QView #183 | Summer, 2024

CUNY Senior Vice Chancellor for Budget and Finance and Chief Financial Officer Sherif Soliman visited campus on the morning of Monday, July 8, for a tour and meetings with college officials about budgetary plans, needs. and the future outlook. Follow-up sessions were subsequently held with the senior vice chancellor’s staff as preparations are underway for the new academic year.  

From left: Vice President for Communications and Marketing and Senior Advisor to the President Jay Hershenson, Interim Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Patricia Price, CUNY Chief of Staff for Budget and Finance Ann Cheng, CUNY Senior Vice Chancellor for Budget and Finance and Chief Financial Officer Sherif Soliman, Assistant Vice President for Budget and Finance Joseph Loughren, Assistant Vice President for Facilities Zeco Krcic.

John Hunter, the artist featured in the solo show Family, Identity & Culture at the Godwin-Ternbach Museum, discussed his life and career in a talk on July 9.

At the request of President Frank H. Wu, Queens College organized and sent a fulsome delegation on a “class trip” to the New York Hall of Science on July 10. The delegation included faculty and staff who have worked with the nearby institution for many years on collaborative science research and education projects. Built as a permanent structure for the 1964-65 World’s Fair, the Hall of Science originally housed presentations from Abbott Laboratories, Airborne Instruments Laboratory, the American Cancer Society, the American Chemical Society, the Ames Company Inc., the Atomic Energy Commission, General Aniline & Film Corporation, the Hearing Aid Conference Inc., Interchemical Corporation, the Martin-Marietta Company, the Upjohn Company, and other exhibitors. Following a tour of the facilities, discussions were held on future funding opportunities that might be jointly pursued.  

The latest international dignitary to set foot on campus was Colombian President Gustavo Petro (standing), who spoke at Campbell Dome on July 12. Interim Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Patricia Price offered greetings in English and Spanish.

A select group of secondary school educators participated in the inaugural Louis Armstrong Summer Teaching Institute July 15-19. Funded by the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation in collaboration with the Queens College School of Education, the institute immersed teachers in Satchmo’s life and legacy. Working with the institute’s faculty, the teachers developed interdisciplinary lesson plans to broaden their students’ perspectives and acquaint them with a cultural hero who happily made his home in Queens.

Ricky Ricardo, director of Research Collections for the Louis Armstrong House Museum, spoke to educators.

Institute participants gathered for a group shot.

The five-day program included live jazz.

Queens College hosted a CUNY-wide barbeque celebration of the Americans with Disabilities Act outside the Student Union Building on Monday, July 25, a day before the legislation’s 34th anniversary. The festive event was organized by the CUNY and QC Coalition for Students With Disabilities, chaired respectively by Arturo Soto and Leonard Blades. It included presentations by the student leaders to and remarks from Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and University Provost Wendy F. Hensel, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Denise B. Maybank, and University Student Senate Chairperson Salimatou Doumbouya. President Frank H. Wu, New York State Senators Toby Ann Stavisky and John Liu, and Assemblymembers David Weprin, Khaleel Anderson ’19 and Harvey Epstein were among the guest speakers.

Arturo Soto and Leonard Blades holding their certificates

Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and University Provost Wendy F. Hensel (center) flanked by organizers of the BBQ

NYS Senator Toby Ann Stavisky

NYS Senator John Liu

President Frank H. Wu

Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez

Assemblymember Harvey Epstein

Assemblymember Khaleel Anderson ’19

Assemblymember David Weprin

Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Denise B. Maybank

From left: President Frank H. Wu; Kareem Hertzog, program director, NYC Men Teach, Brooklyn College; Shemeka K. Brathwaite, associate program director, NYC Men Teach, Brooklyn College; Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, professor of English Education, Teachers College, Columbia University; Nadine Brown Smith, retired educator and wife of Nathaniel Smith; Bobbie Kabuto, dean, School of Education, Queens College; Mark Wilson, director, Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities, Auburn University; Nathaniel Smith, director, NYC Men Teach, Queens College 

The annual TOC II Summer Symposium, We Learn So That We May Serve: Living the Legacy of Dr. Deborah Cannon Partridge Wolfe, brought educators and aspiring educators to the Patio Room on July 25 for presentations and networking. The symposium’s namesake, QC’s first tenured Black faculty member, went on to become the education chief for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor.

Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz at the podium

Queens College Hillel Managing Director Darone Ruskay got an introduction to campus officials over lunch on July 29. He will be leading the organization while Executive Director Jenna Citron Schwab is on maternity leave. 

From left: Queens College Hillel Executive Director Jenna Citron Schwab, Vice President for Communications and Marketing and Senior Advisor to the President Jay Hershenson, Queens College Hillel Managing Director Darone Ruskay, President Frank H. Wu, Chief Diversity Officer and Dean of Diversity Jerima DeWese, Vice President of Student Affairs and Enrollment Management Jennifer Jarvis

On July 31, Fred Wilpon, real estate developer, philanthropist, and former owner of the New York Mets, welcomed visitors from QC to his home on Long Island. Wilpon and his wife Judy Wilpon founded the Kessler Scholars Program, an initiative dedicated to supporting first-generation college students. The Kessler national network comprises 16 colleges and universities, including QC, the only CUNY campus participating in the program.

From left: Associate Provost for Innovation and Student Success Nathalia Holtzman, Chief Diversity Officer and Dean of Diversity Jerima DeWese, President Frank H. Wu, Fred Wilpon, Vice President for Institutional Advancement/Alumni Relations Laurie Dorf

Welcome, Associate Provost Chow

The newest face in the Queens College administration is Rebekah Chow, associate provost for institutional effectiveness as of July 1. She came to QC from Glasgow Caledonian New York College, where she created a framework for all institutional improvement systems and helped launch formal review of the viability of academic programs—work that helped Glasgow Caledonian to attain Middle States accreditation.

Chow holds a BA in psychology from Widener University and an MA in higher education leadership from SUNY Stony Brook. She is close to completing a doctorate in educational practice and leadership from the University of North Dakota.

Designing a Life after QC

From left: Vice President for Communications and Marketing and Senior Advisor to the President Jay Hershenson, Georgine Ingber

Georgine Ingber, a member of the Queens College staff for over a quarter of a century, including as director of Creative Services in the Office of Communications and Marketing, retired last month. Supervising a small team of graphic designers and photographers, Ingber gave college materials—from alumni magazines and brochures to the programs, certificates, and medals required for Commencement—their distinctive, polished look. Jefferson Caballero will be overseeing the unit on an interim basis. 

Noteworthy Programs for Youngsters

For more than 40 years, the Eisman Center for Preparatory Studies in Music (ECPSM) has been teaching children to play and appreciate music. EPSCM’s Music for Tots class provides an introduction to music for children ages 2½ to 4, while the Suzuki programs for strings and piano provide instrumental instruction for students as young as 3½ to 4 years of age. The experienced faculty work with students at every skill level, from ages 3 to 18, providing a comprehensive musical education. In addition to private lessons on all orchestral and band instruments, piano, guitar, and voice, ECPSM offers musicianship classes, chamber music, chorus, and orchestra. Classes take place on weekends, with the fall semester beginning the weekend of September 21-22. To learn more about ECPSM programs, visit its website, email cpsmqueenscollege@gmail.com or call 718-0997-3888

On-Campus Day Care

Looking for safe, reliable day care? A solution is available on campus. QC faculty, staff, and students with young children—between 30 months and five years of age—can enroll them in the Queens College Child Development Center for the fall. The center, which is licensed by the New York State Department of Health and employs licensed teachers, offers a play-based program with developmentally appropriate activities. To learn more about the program, call 718-997-5885 or visit the center in Kiely Hall 245. 

