Remarkable Students Enjoy Degree of Success - CUNY

cuny.edu/news • C ITY U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK FOUNDED 1847 • Summer 2003AT AGLANCE1Blaze of Glory forCUNYAC Athletes in2002-2003 SeasonMechelleBarnwell,blazingaround theArmory inNew York inMarch,helpedCUNY chalkup a best-evertotal of 43All-American honors this year.Except for one in basketball, allwere in track and field. See page 5.2Salk Her StoryScholarshipsKeynote Speaker TellsAt the annualSalk Awardsceremony, Dr.Angela Diaztold of parlayingclassestaken at CityCollege into amajor careerin adolescenthealth at Mt.Sinai Hospital. See page 4.3Bronzino’s Erotic MotifsExplored at GradCenter on his 500thIt took thisVenus,Goddess ofLove, paintedin the 16thcentury by thepainter-poetAgnoloBronzino,more thana century todisrobe. For a report on aconference on him, see page 12.4Sound Design Wizard atCollege of TechnologyCreates “Virtual” MusicThat is nota framedposter buta new breedof speakersseen withProfessorof SoundDesignDavid Smith.For a storyon his advances in re-creatingorchestral sound and the worldwidetravels of his virtualmusicians, see page 3.Remarkable Students Enjoy Degree of SuccessHighlights from Commencements of 2003By Drew Fetherstonn a perfect world, this story wouldbegin here and its jump would be a fewI thousand pages long, chronicling thestruggles and triumphs of the more than28,500 women and men who received adegree from CUNY in the last month.It would give a full account of studentslike Emmanuel Fallah, who emerged froma Nigerian refugee camp to complete hisnursing studies at the College of StatenIsland and who hopes to return to aid hissuffering people.It would tell Lidija Markes’ story:growing up in Croatia, losing her father toheart disease and her country to war, yetpersevering to graduate from the Boroughof Manhattan Community College with anear-perfect GPA.It would tell of Bridgete Smith, animmigrant from Trinidad and Tobagowhose struggle with lupus led her tomajor in medical nutrition under mentorshipof a Lehman College professor.It would detail the life of John Bradley,who turned to CUNY after being laid offin the early 1990s at age 48, after 23years’ work as a journeyman steamfitter.His B.S. is in economics; he plans to continuetoward a Master’s in operationsresearch, working with mathematicalAmodels of economics situations.It would go on for a few pagesabout Sylvia Arredondo, whocame to the United States as anau pair from Guatemala, and whothought her dreams of getting aneducation would be cut short byfinancial problems. A BMCC professorhelped her find aid, allowingher continue engineeringstudies at City College, where shegraduated as valedictorian.Sadly, there is no room to tellthe stories of all who passed themilestone of a college degree.Here, though, are brief storiesabout a few that may suggest the wealthof human experience and achievementthat enriches the University.Lab Work Impossible?Not for this New Ph.D.n her early days as an aspiring scientist,IMelissa Garcia was once told that thefact that she had spina bifida, a congenitalcleft of the vertebral column, would ruleout her working in a laboratory. Instead oftaking “no” for an answer, she decided totake a Ph.D. in biology, as lab-intensive acareer as can be imagined.BOARD CONSIDERS TUITION PROPOSALThe Board of Trustees Committee on Fiscal Affairs has recommended a new tuitionschedule for Fall 2003. The full board is scheduled to consider the proposal on June23, 2003. For details on tuition and related matters, including updates, visitcuny.edu/news and click on “Budget Watch.”Presidents Gerald Lynch, left, and Robert Hampton.tions and the National Research Council.Hampton has published extensively on thesubject of family violence, and has beenlead editor of six books on the subject.“Dr. Hampton’s distinguished record ofacademic and administrative leadershipmakes him eminently suitable for appointmentas president of York College,”Chancellor Matthew Goldstein said.During Lynch’s presidency, John Jay hasgrown from a small police-science collegeto an internationally-recognized center ofresearch, education and training in criminaljustice and public safety. When he arrived,the city was in severe fiscal crisis and theCollege’s very survival was in doubt. Lynchlaunched a successful campaign to per-Melissa Garcia, '03, overcame many obstacles to earna Ph.D in biology. Next is a post-doc post at theNational Institute of Environmental Health.In the course of earning her 2003 doctoratein the Molecular Cell Developmentsub-program from the CUNY GraduateCenter, Garcia inevitably became a labanimal, studying the mechanisms involvedin visual and central nervous systemdevelopment. As part of this research, sheidentified a novel gene that appears toplay a role in “growth cone navigation”during development of the central nervousand visual systems.Garcia’s Bachelor’s is from HofstraUniversity, and her Master’s is from LongIsland University, where she worked onstem cell research. Afterward, she workedin Amplicon Corporation labs on mappingnewly-identified genes involved inbreast cancer pathogenesis, then in NorthShore University Hospital labs on genesinvolved in rheumatoid arthritis and perfectpitch. At the Graduate Center, Garciawas the recipient of a Humana Two-YearFellowship and a Presidential DissertationFellowship.Continued on page 6York Hails New President; Farewell at John Jays the academic year concluded,milestones at two collegeswere announced. At YorkCollege, Dr. Robert L. Hampton,the University of Maryland’s associateprovost for academic affairs anddean of undergraduate studies, hasbeen chosen as president by theBoard of Trustees on the recommendationof Chancellor MatthewGoldstein after a national search.At John Jay College of CriminalJustice, Dr. Gerald W. Lynch, whosetenure as college president—he wasnamed acting president in 1975 and madepermanent in 1977—is the longest ever ata CUNY senior college, announced hewould retire next year.Hampton earned his B.A. in sociologyat Princeton University and his advanceddegrees from the University of Michigan,where he also taught. He taught atConnecticut College and was a lecturer inpediatrics at Harvard Medical School for14 years. He was a senior official atMaryland for nine years. He has held fellowshipsfrom the Woodrow Wilson, Ford,Mellon, Danforth and Rockefeller foundasuadepublic and University officials thatthe College’s mission was vital.Lynch is stepping down as John Jay’sfreshman class, the graduating class andenrollment totals are at all-time highs. TheCollege boasts a Master’s program in publicadministration ranked first nationally by U.S.News & World Report. Since 9/11, theCollege has developed training programs incounter-terrorism, cybercrime and intelligenceanalysis. “Human Dignity and thePolice,” an innovative course to improverelations between police and public, wasdeveloped under Lynch’s supervision. It istaught throughout Latin America and theCaribbean, as well as to police from morethan 40 countries in Africa, Asia and EuropeIn a joint statement, Trustees ChairBenno C. Schmidt Jr. and ChancellorGoldstein commended Lynch for “hisexemplary leadership. From his pioneeringwork in establishing support for theCollege during the fiscal crisis of the1970s, to his success in bringing aboutconsistently higher academic programrankings, President Lynch has providedinvaluable service to the people of ourCity and State.”BOTTALICO

FROM THECHANCELLOR’S DESKWeathering the Budgetary StormFollowing is an excerpt adapted from a fulllength,cover article by Chancellor Goldstein,which may be found in its entirety in thecurrent issue of Presidency magazine.Uncertainty,” wrotepsychoanalyst andsocial philosopherErich Fromm, “is the verycondition to impel man tounfold his powers.”Recent world events,the current economicdownturn, and budgetaryshortfalls at the state andlocal levels have forcedthose of us in publicuniversities to operate in aclimate of uncertainty. The combinationof intense needs, scarce resources, and highexpectations presents significant challengesto fulfilling the educational mission of ourinstitutions. But public institutions ofhigher education can convert dauntingbudgetary challenges into exciting opportunitiesfor change and innovation. Indeed,these realities should underscore a resolveto establish priorities and redirect policies,efforts, and resources to maintain—andperhaps even enhance—our most preciousacademic assets.Given the current economic picture,we see the future strength of our universityin its reconceptualization as an integratedwhole, which maintains the historicidentities and loyalties of its individualcolleges while taking advantage of a“Adapted and expanded here is a story from anew second-season edition of CUNY-TV’s“Study With the Best” which airs Sundaysat 8 p.m.In November of 2001, Adolfo Carrionwas elected Bronx Borough President.It seemed like the perfect result of anatural progression. He had grown up inthe borough and had taught school there.He also worked as a city planner and as adistrict manager of Bronx CommunityBoard 5. Eventually, he served as a citycouncilman from the Bronx.Carrion has dedicated his career of publicservice to the Bronx, but he did leave theBronx at least once—to attend HunterCollege on the Upper East Side.“I went to Public School 111, JuniorHigh School 142,” Carrion recalls, “and I wasin the second graduating class from HarryTruman High School in Co-op City. Beinghere in the city, being a ‘city kid,’ has beenthe most enriching life that you could have.I’m the father of four kids, andthey are in public school.”Carrion points out that hismother “was a student ofBronx Community College,and my dad is a minister…was a minister for about 50years until he retired recently. So I grew upin the shadow of his public service.”Carrion first set out to study world religionsand philosophy, thinking he, too,would enter the ministry. “There was asense of a calling, a sense of serving people,building a better society, giving peoplean opportunity for a better life.” Butcompact geography that enabled facultyand students to view the entire universityas their campus. As an integrated university,we are making administrative and fiscaleconomies that will allow us toredirect resources and createnew revenue streams.Thinking of CUNY as anintegrated university has led usto develop and implement afundamentally different way ofenvisioning, managing, andadministering our institution.This new mind-set protectsour core business of teachingand learning, enables us tobuild and support our faculty,and ensures a safety net forour most disadvantaged students. The followingguidelines, extracted from ourexperience, may help other institutionsconfront the daunting economic challengesahead.1. Engage in an academic strategic planningeffort that builds excellence and prominencein selected fields across the entire institution,instead of allocating new resources unit byunit. We have created a “flagship environment”which, among other things, hasallowed us to pursue faculty hiring in away that steadily increases our fulltime/part-timeratio—important becausefor many years we relied disproportionatelyon part-time instructors—butwhich also allows individual units to contributeto the intellectual breadth andCarrion soon found himself pursuing thosegoals not in a pulpit but in a classroom.“I was working withkids right here inthe inner city, on184th Streetbetween Morris andWalton Avenues.”Feeling constrainedby the curriculum,however,Carrion went to hisprincipal and urgeda teaching plan thatinvolved city planningand architecture.“I said, if weallow these kids to approach their environmentfrom a completely differentangle, I think they will discover the placewhere they live. They will begin to understandhow local government works.”Carrion recalls with a laugh, “It waskind of humorous. My seventhgraders got the giggles whenthey found their first commondenominator in their bathrooms.What happens when you flushthe toilet? Answering that questiontook us to the water supply,to the history of growth in theBronx, to water pressure and how a toilettank refills. Then we addressed the issueof waste management. Where does thewaste go? Who pays for it? How are thepipes maintained? Who decides? How arethese people elected?”