QView #165 | October 31, 2023

(Left to right) Sarima R. Consoli, Italian Charities; Aileen Riotto Sirey, NOIAW; Allesandra Belloni, Giullari di Piazza; Anthony Lofaso, Italian Charities; Domanic Giampina, President, Italian Charities; Mayor Adams; Fabrizio di Michele, Consul General; Angelo Vivolo, Giambelli Foundation and CUNY Trustee;  Anthony Julian Tamburri, Dean of the Calandra Italian American Institute; Nimo Provenzamo; Alan Hartman, Vice President, Italian Charities

Anthony Tamburri (Calandra Institute), third from right, received the Italian American Leadership Award at Italian Charities of America's 87th Dinner Dance, held on October 22 at Roma View in Howard Beach.

Amy Herzog at podium, Daniel Dromm seated on stage

Former New York City Councilmember Daniel Dromm visited a session of Amy Herzog’s class, Intro to LGBTQ Studies, on October 23 to discuss the controversy surrounding the “Children of the Rainbow” public school curriculum proposed in 1991. As reported in the LaGuardia & Wagner Archives, the New York City Board of Education created the curriculum, with a resource guide, to decrease prejudice and bigotry. Rejection of the program galvanized gay pride activists in Queens and prompted Dromm—then teaching fourth grade in a public school in Sunnyside—to come out.

Queens College Hillel and the Office of Student Development and Leadership hosted a Breaking Bread, Building Bonds dinner in the Student Union on Monday, October 23. The dinner is part of a citywide, mayoral initiative to bring people together to explore common bonds, shared cultures, and traditions, and break down silos that too often keep diverse communities apart. 

Exploiting the clear weather on the evening of Monday, October 23, Keaton Bell (Physics) brought telescopes to campus.

Students gathered on the plaza took turns focusing on the sky.

Queens College was represented on October 25, when Mayor Eric Adams held a reception at Gracie Mansion for supporters of the Asylum Application Help Center. Invitations were extended to volunteers and application assistants, supervising attorneys, pro bono attorneys, and members of the Adams administration as well as other partners, including Steven Banks, former commissioner of the New York City Department of Social Services and former attorney in chief of the Legal Aid Society.

So far, QC students working at the city’s Asylum Application Help Center have assisted in the filing of 5,646 asylum applications, 357 work authorizations, and 174 applications for temporary protected status.

From left: Lillian Zepeda, QC marketing director and asylum application assistant at the NYC Asylum Application Help Center; Eric Goldfischer, service-learning coordinator in Urban Studies, whose students are participating in QC's asylum project; Natalia Holtzman, associate provost for Innovation and Student Success, who leads QC's asylum project. 

From left: Hershenson, Frazier, Banks, and Bain

New York City Department of Education Chancellor David Banks and author Al Frazier toured the Louis Armstrong Center on October 27 with Louis Armstrong House Museum Board Chair Jay Hershenson and Executive Director Regina Bain. The new $26 million jazz club, exhibition space, and archives is in Corona, across the street from the house Lucille Armstrong purchased for her husband and herself 80 years ago. Banks said he will organize a meeting of the city's school superintendents at the Armstrong Center and work with the Louis Armstrong House and Museum team to develop a plan for the benefit of students.

Banks toured the exhibition . . .

Men’s and Women’s Soccer Teams Earn Postseason Berths; Women’s Tennis Falls in ECC Championship

The Queens College men’s and women’s soccer teams each picked up wins last week to clinch a playoff spot in this week’s East Coast Conference (ECC) playoffs. The men’s team has earned the #3 seed and will host their first-round match against the College of Staten Island on Wednesday, November 1 at 7 pm. The women’s team is the #5 seed and will go on the road to take on Molloy University on Thursday at 7 pm.

Should either team win, they would advance to the ECC semifinals over the weekend. The men’s semifinals take place on Saturday and the women’s semifinals are on Sunday. Championship matches will take place the following weekend. 

Women’s Tennis

After completing an undefeated regular season, the Knights’ women’s tennis team came up short in the ECC Championship match, losing 4-1 to rival St. Thomas Aquinas College last Saturday.  

Despite the tough loss, the Knights did receive several postseason honors with six members named to the All-Conference Team. Head Coach Alan Nagel was named Co-Coach of the Year, while Maja Makal, Apolline Lamy, and Caroline Hany-Fawzy were selected to the All-ECC First Team. Saga Berggren and Eva Rivoal received All-ECC Second Team selections.

Be sure to visit https://queensknights.com/ for the latest news on the fall sports playoffs picture.

Take Note of Voting Options

Early voting commenced in New York last weekend and will continue through Sunday, November 5. To find your early voting location and its hours of operation, click here. If you don’t cast your ballot early, polls will be open on Tuesday, November 7, from 6 am to 9 pm. To find your voting site that day, click here. This year’s ballot includes two proposed amendments to the state constitution. You can learn more about them here.

Ring-ing in October 31

If your Halloween isn’t sufficiently scary, watch The Ring, presented in Queens Hall 120 on October 31, from 5 to 8 pm, by the Japanese Studies program. Critically acclaimed on its 1998 release, the movie—about a videotape that kills people who watch it—is considered a horror classic.

Wolves at the Theatre Door

Soccer provides a window into the lives and emotions of teenage girls in The Wolves, Sarah DeLappe's Pulitzer-nominated play. The Department of Drama, Theatre and Dance will present Wolves in Goldstein Theatre over the first two weekends of November—Thursdays-Saturdays at 7 pm, Sundays at 3 pm. Tickets may be purchased online here.