Going To Bat for Bats

The painted woolly bat Kerivoula picta (K. picta)—a tiny, insect-eating species from South, East, and Southeast Asia—is potentially threatened by sales of taxidermied specimens to consumers in the United States in online marketplaces. That’s the finding of “Dying for décor: Quantifying the online, ornamental trade in a distinctive bat species, Kerivoula picta,” a study co-led by Joanna Coleman (Biology).

“Dying for décor,” published earlier this month in the European Journal of Wildlife Research, documents the (most likely illegal) hunting of bats where they live and their importation by U.S. vendors, who sell the framed and mounted bodies online as home décor, jewelry, and personal ornaments. Through semi-automated searches and manual data collection of online marketplaces, text analysis, and statistical data analysis, Coleman and colleagues from North America and Asia quantified the trade from October 2022 to December 2022. They found 856 bat listings, more than a third of them for K. picta. Further, the study, which received coverage The Taxidermy Bat Market Is Compounding Threats to a Species’ Existence - The New York Times (nytimes.com) in the New York Times and other news outlets, finds a pattern of misleading appeals to conscious consumption. About 20 percent of sales copy implies or promises that the dead bats are ethically sourced—meaning that they were bred in captivity, died of natural causes, and were not harmed. 

Scientists Speak Up

The scientists reject these claims, arguing that because there is no captive-breeding program for insect-eating bats, in practical terms they must be taken from the wild, violating wildlife laws in the source countries.

“It’s very important to remember that our data-collection period was only three months,” says Coleman, co-chair of the Bat Trade Working Group, part of the Bat Specialist Group within the International Union for Conservation of Nature and its Species Survival Commission. “Meanwhile this is going on on dozens of websites and in physical shops worldwide, so it’s only the tip of the iceberg. . . . the population could be depleted. We need to do something immediately.”

 “This team of scientists has conducted groundbreaking research on the online trade in wild bats, which is largely avoiding official oversight,” says Queens College President Frank H. Wu. “This study rings the alarm for biodiversity, showing us that threats to wildlife have an international scope, benefit from international scientific collaboration, and must be addressed without delay.”

Coleman and her co-authors recommend that K. picta be reassessed and listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), a multilateral agreement that would prohibit its transboundary trade. The research team is already conducting a follow-up study in Vietnam that will explore the supply chain in greater depth, potentially supporting a recategorization of K. picta at the next CITES conference in 2025.

Working at Crosswords Purposes

To cope with the pandemic, some people adopted a pet. Others baked sourdough bread. Elaine Eisler David ’66 and her family collaborated on Little Grids for Big Kids, a crossword book for 8-to-10-year-olds who have outgrown simplistic word games.

The origins of the project aren’t hard to puzzle out, says David. “My dad loved crosswords,” she recalls. “On Sunday he would buy several papers. He did them in ink. He got my brother hooked on them. When my son was born, my brother introduced him to puzzles. Then my grandson got interested.” Her husband likes puzzles, too.

Family Affair 

After COVID started, three generations of Davids engaged in friendly competition, sending each other screenshots of the New York Times crosswords, Wordles, and Spelling Bees they worked on. (The electronic version of the Times crosswords tracks the time spent on each puzzle. Wordle shows how many attempts the user made to determine that day’s word; Spelling Bee records the number of words the player spelled with that day’s letters and the score and rank that person achieved.)

In fall 2022, David’s son proposed that they try constructing mini crosswords; one of her grandchildren suggested making them for children. The project benefited from the expertise of some participants. David—who holds a bachelor’s in math from QC and a master’s in math from the University of Connecticut, where she was assistant vice president of Information Services—has created double acrostics for kids. Her grandson Henry Lin-David is a crossword constructor whose puzzles have appeared in the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and Spyscapes.