“That experience was for me the trig-depth of the entireinstitution.This has enabledus to attract higherquality faculty andbuild bridges across our colleges thatfacilitate the collaborative work of colleaguesin different departments andprograms, and that helps increase grantsfrom external sources. Strengtheningour academic reputation in this wayalso has enabled our enrollment togrow, further shored up our economicbase, and secured a significant amountof private money for CUNY.2. Develop academic and enrollment managementpolicies that overcome obstaclesfor transfer students—an important sourceof revenue for most public institutions.Amore forceful policy on articulation andtransfer (approved by CUNY’s board in1999), and the creation of CUNY’sTransfer Information and ProgramPlanning System (our online courseequivalency guide), have helped ensurea smoother transition for transfer studentsand achieved dramatic success inmoving our students seamlessly fromcommunity colleges to senior colleges.This strategy, so important to our students,is of course also critical to oureconomic base. Retention of studentsensures a more stable enrollment and amore predictable source of revenue.3. Develop centralized and coordinatedadministrative and managerial systemsthat relieve individual units of the necessityof replicating functions. We are acceleratingour efforts to centralize and coordinateappropriate administrative operations.Given the trend of diminishingger to want to affect more than just 30kids in a classroom,” Carrion remembers.Soon he was astudent of urbanplanning at HunterCollege, eventuallyearning a Master’s inthe discipline there.“It was one of themost exciting chaptersof my life. Thislaunched me intopolitics, because Inow started tounderstand howdecisions were madeand who was makingthem. And I said, ‘You know what—I can do that! I can represent people.’”Carrion never thought at that time heBoard of TrusteesThe City University of New YorkBenno C. Schmidt Jr.ChairmanValerie L. Beal Randy M. MastroJohn S. Bonnici Hugo M. MoralesJohn J. Calandra Kathleen M. PesileWellington Z. Chen Carol Robles-RománKenneth Cook Nilda Soto RuizAlfred B. Curtis, Jr. Marc V. ShawJoseph J. Lhota Jeffrey WiesenfeldShamsul HaqueChairperson,Student SenateSusan O ’ MalleyChairperson,Faculty Senatestate support, there is no defensiblerationale for each academic unit toreplicate similar administrative functions—purchasing,human resourceadministration, contracting, and thelike—that could be performed centrallyor regionally with greater efficiency.…Weare building technologyplatforms and shared data systems thatrelieve individual campuses from thenecessity of replicating these functions.This will generate savings we can redirectto academic enhancements.4. Plan facilities and programs that capitalizeon strengths across the institution,rather than just individual units. We areplanning and building a number ofintegrated facilities and programs: ascience research and training facility inManhattan that will be shared amonglogical clusters of institutions; a newuniversity-wide School of ProfessionalStudies that will provide training forprivate companies, unions, governmentagencies, and not-for-profit organizationswith specific workforce trainingneeds; and a new university-wideSchool of Journalism that will capitalizeon our broad strength in urban studies.The reality of uncertain governmentsupport—now and in the future—makesit even more crucial for those of us inleadership positions to ensure that ouruniversities and colleges are vital and productive.…Asan integrated university, wehave found that we can achieve savingsand protect our core academic functionsimmediately, as well as in the future, bymanaging more effectively and investingsavings and newly created revenues in thevibrancy of academic life.Bronx President Carrion, Former Teacher, on EducationBronx Borough President Adolfo Carrionwould one day be president of the Bronx,but then he adds, “Any of us can achieveanything—anything we put our minds to.Look at the people who have graduatedfrom City University. We have NobelLaureates; we have prizewinning authorsand scientists; we have former mayors; wehave graduates who have accomplishedgreat things.”“The purpose of democratic governmentis to enfranchise people by educatingthem so that they can be further enfranchisedboth politically and economically.We must break up the culture of poverty,and the only way we’re going to do that isto educate people,” Carrion says.“I am on a mission to allow people tobe enfranchised and to achieve theAmerican dream. It may sound corny, butit’s what wakes me up in the morning.”ChancellorMatthew GoldsteinVice Chancellor forUniversity RelationsJay HershensonUniversity Director ofMedia Relations Michael ArenaEditor: Gary SchmidgallWriters: Drew Fetherston, Rita RodinPhotographer: André BecklesGraphic Design: Gotham Design, NYCArticles in this and previous issues are availableat cuny.edu/cunymatters. Letters or suggestionsfor future stories may be sent to the Editor by email tocunymatters@mail.cuny.edu. Changes of addressshould be made through your campus personnel office.2 CUNY MATTERS — Summer 2003

Making the Virtual Orchestra a RealityBy Gary SchmidgallWhen the fiery clash betweenBroadway producers and musicianswas resolved after a shortstrike in March, David B. Smith, chair ofthe program in Entertainment Technologyat New York City College of Technology,was delighted. “All this rancor was notgood for Broadway, and I think the agreementended up in afair place.”City Tech’s residentsound wizardhad a keen professionalinterest in theBroadway cliffhanger,however. WhenSmith is not focusingon his campus duties,his thoughts are aptto float through thelooking-glass into theastonishing soundworld of the “virtualorchestra”— a terrainpopulated by MIDIfiles, DML’s, “patches,”and TAP edits. Inespecially dreamymoments, Smith—who earned a Doctorof Musical Arts incomposition and electronicmusic from theUniversity of Cincinnati’s CollegeConservatory of Music—will sometimespeer into the future and see million-pointFast Fourier Transform convolution andperformance spaces boasting a thousandspeakers.Welcome to the leading edge of virtualorchestral sound design, to which Smithhas devoted his professional attention for15 years—virtually, as it were, from thebirth of the field in the late 1980s. Hisinterest in computer-generated musicbegan in the heyday of Switched on Bachand the Moog synthesizer (that is,Professor Moog of Queens College), whenhe was well along in a 15-year stretch ofviolin studies.In 1999, Smith and Fred Bianchi, a digitalmusic colleague from his Conservatoryyears, decided to put their expertise to thecommercial test and formed the MidtownManhattan firm Realtime Music Solutions.(Bianchi is director of Music Technologyat Worcester Polytechnic Institute.) Theircompany was involved in the producers’Plan B, in case a lengthy musicians’ strikethreatened to silence Broadway. “Werehearsed our virtual orchestra with twoshows, Les Misérables and ThoroughlyModern Millie, with full casts,” Smith says.“Rehearsals went well, and the producerswere happy.”But Smith was well aware of the dangersof making a debut with his new technology—trademarkedSinfonia—in such avolatile situation. “Neither the Broadwayproducers nor I want to replace a wholelive orchestra with a virtual one. Broadwayis Broadway, the top of the art form,and it will always require human musiciansin the pit,” Smith says. He did notwant to become a “screaming focal point”of anti-sound enhancement demonizers.Many with sharp ears have consideredBroadway sound a disaster for years.Indeed, Smith considers his new andRight, Joseph O’Keefe, senior project managerat Realtime Music Solutions, verifyingthat sequences are performing the score ofPorgy and Bess correctly.Below, David Smith working withstudents in a sound design class at City Tech.Photo, Michele Forsten.always-being-refined Sinfonia as a form ofdisaster relief from various old-fashionedsound enhancers that are commonly usedin Broadway pits. “Our main focus is notto replace live musicians but to replaceenhancement solutions that straitjacket amusical performance.”The unmusicianly villains—unmusicianlybecause unresponsive to a conductor’scontrol—that Smith has in mind aresynthesizers, sequencers (computers thatcontrol synthesizers—think playerpiano), click tracks (prerecorded partsthat unfold at a given metronomic pace—think cannedmusic), not tomention behindthe-curvesoundretrieval andamplificationsystems.Unbeknownst toNew Yorkers,Realtime’s hardware-filled“boxes,” aboutthe size of amicrowave oven,have been travelingaround thenation for severalyears nowwith considerablesuccess—and not a singleserious mid-performance “crash.” Sinfoniaunits are currently augmenting smallorchestras of between eight and twelvelive players with virtual musicians innational tours of Seussical, The MusicMan, Miss Saigon, and Cinderella. TheRealtime library of shows is currentlyabout 30, among them Annie, Ragtime,Guys and Dolls, Fiddler on the Roof, andInto the Woods.How does it all work?The Sinfonia “box” that has been travelingaround the country augmenting orchestras.Once ascore is captured,theindividualinstrumentalparts are editedwith avariety of“patches” thatindicate howany givennote or passageof noteswill sound,based uponrecordingsmade in Realtime’s studio by live musicianswho have recorded every note intheir instrument’s range in every possiblemanner of articulation.As Smith, a violinist with 20 years oforchestral experience, explains, the refinementof nuance is considerable. “We haveprogrammed more than 50 different waysto articulate a note on a violin—legato,pizzicato, short staccato, détaché, sforzando,to name a few. Our software, trademarkedSinfonia, allows us to make aninitial choice from these for every violinnote in a score. If the conductor asks for achange duringrehearsals, we cancreate and/or edit apatch on the spot.”The Sinfoniaplayer—called, naturally,a Sinfonist—Smith likens to anassociate conductor.He also has mucheditorial flexibility.For any given productionor performance,it is easyto transpose songs,cut or rearrangetheir order, alterthe sound volume,and, of course,mute the instrumentallines whichare being played by live musicians.The essence of Realtime’s technology,however, lies in a key labeled TAP. Witheach hit of the TAP key, the music movesat the assigned value (quarter, eighth, half,etc.), following the tempo of the performance.Sinfonia is able to follow the expressivenuances of the conductor and thestage action just like any other element ofa live performance. Other keys at the disposalof the Sinfonist—who must ofcourse be a trainedmusician with experiencefollowing aconductor—areCRUISE TAP (sameas cruise control onthe highway), ATEMPO, PAUSE(good for long fermataswhen a finalnote is being belted),and VAMP(handy when a propor set gets “hungup” and the performanceisdelayed).Louis Crocco, a Sinfonist who hasbeen on the road with Miss Saigon, considershimself as “live” a musician as anyof his colleagues: “It is a musical instrument…It’s about timekeeping, listeningto the other players, and watching theconductor. It’s not just plugging it in andturning it on.”In 1997, Smith arrived at City Tech,whose Entertainment Technology programis the only one of its kind in theNortheast (its current 100 majors specializingin such specialties as sound, lighting,and scene construction, projection, and—recently added—show control). In spring2000 his student sound engineers anddesigners were mounting the College’sfirst application of virtual orchestration ina major musical production, Evita, by theCollege’s TheatreWorks company.Realtime’s goal is not a modest one.Smith says it is “to develop a perfectmusical instrument for the 21st century,”and he is not shy about making the mostof a quickly advancing state of theacoustic art. Music history, he points out,is on his side: “The 16th century was aground-breaking era in Italian cabinetry,and violin makers like Amati, Guarneri,and Stradivari made brilliant use of thenew technology. Likewise, 19th centuryadvances in machine tooling made possiblethe rapid improvement of old-style,valveless brass instruments.”In Smith’s view, the ideal is not an entirelyghostly orchestra. An accomplished livemusician himself, he enjoys live performances—atAvery Fisher and CarnegieHall—too much to want that. He wantsto fill seats that would otherwise beempty. Finally, Smith hopes his perfectinstrument of the 21st century willbecome popular among composers of theavantgarde. “Forget simulation! Use it toexpand the musical palette.” Smith isshowing the way, with more than 50 compositionsfor the theater to his credit. Justpossibly because his wife is an operaticlyric soprano, he has also ventured intoopera. One current project is a chamberopera titled Brecht at HUAC, about theGerman playwright’s virtuoso testimonybefore Congress amid the communistwitch- hunting after WWII.After mentioning that he has also beenat work on a sequel to The Magic Flute,Smith laughs and ventures a very plausiblehypothesis: “If Mozart were aroundtoday and heard about this new technology,I’d like to think he’d say, ‘Soundsgreat—let’s use it!’”CUNY MATTERS — Summer 2003 3

