Discimus ut serviamus: We learn so that we may serve.
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QView #125 | March 29, 2022
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Members of the college’s mental health counseling team met with President Frank H. Wu on Tuesday, March 22. Staff seen here flanking the president are, from left, Olivia Tursi, Kris Belmonte, Maureen Pierce-Anyan, Francesca Girod, Nancy Leighton, Barbara Moore, and Seema Ahmed.
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Queensborough Community College President Christine Mangino toured campus on Wednesday, March 23, in the company of President Frank H. Wu. Many Queensborough students continue their education at QC. |
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From left: QC President Frank H. Wu; Queensborough senior administration members Michael J. Pullin, Sandra Palmer, and Brian Mitra; President Christine Mangino; and QC Chief of Staff Meghan Moore-Wilk |
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Call it Un-boxing Day: President Frank H. Wu and Assistant Vice President/CIO Troy Hahn distributed gifts to students living on campus during Summit Resident Appreciation Day on Wednesday, March 23. |
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President Frank H. Wu was in the company of remarkable women on Thursday, March 24. That's when Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz (at left)—the first female to hold that title—and the Queens County Women’s Bar Association hosted a Women’s History Month Celebration on campus; New York State Attorney General Leticia James (right), the first woman in her office, gave the keynote. WPIX reporter Mary Murphy, a QC alumna, emceed. |
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City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and President Frank H. Wu |
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The Fogo Azul NYC Marching Band Drumline provided entertainment. |
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Athletics Announces Spring Recreation Schedule
The Queens College Athletics program is pleased to announce its Spring 2022 recreation schedule. The fitness center, gymnasium, and swimming pool will be available for students, faculty, and staff by reservation. The hours are as follows:
Fitness Center: Monday–Friday, 12–5 pm
Swimming Pool: Monday–Thursday 12–3 pm
Open gym: Monday–Thursday 12–3 pm
Please note: all those using the facilities must be vaccinated against COVID-19 and have prior access to campus. Click here to view a complete list of rules.
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Stay on Course This Summer |
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Yesterday’s chill notwithstanding, warmer weather is around the corner. So is QC’s summer session. Students can choose from hundreds of undergraduate and graduate courses, offered online and in person. Sessions last four, six, or ten weeks. For complete information, click here.
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New Team Leads Modern Greek and Byzantine Studies |
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QC’s Center for Modern Greek and Byzantine Studies has a pair of new executives: Director Gerasimus Katsan and Assistant Director Maria Athanasopoulou. They were appointed to replace Christos Ioannides and Effie Lekas, respectively the center’s director and assistant director, who retired from the college.
Katsan is associate professor of modern Greek, coordinator of the modern Greek program, and chair of the Department of European Languages and Literatures (ELL). His most recent book is Retelling the Past in Contemporary Greek Literature, Film, and Popular Culture (co-edited with Trine S. Willert) (Lexington 2019). He is the author of History and National Ideology in Greek Postmodernist Fiction (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press 2013). His research interests include contemporary fiction, postmodernism, comparative approaches to literature, and Greek cinema. Katsan holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies from The Ohio State University.
Athanasopoulou, an adjunct assistant professor in ELL, teaches Greek language and conversation at both QC and at Stonybrook University. She began her academic career at the University of Athens, Greece, where she earned a PhD in Transcultural Sciences. The author of numerous professional publications—including one book and several chapters—she created, organized and taught conversational and literature circles designed for college students and adults as community services.
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QC Student Invited to 2024 Paralympics Tryout |
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Queens College student Seira Larrauri Garcia, a member of CUNY’s wheelchair basketball team, soon will have the chance to be a member of Team USA, too. Garcia has been invited to try out for the United States Paralympic Wheelchair Basketball Team, becoming the first CUNY student-athlete to be invited to try out for a U.S. national team.
Only 29 athletes from around the country were invited to try out for Team USA; just 12 players plus three alternates will make the team for the Paris Games in 2024.
“I had to read the email three times to make sure it was real,” said Garcia in an interview with CUNY.
Garcia, a junior urban studies major, was seven years old when she was diagnosed with Legg-Calve-Perthes, a disease that affected her hip joints. She has had seven surgeries and in 2014, when she was 17, was forced stop playing standing basketball.
