October 2023

With the fall semester in full swing, everyone is quite occupied, including me. 

I attended a special event on September 13, and gave the opening keynote at the Trailblazers Gala held by the Serica Initiative, a New York-based nonprofit that advocates for greater Asian American inclusion and strives for positive social impact in U.S.-China relations. Afterward, I enjoyed a photo op with Pat Chin, president and co-founder of VP Records; Anla Cheng, founder and chair of the China Project; Daniel Tam Claiborne, multiracial essayist; Jay Kuo, CEO of the Social Edge and composer of the Broadway show, Allegiance; Roseann Lake, director of International Publishing at RBMedia and former China Editor at the Economist; and Wendy O’Neill, life trustee at the Asian Cultural Council.

From left: Wu, Claiborne, Kuo, Chin, Cheng, O’Neill, Lake

The Office of Alumni and Institutional Advancement hosted an on-campus reunion for Phi Epsilon Pi on September 21, and 27 members of the fraternity, spanning class years 1956-1974, turned out. The brothers remain involved with their alma mater through the Phi Epsilon Pi Scholarship Endowment, which to date has given awards to 16 students. Two of them attended the reunion. The 2023 scholarship recipient, Raul Zapata-Tineo, a senior majoring in accounting, delivered remarks.  

On Tuesday, September 26, Queens College was selected out of numerous colleges nationwide for the privilege of hosting U.S. Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education Nasser Paydar and senior White House officials, who came to campus to mark Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander–serving Institutions (AANAPISI) Week. President Joseph Biden issued the first-ever proclamation in recognition of the initiatives underway at higher education institutions. This occasion allowed us to showcase the campus and its programs, such as the federally funded Queens College AANAPISI Project (QCAP). In the course of the visit, students had the opportunity to share their experiences; they spoke eloquently about what is needed to help AANAPISI students succeed.

I hosted Nasser Paydar (wearing red tie), U.S. Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education—the highest-ranking federal higher education official—on a visit to campus in support of AANAPISI Week.

Queens College is an AANAPISI, defined under the Higher Education Act as a college with an undergraduate enrollment that is at least 10 per cent Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander.

Nasser Paydar and I listened to QC students talk about their experience. From left are Sal Sayema, Benson Gu, Yasoda Debidayal and Ray Liu; to the right of Dr. Paydar are Rohan Ramnarain, Trisha Sherman, and Zareefa Khan.

The next day, I talked with the latest QC cohort of honors program students about my life journey, its challenges, and the importance of higher education. For example, I met those participating in the Kessler Scholars Collaborative, which takes an innovative approach to supporting first-generation students, who sometimes struggle to graduate; QC, the first public college in New York State to join the collaborative, has been participating in the Kessler program since 2020. Philanthropist and former New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon and family members have been generous supporters of the program. 

Later that afternoon, I had coffee with Sonya Smith, director of the New York Small Business Development Center. (In the picture above, she's right of me.) One of the many ways QC participates in borough life is to maintain SBDC services on our campus, in Kissena Hall, providing free guidance in multiple languages to local entrepreneurs.

We’ve had so much rain recently that I was concerned about scheduling my next Monday Mile on October 2. My worries were unnecessary. The weather cooperated—it was sunny and warm—and students joined me for conversation and a few laps around the Quad.

Tomorrow—October 4—the Godwin-Ternbach Museum will open a new in-person show, Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence. The pieces on display, made by women in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, are extraordinary. The artists repurposed beading, a traditional regional craft, to create compelling representational and abstract images; selling the works gave the women income, the reason “independence” appears in the exhibition’s title. Ubuhle Women will be at the Godwin-Ternbach through January 11, so there is plenty of time to see this exhibition.

On Thursday, a pair of ceremonies will honor two outstanding individuals who were associated with Queens College. 

At 10 am, New York City Council Member James Gennaro, Barry Commoner Center for Health and the Environment Director Steven Markowitz, Commoner’s widow Lisa Feiner, and I will gather with colleagues at the west corner of Kissena Boulevard and 65th Avenue to name a street after Commoner. A Brooklyn-born biologist admired as one of the founders of the environmental movement in the United States, he opposed nuclear weapons testing, led a study that found dioxin in the breast milk of Inuit women in the Arctic, and ran for the presidency on the Citizens Party, which he founded. After teaching at Washington University in St. Louis for more than 30 years, he moved his Center for the Biology of Natural Systems to Queens College, which subsequently renamed the center for him.

Commoner

Hamdani

At 5:30 pm, the college will unveil a plaque at Cooperman Plaza honoring Salman Hamdani ’01, an EMT who had served as a New York Police Department cadet and wanted to become a doctor. On September 11, 2001, instead of going to his job at a Rockefeller University lab, Hamdani headed to the World Trade Center, where he perished. He died trying to help people, but the fact that he was a Pakistani-American prompted speculation that he was a terrorist. His mother and brother, Talat and Zeshan Hamdani, will speak at the unveiling. It will be followed by a screening of the documentary American Jedi: The Salman Hamdani Story, and a reception.

I am looking forward to welcoming the participants in the annual conference for the CUNY Black Male Initiative (see QView #161) this Friday on campus. I am delighted that Queens College is again hosting this important university-wide event.

Events in the next few weeks include the October 10 opening of an archive and showcase in Benjamin S. Rosenthal’s Tanenbaum Room dedicated to retired QC Coach Lucille Kyvallos, a legend in women’s basketball. B-ball fans take note: Kyvallos will be there to speak. The date isn’t coincidental: QC’s men’s and women’s basketball teams will launch their seasons that evening, at MidKnight Madness. Come to FitzGerald Gym and watch accomplished athletes in action!

Dean’s List Scholars, Provost Scholars, and Presidential Scholars for 2023–2023 will be celebrated the next day at the Academic Excellence Ceremony; Charles Swarns ’80, a regional director for Truist Bank will give the keynote and I will present him with the college’s highest administrative honor, the President’s Medal. Because Colden Auditorium is undergoing renovations, the ceremony will take place in LeFrak Concert Hall, with limited seating. But everyone can watch the livestream starting at 5:30 pm.

The school is holding a conversation with John C. Williams, president and chief executive of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, on Wednesday, October 18, from, 12:15 to 1:30 pm; I’ll talk to Williams and then he’ll reply to questions from students. The next Business Breakfast will take place a week later, from 8:30 to 10 am. Bring an appetite for networking!

Let me close by wishing everyone both good health and a productive fall semester.

PS: Fall is being celebrated all over the borough this month. The Queens County Farm Museum offers hayrides and a scavenger hunt every day, weather permitting; on weekends, visitors can make their way through a maize maze, refuel at a donut and cider booth, and pick their own pumpkins. The Queens Botanical Garden will host a pumpkin patch, with related activities, on weekends starting October 14. On Sundays through the end of the month, Alley Pond Park holds free Adventure Course programs at 9:30 am and 1 pm; space is limited, so it’s best to arrive at least half an hour ahead of time. Socrates Sculpture Park will bring back its Halloween Harvest Festival on Saturday, October 28, at noon. The schedule will include a pumpkin-carving contest and compost catapult and—you heard it here—a dog costume contest presented by Chateau le Woof.