Highlights from Commencements of 2003
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
In a perfect world, this story would begin here and its jump would be a few thousand pages long, chronicling the struggles and triumphs of the more than 28,500 women and men who received a degree from CUNY in the last month.
It would give a full account of students like Emmanuel Fallah, who emerged
from a Nigerian refugee camp to complete his nursing studies at the College
of Staten Island and who hopes to return to aid his suffering people.
It would tell Lidija Markes’ story: growing up in Croatia, losing
her father to heart disease and her country to war, yet persevering
to graduate from the Borough of Manhattan Community College with a near-perfect
GPA.
It would tell of Bridgete Smith, an immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago
whose struggle with lupus led her to major in medical nutrition under
mentorship of a Lehman College professor.
It would detail the life of John Bradley, who turned to CUNY after being
laid off in the early 1990s at age 48, after 23 years’ work as
a journeyman steamfitter. His B.S. is in economics; he plans to continue
toward a Master’s in operations research, working with mathematical
models of economics situations.
It would go on for a few pages about Sylvia Arredondo, who came to the
United States as an au pair from Guatemala, and who thought her dreams
of getting an education would be cut short by financial problems. A
BMCC professor helped her find aid, allowing her continue engineering
studies at City College, where she graduated as valedictorian.
Sadly, there is no room to tell the stories of all who passed the milestone
of a college degree. Here, though, are brief stories about a few that
may suggest the wealth of human experience and achievement that enriches
the University.
Lab Work Impossible?
Not for this New Ph.D.
|
In her early days as an aspiring scientist, Melissa Garcia was
once told that the fact that she had spina bifida, a congenital cleft
of the vertebral column, would rule out her working in a laboratory.
Instead of taking “no” for an answer, she decided to take
a Ph.D. in biology, as lab-intensive a career as can be imagined.
In the course of earning her 2003 doctorate in the Molecular Cell Development
sub-program from the CUNY Graduate Center, Garcia inevitably became
a lab animal, studying the mechanisms involved in visual and central
nervous system development. As part of this research, she identified
a novel gene that appears to play a role in “growth cone navigation”
during development of the central nervous and visual systems.
Garcia’s Bachelor’s is from Hofstra University, and her Master’s
is from Long Island University, where she worked on stem cell research.
Afterward, she worked in Amplicon Corporation labs on mapping newly-identified
genes involved in breast cancer pathogenesis, then in North Shore University
Hospital labs on genes involved in rheumatoid arthritis and perfect
pitch. At the Graduate Center, Garcia was the recipient of a Humana
Two-Year Fellowship and a Presidential Dissertation Fellowship.
And her next job will be—Garcia seems to love rubbing it in—in
yet another laboratory. She has accepted a post-doctoral position at
the National Institute of Environmental Health, where she plans to study
a signaling pathway that may play a role in the metastasis of cancer
tumors.
Two Queens
Grads (One Couple)
 |
|
When Graziela Ionescu met Vasili Byros in an Italian
restaurant in Brooklyn that Vasili was managing for his Greek father,
something clicked. “We began to talk, he asked me out, and before
long, we knew we were meant for each other,” Ionescu recalls. Two
days after they graduated from Queens College on May 29, they were married,
and in the fall each will be taking up doctoral studies at Yale, Ionescu
in ancient history, Byros in music.
Ionescu, a native of Romania, maintained a 4.0 GPA and was the College’s
Commencement speaker. A Phi Beta Kappa member, she came to the U.S.
after high school and soon enrolled at LaGuardia Community College.
At Queens she discovered her passion for Latin, the classics, and ancient
Roman history, becoming especially interested in researching the little-explored
subject of the relations of the Roman Empire with Dacia, as Romania
was called in ancient times.
“No other place could have helped me further my interests as Queens
College did,” she says. “It had the ideal environment, resources,
and professors who became mentors to me.”
Byros, a pianist born and raised in Queens by his Greek immigrant parents,
is graduating from the College’s Aaron Copland School of Music
with a Master’s and will continue for his doctorate in music at
Yale. “The School of Music is incredible,” he says, “comparable
in quality to much more expensive schools such as Mannes and the Manhattan
School of Music, and the faculty are skilled in performance and have
made major contributions to the field.”