Obstacles and Perseverance—Tale of Salk Awards’ Keynoterngela Diaz came to the U.S. from theDominican Republic when she wasA 15 to be with her mother. Sheentered high school and was put in an ESLclass with younger students “who spoke alldifferent languages. But we had a wonderfulteacher who found creative ways to getus to communicate with each other.Because I was good at it, I was allowed intoa math class to study algebra. I couldunderstand the signs and symbols, if notthe language, and did well. But when Iwent to take the Regents exam I couldn’tunderstand the directions, and I flunked it.”After squeezing in an algebra class onher lunch hour, she passed it on her secondtry, but then, much perplexing herteachers, she became a drop-out in hersenior year of high school. They kept callingher, offering help even asking if shewas pregnant. Diaz very indignantlyresponded, “No, I haven’t even had sex!”Finally they struck a bargain with her: ifshe came back and took a few morecourses, she would be able to graduatewith her class. So she did.But her mother did not approve of theidea of going away to college. In their culturegirls who are virgins must live withtheir family, she insisted. “I didn’t knowwhat to do. My mother didn’t speakEnglish, and I had no one to advise me.”Then Diaz found City College, just a fewblocks from their home.One day, a year later, she saw a sign forColumbia University and walked in. “I hadalways wanted to be a doctor, so I askedwhat I had to do to get into medicalschool. I was told I had to take this courseand that course, and I said I’ve alreadytaken those courses at City College. Can Iapply? So the registrar handed me anapplication and I asked her for a pen andfilled it out right there. She asked me forthe $15 application fee—this was in 1977,remember—which I didn’t have! Still, Iwas called back for an interview and I gotin. It wasn’t until I was in my second yearin medical school that something clicked. Ibecame centered. I knew where I wasgoing—and why.”Such was the tale of perseverance Diaztold to a riveted audience as keynotespeaker for this year’s Jonas E. SalkAwards ceremony, and the happy endingto her story has been unfolding ever since.She never looked back, despite marriageand the birth of three children bythe time she finished medical school andher residency. She completed her postdoctoraltraining at Mount Sinai School ofMedicine and is now Dr. Angela Diaz,M.D., M.P.H., director of the Mount SinaiAdolescent Health Center, CrystalProfessor of Pediatrics at Mount SinaiSchool of Medicine, and one of New Yorkmagazine’s “Best Doctors in New York.”The New York State Department ofHealth named the Mount SinaiAdolescent Health Center a Center forExcellence in Adolescent Health in 2000.Her many honors fill pages.Diaz told the newest Salk Scholars andtheir proud families, “I love what I do. Ilove working with adolescents. AlthoughI am trained as a pediatrician, this is thepopulation that I most love working with.There isn’t a day in my life when I don’tthink I am in the perfect profession.”She has also worked with internationalhealth projects in Asia, Central and SouthAmerica, the Caribbean, Europe andAfrica, and is deeply involved in healthadvocacy and policy in the U.S. In 1994she was selected as one of 17 WhiteHouse Fellows from nearly 1,300 applicantsand was assigned by theDepartment of Interior to assess healthcare delivery in the U.S. Pacific Islandsand Virgin Islands.And Diaz has not ceased being astudent. Unwilling to rest on her newlyearnedHarvard M.P.H. laurels, she is nowworking toward a Ph.D. in epidemiologyat Columbia.The SalkScholarships arethe legacy of thedeveloper of thepolio vaccine nearlyhalf a centuryago. Dr. Salk, agraduate of CityCollege, turneddown a ticker tapeparade in honor ofhis discovery, andasked instead thatthe money be usedfor scholarships. The city provided initialfunding for the Salk Scholarships in 1955.The endowment now provides a stipendof $6,000 per scholar for medical school.The Salk Scholars were selected by apanel of distinguished physicians, all SalkScholar alumni, based on the quality ofthe scientific research conducted by thestudents, who have glowing recommendationsby professors and mentors. The eightwinners and five honorary scholars wererecognized for their research in biochemistry,genetics, environmental toxins, braindevelopment, physics, immunology andother fields.Among this year’s Salk Scholars isChiyedza Small, whose life-long love ofscience developed into an interest inscientific research after her freshman yearat City College, when she spent the summerstudying immunoglobulin classswitching in a human monoclonal B-cellline at Cornell University Medical School.She continued her interest in immunity inthe City College laboratory of ProfessorShubha Govind, where she studied hematopoiesisand cellular immune reactions inthe fruitfly. Her collaboration with agraduate student resulted in a refereedpublication in 2002 in BioTechniques. Shewill attend Mount Sinai School ofMedicine for a Ph.D. in immunology.Dr. Angela Diaz speaking to this year’s Salk Scholars.Kanwal Farouki, another Salk Scholar,was an independent lead person in a complexresearch project on the role of p53, atumor repressor cell, in Professor CarolWood Moore’s microbiology lab at CityCollege. Because cancerous cells oftenarise after their DNA has undergone damage,DNA damage has become a signal forp53 activation. Her research has resultedin academic presentations and an up-comingpublication. She will attend NewYork Medical College.Other Salk Scholarship winners, theircolleges, and the medical schools they willattend include: Mihail Rivlin (Hunter),Albert Einstein College of Medicine;Susan Bard (Brooklyn), SUNY DownstateMedical Center; Jeanne Amuta (Hunter),Albert Einstein College of Medicine;Frank Akwaa (Hunter), University ofRochester Medical School; Amir Estephan(Staten Island), SUNY Downstate; andRonald Charles (City), Weill MedicalCollege of Cornell University.The honorary Salk Scholars are: PhyllisEze (City), SUNY Downstate; KwasiManu (Hunter), SUNY Downstate;Larissa Orloff (Queens), University ofChicago Pritzker School of Medicine;Shella Saint Fleur (Brooklyn), N.Y.U.School of Medicine; and Rachna Sondhi(Staten Island), SUNY Downstate.ING Corporation Funds Scholarships for Children of 9/11 Familieshe ING DIRECT Kids Foundationhas set aside $167,000 (plus possiblefuture contributions) to be dis-Ttributed as scholarships to part-timeCUNY students whohad a parent killed orseverely injured in the9/11 terrorist attacks.The Foundationanoffshoot of ING, thecorporation that doesbanking, insurance andasset management in 60countries – was developedto improve thequality of life ofchildren and adolescents.“We were looking forsome place where wecould make a difference,”said DeneenDonnley-Evans, theFoundation’s executivedirector, in explaininghow CUNY had beenchosen. “We didn’t want to be one cog ina big machine.”CUNY and its part-time students havea special resonance for Donnley-Evans:Chancellor Goldstein with ING DIRECT Kids Foundation Executive Director DeneenDonnley-Evans.Her mother, a corrections officer, was apart-time student for most of the timefrom the late 1960s until she earned herdegree from John Jay College in 1974.Nonetheless, findinga place for thefund took somedoing. “We had beenlooking for two yearsto donate money tohelp children whowere affected by9/11,” Donnley-Evanssaid. “We couldn’tfind a group that wasn’tbeing helped byother organizations.”Full-time studentsaffected by the 9/11attack are covered bya New York Stateprogram. CUNY has30 participants inthat program, whichdisbursed more than$100,000 in its first year.About 40 percent of CUNY’s morethan 400,000 students attend part-time,and there was no aid program coveringthem, aside from minimal TAP support.“This new program helps fill a significantgap since the existing World Trade CenterMemorial Scholarships are only availableto full-time students,” said ChancellorMatthew Goldstein. “I am deeply gratefulto Deneen Donnley-Evans…and hercolleagues at the ING DIRECT KidsFoundation.”The ING DIRECT scholarship will beavailable to students who, in addition tohaving been affected by the attacks, alsomeet the University’s admissions criteriafor matriculated undergraduate standing,who attend one of the colleges part-timeand who demonstrate financial need.An eligible student who remains in goodacademic standing may receive funds for amaximum of 10 semesters. The Universitywill set the award amounts, based on itsregular financial aid calculations.4 CUNY MATTERS — Summer 2003

2003 GuggenheimsFor Three Facultyappointment of three CUNYTteachers made 2003 a bumper yearfor Guggenheim Fellows, which wereannounced by the Foundation in May.Zoe Beloff,a video artist and adjunctprofessor of media and communicationarts at City College, will use her fellowshipto create a video installation employingphotographs made by an early20th-century Parisian medium of herséances. Beoff’s work has included avariety of cinematic imagery, film,stereoscopic projection performance,and interactive media.Queens College professor emerita ofEnglish and prominent New York Citypoet Marie Ponsot will use her Guggenheimto complete her next volume ofpoetry (her last collection, Springing,appeared from Knopf last year). “I haveabout 20 poems finished, and I needabout 20 more,” she said.Roger Sanjek, the Queens Collegeanthropologist featured in the May issue ofCUNY Matters for his pioneering researchon ethnicity and race in Queens, will usehis fellowship to complete a book on theGray Panthers. The Panthers was an advocacygroup for the aging—a very timely topic,given the current “graying” of the U.S. populationexpected in the next decade.Summer Conferenceon Teaching Holocaustat Queensboroughhe first conference in the nation toTexplore the teaching of Holocaust andGenocide Studies at community collegeswill take place on August 10-11 atQueensborough Community College,under the auspices of the College’sHolocaust Resources Center, which isnow celebrating its 20th anniversary.Dr. William Shulman, the founder anddirector of the Center, calls the Holocaust“a watershed in the 20th century” that hashad “an impact on everything that hashappened since.” Emphasizing the importanceof the subject for the 21st-centuryclassroom, he observes, “Genocide studiesare crucial. . .learning from the darkesteras of human history is essential for theunderstanding of ethical behavior.”The conference will bring togetherthose who have already taught these subjectsand those interested in institutingthem. Sessions will be hosted by professorsnationwide. Among thepresentationsA false I.D. cardused by Hanne Liebmann duringher flight to Switzerland from NaziGermany, currently on display at theHolocaust Resource Center and Archives atQueensborough Community College.21 CUNYAC Student AthletesCapture 43 All-American HonorsThe best season ever for the City University Athletic Conference (CUNYAC)has just been completed, with 21 athletes garnering a total of 43 All-American honors this academic year. These students came from four communitycolleges (Borough of Manhattan, Bronx, Kingsborough, Queensborough)and two senior colleges (Lehman and York).All but one of these honors came in track andfield. The loner was BMCC basketball forward FantaSissoko. A highlight of the track season was LehmanCollege’s team placing second not once but twice atNCAA Championships. Its head coach, LesleighHogg, boasts the most honorees with six, includingtwo of CUNYAC’s most decorated sportswomen,11-time All-American senior Paulette Baldwin (also2003 NCAA Indoor Track Athlete of the Year), andsophomore Alecia Watson, a 9-time All-American.CUNYAC also sent five senior college teams toNCAA championships this year—in women’s volleyball,men’s soccer, men’s and women’s basketball,and softball. At its May awards ceremony, CUNY-AC also honored four competitors who have alsoslam-dunked their classroom work. Queensborough’sIsrael Henriquez has maintained a 3.62 GPALehman freshman MechelleBarnwell competed at theArmory in the CUNYChampionships in March.in secondary education while competing in the800M dash and relays at such major meets as thePenn Relays and Millrose Games. He transfers toHunter College next fall. Volleyballer Owen Niles isa three-time CUNYAC Player of the Year and graduatedthis spring from City College with a 3.53GPA (he is continuing in CCNY’s 5-year Bachelor’s of Architecture program).Brigette Burke sports a 3.4 GPA in psychology at QCC when not slugging over.500 and captaining the Tigers’ softball team. Maria Castro, of the Lehman Lightning,is a distance specialist in both track and swimming; she just graduated in multilingualjournalism and minors in Italian and computer graphics with a 3.75 GPAand heads now for N.Y.U. and a Master’s in legal and financial translation.will be “The Social Psychology of theHolocaust: Exploring Human Behavior inExtremity,” “Genocide and the Holocaust:From the Armenians to the Trial ofSlobodan Milosevic,” and “Literature andHistory: Natural Partners in Teachingabout the Holocaust.” For more informationon the conference contact Dr.Shulman at 718-281-5770 or WShulman@qcc.cuny.edu.Housed in Queensborough’s Library,the Center—the only one of its kind servingNew York City and Long Island—offers a series of public lectures, collaboratesin curriculum development; offersboth Center and traveling exhibits; and hasloan programs that draw from its thousandsof volumes and hundreds of videoson the Holocaust and related subjects.The Holocaust Resources Center, onthe Bayside campus, is open M-Th 9 to 4;F 9 to 3; and one Sunday a month 10 to 2(its web site is www.qcc.cuny.edu/HolocaustCenter/).