CUNY Newswire

Hunter students Michelle Balon, Hunter Gross, Umila Singh, Michael Oman-Reagan, and Jeanne Michaels have been awarded Critical Language Scholarships from the U.S. Department of State to study “critical needs” languages during the summer of 2013. The CLS Program is part of a U.S. government effort to expand the number of Americans studying and mastering critical [...]

Hunter Chinese Flagship students Dillon O’Connor, Rossi Petrova, and Crystal Yeh have all won prestigious Boren Scholarships to support their Flagship Capstone year of study in China starting in fall 2013. Each student will receive up to $20,000. The Boren Scholarship is an extremely competitive grant from the National Security Education Program designed to encourage [...]

Doctoral faculty member Jonathan Kalb (Theatre) is a recipient of the 2011–12 George Jean Nathan Award for dramatic criticism for Great Lengths: Seven Works of Marathon Theater (University of Michigan Press, 2011). He shares the prize with Kenneth Gross (Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life). Kalb previously won the Nathan Award in 1990–91 for his [...]

The Christian Science Monitor has named Charter Schools and the Corporate Makeover of Public Education, by doctoral faculty members Michael Fabricant (Prof., Hunter, Social Welfare) and Michelle Fine (Dist. Prof., GC, Psychology, Urban Education), one of the year’s 15 must-read books about K–12 education in the United States. The Monitor says, “This book provides an [...]

Doctoral faculty and graduate students in archaeology in the GC Anthropology Program have collaborated with an international team of geneticists and biologists in a study of the arctic fox in Iceland.

“Impossible Grace,” a poem written by Distinguished Professor Meena Alexander has inspired the first Al-Quds Composition Award, to be presented by the newly established College of Music at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem. The winning composition will receive two public performances in Jerusalem in October under the artistic direction of Anke Rauthmann, director of the Berlin Lyric Opera.

A book by doctoral faculty member Jonathan Kalb, professor of theatre at Hunter College, has won the Theatre Library Association’s 2012 George Freedley Memorial Award.

The 2011 Graduate School Rankings issued by U.S. News lists Hunter’s MFA Program in Fine Arts high in the News nationwide roster of MFA Programs in Art and Design. Of the 230 programs assessed, Hunter was ranked #13.

The Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College ranks 16th among 206 social work graduate programs nationwide, according to the 2012 U.S. News and World Report edition of “America’s Best Graduate Schools.” This places Hunter’s school of social work in the top eight percent of all programs. Rankings are based on surveys of experts in the field of social work education. In the previous 2008 report, Hunter was was ranked 26th among 168 MSW programs.

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer came to Hunter College on Thursday, January 26, with a powerful idea: New York should install solar panels on the roofs of its 1,094 public schools, a project that would eliminate nearly 77,000 tons of carbon from the city’s air each year, save taxpayers millions in energy costs and create 5,400 green jobs.

The Hunter College community is profoundly saddened by the loss of our former president and inspiring mentor, Jacqueline Grennan Wexler.

President Obama has named Dr. Mildred S. Dresselhaus (Hunter ’51) as one of two recipients of the Enrico Fermi Award, a prestigious award for scientific achievement. The award, honoring the memory of Nobel Laureate Enrico Fermi, is administered on behalf of the White House by the U.S Department of Energy. Dresselhaus shares the honor with Dr. Burton Richter of Stanford University.

On stage at Hunter College’s winter commencement on January 19th will be the internationally acclaimed ballet dancer Heather Watts, Ford Foundation president Luis A. Ubinas, and the 1,500 undergraduate and graduate students who will receive their degrees. Watts will receive an honorary degree and Ubinas will deliver the commencement address. The ceremony will take place at 3 pm in the Assembly Hall.

Hunter College President Jennifer Raab, members of the Hunter Sustainability Project (formerly known as the Hunter Solar Project), Hunter faculty and CUNY administrators joined together on November 14 on the roof of the Hunter North Building for the unveiling of new solar panels.

Add this to the long list of advantages of attending Hunter: Its graduates carry one of the lowest debt loads of any college or university in America. So says the Project on Student Debt in a report covering members of the Class of 2010. The survey places Hunter among the 20th lowest debt schools in the nation.

The Martina Arroyo Foundation – which prepares young opera singers for professional performance – honored Hunter President Jennifer Raab at its annual gala on November 9. Raab accepted the award “on behalf of Hunter College and our new partnership with Prelude to Performance,” the Foundation’s training program that culminates with fully-staged operas performed on the stage of Hunter’s Kaye Playhouse.

Diana J. Mason, the Rudin Professor of Nursing at the Hunter School of Nursing, has been chosen for one of the highest honors in her field, president of the American Academy of Nursing. She will serve a two-year term as president-elect beginning in November before assuming the presidency. The 1,500-member AAN advances policies and practices that help drive the reform of the American health-care system.

American Public Health Association Executive Director Georges C. Benjamin MD, FACP, FACEP (E), has been appointed as the fall 2011 Joan H. Tisch Distinguished Fellow in Public Health at Hunter College. Benjamin will take a brief sabbatical from his role as executive director of APHA and spend one semester pursuing this coveted, fully funded research fellowship.

Hunter Professor of Sociology Janet Poppendieck, author of books such as Free for All: Fixing School Food in America and Sweet Charity?: Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement, was selected as one of 10 inaugural recipients of the James Beard Foundation Leadership Award. The award honors those helping to create a “healthier, safer, and more sustainable food world” through “excellence of work, innovation in approach and scale of impact within a community or the nation.” Among Poppendieck’s co-honorees are First Lady Michelle Obama and Alice Waters, celebrated chef and pioneer in the organic food movement.

Any time a new poet laureate is named, there is always interest in what poets he or she likes to read. So now that Philip Levine has been named, at age 83, as the 18th to hold this national honor, whom among his poetic colleagues does he admire?

The list, as quoted in the August 11 New York Times, is a short one, and on it is none other than Hunter College’s own Tom Sleigh. Here is what Levine said: “I love intelligent poetry — Stevens, Ammons, Tom Sleigh, Robert Morgan.”