Dentist
Turns Cum Laude — Just 58 Years Later
|
For most students the hiatus between sophomore and junior year is about
three months. James O’Connor’s hiatus lasted well over
half a century. The 84-year-old former dentist marched in City College’s
2003 honors convocation, having earned a Bachelor’s degree in philosophy
cum laude. It was exactly 58 years after the Bronx-born son of Irish
immigrants entered City College as a World War II veteran with sciences
and a dental career in mind.
O’Connor’s big early break came when N.Y.U. accepted him into
its doctoral program in dentistry even though he had no undergraduate
degree. “These were special times after the war,” recalls
O’Connor, who served with the U.S. Army in England. He graduated
in 1951 and went on to practice in Inwood for the next 47 years.
After he retired, the notion of hitting the books again proved irresistible.
“The thing is that I’m interested in education, and after
I retired I felt it was important to come back to City College and pursue
that degree I never got.” He found certain aspects of life “on
the hill” unchanged: “This place is very demanding and challenging,”
he says, “and I learned a lot from the young people here—from
people who disagreed with me.” (Former Mayor Ed Koch had a similar
career path: after WWII interrupted his CCNY studies, he earned an N.Y.U.
law degree in 1948, but came back for his B.A. at the College in 1981.)
Nikolas Pappas, chair of philosophy and teacher of O’Connor’s
Ancient Philosophy class, was impressed: “Mr. O’Connor responded
to philosophy the way I want all my students to. He got into a conversation
with the great philosophers. When he disagreed with them, he trusted
his life’s rich experience to tell him when to re-examine his own
beliefs and when he should stand firm, just as an intelligent person
ought to do in every conversation.”
O’Connor, who picked up an M.A. in liberal arts at Fordham before
his City College home-coming, says, “I’m proud of City College
and still think of it as the ‘poor man’s Harvard.’ I’ve
had a happy time here.”
A New Bus Route in Brooklyn: The Gleason Depot to CUNY BA
|
Jessamy, who has been driving the B35 bus along Church Avenue in Brooklyn for nearly seven years, offers the benefit of broad experience in juggling job, family and education. During those years, he spent nights at the wheel of his bus and days with his shoulder to the wheel of a college education.
He is among this spring’s graduates of the CUNY Baccalaureate Program, having completed work for a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration at Brooklyn College.
The 43-year-old native of Grenada, who came to this country in 1986, attended with the help of a Thomas W. Smith academic scholarship, which he was granted after he earned an Associate’s degree with honors from Kingsborough Community College. “That covered my tuition and books,” he says.
After he came to Brooklyn, Jessamy worked as a field inspector for an insurance company. “When I was laid off in a downsizing, I was forced to look around for any job I could get,” he recalls. “I had a young son, born in 1992, so it was kind of a panic situation. A friend of mine said, ‘Why not take the bus driver exam?’”
Jessamy took the test and passed, but the first offers were for driving in Manhattan and the Bronx. Instead, he began working for a social service agency in Brooklyn. “I worked in a facility for homeless young women with children,” he recalls. “We would screen them and house them for a maximum of six months. We prepared them to live on their own.” It was deeply satisfying work, which left him with a resolve to continue trying to help people in need. He rose from family manager to full case manager, while, starting in 1994, carrying a full-credit load at Kingsborough. “Working full-time and studying full-time was really a killer,” he recalls.
A second son arrived, tightening the financial screws. When the MTA called with an offer of a Brooklyn route, he took it. He now works out of the Jackie Gleason Depot on Fifth Avenue and 39th Street. Driving, Jessamy says, allowed him to contemplate education, because “bus drivers pick their shifts and days off approximately every two months.” He drove from mid-afternoon to the early morning hours. “I’d go to bed about 2 a.m., get up at 8 and go to class,” he recalls. Back home about noon, a few hours’ sleep, then back to the Depot.
“Had it not been for my wife, Elizabeth, taking up the slack, this would have been impossible for me,” Jessamy says. He relaxes by playing guitar and painting landscapes and by writing poetry (sample it on the poetry.com website).
