assessment,” said Professor Aida Mysan,who has been incorporating ePortfolio tech-nologies in her advertising design andgraphic arts curriculum since Fall 2002.

Students also gain valuable skills ininformation technologies, Mysan added,which are transferable beyond their aca-demic careers.

For Professor Tanya Mayulta of theComputer Information SystemsDepartment, ePortfolio offers a personaldimension that “takes student presenta-tions to an absolutely new level.” Viewingand discussing portfolios that encompassher students’ biographies, goals and dreams“is very moving and allows us to learnmore about one another,” she said.

Antonio Calixto, who came from Mexico 10years ago at age 15 and earned his bachelor’s degree from City Tech in June, advertisedhimself with ePortfolio.

Baruch Alumni Donate Millions to Their ‘Downtown City’

ePortfolio Helps Students Showcase Skills to Prospective Employers