Soon family members were drafting and circulating puzzles for the elementary school set, meeting once a week over Zoom to discuss their efforts. “It was a way for us to do something together,” observes David. Her nine-year-old granddaughter was one of the puzzle testers. The others were children who were in the right age group and came from families in which at least one person enjoyed crosswords. As the professional on the team, Lin-David made the decisions on clueing and received top billing. After enlisting the services of an artist and an editor to finish the book, the Davids published Little Grids through Amazon.

True to its title, the paperback comprises two dozen puzzles, a mix of 4x4 “ultra-minis,” 5x5s, and slightly larger “midis.” To help novices, there is a section on how to tackle crosswords. Mary Tobler, puzzle creator for the newsletter Morning Brew, calls the book “a fun, smart gift for budding cruciverbalists.”

The hobby they develop could last a lifetime. David makes a daily routine of doing puzzles, including non-word games such as Sudoku and KenKen, with her husband, a retired professor of chemistry at UConn. “His goal is to do better than me,” she says.

Tuning in to Free Concerts

Live at the Gantries—a free series presented in collaboration with the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, and with generous support from the Mathis-Pfohl Foundation—offers great music and great views. Sonny Jain’s Wild Wild East takes the stage tonight (August 6) at 7 pm to serve up its signature fusion of Bollywood classics, spaghetti Westerns, Punjabi folk traditions, and jazz. The series will conclude next week with Lulada Club, an all-female salsa band. 

The Queens Jazz Trail Concert Series will continue this month with two dates on Thursdays. Sam Martinelli and the Brazilian Jazz Collective will play in the Rockaway Beach Amphitheater in Far Rockaway on August 15 at 7 pm. Two weeks later, Funkin’ for Jamaica will celebrate the legacies of Don Blackman, Bernard Wright, Casey Benjamin, and other local artists.

Artful Transparency

The next show at the Garage Art Center—an exhibition space founded and directed by artist and Godwin-Ternbach staffer Stephanie Lee—will be Seeing with Your Heart & Soul, a workshop and installation by Zach Rothman-Hicks and André Knights on August 17-18. Rothman-Hicks is an artist and a member of the SEYS faculty at Queens College; Knights is a health and wellness instructor and certified LMT. They began collaborating on social practice art projects in 2021. Their Garage Art Center exhibition will result from a session in which participants will receive clear plastic boards on which to draw each other's portraits. The see-through nature of the plastic boards will enable participants to witness their own and others' portraits overlaid, sparking conversations, stories, and laughter. To take part in Seeing with Your Heart & Soul, register in advance here.

From left: André Knights, Zach Rothman-Hicks

Alan Blackman ’50

Alan Blackman, an artist famous for sending himself first-day cover stamps for 36 years, addressing the envelopes in astonishing feats of calligraphy, died on June 6. He was 96.

A stamp collector since childhood, Blackman studied anthropology and sociology at Queens College, perhaps because he couldn’t major in philately. Upon graduating, he worked as a postal clerk, served in the U.S. Army, and went to England, where he got a second degree in anthropology from Oxford University. Returning to the United States, he settled in California, holding jobs at the University of California-Berkeley anthropology museum, the post office, and an art supply store.

Like many stamp collectors, Blackman sought out new commemorative stamps, known as “first-day covers,” on their release. He’d buy the stamp, stick it on an envelope, bring the envelope to a postal clerk to be postmarked that day, and mail it to himself. If that wasn’t possible, he’d send an unstamped, self-addressed envelope to the postmaster in the city where the stamp debuted; obliging postmasters would put a stamp on the envelope and cancel it with the phrase, “first day of issue.”

Blackman made an art out of this ritual after studying calligraphy in night school at the California College of the Arts. “It dawned on me that since the stamps were always different, the design on the stamp could influence what the address looked like,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2015. For a Swedish first-day cover featuring circus performers, he spelled out his name upside down; the capital A and B were rendered, respectively, as a unicyclist pedaling with his hands and an aerialist dangling from a pair of rings. The envelopes he accumulated in this way from 1968 to 2004 were exhibited in a traveling show called Letters to Myself.