Prof. Hershey Friedman was Jessamy’s CUNY/BA mentor at Brooklyn College. “Whenever I called, he was right there,” Jessamy says. He was a tremendous help to me.”
Being a student gave him good credibility with his sons, now 11 and 16, who face the same challenges in their daily lives. “Between us, we set goals and then work to achieve them,” says dad. “They’ve learned that you face obstacles, but if you keep at it you’ll overcome them.”
Jessamy is studying now to get his state license as an insurance agent, and has lined up part-time work with a financial services company. The idea of continuing on for a Master’s is parked in the back of his mind, but, Jessamy says with an easy laugh, “For the moment, I plan to keep driving the bus.”
“The
Strip,” then the Stage Former Beat of New Ph.D.
|
For 15 years, from 1965 to 1980, Henry Miller was a police officer
assigned to District 3 of the then New York City Transit Police in Harlem.
At that time, District 3 covered what was one of Harlem’s toughest,
most crime-ridden areas, known as “The Strip,” from 110th
to 125th Streets. Talk about street theater.
But all the while, Miller, newly minted as a CUNY Ph.D. in Theater,
was becoming a veteran of the 1960s/70s African-American theater. Now
60, he was a founding member of the Joseph Patterson Players in the
South Bronx and also worked with the Afro-American Repertory Theater
in Harlem. (His wife is a retired Harlem public school principal.)
Miller’s ground-breaking dissertation, “Art or Propaganda:
A Historical and Critical Analysis of African-American Approaches to
Dramatic Theory, 1900-1965,” considers how the Black Arts Movement
influenced African-American theater.
A MAGNET—Minority Access/ Graduate Networking—Fellow, Miller
has also been an engaged theatrical practitioner as well as scholar.
He has original plays and musical theater works among his credits, and,
most recently directed main-stage operatic productions of Porgy and
Bess in Philadelphia and Indianapolis. His one-act plays, The Christmas
Eve Companion Plays: A Winter Reunion and Gifts of Parting, won awards
in 1995 and 1998. His latest work-in-progress, Only Yesterday, will
be a drama employing the music of Duke Ellington that takes place at
the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. Miller, a South
Bronx native (his mom was “Miss Palm Café,” a Harlem
beauty queen), grew up in the former neighborhood of Isaac Bashevis
Singer and attended the same junior high school as Colin Powell.
From Substance
Abuser to City Tech Valedictorian
|
Substance abuse dogged Jed Gelber for two decades—during
high school on the Upper West Side, through a year at SUNY Stony Brook,
a stint as a Wall Street clerk, then during an enlistment in the U.S.
Marines. “I am living proof that we don’t just get a second
chance in life, we get a third, fourth, or fifth,” Gelber says.
“But it’s not an infinite number, and at some point you either
pull yourself out of the pit or languish in it permanently.”
Even after another ten years as an abstractor for a title insurance
company, Gelber had not hit bottom with his abuse. So, finally, at the
age of 40, Gelber did pull himself out of the pit—and into New
York City College of Technology’s paralegal studies program, the
only public one of its kind in the City. “In many ways my life
really did begin at 40, when I recovered from my final relapse. That’s
when I enrolled in City Tech.”
He took to campus life, he says, “incredibly well.” He was
rewarded with a 4.0 that first semester, a GPA he has managed to maintain
ever since. “I was especially inspired by my criminal law professor,
who is a supervising attorney at the Brooklyn Legal Aid Society,”
Gelber says.
Gelber, always a skilled writer, kept himself afloat financially by
working as a writing tutor in City Tech’s Office of Student Support
Services. Though he will be enrolled at CUNY Law School next fall, he
is already mulling a return to campus. “When I finish law school,
I’d like to come back and teach a writing course. It will be one
way I can give back.”
A remarkable irony attended Gelber’s graduation. His father Jack
Gelber, a noted playwright who died just weeks before the ceremony,
first made his name with The Connection, a raw look at the dead-end
life of the drug-addicted. It premiered Off Broadway in 1959, the year
Jed was born.
