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Discimus ut serviamus: We learn so that we may serve.
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Middle States Commission on Higher Education Evaluation Team Visits Campus April 2–5
An Evaluation Team from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education will be on campus April 2–5 for its decennial accreditation review of the college. Queens College is among 15 institutions selected by the commission to work with its new streamlined standards.
The college submitted the final draft of its Self-Study to the commission in February, a report that was two years in the making and benefited from the contributions of dozens of faculty, students, and staff who donated their time to working groups, committees, and forums. The Self-Study reflected the goals of the college's most recent Strategic Plan.
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Pictured above (l–r): QC Computer Science Chair Zhigang Xiang; President Félix V. Matos Rodríguez; Team First Pass members Ehud Adler and Julian Moskowitz; CUNY Board of Trustees Chairperson Bill Thompson; Team Knight members Shaoqiang Lin, Carlos Beltran, Navid Rahman, and Zifang Huang; Peter Patch; Provost Elizabeth Hendrey; and Program Manager for the TTP Residency@QC Ying Zhou.
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The Winning Teams
Queens College students seem to be excelling everywhere, whether at a coding contest or on the basketball court.
On Friday, March 10, two teams of QC computer science majors were in the New York offices of Facebook to compete in the Making College Possible Coding Challenge. Seventy teams from CUNY and SUNY applied to this competition, in which they had to develop an app or webpage promoting Governor Cuomo’s plan to make college free for all New York students. Five teams were chosen as finalists, and two of those five teams were from Queens College.
And how did our teams do? QC Team Knight finished first and QC Team First Pass came in second. Team Knight’s winning app—available in English, Spanish, and Chinese—easily connects students with scholarships and grants. No wonder the Daily News described our students as “whiz kids.” Both teams were awarded $2,000.
On Monday evening, March 13, the women’s basketball Knights defeated the Molloy Lions 70–60 to capture the NCAA Division II East Regional Championship, the first time the Knights have ever won the regional title. They now advance to the Elite Eight (National Quarterfinals) at Alumni Hall in Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday, March 21. Go Knights!
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College Receives $1 Million Gift to Help Disadvantaged Students
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Pictured above (l–r): Percy Ellis Sutton SEEK Student Paola Peña; President Félix V. Matos Rodríguez; QC graduate student Japneet Singh; NYC Outward Bound Schools Alumni Manager Julia Forman; Eagle Academy Foundation Director of College Partnerships Donald Ruff; and Give Something Back Founder and Chairman Robert Owen Carr.
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On March 1 the college received a $1 million gift from Give Something Back, a program that helps high school students facing financial and other challenges stick with their studies and apply to college. “Queens College opened its doors close to 80 years ago, right in the middle of the Great Depression,” noted President Félix V. Matos Rodríguez at the presentation, “so you might say that educating students who are facing financial challenges is part of our DNA.” QC is the first public college in New York State--and one of only 14 colleges nationwide--to be chosen by Give Back. Thanks to this gift, 50 young women and men will attend QC without having to pay for tuition, fees, or room and board. The program was created by Give Back founder Robert Owen Carr, who remembered how a $250 scholarship to attend college changed his life.
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CUNY Citizenship Now! Office Opens on Campus
CUNY Citizenship Now!, which provides free, high-quality, and confidential immigration law services to help individuals and families on their path to U.S. citizenship, now has a presence on campus. Queens College has arranged for attorney Midori Hills to run a Citizenship Now! office from King Hall one day a week. Working with the college's Office of International Students and Scholars, she will offer one-on-one consultations to assess participants’ eligibility for legal benefits and assist them in applying when qualified. More information on immigrant services offered by the college can be found here.
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Godwin-Ternbach Receives Major Collection of Coptic Textiles
The Godwin-Ternbach Museum recently received a gift of 85 Coptic textiles from the Rose Choron Collection. These textiles, originally from Egypt, mostly date from the third to the seventh centuries CE. Acquired in Switzerland and New York over several decades, the collection represents a major expansion of the museum’s holdings both in textiles and in the arts of Late Antiquity. Although the original function of these weavings was to adorn garments and indoor soft furnishings, their bold and expressive designs seem at times to foreshadow Matisse or Picasso.