A star in the world of calligraphy, Blackman also designed two typefaces. The fall issue of Alphabet, the journal of the Friends of Calligraphy, will be dedicated entirely to him.

James Bernstein

The Very Rev. A. James Bernstein, an archpriest in the Eastern Orthodox Church, passed away on June 17 at the age of 78.

A rabbi’s son raised in Queens, Bernstein adopted Christianity at 16. At QC, he was chapter president of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. He explored multiple denominations—among them Jews for Jesus, which he helped to found—before devoting himself to Eastern Orthodoxy; he was ordained a priest in 1988 and completed a Master of Divinity from St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary the following year. He recounted his spiritual evolution in Surprised by Christ: My Journey from Judaism to Orthodox Christianity.

Bernstein served as pastor of St. Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church in Brier, Washington, for more than 25 years, retiring in 2017. He is survived by his wife, their four children, and their ten grandchildren.

Nicholas Coch

Geology Professor Emeritus Nicholas Coch died on July 6, 2024. He was 86.  

Coch came to QC in 1967 after earning a BS in Geology from City College and a PhD in Geology from Yale University. In 1982, he joined the Earth & Environmental Sciences doctoral faculty at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Trained as a sedimentologist, Coch conducted extensive research in coastal and estuarine sedimentary processes on the Earth and beyond; he was the first geoscientist to recognize sedimentary structures in lunar cores. He and his students produced the first sediment maps of Long Island Sound and New York Harbor, results confirmed decades later by modern research techniques. Other studies published by his lab examined cliff retreat and dynamic depositional features along the North Shore of Long Island.

In later years, Coch focused on hurricane dynamics and hazards and served as a consultant to the New York City and New York State Emergency Management Offices. He was interviewed frequently on local and national television stations and appeared in segments of BBC, National Geographic, and Weather Channel hurricane specials, earning the nickname Dr. Doom for dwelling on the potential impact of a hurricane entering the New York estuary. On his business card, he called himself a “forensic hurricanologist—no category storm too small.” His predictions came true in 2012, when Hurricane Sandy inundated New York, causing 43 people to drown and an estimated $19 billion in damage.

A towering figure in his field—he was 6 feet, 7.5 inches and wore size 15 shoes—Coch was known for his sense of humor, too. “Informally, I might be the biggest coastal geologist in the country, skeletally at least,” he said. “Having height is good. When the hurricane surges rise, I'm the last one to go.”

Coch wrote Geohazards: Natural and Human and co-wrote two introductory geological textbooks. He was a fellow of the Geological Society of America and a member of the American Meteorological Society, the Society of Sedimentary Geologists, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, and the National Association of Geology Teachers, the last of which recognized him for excellence in teaching. From 2004 to 2006 Coch was a distinguished lecturer for Sigma Xi, the scientific research honor society. He stepped down from QC in 2017.

Adele Faber

Adele Faber, co-author of seven influential child-rearing guides, died on April 24. She was 96.

The youngest child of working-class, Jewish immigrants—because her parents relied on Yiddish, she didn’t learn to speak English until she attended school—Faber earned a bachelor’s degree in drama and theater at QC and a master’s in education at New York University. After teaching in public high schools for eight years, she left the classroom and moved with her husband to Roslyn, New York, to raise her own family. She found her new calling and her writing partner, Elaine Mazlish, while attending an eight-week parenting course given by child psychologist Haim Ginott, author of Between Parent and Child.

Ginott outlined strategies for improving communication, reducing conflict, and validating children’s feelings. Applying these methods in their own homes, the women were so pleased with the results that with Ginott’s approval, they described their experiences in their first book, Liberated Parents, Liberated Children. The two went on to collaborate on six more titles, notably the best-selling How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk, released in almost 40 countries. Faber used her theatrical background to run workshops and returned to the classroom, teaching at the New School for Social Research and the Family Life Institute at the C.W. Post campus of Long Island University.