$10M Donation atBrooklyn Collegeong recognized for its distinguishedperforming arts curri-Lculum—in music, theater, dance,film, television and radio—BrooklynCollege will soon have outstandingcampus facilities to match. PresidentChristoph Kimmich recentlyannounced that two of the College’salumni, Leonard and Claire Tow(‘50 and ‘52, respectively) are donating$10 million for a new Center for thePerforming Arts. This is the largest singledonation in the College’s history, eclipsingthe $6.5 million bequest from formerLeonard and Claire Towphilosophy professor Walter Cerf thatcame in 2002.The gift, Kimmich predicted, “willtransform the arts on campus, and we areexceptionally grateful.” Lindly Hanlon,chair of the the College’s Arts Council,agreed: “This gift will enable our supportof an arts curriculum that attracts talentedstudents and faculty from around theworld.” Planners for the Tow Center envisionperformance and rehearsal spaces, setdesign and construction workshops, exhibitiongalleries, classrooms, an arcade, anda grand lobby.Tow is chairman and chief executiveof Citizens Communications, a majortelephone and cable company, and is alsoinvolved in the reorganization of AdelphiaCommunications. He also serves as atrustee on the Brooklyn CollegeFoundation, and the Tows have hithertofunded scholarships, internships, andresearch travel stipends for both studentsand faculty of the College.MATTERSINBRIEFCity Tech StudentDrapes Hussein StatueFlags are a theme for Anna Fu andEdward Chin.ne of the most memorable images ofOthe recent invasion of Iraq was thatof a young marine clambering up one ofthe seemingly ubiquitous monumentalstatues of Saddam Hussein and drapingthe dictator’s head, first with an Americanand then an Iraqi flag.Responsible for that Kodak momentwas a once-and-future student at NewYork City College of Technology. EdwardChin is seen here with his wife Anna Fu,a current City Tech student who expectsto get her Associate’s degree in civil engineeringtechnology next year.Corporal Chin left the College in 1999to enlist in the marines, and he is planningto apply for readmission after his releasefrom the military this summer. Chin hopesto complete a Bachelor’s in architecturaltechnology, and Fu (who holds an NSFscholarship) will be working toward aBachelor’s in civil engineering. After graduationand working in their respective fields,the couple envision a husband-and-wifeconsulting firm that will wave the flag forenvironmental clean-up and protection.Four Nominated to BeDistinguished Profsour professors, including one newFarrival to the University, have beennominated by their colleges to the rankof Distinguished Professor.Deborah Tannen, who is joining theLehman College faculty after 12 years as aprofessor of linguistics at GeorgetownUniversity, is the author of several popularbooks, including You Just Don't Understand:Women and Men in Conversation. The bookwas on the New York Times’ best-seller listfor almost four years, including eightmonths as Number 1. Tannen is the authorof more than 80 scholarly articles.Edwin G. Burrows, who has beenteaching at Brooklyn College since 1974,is the co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-winningGotham: A History of New York Cityto 1898. Virginia Valian,a professor ofpsychology at Hunter College since 1987,is the author of Why So Slow?, an examinationof the social forces that hinderwomen’s advancement that has achievedan impact outside the academic field.Carl Riskin, who came to Queens Collegein 1974, is a leading authority on incomedistribution, poverty and hunger in China.Several of his books have been describedby reviewers as classics in the field.The nominations are to be acted on bythe Trustees at their June meeting.CUNY MATTERS — Summer 2003 5

Students Enjoy Degree of SuccessContinued from page 1And her next job will be—Garcia seemsto love rubbing it in—in yet anotherlaboratory. She has accepted a post-doctoralposition at the National Institute of EnvironmentalHealth, where she plans to study asignaling pathway that may play a role inthe metastasis of cancer tumors.Two Queens Grads(One Couple)hen Graziela Ionescu met VasiliWByros in an Italian restaurant inBrooklyn that Vasili was managing for hisGreek father, something clicked. “Webegan to talk, heasked me out, andbefore long, weknew we weremeant for eachother,” Ionescurecalls. Twodays after theygraduated fromQueensCollege onMay 29, theywere married,and in the falleach will be taking up doctoralstudies at Yale, Ionescu in ancient history,Byros in music.Ionescu, a native of Romania, maintaineda 4.0 GPA and was the College’sCommencement speaker. A Phi BetaKappa member, she came to the U.S. afterhigh school and soon enrolled atLaGuardia Community College. AtQueens she discovered her passion forLatin, the classics, and ancient Roman history,becoming especially interested inresearching the little-explored subject ofthe relations of the Roman Empire withDacia, as Romania was called in ancienttimes.“No other place could have helped mefurther my interests as Queens CollegeByros and IonescuNew Distinguished ProfessorApplauds Her StudentsOn January 27, when the Board of Trustees formallyappointed Jerrilynn D. Dodds a Distinguished Professor, thearchitectural historian, formerly on the Columbia Universityfaculty, spoke briefly but passionately about her City Collegestudents. Referring to her new title, Dr. Dodds said:t is a title I owe most of all to City College students—Istudents from the School of Architecture, with theirpiercing intelligence, their staggering drive and dedication,and their knowledge of a world which I only knewJerrilynn Doddsas an intellectual construct before I came here…If my writing was about cultural interactionwhen I first came to City College, it was the questioning, the deep intellectualcuriosity and life experience of School of Architecture students that gave it the complexityor depth it required…Multiculturalism, that word by which we have come to distinguish part of the CityCollege experience, is not on any level some kind of compensatory consideration there,a kind of politically correct, working-class consolation which one might weigh againstthe competitive excellence of a private college education.It doesn’t work that way. City students are intensely stimulating; they are intellectuallychallenging and alive. And further, I believe that City students, because of theirdeep understanding of the urban world of negotiated identities and ambivalent boundaries,understand more about the world which is to come than any other college studentsI know. Their life experience, together with their City College education, girdthem uniquely to lead this generation. They are prepared for leadership in this international,urban world more than any Ivy League students I have taught…NUÑEZ / SUMMERSCARVALHOdid,” she says. “It had the ideal environment,resources, and professors whobecame mentors to me.”Byros, a pianist born and raised inQueens by his Greek immigrant parents,is graduating from the College’s AaronCopland School of Music with anMaster’s and will continue for his doctoratein music at Yale. “The School of Musicis incredible,” he says, “comparable inquality to much more expensive schoolssuch as Mannes and the ManhattanSchool of Music, and the faculty areskilled in performance and have mademajor contributions to the field.”Dentist Turns Cum Laude— Just 58 Years Lateror most students the hiatus betweenFsophomore and junior year is aboutthree months. James O’Connor’s hiatuslasted well over half a century. The 84-year-old former dentist marched in CityCollege’s 2003 honors convocation, havingearned a Bachelor’s degree in philosophycum laude. It was exactly 58 yearsafter the Bronx-born son of Irish immigrantsentered City College as a WorldWar II veteran with sciences and a dentalcareer in mind.O’Connor’s big early break came whenN.Y.U. acceptedhim into its doctoralprogram in dentistryeven thoughhe had no undergraduatedegree.“These were specialtimes afterthe war,” recallsO’Connor, whoserved with theU.S. Army inEngland. Hegraduated in1951 and went on to practice in Inwoodfor the next 47 years.James O’ConnorA New Bus Routein Brooklyn:The Gleason Depotto CUNY BAometimes, late in the night, a young pas-will stay on the bus of AugustineSsengerJessamy to the end of the line inBrownsville, talking about plans and dreams.Jessamy, who has been driving the B35 busalong Church Avenue in Brooklyn for nearlyseven years, offers the benefit of broad experiencein juggling job, family and education.During those years, he spent nights at thewheel of his bus and days with his shoulderto the wheel of a college education.He is among this spring’s graduates ofthe CUNY Baccalaureate Program, havingcompleted work for a Bachelor of Sciencedegree in business administration at Brooklyn College.The 43-year-old native of Grenada, who came to this country in 1986, attended withthe help of a Thomas W. Smith academic scholarship, which he was granted after heearned an Associate’s degree with honors from Kingsborough Community College. “Thatcovered my tuition and books,” he says.After he came to Brooklyn, Jessamy worked as a field inspector for an insurancecompany. “When I was laid off in a downsizing, I was forced to look around for any job Icould 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 andAfter he retired, the notion of hittingthe books again proved irresistible. “Thething is that I’m interested in education,and after I retired I felt it was important tocome back to City College and pursue thatdegree I never got.” He found certainaspects of life “on the hill” unchanged:“This place is very demanding and challenging,”he says, “and I learned a lot fromthe young people here—from people whodisagreed with me.” (Former Mayor EdKoch had a similar career path: after WWIIinterrupted his CCNY studies, he earnedan N.Y.U. law degree in 1948, but cameback for his B.A. at the College in 1981.)Nikolas Pappas, chair of philosophy andteacher of O’Connor’s Ancient Philosophyclass, was impressed: “Mr. O’Connorresponded to philosophy the way I wantall my students to. He got into a conversationwith the great philosophers. When hedisagreed with them, he trusted his life’srich experience to tell him when to reexaminehis own beliefs and when heshould stand firm, just as an intelligentperson ought to do in every conversation.”O’Connor, who picked up an M.A. inliberal arts at Fordham before his CityCollege home-coming, says, “I’m proud ofCity College and still think of it as the‘poor man’s Harvard.’ I’ve had a happytime here.”“The Strip,” then the StageFormer Beat of New Ph.D.or 15 years, from 1965 to 1980, HenryFMiller was a police officer assigned toDistrict 3 of the then New York CityTransit Police in Harlem. At that time,District 3 covered what was one ofHarlem’s toughest, most crime-riddenareas, known as “The Strip,” from 110th to125th Streets. Talk about street theater.But all the while, Miller, newly mintedas a CUNY Ph.D. in Theater, was becominga veteran of the 1960s/70s African-American theater. Now 60, he was afounding member of the Joseph PattersonPlayers in the South Bronx and alsoworked with the Afro-AmericanRepertory Theater in Harlem. (His wife isa retired Harlem public school principal.)Miller’s ground-breaking dissertation,“Art or Propaganda: A Historical andCritical Analysis of African-AmericanApproaches to Dramatic Theory, 1900-1965,” considers how the Black ArtsMovement influenced African-Americantheater.A MAGNET—Minority Access/Graduate Networking—Fellow, Miller hasalso been an engaged theatrical practitioneras well as scholar. He has original playsand musical theater works among hiscredits, and, most recently directed mainstageoperatic productions of Porgy andBess in Philadelphia and Indianapolis. Hisone-act plays, The Christmas EveCompanion Plays: A Winter Reunion andGifts of Parting, won awards in 1995 and1998. His latest work-in-progress, OnlyYesterday, will be adrama employingthe music of DukeEllington thattakes place atthe beginningof the HarlemRenaissance inthe 1920s.Miller, a SouthBronx native(his mom was“Miss Palm Café,”a Harlem beauty queen), grew up in theformer neighborhood of Isaac BashevisSinger and attended the same junior highschool as Colin Powell.Henry Miller6 CUNY MATTERS — Summer 2003