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Schwarz Music Archives Now Digitized
Thanks to a privately funded project, the recordings and transcripts of interviews conducted by musicologist K. Robert Schwarz ’79—donated to QC shortly after his death in 1999—have been digitized. Among the musicians Schwarz interviewed are violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, baritone Thomas Hampson, composers Meredith Monk and Terry Riley, and conductors André Previn and James Levine. Schwarz's father, Boris, was a long-time member of the college's music faculty. Members of the QC community are welcome to visit the Music Library to listen to any of those conversations, stored on 321 CDs. A preservation copy of the CD set and the original cassette tapes, along with Schwarz’s notes and papers, resides in the Special Collections of the Benjamin Rosenthal Library.
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Steven Friedman ’76 MD
Human beings have been sewing up wounds and incisions at least since the time of Sushruta, an Indian physician who used hemp to tie off blood vessels roughly 7,000 years ago. Patients were held down, or knocked out by hefty doses of wine for anesthesia. Last fall Steven Friedman ’76 MD, chief of vascular surgery at ProHEALTH Care Associates, came to campus to give about 60 pre-med students an update on advances in vascular surgery
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Pictured above: Between Rabbi Moshe Shur and QC General Counsel and Chief of Staff Glenda Grace is sophomore Abigail Ziegler. Abigail chose for her post-trip project to create a painting, which she donated to the college.
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Once again this past January Rabbi Moshe Shur, an adjunct professor at QC and retired campus director of Hillel, led a group of ethnically and religiously diverse students to Georgia and Alabama as part of his “In the Footsteps of Dr. King” initiative. They visited museums, memorials, and important sites in the struggle for Civil Rights, and participated in a Martin Luther King Day march. On February 27 the participants came together again in the Student Union to present their post-trip reflections projects.
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With Hurricane Sandy, New Yorkers got a taste of what the future may hold, as climate change is expected to bring not only high temperatures but also destructive storms, floods, and sea rise. Although engineered solutions—like high storm walls—often are proposed, many environmental scientists, social scientists, planners, and government officials are working from a different, ecological playbook: using nature’s own resources to adapt to the challenges of global warming. Some of this thinking is explained in Prospects for Resilience: Insights from New York City’s Jamaica Bay (Island Press), co-edited and co-written by long-time environmental scientist and advocate John Waldman (Biology). The authors hope New York will pioneer forward-looking urban environmental policy, not only for its own sake but as an example to the larger U.S. population, which is concentrated in coastal cities that also are threatened by climate change
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Celebration of Mozart: Jonathan Irving & Gerald Robbins, piano. Friday, March 17, 10 am, LeFrak Concert Hall.
Annual Virginia Frese Palmer Conference: Women and Policing: Injustices of Improper Policing. Monday, March 20, 9 am–12:30 pm, Student Union, fourth floor. Click here
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QC Evening Reading:
Essayist Phillip Lopate, author of Against Joie de Vivre, Waterfront, A Mother’s Tale, and other works, will read and be interviewed by Leonard Lopate (yes, they’re brothers). Tuesday, March 21, 7 pm, Music Building. Click Here
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Trade in the Age of Trump: A panel discussion on trade policy sponsored by the Economics and Business Club and the Office of the Dean of Social Science. Wednesday, March 22 at 12:15 pm, Campbell Dome. You can submit questions to the panel in advance at
[email protected].
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Damn Yankees: Tony Award-winning musical with music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, performed by Queens College students. Wed.–Sat., April 5–8, Goldstein Theatre.
Click here
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Q Gala to Honor Three Top Alumnae
The college’s annual Q Gala will take place this year on Wednesday, May 3, at Guastavino’s on 59th Street in Manhattan. The Gala will be honoring three prominent alumnae: Muriel Sapir Greenblatt ’54 (Alumni Award), Evelyn M. Strauch ’60 (President’s Award), and Fran Drescher (Lifetime Achievement Award). For more information on the Gala, write to [email protected] or call 718-997-2920.
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The women and men of Buildings and Grounds strive to provide excellent service to the campus community and support the college’s mission. They would appreciate having your feedback on how well they performed over the last year. “We count on the survey data to measure the effects of our service goals and to gain insight and plan improvements in all areas of our functions,” notes B&G director Zeco Krik. The survey, which takes only a few minutes, can be accessed here.
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