Love for the Game
But none of that has kept her from playing the game she loves. This season, she leads CUNY’s wheelchair basketball team in scoring, averaging 16.5 points per game.
The university’s wheelchair basketball teams were launched as a result of a 2017 initiative, CUNY’s Inclusive and Adaptive Sports platform. CUNY plays in the National Wheelchair Basketball Association, the world’s oldest and largest disabled sports organization. Garcia has also played with FEBASIRU, Puerto Rico’s wheelchair basketball team, as well as the Brooklyn Nets’ and New York Liberty’s amateur teams.
“Seira exemplifies the resolve that drives CUNY students, alumni, faculty, and staff, including those with disabilities,” said Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez in a statement. “She is also a testament to the success of CUNY’s Inclusive and Adaptive Sports platform.”
Her story has also been gaining the attention of local media, including WPIX, which did a feature story on her on March 21.
While other former CUNY students have qualified for a Paralympic team, including former QC student Nicky Nieves in the sport of sitting volleyball, Garcia is the first to be invited to try out while enrolled as a student. Tryouts will take place April 12–16 at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
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A Campus Legend Turns 102 |
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Music Professor Emeritus Alexander Kouguell completed his 102nd trip around the sun last week, and his many friends helped him celebrate. Edward Smaldone (ACSM) and President Frank H. Wu dropped by the centenarian’s home on Friday, March 25. They enjoyed pork buns brought by Yeou-Cheng Ma—accomplished pianist, executive director of the Children’s Orchestra Society, and Yo-Yo Ma’s sister—and a discussion of Brahms’s second piano concerto, a favorite of both Wu and Kouguell.
On Sunday, March 27, Kouguell’s birthday, ACSM colleagues threw him a party over Zoom. The man they feted, a cellist, taught at QC for 68 years; with his late wife, he established the Alexander and Florence Kouguell Cello Scholarship for a talented soloist who participates in chamber music and the Queens College Orchestra while excelling academically. He also donated his instruments, bows, music, and memorabilia to ACSM.
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“Taking Down the Tiger King and Other Foes,” to be held on March 30 at 7 pm over Zoom, is the next lecture in the Values in Action series launched by Jewish Studies earlier this year. The event features Asher Smith, director of litigation at the PETA Foundation, who will discuss strategies for advancing animal rights in the courts and his experiences winning legal victories against some of the country’s most notorious animal abusers.
Smith joined the PETA Foundation in 2018 after working for the law firm Paul, Weiss on matters including multibillion-dollar securities litigation and the fight for gay marriage in the deep south and at the Supreme Court. He won precedent-setting victories against multiple exhibitors featured on the Netflix show “Tiger King,” as well as Pete and Gerry’s Organics, the seller of Nellie’s Free Range Eggs. His current cases include actions under the Endangered Species Act against abusive roadside zoos and challenges to companies that falsely advertise their animal products as “humane.”
Smith’s appearance is co-sponsored by the Pre-Law Program. To attend the virtual lecture, register here.
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Jonathan Bearak, a QC alumnus who is a senior research scientist at the Guttmacher Institute, is the lead author of the first study providing county-level estimates of unintended pregnancy and abortion. The study, released by Guttmacher, the World Health Organization, and the U.N.’s Human Reproduction Programme, is published in BMJ Global Health . . . .
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Roy Glaser ’69 received coverage on CBS News and in Newsday after his company, Glaser Mills, began helping a charity. Glaser Mills, which sells textiles to companies that make flags and banners, has seen demand soar for materials needed in Ukrainian flags. The company teamed up with Flag Manufacturers of America to establish a matching program to support a not-for-profit distributing medical supplies in Ukraine. . . . The late Art Seiden, an alumnus who illustrated more than 300 children’s books, is the focus of Zoo Animals for Children, a solo show at the Zimmerli Museum at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey . . . . Richard Vetere (Media Studies) reports that his teleplay adaptation of his stage play The Marriage Fool is now running on Amazon and Apple TV. “It was the most watched TV movie ever on CBS, with Walter Matthau and Carol Burnett and John Stamos,” notes Vetere . . . . President Frank H. Wu is quoted by Nature.com in coverage of the trial of Franklin Tao, a chemical engineer accused of hiding his ties to China
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