FORSTENthe Bronx. Instead, he began working for a social serviceagency in Brooklyn. “I worked in a facility for homelessyoung women with children,” he recalls. “We wouldscreen them and house them for a maximum ofsix months. We prepared them to live ontheir own.” It was deeply satisfyingwork, which left him with a resolve tocontinue trying to help people in need.He rose from family manager to fullcase manager, while, starting in 1994,carrying a full-credit load at Kingsborough.“Working full-time and studyingfull-time was really a killer,” he recalls.A second son arrived, tightening the financialscrews. When the MTA called with an offer of aBrooklyn route, he took it. He now works out of theJackie Gleason Depot on Fifth Avenue and 39thStreet. Driving, Jessamy says, allowed him to contemplateeducation, because “bus drivers pick their shiftsand days off approximately every two months.” Hedrove from mid-afternoon to the early morning hours.“I’d go to bed about 2 a.m., get up at 8 and go toclass,” he recalls. Back home about noon, a few hours’sleep, then back to the Depot.“Had it not been for my wife, Elizabeth, taking upthe slack, this would have been impossible for me,”Jessamy says. He relaxes by playing guitar and paintinglandscapes and by writing poetry (sample it on thepoetry.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 samechallenges in their daily lives. “Between us, we set goals and then work to achieve them,” saysdad. “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 uppart-time work with a financial services company. The idea of continuing on for aMaster’s is parked in the back of his mind, but, Jessamy says with an easy laugh, “For themoment, I plan to keep driving the bus.”From Substance Abuser toCity Tech Valedictorianubstance abuse dogged Jed Gelber forStwo decades—during high school onthe Upper West Side, through a year atSUNY Stony Brook, a stint as a Wall Streetclerk, then duringan enlistmentin the U.S.Marines. “I amliving proof thatwe don’t just geta second chancein life, we get athird, fourth, orfifth,” Gelbersays. “But it’s notan infinite num-Jed Gelberber, and at somepoint you eitherpull yourself out of the pit or languish in itpermanently.”Even after another ten years as anabstractor for a title insurance company,Gelber had not hit bottom with his abuse.So, finally, at the age of 40, Gelber did pullhimself out of the pit—and into New YorkCity College of Technology’s paralegalstudies program, the only public one of itskind in the City. “In many ways my lifereally did begin at 40, when I recoveredfrom my final relapse. That’s when Ienrolled in City Tech.”He took to campus life, he says, “incrediblywell.” He was rewarded with a 4.0 thatfirst semester, a GPA he has managed tomaintain ever since. “I was especiallyinspired by my criminal law professor, whois a supervising attorney at the BrooklynLegal Aid Society,” Gelber says.Gelber, always a skilled writer, kepthimself afloat financially by working as awriting tutor in City Tech’s Office ofStudent Support Services. Though he willbe enrolled at CUNY Law School nextfall, he is already mulling a return to campus.“When I finish law school, I’d like tocome back and teach a writing course. Itwill be one way I can give back.”A remarkable irony attended Gelber’sgraduation. His father Jack Gelber, anoted playwright who died just weeksbefore the ceremony, first made his namewith The Connection,a raw look at thedead-end life of the drug-addicted. It premieredOff Broadway in 1959, the yearJed was born.SEEK and Ye Shall Find—a Path to Yalesmaele Jacques,Iwho has beenspending a lot oftime with 2,3,7,8-tetrachloro-dibenzop-dioxin—CTCDDfor short, and partof the notoriousdefoliant AgentOrange—will soonbe departing fromBushwick to beginIsmaele Jacquesher studies in advanced microbiology atYale University. It’s a remarkable leap:Jacques attended Brooklyn College as aSEEK student.As a sophomore, Jacques convinced hercounselors to let her take three of thetoughest classes in the College’s curriculumall at once: Chemistry 1 (five credits),Organic Chemistry (five credits), andCalculus (three credits), earning two B+’sand an A. She joined the Minority Accessto Research Careers (MARC) program inher junior year, with the goal of a careerin medical research and teaching. Lastsummer she interned at Cornell’s MedicalCenter for researchers working on dermalA College Nightmare with a Dream EndingSusan Madera remembers well how—long ago, in 1978—her dream of going to college“turned into a nightmare.” Like many a New Yorker, she was bilingual: English and “neighborhood”(hers being Little Italy). A very intimidating teacher of Speech 101 at BrooklynCollege made so much fun of her “neighborhood” idiomsthat she dropped out after one semester. Marriage, the birthof two sons, and a steady rise to head of a word-processingdepartment at Morgan Guaranty followed. Then sheresigned to be a full-time mom and began to think about areturn to college. In 1999 Madera came to QueensboroughCommunity College, and this June received herAssociate’s degree with honors in English. She just made herpublishing debut with “One Voice,” an essay describing herlife story that QCC English chair Sheena Gillespie includedin the 5th edition of her Across Cultures (Allyn &Bacon), a collection of essays on multicultural experiences.Adapted here is the happy ending of her essay.Susan Maderawas lucky enough to get a position as a typist in a very prestigious company,IMorgan Guaranty. I began my career in the typing pool, typing on an IBM typewriter.Within a year, word processors came into the office, and I was thrilled to bepicked as one of the people trained to use one. Eventually, they made me an offer Icould not refuse: I headed a department of word processors in the investmentresearch division. I left Morgan on maternity leave with my first child. Upon myreturn, I was trained to be on the new IBM computers, and become supervisor of aneven larger group of people. But once our son was born and I looked into hissparkling eyes, I knew I could not leave him to the care of a baby-sitter. When Ireturned three months later, it was to resign my position.I am still a supervisor, but of our home. Michael is now twelve years old, andMatthew is six. I want our children to have the benefit of a strong background inEnglish. I know the downfalls of not speaking properly, and I do not want them toexperience them, as I have.To say that I have conquered all my fears of the English language would beuntrue. Twenty-one years after walking away from Brooklyn College, I am back inschool at Queensborough Community College. What was the first class I decided totake? Why English, of course. I am doing well in my class, and I am proud of myself.I am also quite glad that QCC has decided to give me the three credits I earned inSpeech at Brooklyn College, although I barely passed, with a grade of D. I could nothave taken that class again.Over the years, I have gained confidence in myself as a writer. The way I speakdoes not exemplify who I am; however, my writing is a true expression of the personI am inside. When I write, words come from deep inside of me, and spill out onto thepage. I never stop to correct myself, as I would if I were speaking. I may speak twolanguages, but I write with one voice.fibroblasts. “When I’m taking a newcourse, it’s almost like I get high on thechallenge,” she says.Jacques arrived in the U.S. in 1991with her parents and three younger brothersfrom Haiti, lived in a one-room apartment,then moved into larger accommodationsin the Marcy Projects inBushwick. After graduating fromMartin Luther King High School, sheentered the SEEK program, whichoffers financial and study support topromising students.Leaving Bushwick is not withouttension for the 21-year-old Jacques.Getting into Yale worried her less thangetting to Yale. “I’m claustrophobic,” shesaid. “I sometimes get severe panicattacks on trains, and I can’t fly. I wasafraid this might limit my choice ofschools. But I was really proud. It wasthe first time I had ever gone out of stateby myself, and the bus ride was fine.”Medical Dream ComesTrue for BLM3p Studentrowing up in Grenada, RonaldGCharles had the grades to attendmedical school, but not enough money todo so. Like so many others, he had tomake the heart-wrenching decision toleave home and emigrate to the U.S. formore opportunity, bringing his youngerbrother with him. Both were acceptedinto City College as full-time students.But they had to endure poor living conditions,and Ronald worked long hours atlow-paying jobs tosupport them both.Despite these hardships,he establishedan outstanding academicrecord andwas named aMinority Access toResearch CareersScholar, whichpaid his tuitionand a monthlystipend for hisresearch. He graduated from CityCollege this June and, fulfilling a lifelongdream of becoming a doctor, he has won aSalk Scholarship to medical school.As a MARC Scholar, Charles workedin Professor Carol Wood Moore’s lab on aproject to determine the function of anunknown and conserved protein inyeast—the novel BLM3p gene, which isone of many yeast genes whose functionis unknown. Recently, similar genes werefound in humans, and BLM3p is consideredlikely to be very important in multipleorganisms. Charles is particularlyinterested in understanding how cellsrespond to damage of DNA and how thisgene might help in repair processes. Hisresearch paper on the subject, “FunctionalCharacterization of BLM3p, a Proteininvolved in Resistance to OxidativeDamage to Saccharomyces cerevisiae,”helped him to win his Salk award, whichhe will enjoy at Weill Medical College ofCornell University.Ronald CharlesCUNY MATTERS — Summer 2003 7

CUNY Research Chemists Rejoice at Arrivalof New Spectrometerhe level of excitement rose sharplyamong chemistry researchers at theT City University on May 22. Thiswas the long-awaited day that the installationwas completed on a brand-newVarian Inova 500MHz MultinuclearNuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR)spectrometer at City College’s MarshakScience Building.Professor Mahesh Lakshman, a coprincipalinvestigator on the team responsiblefor the purchase of the $520,000instrument, hopes to be putting itthrough its paces over the summer in hisfield of research. Soon CUNY researcherswill be using the spectrometer to illuminatethe causes of cancer, discover newtherapeutic compounds, and improvesolid-rocket propellants.Taking a broader view of the future,Lakshman also points out, “The newinstrument will help us to develop aresearch infrastructure that will help us torecruit and retain outstanding faculty andgraduate students, who will be eager touse the instrument in their research.” Heis also happy to know the spectrometerand its 300 Mhz sidekick will also be usedfor teaching undergraduate and graduatestudents, particularly in a training coursein advanced NMR techniques.The Inova spectrometer, purchasedwith matching funds from the NationalScience Foundation, will enable scientistsfrom many CUNY campuses to conductnationally competitive, cutting-edgeresearch in diverse areas of organic, bioorganic,inorganic, and analytical chemistry.It will also encourage multi-disciplinarycollaborations ranging from organicsynthesis and bio-organic chemistry tobiochemistry and engineering.Lakshman himself will be exploringthe synthesis and study of unusual nucleosides(the basic building-blocks of DNA)as well as DNA that contains theseunusual nucleosides. His research is particularlyaimed at trying to understandthe underlying pathways involved in cancercausation. His prime research concern,using the Inova, will be the unambiguousverification of chemically synthesizednucleosides that can then be inserted intosmall sections or “turns” of the doublehelicalstrands of DNA.The high-end spectrometer, whichsupersedes a lower-end 300Mhz spectrometer,will significantly upgrade theresolution capacity for analyzing spectraldata of a wide range of molecules. It willalso reduce the amount of material neededfor analysis. “The interpretation of datawill be much simpler,” Lakshman says,“especially for complex compounds. Andany ambiguity in structural characteristicswill be significantly lowered.”Among the scientists eager to use theInova—for which a special room has beenNovel Proteins and Other InquiriesUNY faculty have been honored this semester with major grants from founda-government and industry. The awards, reflecting the diversity of scholarlyCtions,interests of the faculty across the University, include research in bioengineering, biochemistryand disease control. What follows is a sampling. Visit cuny.edu/news for acomplete listing.“IGERT: Multiscale Phenomena in Soft Materials,” National Science Foundation,Morton Denn, Levich Institute, City College, $742,000.“Engaging Latino Communities for Education Initiative,” W.K. Kellogg Foundation,M. Saravia-Shore, Lehman College, $400,000.“Title V, Electronic Student Profiles,” U.S. Department of Education, J. LaPerla andK. Bonsignore, New York City College of Technology, $318,706.“Teacher Quality Leadership Program,” New York State Education Department, K.Kinsler and M. Gamble, Hunter College, $235,000.“Bridges to the Future Program,” U.S. National Institute of Health, C. Wu,LaGuardia Community College, $215,996.“EDGE—Adult and Continuing Education Program,” New York State EducationDepartment, J. MacKillop, City College, $196,001.