SEEK and
Ye Shall Find—a Path to Yale
|
Ismaele Jacques, who has been spending a lot of time with 2,3,7,8-tetrachloro-dibenzo-p-dioxin—CTCDD
for short, and part of the notorious defoliant Agent Orange—will
soon be departing from Bushwick to begin her studies in advanced microbiology
at Yale University. It’s a remarkable leap: Jacques attended Brooklyn
College as a SEEK student.
As a sophomore, Jacques convinced her counselors to let her take three
of the toughest classes in the College’s curriculum all at once:
Chemistry 1 (five credits), Organic Chemistry (five credits), and Calculus
(three credits), earning two B+’s and an A. She joined the Minority
Access to Research Careers (MARC) program in her junior year, with the
goal of a career in medical research and teaching. Last summer she interned
at Cornell’s Medical Center for researchers working on dermal fibroblasts.
“When I’m taking a new course, it’s almost like I get
high on the challenge,” she says.
Jacques arrived in the U.S. in 1991 with her parents and three younger
brothers from Haiti, lived in a one-room apartment, then moved into
larger accommodations in the Marcy Projects in Bushwick. After graduating
from Martin Luther King High School, she entered the SEEK program, which
offers financial and study support to promising students.
Leaving Bushwick is not without tension for the 21-year-old Jacques.
Getting into Yale worried her less than getting to Yale. “I’m
claustrophobic,” she said. “I sometimes get severe panic attacks
on trains, and I can’t fly. I was afraid this might limit my choice
of schools. But I was really proud. It was the first time I had ever
gone out of state by myself, and the bus ride was fine.”
Medical
Dream Comes True for BLM3p Student
|
Growing up in Grenada, Ronald Charles had the grades to attend
medical school, but not enough money to do so. Like so many others,
he had to make the heart-wrenching decision to leave home and emigrate
to the U.S. for more opportunity, bringing his younger brother with
him. Both were accepted into City College as full-time students. But
they had to endure poor living conditions, and Ronald worked long hours
at low-paying jobs to support them both. Despite these hardships, he
established an outstanding academic record and was named a Minority
Access to Research Careers Scholar, which paid his tuition and a monthly
stipend for his research. He graduated from City College this June and,
fulfilling a lifelong dream of becoming a doctor, he has won a Salk
Scholarship to medical school.
As a MARC Scholar, Charles worked in Professor Carol Wood Moore’s
lab on a project to determine the function of an unknown and conserved
protein in yeast—the novel BLM3p gene, which is one of many yeast
genes whose function is unknown. Recently, similar genes were found
in humans, and BLM3p is considered likely to be very important in multiple
organisms. Charles is particularly interested in understanding how cells
respond to damage of DNA and how this gene might help in repair. His
research paper on the subject, “Functional Characterization of
BLM3p, a Protein involved in Resistance to Oxidative Damage to Saccharomyces
cerevisiae,” helped him to win his Salk award, which he will enjoy
at Weill Medical College of Cornell University.
|
New Distinguished Professor Applauds Her Students
On January 27, when the
Board of Trustees formally appointed Jerrilynn D. Dodds a Distinguished
Professor, the architectural historian, formerly on the Columbia
University faculty, spoke briefly but passionately about her City
College students. Referring to her new title, Dr. Dodds said: It is a title I owe most of all to City College students—students from the School of Architecture, with their piercing intelligence, their staggering drive and dedication, and their knowledge of a world which I only knew as an intellectual construct before I came here...If my writing was about cultural interaction when I first came to City College, it was the questioning, the deep intellectual curiosity and life experience of School of Architecture students that gave it the complexity or depth it required... Multiculturalism, that word by which we have come to distinguish part of the City College experience, is not on any level some kind of compensatory consideration there, a kind of politically correct, working-class consolation which one might weigh against the competitive excellence of a private college education. It doesn’t work that way. City students are intensely stimulating; they are intellectually challenging and alive. And further, I believe that City students, because of their deep understanding of the urban world of negotiated identities and ambivalent boundaries, understand more about the world which is to come than any other college students I know. Their life experience, together with their City College education, gird them uniquely to lead this generation. They are prepared for leadership in this international, urban world more than any Ivy League students I have taught... |
 |
 |
|
|
