CUNY Newswire

High-achieving students continue to enroll at record levels at CUNY, while more students are on track to complete their degrees, according to a preliminary fall 2012 enrollment report. The University continues to see record enrollment of students with high school averages over 85 this fall, with a 5 percent increase over last year. CUNY’s highly competitive Macaulay Honors College experienced more than a 35 percent increase in the number of applicants for this year, to a record 5,537 for 400 places.

HAVE YOU HEARD? A Hunter student led his wheelchair basketball team to its third gold in London’s Paralympic Games … In Beijing, a Brooklyn College student sang the lead in a Chinese opera … New research by a CCNY climate specialist indicates New York gardens soon might bloom all winter.

CUNY’s $2.7 billion building program is beginning to deliver planned new facilities ranging from cutting-edge labs to entire campuses.
New labs with easy access to top medical researchers. A rooftop greenhouse. Custom-designed study carrels. A moot courtroom. Storefront access for English-learners. A childcare center with an environmental playground.

Clarisse was 8 when she was brought to the U.S. from the Caribbean. She discovered that she was undocumented when she had difficulty registering for high school in New York City, but her status was never adjusted because of divorce and dislocation in her family.
Now 27, Clarisse (not her real name) is among hundreds of CUNY students in the U.S. illegally, who hope to qualify for President Obama’s new Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program (DACA).

To usher in the high presidential campaign season — “high” in the aggravating, not the mind-altering sense — here are three vignettes from John Jay professor Marc Dolan’s savvy and probing biography, Bruce Springsteen and the Promise of Rock ’n’ Roll (Norton).

Say Word! Voices From Hip Hop Theater, edited by School of Professional Studies’ Applied Theatre faculty member Daniel Banks, collects eight works by contemporary artists who confront issues such as racial profiling, police brutality, women’s empowerment and identity politics. The book (from University of Michigan Press) includes a roundtable moderated by Holly Bass and featuring Hip Hop pioneers Eisa Davis, Danny Hoch, Sarah Jones and Will Power that traces Hip Hop Theater’s roots and imagines its future directions.

With grades below B, they were average students by the standards of academia. But the students who attended night school at New York City’s public colleges — often rushing to classes after a full workday — were anything but average. Diverse in age, income and life experience, they not only spent their evenings striving toward their college degrees and future careers, but unlike their day school counterparts, they paid tuition for the privilege.

The CUNY Value booklet and website, detailing the University’s rising academic accomplishments as well as the “CUNY Safety Net” of affordable tuition, financial aid and tax credits, is being updated this fall with new information for the 2012-13 academic year. The materials include new data compiled by the University, The College Board and other sources, confirming again that CUNY represents the best higher-education value in the nation as it continues to meet the challenge of a decade of unprecedented college enrollments.

These are extraordinary faculty who connect the University to its community, engaging their students in the complex challenges facing the city. From its beginning 165 years ago, The City University of New York has always had a dual mission: Deliver high-quality education — and serve the citizens of the city.

As a baby boomer retirement tsunami looms, University seminars are educating employees about financial and emotional issues they might face.

From her native Mumbai, India, Cassandra Pereira immigrated to New York in 1999 and found a fulfilling job at the CUNY School of Law. For the past 12 years, she has assisted hundreds of faculty members, helping with course materials, class preparation and unexpected student issues.

Help Those in Need Via CUNY Campaign. With the holiday season approaching, the CUNY Campaign for Voluntary Charitable Giving is an easy way to help those in need. Currently, New York City has more people living in poverty than the rest of New York State combined, said Gloriana B. Waters, Vice Chancellor for Human Resources Management.

The Graduate Center’s Advanced Research Collaborative (ARC) announces a ARC’s 2013–14 Distinguished Fellowship program and invites senior scholars to apply by October 31, 2012.

A City University of New York task force of business leaders appointed by Chancellor Matthew Goldstein recently presented a report entitled “Jobs for New York’s Future” providing recommendations on how the University could enhance its already extensive effort at preparing a competitive workforce and, through higher education, enable the city to sustain its global leadership.

The University’s renowned faculty members continually win professional-achievement awards from prestigious organizations as well as research grants from government agencies, farsighted foundations and leading corporations. Pictured are just a few of the recent honorees. Brief summaries of many ongoing research projects are listed below.

Attending commencement ceremonies is surely one of the best benefits of being part of a university community. The well-earned joy of our graduates and their families is contagious. I congratulate all of our 2012 graduates, along with the dedicated faculty and staff who have supported them throughout their studies. And I invite our new alumni to stay connected to the CUNY college that has served as a place of reflection for them over the last few years.

Graduation rates of black and Latino students in University baccalaureate programs have increased sharply over the past decade, according to a recent analysis by the Office of Institutional Research.

A Salk Award solidified a student’s circuitous road to medical school.

The annual CUNY Math Challenge — sponsored by the Office of Academic Affairs and the CUNY Institute for Software Design and Development, and supported by the Office of the Chancellor — this year rewarded nine math whizzes with cash prizes ranging from $500 up to a grand prize of $2,500.

Annual Citizenship Now! Hotline recently helped its 100,000th caller — and thousands more.

Long-lost original blueprints of a beloved stadium, along with mementoes of the team that played there for almost half a century, are featured in a new Brooklyn College Library exhibit: “There Used to Be a Ballpark: Ebbets Field and the Brooklyn Dodgers.”