“China International Migration Project,” NIH/National Institute of Child Healthand Human Development, Z. Liang, Queens College, $138,600.“Molecular Structure and Function of Protective Plant Polymers,” National ScienceFoundation, Ruth Stark, The College of Staten Island, $120,000.“Characterization of Novel Proteins Involved in Sterol Homestasis,” Pfizer, G. Small,City College, $110,000.“Asthma & Hazardous Substances Applied Research & Development: Mapping AirToxics & Asthma in Greenpoint/Williamsburg,” PHS/Centers for Disease Control,J. Corburn and D. Kotelchuck, Hunter College, $100,000.“Gear Up Program,” U.S. Department of Education, A. Kahn, LaGuardiaCommunity College, $1,519,998.“Comprehensive Career Development Program,” New York City Housing Preservationand Development, S. Watson, LaGuardia Community College, $1,469,661.“National Center for Permanency Planning,” HHS/Administration for Children &Family Services, B. Leashore and G. Mallon, Hunter College School of SocialWork, $1,150,000.CCNY Researcher Padmanava Pradhan, manager of the new spectrometer laboratory, withthe new instrument. Photo, Summers/Nuñezredesigned and modified for temperaturecontrol—are several of Lakshman’sCCNY colleagues. Dr. Maria LuisaTasayco will be examining protein fragments,and Dr. Valerie Balogh-Nair isplanning to look for novel pharmacophores—compoundswith therapeuticpossibilities—that are effective againstAIDS-related opportunistic infections.Dr. Lane Gilchrist will study the S-layer protein of Lactobacillus brevis with aview to characterizing products formed inthe molecular engineering of proteins andenzymes in order to enhance their naturalfunctions. Dr. Theodore Axenrod will befocusing on N-nitramino and geminaldifluoramino solid propellants. This, hehopes, will lead to the synthesis of highenergy-density materials to be used assolid rocket propellants.Dr. Padmanava Pradhan, the laboratorymanager for the spectrometer, will himselfbe using it for stereo-chemistry research,in which the spatial orientation of atomsand substituent groups in organic compoundsis plotted. “My focus will be onTthe interactions between proteins andDNA, with the ultimate goal of understandingbetter the causes of cancer anddeveloping therapeutical agents,” he says.Dr. Panayiotis Meleties of BronxCommunity College will use the Inova forsynthesis of a new class of man-mademolecules that mimic natural moleculesknown to have anti-cancer antibioticeffects. And Dr. Robert Rothchild of JohnJay College will use the Inova to studyhindered molecular motions in novel“crowded” molecules. He hopes thisresearch will provide better insight intobasic behavior of molecules, which maylead to molecules of potential pharmacologicaland forensic importance.Lakshman adds, “All of us who havebeen looking forward to a new NMRspectrometer are particularly grateful toGillian Small, Associate University Deanfor Research. Her assistance was crucial ingetting all the participants together torequest funds for it, and we are grateful tothe NSF for the funds that made theInova a reality.”A Film Festival and a Life Celebratedhe Tenth Annual Bronx CommunityCollege Film & Video Festival wasthe scene of a first this year, as theinitial awards created in memory of aLaGuardia Community College professorwere presented to four student filmmakers.The BCC Media Technology Programestablished the Peter J. Rondinone MemorialAwards after the LaGuardia professor diedlast November at age 48. The MediaTechnology program’s director is ProfessorJeffrey Wisotsky, one of Rondinone’s CityCollege classmates. The awards recognizestudents who have “demonstrated an abilityto make a positive difference in the Collegeand in their community.”This year’s invitation-only festival, heldat the Clearview 59th Street Cinema inManhattan, was sponsored by theEastman Kodak Co. A larger festival, withscreenings open to the public, will takeplace on the BCC campus in the fall.Rondinone’s first teaching assignmentwas at BCC. He went on to serve as professorof English and director of the journalismprogram at LaGuardia from 1986 untilhis death. His screenplay, “Yo-Yo Land,”written with Wisotsky, was a 1996 finalist inthe Sundance Screenwriters DevelopmentAward competition, and a finalist in Hollywood’s1997 Beigel Screenwriting Contest.Rondinone grew up in the South Bronx,and turned his street experiences into literature,producing a series of short storiesthat were published, to critical praise, bySt. Martin’s Press/Picador under the title“The Digital Hood.” His mentor at CCNYwas the author Donald Barthelme.Rondinone once recalled askingBarthelme, “How can I be like you? Heanswered my question with a question:‘How many words do you think I put intoprint before I sold my first short story?’ ”The answer was many thousands.The BCC Media Technology Programoffers student filmmakers practical handsonskills taught by experienced professionalsin media production and management.8 CUNY MATTERS — Summer 2003

You would be very foolhardy tobegin browsing through The Milk ofAlmonds— and it is the perfectbook for aestival browsing—on an emptystomach. In no time at all, you will likelybegin to crave something to eat involvingravioli, artichokes and figs or maybe mortadella,finocchio, or baked ziti…and rushout to the nearest trattoria or ristorante.This is because the full title of this newanthology from the CUNY’s ownFeminist Press, whose editorial offices areat the Graduate Center, is The Milk ofAlmonds: Italian American WomenWriters on Food and Culture. Each oneof the foods just mentioned—and manymore, like polenta, pomodori, basile,tripe—appears in a title in this collection,which was compiled by Louise DeSalvo,newly appointed Jenny Hunter Professorof Literature and Creative Writing atHunter College, and Edvige Giunta,anative of western Sicily and professor ofEnglish at New Jersey City University.But don’t expect many recipes in thevolume. It is instead a banchetto of poems,essays, stories, and memoirs about everyaspect of Italian culture, with food the everpresent,insinuating ingredient. Among the50 writers included are many whose namesroll off the tongue like the titles of operaticarias: Rosanna Colasurdo, Gioia Timpanelli,Rosette Capotorto, and Annie Lanzillotto.Some authors are well-established (SandraGilbert, Carole Maso, Nancy Savoca, LuciaPerillo), others just emerging.Nor is The Milk of Almonds a mere lightheartedadventure in buon gusto. The editorshave more serious intentions, as theirexplanation of the title hints: “In Sicily,where spring comes in February, as thealmond trees blossom, they signal change,renewal, a rebirth…In the island’s distant,mythical past, Persephone comes back inspring, although temporarily, to her mother,Demeter, goddess of Sicily, goddess ofharvest and fertility. A daughter lost, found,then lost again: an endless series of departuresand returns, the cycle of seasons, therhythms of grieving and healing.”DeSalvo and Giunta strike the seriousnote when they conclude their introduction’shighly informative set-piece onalmonds: “Though it takes hard work toshell almonds, it takes even harder workto extract milk from them. Crushedalmonds, sugar, water: the simple, deliciouscombination used to make pastareale, almond paste—literally,royal paste—and used tomake the milk of almonds,latte di mandorle, the ambrosiaof the Italian south.”The “hard work” of living iswhat many pieces in the bookare really about. DonnaMasini’s urgent poem “Hunger”has nothing to do with anythingyou might pick up at Gristede’s.In DeSalvo’s own memoir“Cutting the Bread,” whichserves as the volume’s exit aria,she confesses hatred of her mother’scooking and recalls her grandmotherbitterly muttering merdaat the awful store-bought whitebread her daughter brought home.Nancy Caronia tells of a family’srefusal to acknowledge the years ofverbal, physical, and sexual abuseperpetrated by its patriarch. Finallycatching him molesting his granddaughter,her grandmother’s automaticcomforting response is to makeThe Food of Life—Italian Styleher something to eat. Nancy Savoca’s“Ravioli, Artichokes, and Figs” tells of theauthor’s dying mother, who, after refusingfood for days, agrees to share a fig.Religion, inevitably, figures in severalentries. Sandra Gilbert’s poem “Kissingthe Bread” takes flight from the image ofthe priestly hand offering a crust:Kissing the bread was kissingthe carrion that was the bodyof every body, the wristof daughter and husband, the crook’darm of the mother, the stonefist of the father.On a more exuberant note is MaryBeth Caschetta’s “The Seven Sacraments,”which reports on her cooking up, with afriend on one very busy day in thekitchen, a septet of fish recipes to honorthe sacraments. Baptism was linguine inclam sauce; the Eucharist was garlic filetof sole over lemon risotto.Cris Mazza writes wryly about beingraised in suburban California by a firstgenerationfather who believed foodshould be grown, raised, hunted or foragedrather than simply collected from asupermarket. Carole Maso opens thebook, fittingly, with a meditation-memoiron breast-feeding titled “Rose and Pinkand Round.”The Milk of Almonds is organized inseveral sections: Beginnings, Ceremonies,Awakenings, Encounters, Transformations,Communities, Passings, Legacies. LibraryJournal has called it “highly recommended”for “readers seeking meditations onthe reality of women’s lives.”Hot PeppersBright redand pointed like hornsweapons against the evil eyeantidotes against decaylean and dry, asceticextreme like saintsrevolutionariesthat set everything on fire.— Rina FerrarelliBOOK TALKOF THECITYPoems of Praise from a “Baruch” LifeIf not a private allusion, there iscertainly a delicious irony in the factthat the phrase “Baruch atah Adonai”figures in one of the poems in GraceSchulman’s latest collection, Days ofWonder: New and Selected Poems(Houghton Mifflin).This is because Schulman began teachingat Baruch College in 1972, and over theyears—“to my astonishment,” she says—sherose from adjunct professor to DistinguishedProfessor of English at the College.Baruch (blessed) atah (are you) Adonai(God), she explains, is a prayer commonlyspoken before meals as grace—anotherself-referential wink of the poet’s eye? Ina poem titled “Flags,” Schulman describesher father being asked by a wealthy, xenophobicbigot to say graceand, with stifled anger,The Pianoobliging in Hebrew. “Flags” is one of tennew poems in Days of Wonder, whichHarold Bloom has called Schulman’s best,confirming her “emergence into authenticeminence.” They join her favorites fromfour previous collections that haveappeared over the last three decades.Asked the significance of her title,Schulman says there is “no referentamong the poems in the book, but I thinkthe title has everything to do with thebook as a whole, from the cover art[Monet’s “Impression Sunrise”] to theepigraphs [one is from Chaucer: “The lyfso shorte, the craft so long to lerne,/ Th’assayso hard, so sharp the conquerynge.”]. Light,air, praise, wonder—in Hopkins’ sense ofwonder, as in his poem ‘Pied Beauty.’”Once men pried loose a window to haul inthe Knabe grand piano, and I heardbrick scrape dark wood, four legs land with a thudthat shook bare walls. Harsh birth.You played Chopin,Father tried Brahms as Jacob fought his angel,and I missed keys. Topaz lamps shone brightly,never on our sheet music but on familyphotographs on the piano: a lost uncle,decades of cousins. In panic over chords,I could implore the piano’s faces, ponderthe lives it held, or, at the worst times, stareat statues: Esther, Saint Luke, a clay Buddha.When the apartment changed hands, I did notstay to discover how they moved it out.— from Days of WonderThe first line of the famous Hopkinspoem—“Glory be to God for dappledthings”—certainly catches Schulman’surge toward the exultant and celebratory,even when the subject matter is far fromhappy. This is notably the case in the 15-sonnet sequence titled “One Year WithoutMother” that appeared in 2001; its lasttwo words capture the entire volume:“Praise life.” (These sonnets will put readersin a perfect frame of mind to visit theNew York Public Library’s splendid exhibition“Passion’s Discipline: The History ofthe Sonnet in the British Isles and America,”which runs through August 2.) The secondpoem of the sequence on Schulman’smother is reproduced here.New Yorkers will specially delight inpoems from her 1994collection, For That DayOnly, which offers vividscenes of New York in thetradition of Whitman,Crane, and Moore. The titlepoem, for example, recreatesthe city on June 11,1883, and Walt himself andPfaff’s, his favorite wateringhole, figure in “Footstepson Lower Broadway.”Speaking of Crane, thereis also in Days of Wonder apoem titled “BrooklynBridge.” Among the newpoems is one with apsalmic feel, “JewishCemetery, Eleventh Street.”It describes the tiny 200-year-old burial ground ofthe Spanish-PortugueseSynagogue on 11th Streetnear Sixth Avenue.Schulman is poetry editorfor The Nation and aformer director of thePoetry Center at the 92ndStreet Y.CUNY MATTERS — Summer 2003 9

Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies ParadesBy Gary SchmidgallThe gleam in Martin Duberman’seye first appeared in about 1986:why not establish a center for thestudy of homosexuality? The DistinguishedProfessor of history, who arrived at LehmanCollege in 1972, reasoned that, given theexplosion of serious research and publicationon the subject in the post-Stonewallyears, the time was ripe to call for “theperks and encouragement and supportand legitimacy that a university settingwould provide” for the burgeoning field.Duberman’s brainstorm was also bornof frustration. Feeling his own “illuminations”as the tide of Stonewall rolled in,the noted scholar of 19th-centuryAmerican history and Bancroft Prize-winningbiographer of such mainstream figuresas James Russell Lowell and CharlesFrancis Adams felt an urge to indulge in a“shift in expertise.”Part of that shift was a desire toexplore gay history, so in the early 1970she offered to teach a Graduate Schoolcourse on sexuality in history, his courseabstract carefully worded not to frightenthe horses. “There was instant consternation,”Duberman recalls. “Impossible! It’snot a recognized topic for scholarly investigation!It’s not a recognized discipline!”Disgusted, Duberman cut his ties withthe Graduate Center entirely and settledin to see how long it would take for theIvory Tower to catch up with the realworld. He also got actively involved in theold Gay Academic Union, which mounteda well-attended “watershed” conferenceat John Jay College in 1973.As it turned out, Duberman and severallike-minded academics had to waitabout 15 years for the prospects for aCenter for Lesbian and GayStudies—or CLAGS, as it is nowuniversally known—to seriouslyjell. The sine qua non,of course,was a change in attitude withinthe suites of college provosts andpresidents. And that happened,after a false start in whichDuberman approachedYale University with aproposal to house thenation’s first such centerthere.Esther Newton, anearly CLAGS Boarddirector, says, “I vividly recall themeeting of our Committee forLesbian and Gay Studies withformer Graduate Center PresidentHarold Proshansky. Having been subjectedfor many years at my college tosometimes outright homophobic administrators,I was prepared for the worst.Instead, Proshansky treated us withrespect from the outset. Without minimizingthe financial and political difficulties,his attitude was: How can we do it?Thanks, Hal!” Duberman, also present,agrees: “It was stunning. Proshansky said, ‘Ireally want to thank you for coming tome with this idea. It’s long overdue.’”Proshansky, however, did set a bar of$50,000 in funds to be raised in order togive the center fiscal credibility, andDuberman says gathering that sum “wasno easy matter.”But slowly, over several years, the seedSecond CLAGS director Jill Dolan, left, Joey Arias, and founder MartinDuberman at an early CLAGS reception.money was gathered—sometimes fromunusual sources. Joseph Wittreich,Distinguished Professor of English at theGC and a long-time and generous supporterof CLAGS, likes to recall the anecdoteof two CUNY graduate students diningwith an elderly neighbor in San Diegoand talking excitedly about the plans forCLAGS. “That man—his name was DavidClarke—soon died, and a bequest fromhim provided some of CLAGS’s seedmoney. Clarke’s only stipulation,Wittreich adds, “was that, when the twograduate students were able, they shouldmake a comparable gift.”At long last, in April 1991, the Centerfor Lesbian and Gay Studies was formallyestablished, and immediatelybegan to thrive withDuberman as foundingexecutive director.Wittreich attributes thisin part to “the unflaggingcommitment of thosefirst board members,notably SamPhillips, who was thenuniversity director ofpersonnel, and thesteady support ofChancellor W. AnnReynolds.” (The goodoffices of Phillips andReynolds, Wittreich pointsout, led to the establishmentof domestic partnership benefitsat CUNY at about this time.) Dubermanalso acknowledges Frances Horowitz forbeing “wonderfully friendly and helpful”to CLAGS throughout her GraduateCenter presidency.Two impressive declarations of confidencein CLAGS came very early on. Firstwas a donation of more than $100,000from Dr. David Kessler, a San Franciscan,that gave the Center its first endowmentfund. It supports the annual KesslerLecture, which honors “an individual whohas made an outstanding contribution tothe expression and understanding of les-bian and gay life.”Since 1992, theKessler roll callhas brought tothe Universitysuch movers andshakers as JoanNestle, EdmundWhite, BarbaraSmith, MoniqueWittig, EstherNewton, SamuelDelany, EveKosofskySedwick, JohnD’Emilio, CherríeMoraga, andJonathan NedKatz.Another substantialCLAGSsupporter fromafar over thedecade has been Honolulu resident IvorKraft, whose donations have even extendedto shipments of chocolate-coveredmacadamia nuts (see “The Pleasures ofCLAGS” sidebar).Also in 1992 came what Dubermancalls “the tremendous boost” of a$250,000 grant from the HumanitiesFellowship Program of the RockefellerFoundation. The three-year grant—whichwas almost unprecedentedly renewed forthree more years—allowed twelve scholars-in-residenceto come to the GraduateCenter between 1993 and 2000.CLAGS now has the funds to offer fellowshipsand prizes of its own. Dubermanhas endowed a fellowship in his ownname which gives $7,500 annually toapplicants without respect to nationalityor academic affiliation. A $5,000 CLAGSFellowship goes yearly to scholars early intheir careers. The Monette-HorowitzDissertation Prize honors the distinguishedgay author Paul Monette and hislover (both AIDS victims), and therecently established Sylvia RiveraAward, honoring the transgenderactivist, will go to the best book orarticle in transgender studies.From the early years, CLAGS hasraised the profile of gay studies and facilitatednational and international exchangeof ideas through a monthly colloquiumseries, panels, and conferences. Sparksflew at one early conference on “The GayBrain,” during which Simon LeVay presentedhis theory of a connection betweenbrain structure and the diversity ofhuman sexual feelings and was sharplycritiqued by such skeptics as Carole Vanceand William Byrne.Former Board member Oscar Monterosays the “highlight of my tenure wasworking with Elena Martinez and manyothers” on two Latino/a conferences.“Being around so many committed, articulate,energetic folks was tough buttremendously rewarding,” Montero says,adding, “it was great fun!”In March 1995, more than 500 participatedin a three-day event on “BlackNations/Queer Nations,” and its manyintense and passionate moments werefilmed with support of the FordFoundation. Just a month later, 400 peoplewith thespian tendencies were attracted toCLAGS’s conference on Queer Theater.Among the participants were HollyHughes, Larry Kramer, Tony Kushner, andEverett Quinton. Jill Dolan, one of theQueer Theater keynoters and a leadingscholar of feminist and queer performance,became the second CLAGS director, onDuberman’s retirement in 1996.The proof of scholarship is finally inthe publishing, and the influence ofCLAGS members who are authors, and ofCLAGS itself in facilitating research inthe field, has been enormous.Duberman is practically a one-manBronx cheer at that ridiculous notion of30 years ago that gay studies “is not a discipline.”Predating CLAGS was his importantHidden From History: Reclaiming theGay and Lesbian Past, which was followedby a memoir titled Cures: A GayMan’s Odyssey;a study of the ruckus onChristopher Street, Stonewall; anothermemoir, Midlife Queer; and, most recently,a collection of vigorous political essays,Left Out: The Politics of Exclusion.But, as far as CLAGS is concerned, thejewels in Duberman’s publishing crownare two titles he edited: A Queer Life: TheCLAGS Reader, and the massive QueerRepresentations: Reading Lives, ReadingCultures (both appeared in 1997). Thelatter, which gathers together the work ofcountless scholars from a wide range ofdisciplines that were touched in someway by CLAGS, is perhaps the definitivedemonstration that the discipline of gayand lesbian studies is not only thriving,but here to stay.CLAGS also created a productive communityof gay and lesbian writers withinCUNY. Among many other present andpast CLAGS Board members who havepublished in the field are Mark Blasius(Political Science at LaGuardia and theGC), who co-edited We Are Everywhere:A Historical Sourcebook for Gay andLesbian Politics,and Steven Kruger(English, Queens and the GC), author ofAIDS Narratives: Gender and Sexuality,Fiction and Science. Elena Martinez, Chairof Modern Languages at Baruch College,is the author of Lesbian Voices from LatinAmerica; Representacion en Julian DelCasal. And Esther Newton has to hercredit Mother Camp,a study of FemaleImpersonators in America, and a historyof 60 years in the gay community on FireIsland.James Saslow, of Queens College andthe Graduate Center, was on CLAGS’sfounding committee and has almost singlehandedlyjoined the disciplines of gay studiesand art history, notably with Ganymedein the Renaissance: Homosexuality in Artand Society and Pictures and Passions: AHistory of Homosexuality in the Visual Arts.Saslow is currently helping CLAGS to planan art history conference in 2004.Robert Reid-Pharr, newly arrived in theGraduate Center’s English program andnow a CLAGS Board member, is theauthor of Black Gay Man. Robert Kaplan,a CLAGS Board member from 1999 to2001, is currently working on a dissertationwith a tantalizing same-sex angle:“The Federalist Papers and the Bonds ofWhite Men in the Vision of a NewNation.”He is particularly happy that, of late,CLAGS has been focusing more attentionon quality-of-life-and-learning within10 CUNY MATTERS — Summer 2003

into Second DecadeCUNY. His fondest memory is of the“sunny Saturday morning in May 2000when 60 queer students, faculty, and stafffrom around the University met for thefirst annual Queer CUNY conference todiscuss the joys and travails of being out—or not out, or semi-out—on campus.” Itwas good to feel “exhilaration thatCLAGS was beginning to get moreinvolved in the life of its home institution,”Kaplan says.Among CLAGS projects aimed at fertilizingLGTBQ—Lesbian/Gay/ Transgender/Bisexual/Queer—pedagogy nationally wasthe establishment in 1995 of a systematiccollection of college syllabi (it went onlinea few years later). Calls from around thecountry about these syllabi are now cominginto the CLAGS office, which isstaffed by several part-time graduate students.In 1999 two new media for the disseminationof work in the field arrived: anemail discussion listserv (gendersexstudies-l)and abook series collaborationwithN.Y.U. Press,Sexual Cultures:New Directionsfrom CLAGS.Spring 1999also brought theannouncementthat Jill Dolanwas leavingCUNY for theUniversity ofTexas. AlisaSolomon, aBaruch Collegeprofessor of English and Journalism andthree-term CLAGS Board member, washer successor as director.In the spirit of the founder’s articulatepolitical activism, CLAGS has oftenfocused its energies on political andcultural issues of the moment. In 1998CLAGS initiated an AdvocacyCommittee charged with strengtheningthe bridge between academe and activists.Panels were presented on the volatile politicsof race and culture, and a roundtableon arts censorship was held apropos ofthe famous “NEA Four” case that wasPresident Frances Horowitz with Kessler LecturerSamuel Delany, famed author of science fiction.heading to the Supreme Court. CLAGSmembers became involved in the defenseagainst attacks around the nation onLGTBQ study programs.Fall of 1999 brought a move to newquarters in the old B. Altman building ofthe Graduate Center and an emphasis onmore global perspectives, which reached aclimax last December with a CLAGShostedorganizational meeting—fundedwith $100,000 from the Ford Foundation—tocreate an International ResourceNetwork among LGTBQ researchers. Itwas attended by 100 people from 35countries.Alisa Solomon recently announced herretirement after four years as CLAGSdirector. Her successor will be PaisleyCurrah, professor of political science atBrooklyn College and long-time CLAGSBoard member, whose scholarship is onnarratives of transgender identity, particularlyas deployed in U.S. courts. His Notthe United States of Gender is forthcoming.Solomon sums up, “Over the last 12years, CLAGShas producedmore than 100public events, atwhich morethan 1,000 peoplehave presentedtheirwork. We haveawarded some70 fellowshipsand prizes, collaboratedwithdozens of academic,community,and activistorganizations—local, national, and international. We haveconversed with countless LGTBQresearchers who have dropped by ouroffice or sent us e-mails.