CUNY Newswire

For many international students at Brooklyn College, commencement was more significant than it might seem — most of them mastered the art of speaking and writing English in just a few years and were proudly holding their American diplomas while posing for pictures with their families, many of whom had traveled for days in order to attend the commencement.

Ten undergraduates in the senior colleges of the City University of New York have won prizes for Making Work Visible, the 2012 Labor Arts/CUNY Contest, held annually to celebrate the achievements of the U.S. labor movement.

Queens College will celebrate the reopening of four arts venues in the Kupferberg Center for the Arts with a ribbing-cutting ceremony in the lobby of Colden auditorium on Monday, June 11 at 2 pm. Following two years of interior and exterior renovations, the Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Music Building, Goldstein Theatre, and Colden Auditorium will officially reopen to the public. Queens College president James Muyskens and Max Kupferberg–who, along with his late wife Selma, founded the arts center with a $10 million donation in 2006–will be among the speakers. Well over 350,000 people attend cultural programs at Queens College each year.

CUNY in the Heights, which offers continuing education and credit courses to the community, is moving to a state-of-the-art space at the Inwood Center at 5030 Broadway in Manhattan’s Inwood/Washington Heights neighborhood in time for the fall semester.

Lehman College Biological Sciences Professor Dr. Eleanore Wurtzel and her team of researchers have discovered an attribute of the CruP plant protein that could make crops more resistant to climate change. Dr. Wurtzel’s paper, “Lycopene cyclase paralog CruP protects against reactive oxygen species in oxygenic photosynthetic organisms,” is published in the latest issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In 2008, Audrey Arpelleh (who goes by the name ‘Vanessa’) came to study in the United States. Arpelleh grew up in West Africa’s Ivory Coast, and family members encouraged her to pursue a higher education in the United States.

When the lights went down at Symphony Space, the Upper West Side performing arts center and home to the 30th Annual Brooklyn College Film Festival, the student films on display felt like labors of love crafted by hardworking, talented filmmakers-in-training. The films spanned numerous genres —documentaries, thrillers and comedies along with a lavishly produced World War II drama and a stop-motion short on the perils of writing. The festival also featured an opportunity to look back as a retrospective unspooled, highlighting memorable works from the past 30 years.

Noted scholar and author Dr. Byron E. Price will assume the position of Dean of the School of Business at Medgar Evers College, effective July 31, 2012. As Dean, Dr. Price shall steward the School through successful completion of its re-accreditation process with the Accreditation Council of Business Schools and Programs and further strengthen the School’s role as a center for business and economic discourse.

In a post for “Long Island Wins,” an organizing campaign designed to engage Long Islanders in finding sound solutions to immigration issues, Professor Alizabeth Newman exposes efforts by the House of Representative to eliminate critical provisions from their version of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).

The College of Staten Island recently honored its top students, with the help of their friends and families,  at the Fifth Annual Honors Convocation, which was held in the Center for the Arts Concert Hall.  The event’s emcee was Dr. A.

Long Island City, NY—U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan joined leadership from LaGuardia Community College and Goldman Sachs to discuss the10,000 Small Businesses program, a partnership with LaGuardia Community College and the Goldman Sachs Foundation that helps small business owners grow their businesses and create jobs.  Program alumni also participated in the roundtable discussion held [...]

The National Law Journal notes that CUNY Law “is turning into something of a finishing school for deans,” highlighting the fact that in the past three months, two CUNY Law associate deans have been named as deans of two different law schools.

Professor Emeritus John Farago’s Letter to the Editor about parents donating money to public schools was published in the New York Times.

In 1984, the people of Beta Israel, an ancient and secluded community in Ethiopia, began a perilous month-long journey on foot across mountainous terrain. Like most Ethiopians, they were Black. They were also Jewish.

K.D. Irani, professor emeritus of philosophy at The City College of New York, will receive the 2012 CCNY Alumni Association’s Faculty Service Award. The Association’s Administrative Service Award will go to Wendy J. Thornton, executive director, Student Services and Conduct.

At the 6th annual NYC Solar Summit the City University of New York, on behalf of New York City, presented SMART NY; a groundbreaking project to streamline solar adoption in NYC. ‘Solar Market Analytics, Roadmapping, and Tracking NY’ (SMART NY) is a collaboration of 30 partners and agencies* and is supported by a grant through the U.S. Department of Energy SunShot Initiative Rooftop Solar Challenge; part of a national effort to make solar energy cost competitive with other forms of energy by the end of the decade.

A federal district court cited Professor Rick Rossein’s treatise, Employment Discrimination Law and Litigation, in a May 29 judgment in Stone v. Bear, Stearns & Co., Inc. The judgment adopted Rossein’s view on a disclosure and waiver issue in the context of employment arbitration and the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) in an investor case litigated under FINRA.

Long Island City, NY—In this milestone year marking LaGuardia Community College’s 40th anniversary, the LaGuardia Community College Foundation honored Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses, a program committed to helping small businesses in the United States create jobs and economic growth, at its 2012 Innovative Leadership Award Reception.  LaGuardia was the first community college in the [...]

A National Law Journal opinion piece lists CUNY School of Law among law schools that feature experiential learning as a core component of their programs. The piece focuses on the need for experiential learning in legal education and an alliance of educators from more than 30 law schools that is focused on the issue.

“Say yes!” City College of New York President Lisa S. Coico said in her charge to members of CCNY’s Class of 2012 at The College’s 166th Commencement June 1.

“This is my advice to you… Say Yes!” she told the graduates. “Say yes – I will try that, even though it is entirely out of my comfort zone. Yes – this may not be my dream job, but I will start here – and learn everything that I can – so I can get there.”