Faber is survived by Leslie Faber, her husband of 74 years, and their three children and seven grandchildren. She was predeceased by Mazlish, her writing partner.

Norman Lichtenstein ’55

Norman Lichtenstein, a nephrologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, died on June 18, shortly before his 89th birthday.

The son of Polish immigrants, Lichtenstein was born in the Bronx and raised in Queens. After earning a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at QC and an MD at Cornell Medical College, he completed a residency at Yale and a nephrology fellowship at Mass General.

Lichtenstein shared his love of travel, opera, art, military history, and France with his wife, who survives him, as do his nieces, nephews, and grand-nephews and -nieces.

Fran Drescher, QC alumna, star and producer of the hit sitcom The Nanny, and president of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists Union (SAG-AFTRA), has been chosen for inclusion in the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Her name will be added in a ceremony to take place later this year . . . . Andrea Garcia ’23 has been awarded one of the six seats in the inaugural Columbia School of Professional Studies CUNY Fellowship. The fellowship will provide Garcia a full scholarship to Columbia’s master’s program in negotiation and conflict resolution . . . . Jonathan Gomez ’24 spoke at a recent CUNY Board meeting on Student Life, giving a quick rundown of all events hosted by the QC Gender Love and Sexuality Alliance (GLASA) and the CUNY LGBTQIA+ Consortium, of which he is a leading member . . . . Vice President for Communications and Marketing and Senior Advisor to the President Jay Hershenson published “Chaney, Goodman & Schwerner Live On,” an op-ed, in the New York Daily News . . . . Mike Lavin ’15 and John Sheridan ’16 are two-thirds of 3 Nuts Studios, which premiered its first feature, Chazz Palminteri’s A Bronx Tale: The Original One Man Show, at the Tribeca Festival on June 13 . . . .

Peter Liberman (Political Science) has been appointed Provost's Middle States Faculty Fellow for 2024-2025. He will work with Interim Associate Provost for Academic and Faculty Affairs, Maria DeLongoria, the Office of Institutional Effectiveness, and relevant department chairs to improve teaching assessment and student course evaluations . . . . Liza Marquez (External & Governmental Relations) is listed on City & State New York’s Trailblazers in Higher Education - City & State New York (cityandstateny.com) . . . . Lakisha Odlum (SEYS) is a 2024 recipient of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Early Career Educator of Color Leadership Award . . . . Kara Schlichting (History) has won the 2024 Theodore C. Blegen Award from the Forest History Society for her article, “The Narrowing of Broad Beach: Coastal Change and Public Beaches in Malibu, California” . . . . Joseph Sciorra (Calandra Institute) was awarded the Vernacular Architecture Forum’s 2024 Catherine W. Bishir Prize for his article “‘The Strange Artistic Genius of This People’: The Ephemeral Art and Impermanent Architecture of Italian Immigrant Catholic Feste,” published in the Fall/Spring 2023 issue of Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum . . . . Pedro Val (SEES) is the subject of a story Pedro Val: River Science Runs in the Family - Eos in Eos, the news magazine published by the American Geophysical Union . . . .

John Waldman (Biology) published an op-ed, “Let the Salmon Run Free,” in the New York Times on May 28 . . . . The Calandra Institute’s eighth edition of the Italian Diaspora Studies Summer Seminar (IDSSS), held in Rome earlier this summer, received coverage in La Voce di New York. A larger piece appeared in L’idea Magazine. Also, Calandra was represented for the third year in a row at “Tutti giù in Cantina,” il Festival della Cultura del Vino di Velletri (“All Back Down to the Cellar,” the Velletri Wine Culture Festival) . . . . The Godwin-Ternbach show, Family, Identity & Culture, was the subject of an article Godwin-Ternbach Museum - by Cathy's NYC Museums Project (substack.com) in the NYC Museums Project, a blog by Cathy Kennedy.