Queens College Program Gets a New Name

The Queens College Behavioral Intervention Team, which strives to maintain a healthy and safe environment at Queens College, is getting a new name. Moving forward, they will now be known as the Care and Concern Team.

“The new name better encapsulates the essence of our work and our commitment to addressing the well-being and needs of our Queens College community members,” said Dwayne D. Jones, interim dean of students. “We believe this name change more accurately represents the caring and supportive approach we strive to provide.”

The Care and Concern Team is a collaborative committee of trained and dedicated QC professionals who meet regularly to discuss the behavior of individuals about whom reports are received. The team provides a structured, positive method of addressing behaviors of concern that impact the college community. The team can be reached at their new email address, CARE@qc.cuny.edu.

“We are excited about our team’s direction,” added Jones. “And we believe these changes will allow us to serve our Queens College community members better.”

Meet BlackMass Publishers in Library

Among the newest holdings in QC Library’s Special Collections and Archives is a curated box of more than 60 zines from BlackMass Publishing, an independent press that promotes and publishes material by Black artists. On November 6, to celebrate this acquisition and mark Black Solidarity Day, the library will host a talk and Q&A with BlackMass’s Yusuf Hassan and Kwamé Sorrell. The event, taking place in the Tanenbaum Room from 5 to 6:30 pm, is sponsored by the Library Special Collections and Archives, the QC MFA Program, and Africana Studies with the generous support of the Pine Tree Foundation of New York.

NYC Men Teach Holds Conference at QC

With its fifth annual Innovation in Education conference, hosted by Queens College on November 10, NYC Men Teach will explore the theme “Unbanning Our Schools: Legalizing the Right to Truth, Justice & Freedom in Public Education.” The guest speaker will be Jarvis R. Givens, a professor of education and African & African American studies at Harvard University, and the moderator will be Soribel Genao, professor of educational leadership at Queens College.

The conference will start in the Godwin-Ternbach Museum—site of Ubuhle Women, an exhibit of astonishing beadwork art by a collective of South African women--at 4 pm, moving to the Patio Room at 5 pm. Audience members will receive free copies of Givens’ book, Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching, autographed in person by the author. To attend, register in advance here. 

Empowering Asian American Women at CUNY

AAMPOWER—an acronym for a CUNY program, Asian American Mentorship Providing Opportunities to Women for Empowerment and Resilience, sponsored by the Asian American/Asian Research Institute (AA/ARI)—has announced two programs this semester. The first, a virtual event on Friday, November 3, from noon to 1 pm, is Mentoring 101: How To Be a Good One and How To Ask for One. AAMPOWER’s inaugural in-person gathering, to be held at AA/ARI (25 West 43rd Street, Suite 1000, Manhattan) on Friday, December 1, from 5 to 8 pm, will explore networking. To learn more, sign up here.

Certification Track for Registered Behavior Technicians

Up to ten undergraduates will have the opportunity to be certified as registered behavior technicians (RBTs) through a new health care career credential (HC2) initiative offered by the Psychology Department.

RBTs are paraprofessionals who, under the supervision of board-certified behavior analysts and licensed behavior analysts, provide therapeutic services to individuals with developmental disabilities. Students who complete the 40-hour RBT certification course will immediately be eligible to interview with one of Queens College’s partner organizations for a paid position. Upon passing the certification exam, RBTs can work 10 or more hours a week.

The HC2 program, funded through a collaboration between CUNY and the Mayor’s Office of Talent and Workforce Development, is designed to help students in health and human service degree programs attain specialty credentials that lead to employment.

This project was developed and will be administered by Sally Izquierdo (Psychology), clinical training manager and director of Applied Behavior Analysis Graduate Programs. Questions should be directed to her at sally.izquierdo@qc.cuny.edu.

Leticia Arroyo Abad (Economics) won a National Science Foundation grant. She is a trustee of the Economic History Association trustee and an editorial board member of PNAS Nexus . . . . Ala Alryyes (English) won the Maximillian E. Novak Essay Prize, given by the Defoe Society every two years for the best published essay on Daniel Defoe . . . . Natalia Candelo-Londono (Economics), with Sherry Li Xin from the University of Arkansas, received a $35,000 Con Edison Social and Behavioral Research Award for a study, Understanding Volunteering Behavior in Emergencies: Experimental Evidence from Heterogeneous Neighborhoods in New York City . . . . Miles Grier (English) won the 2022 Douglass Adair Prize, awarded biennially to the best article published in the William and Mary Quarterly during the preceding six years . . . .

Pyong Gap Min (Sociology) published a monograph, The Transnational Cultural Flow from Home: Korean Community in Greater New York, that in January 2023 was named the second-best book by the Association of Koreans Abroad. Min was nominated as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . . . . Nakia Gray-Nicolas (ECP) received the 2023 Emerging Scholars Award from the American Educational Research Association (Division A: Administration, Organization, and Leadership) . . . . Holly Reed (Sociology) published “Social Consequences of Forced and Refugee Migration” in the Annual Review of Sociology. She will be a guest professor in Migration Studies at the Malmo Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity, and Welfare at Malmo University, Sweden, during 2023-2024 . . . . Fidel Tavarez (History) is spending this fall as a Mellon Mays Career Enhancement Fellow. His research on the early modern Spanish Empire is taking him to Seville; Trier, Germany; and the Huntingdon Library in California . . . . Anahí Viladrich (Sociology) published “‘American Tales of Heroes and Villains’: Donald Trump’s Framing of Latinos During COVID-19 Times” in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.