“LGTBQ Studies has grown tremendouslysince Martin Duberman hatchedthe idea for CLAGS,” she adds. “TheCenter is proud to have been a part ofshaping and expanding the field. Intoday’s conservative and economically difficulttimes, we face tough challenges—which makes our work more importantthan ever.”The Pleasures of CLAGSALISA SOLOMON’S TOP TEN LIST1. Listening to Joan Nestle’s inaugural Kessler Lecture—nothing short of thrilling.2. Being part of the energetic debate at the town-hall meeting that closed the trulygroundbreaking “Black Nations/Queer Nations” conference.3. Watching Carmelita Tropicana capture the high emotion of the Queer TheaterConference as she emcee-ed a performance evening.4. Creating up-coming programs joining LGTBQ Studies and Disability Studies.5. Learning from master teachers at our regular Pedagogy Workshops.6. Winning approval of an Interdisciplinary LGTBQ Concentration at the GC.7. Hashing out ideas for an international network of LGTBQ researchers with some100 scholars and activists from 35 countries last November.8. Working daily—and eating Hawaiian chocolates—with a staff made in heaven.9. Feeling the love (yes, really) at our first Board meeting after 9/11—and agreeing to runa special CLAGS News to help us think through the horror.10. Dancing cheek-to-cheek with my partner, Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark, in total blissat the CLAGS 10th-anniversary bash after Judith Butler’s inspiring Kessler Lecture.CUNYJoel Klein Discusses Testing Issues,Parental Involvement in City’s Schoolsnnovation and meaningful change were among the topics of discussion for NewIYork City Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, the special guest of Chancellor MatthewGoldstein on a recent broadcast of CUNY TV’s “CUNY Honors,” excerpted here. Thecomplete interview is a available at cuny.edu/news.Q & AChancellor Goldstein: I am struck by yourfocus on leadership because I so much agreewith you. You show me a great school and Iam going to show you an inspired leader.Chancellor Klein: Well, I do agree with yourpremise. I think the leadership is all thedifference in the world. The principal has tobe the instructional leader in the building.If you are there doing something else, it isnot going to send the right message. Second,you’ve got to be a situational manager.What we are doing is teaching people acombination of instructional and businessskills in a way that, for example, will help Chancellor Joel Kleinthem understand that the most importantasset any leader has is time. If you dissipateit, you won’t effect change in a system. The third thing we are doing is having avery problem-solving curriculum. We are not big on traditional didactic classroomteaching as a way to really get to students.Q: I am particularly impressed with the notion of a common curriculum, which isso fundamental in mathematics and in English. This is revolutionary in this cityand quite exciting.A: We had forty, fifty math curricular and thirty-five different literacy programs.We have—especially in our poverty areas—enormous mobility inside the city.So you may have a young teacher move from school to school two or threetimes and face a new curriculum each time. So why not try to make it easy?If we were getting good results from all these curriculums, I’d say “let a thousandflowers bloom,” and we’d have a beautiful garden. But instead we havebeen getting very different outcomes.Q: With the changes, profound changes, organizational management changes andreally deep educational changes, how are you going to know two years from now,three years from now, that these alterations are having the effect that you want?A: Standardized test scores. I don't want to exaggerate their significance, but theyare a reasonable measure in terms of whether we are raising performance. Wehave the data and indeed the federal and state governments are going to usethese tests to define our future. We will also look at our graduation rates, therates of students passing the Regents exam, our attendance rates. We will be verytransparent about it. My view is that you put this data out there. You don't tryto spin it.Q: There is another ingredient here, and that is the role of getting parents verymuch involved in the learning process and in the life and vitality of the schools.What are you going to be doing that is different from what others have attempted,and how is that going to be conceptualized and organized?A: You are absolutely right about this-and this comes from my own experience inlife. This is the way parents, my parents saw the role of public education in myown life. People used to say, well, your parents read to you at home, but myparents didn't read to me at home. But they conveyed to me that, frankly, if Iwanted to live a different life, an economically more secure life than they hadlived, then education was the medium to do so. They conveyed that I would beunfortunate if I didn't seize it. Even though I was a young kid, I had to understandthat. So a core thing we are doing is putting a parent coordinator in eachschool. This is a new position, and this is going to be somebody whose full-timejob it is, and we are going to have a training program for them as well. Theparent coordinator will relate to the parents in the building.Q: What are some of the things that get you upset, surprise you, make you justwant to bang some heads together?A: The fundamental problem is that too often in the system the interests of otherstake precedence over kids. Let's face it, whether it’s vendors or whether it’sinterest groups, whether it is a particular constituency, or how we hire–all thosekinds of issues come up in the system and overwhelm the children, who, afterall, are not an organized constituency. And I think that has been at times dismaying,frustrating. But keeping the focus on the needs of kids is critical. Thesecond thing that surprised me, I think in a very positive way, is how manytimes, despite common wisdom, you will find in very tough neighborhoodshigh-functioning schools, where you will have a principal who has created alearning environment that is exciting, that works for the teachers. There is analignment, not a we/they confrontation, that works. You can tell walking into abuilding, you can tell whether the principal knows the kids in the building.CUNY MATTERS — Summer 2003 11

Celebrating 500th Anniversary of an Artist of the EroticAgnolo Bronzino was theleading artist of mid-16th-century Florenceand an official painter at theMedici court. Cupid was oftenon his mind. A number of hismost important paintings representederotic subjects, and one ofthem is seen here, “Venus,Cupid, and a Satyr,” from Rome’sGalleria Colonna.Bronzino painted the largepanel in 1553-54 as one of aseries celebrating Venus, Goddessof Love and Beauty, whichadorned a room in the house of aFlorentine patrician and connoisseurof erotic tableaux representingpagan deities. “Bronzino’sscene suggests the imminenterotic interaction betweenVenus, who reclines on a luxuriouslydraped bed, and her sonCupid,” says CUNY DistinguishedProfessor of art historyJanet Cox-Rearick. “They playwith the boy’s bow and arrow,and a leering satyr leans eagerlyinto the scene, directing his gazeat the adolescent—just asBronzino hoped viewers wouldgaze at his goddess.”In the 19th century, the prudishowners of many such risquépaintings, including others by Bronzino,ordered them to be overpainted. TheColonna Venus was subjected to justsuch a cover-up, as seen here, and onlyin 2002 was her period of literally falsemodesty brought to an end. Conservatorsusing infrared reflectography discoveredthe original composition, and the beautyof Bronzino’s eroticism was soonrestored to view.Like his great contemporary, Michelangelo,Bronzino was also an accomplishedpoet. Some of his burlesquepoems were blasphemous and transgressive.Under the pretext of describing anordinary object, such as a paintbrush,Bronzino would employ a coded vocabularyto obscene effect. Such poems area tour de force of sexual innuendo andraucous allusion.Last April, the erotics of Bronzino’spaintings and poetry came under closescrutiny at a Graduate Center colloquium,“Eros at the Court of the Medici,”that celebrated his 500th anniversary (helived from 1503 to 1572). It was organizedand chaired by Cox-Rearick of theGraduate Center’s art history department.Since 2000 she has headed up aBronzino’s “Venus, Cupid and a Satyr” is seen in its “polite” state at top,and restored to its original glory in the second image (photos courtesy ofthe Galleria Colonna).new specialization in Renaissance andBaroque art, which offers six courses ayear on Italian and North European topics,among them, for example next fall’s“Duccio to Holbein: The Interaction ofItalian and North European RenaissanceArt,” “Velasquez: Painting as Making andDiscourse in 17th-century Europe,” and“Trecento Painting and Sculpture in Italy,1250-1400.” The Renaissance/ Baroquespecialization website ishttp://web.gc.cuny.edu/dept/arthi/prog_info/requirements.html#special.The colloquium was held in ElebashHall under the auspices of theRenaissance Studies CertificateProgram. Art History is but one of severalPh.D. programs at the GraduateCenter that are collaborating on theRenaissance Studies Certificate Program(RSCP), whose Coordinator is MartinElsky. Others are ComparativeLiterature, English, French, Hispanic andLuso-Brazilian Literatures, History,Music, Philosophy, and Theatre.Students and faculty in these programscome together in courses, colloquia, lectures,and dissertation seminars. TheRenaissance certificate is added to thePh.D. for students who take requiredand elective coursesemphasizing interdisciplinaryresearch and teachingin Renaissance andEarly Modern subjects.The RSCP website isgc.cuny.edu/renaissancestudies.The RSCP is also affiliatedwith the Society forthe Study of Women inthe Renaissance, also basedat the Graduate Center,which sponsors nationalconferences and a monthlyspeakers program.Such a confluence ofacademic resources hasmade the City University,and the Graduate Centerin particular, one of themost active sites forRenaissance studies in thenation. This eminencewas underscored in 2002when—thanks to thegood offices of the RSCP,CUNY’s Renaissancescholars, and ProvostWilliam Kelly—theRenaissance Society ofAmerica chose to makethe Graduate Center itsnew home.With more than 2,600 membersworldwide, the Society is the mostrenowned Renaissance organization inthe world, and its Renaissance Quarterlyis likewise the most distinguishedmulti-disciplinary journal in the field.The Society’s arrival at 34th andFifth Avenue is a very timely homecoming,for it is now celebratingthe 50th anniversary of its foundingin New York, mostly by scholarsfrom Columbia and severalof CUNY’s predecessor colleges.Over the decades, CUNY facultyhave been extremelyactive in the RSA. One ofthese, Hunter College andGraduate Center historianemerita Nancy Siraisi, a formerRSA president, will soon bereceiving one of its most prestigiousawards, The Paul OskarKristeller LifetimeAchievement Award. Some60 CUNY faculty are membersof the Society, anextraordinarily high numberfor a single institution.And CUNY will have ahigh profile at the annual RSA conferencenext spring, to be hosted by theGraduate Center. Some 30 sessions onart history, literature, history, music, philosophy,and theater in England, France,Italy, Spain, and the Americas will beorganized by CUNY faculty membersand students.The nearly 1,000 attendees will alsobe treated to an exhibition in theGraduate Center Art Gallery, whosecurator is Diane Kelder, an art historyprofessor emerita at the Center. Titled“Splendors of the Renaissance: PrincelyAttire in Italy,” it will consist of 15 spectacularreconstructions of courtly clothingfrom the late 15th to the early 17thcentury worn by Duchess Eleonora diToledo of Florence, Marchesa Isabellad’Este of Mantua, and other members ofthe Medici and Gonzaga families, suchas Vincenzo I Gonzaga, fourth Duke ofMantua. Seen below is the ceremonialcostume of gold-embroidered whitesatin with an ermine cape he wore onhis elevation to the dukedom in 1587(based on a state portrait of him byGiovanni Bauhet).The exhibition of carefully researchedand executed reconstructions of courtcostumes is the creation of FaustoFornasari of Mantua. Since 1994 theexhibition has toured major cities inItaly and Spain, as well as five LatinAmerican capitals. The exhibition’scurator is Prof. Cox-Rearick, whohas also organized two RSAconference sessions on Italiancourt attire to complementthe show, which will beopen to the publicfrom March 10to April 24.Costume ofVincenzo IGonzaga(photo courtesyKing Studios,Codisotto diLuzzara,Italy).“I love New York. I love this spot.It’s like a giant funnel with all the newpeople coming here. They come withhope, and that’s infectious. It’s theclimate of New York to have hope.”— Marie Ponsot, professor emerita of Queens College,award-winning poet and just-announced recipientof a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship (see page 5)CUNY MATTERSOffice of University RelationsThe City University of New York535 East 80th St.New York, NY 10021PresortedStandard MailU.S. PostagePAIDNew Haven, CTPermit # 1411BUDGETWATCHFor the latest budget analysesand updates visit cuny.edu/newsand click on “Budget Watch.”