As Crain’s New York Business recently noted, CUNY has become a leader in basic research and applied technology. Technology also unites the University in inno-vative ways. This occasional column will report on the technology revolution at CUNY, and the ways members of the University can use these rich and expanding resources.

Just Browsing?
If you’re content to browse, the CUNY website offers a dynamic events calendar (www.cuny.edu/events) that lists hundreds of events – chamber music and jazz concerts, plays, medieval festivals, dance performances, art exhibits, sporting events, lectures by famous authors and much more – taking place across the 19 campuses. If you don’t wish to browse the entire list, you can narrow the search for events to a type – say, a lecture – by college and date. Too busy to browse at all? Click on “Join e-mail list” and you’ll receive notification of events by e-mail. Choose from eight categories of events and any or all of the University’s campuses. You can change your selections or opt out of the system at any time.

Of Course You Can
For the first time, CUNY students can search for courses in any of 1,400 academic programs, leading to any of 100 degrees (both graduate and undergraduate) at all 11 of the University’s senior colleges, its School of Law and five community colleges. The source is www.cuny.edu/classes, a database of more than 30,000 course offerings. Users choose a college and a semester, then can refine the search by listing desired area of study, credits, days of the week, class meeting times, and the professor’s name. The new web service “helps realize the potential of a truly integrated university, where students can fulfill their academic requirements on more than one campus,” Chancellor Matthew Goldstein noted. “The new search function is especially helpful to students looking for weekend or evening classes close to their home or job.” The information is also available through the electronic Student Information Management System or eSIMS.

Former Poet Laureate Collins

Poetry… and a Night at the Opera
Invite former Poet Laureate Billy Collins, Pulitzer Prize and Academy Award-winning composer John Corigliano and Elizabeth Nunez, the prize-winning author of Bruised Hibiscus, to your home tonight via the “Faculty Showcase” at www.cuny.edu/news, which offers streaming video of these and other CUNY scholars telling their stories and explaining their work. Collins, distinguished professor of English at Lehman College, reads two of his poems; Corigliano, distinguished professor of music at Lehman, speaks about and offers selections from his opera, The Ghost of Versailles. Nunez, a distinguished professor of languages, literature and philosophy at Medgar Evers College, tells how education helped her shatter the glass ceiling imposed by colonial rule in her native Trinidad. Other topics explored include the evolving anti-Mafia movement in Sicily, Holocaust photographs, and the cultural and architectural future of New York City.

Author Nunez

Paper Xpressly Forbidden
Exams Xpress, a new CUNY web-based system launched in August, promises to shorten the civil service hiring process dramatically, from many months to just days. Exams Xpress allows individuals to file applications over the web. It evaluates their qualifications; enables them to take an education and experience test in the comfort of their homes (or wherever they have internet access); lets them pay application filing fees via credit or debit card; and sends them an e-mail when their test scores are ready to be viewed. The system features the same encryption technology used by e-commerce companies to assure the security of customers’ personal information. Another of the new system’s advantages is that it effectively automates the rest of the civil service hiring process for individual CUNY colleges. For example, after job applicants have passed a civil service test they are placed on eligible lists. When a college has a vacancy, the Office of Faculty and Staff Relations electronically transmits profiles of qualified candidates to the College Personnel Office for interview consideration. When a hiring decision is made the College Personnel Office simply enters the new employee’s data directly into Exams Xpress. Designed by Dr. Mark Smolensky, University Civil Service Exams Officer, the system was initially conceived to help CUNY attract quality information technology professionals, since the private sector’s IT hiring cycle is only a few weeks. By year’s end it will encompass three IT job titles and next year several non-IT civil service positions will be added.