QView #189 | October, 22

QC was well represented at Flushing Town Hall’s 45th Anniversary Gala on Tuesday, October 15, fielding a delegation of faculty and staff. Kupferberg Center for the Arts Director of Strategic Partnerships and Development/School of Arts Associate Dean Julia Del Palacio took a turn in the spotlight, performing with Juntas Chicas.

From left: Kupferberg Center for the Arts Director Jon Yanofsky, KCA Marketing Director Shawn Choi, Interim Associate Provost for Academic and Faculty Affairs Maria DeLongoria, School of Arts Program and Communications Manager Neophytos Ioannou, Interim Arts and Humanities Dean Simone Yearwood, KCA Program Associate Nedelka Sotelo, School of Business Associate Dean and Flushing Town Hall Board Member Schiro Withanachchi, and Assistant Vice President for External and Governmental Relations Jeffrey Rosenstock

The Knights Table Food Pantry marked World Food Day on Wednesday, October 16, with a ribbon cutting at its expanded facilities in the lower level of the Student Union, across from the original pantry location. In addition to stocking canned and packaged food, the Knights Table now has a closet, called the Armory, of free clothing, from casual wear to professional attire. The items in the Armory were made possible through donations from the college community and the efforts of Arianna Livreri, associate director of Civic Engagement and the Knights Table.

From left: New York State Senator John Liu; Ricky Malone, chief of staff for Assemblymember Sam Berger; President Frank H. Wu; Associate Director for Civic Engagement and Knights Table Food Pantry Arianna Livreri; Urban Studies Distinguished Lecturer James Vacca; Shannar White, member of Congresswoman Grace Meng’s staff

Arianna Livreri, James Vacca

Making transportation easier for people with disabilities, the MTA set up a new Access-a-Ride stop outside Kiely Hall on Wednesday, October 16. Information about Access-a-Ride is available in English and six other languages—Bengali, Chinese, Haitian Creole, Korean, Russian, and Spanish—on the service’s website.

From left: Stacey Avila, Michaella Gordon, President Frank H. Wu, Arturo Soto, Vice President for Communications and Marketing and Senior Advisor to the President Jay Hershenson, and Jullisa Hibbert 

Appearing in the Grand Rounds series at CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy—and over Zoom—on Thursday, October 17, President Frank H. Wu discussed “The Many Truths about Asian Americans: Debunking the Stereotype of the Model Minority.”

The Godwin-Ternbach Museum (GTM) held an opening reception for its new exhibits, Exploring the Language of Form and Wunderkammer II: Animalia, on the evening of Thursday, October 17. After remarks by GTM Co-directors Maria Pio and Louise Weinberg and Interim Arts and Humanities Dean Simone Yearwood, visitors explored the displays. Programs planned in conjunction with the shows include Spotlight Talks (11/20, 12/4), an Artist Talk (11/14) and a fun Fall Family Day program (11/9). 

Women’s Tennis and Cross Country To Compete for ECC Title This Weekend

The Queens College women’s tennis team has its eyes set on another East Coast Conference (ECC) title. The Knights earned the #1 seed and will host the championship tournament this weekend.

The Knights are matched up against #4 Daemen University in the semifinals, which takes place on Friday, October 25, at noon at the Queens College Tennis Bubble. If they win, they will take on the winner of the University of the District of Columbia and St. Thomas Aquinas College match in the championship on Saturday, October 26 at 5 pm. The Knights will be seeking their 10th ECC title and an automatic berth into the NCAA tournament.

The men’s and women’s cross country team will also compete for the ECC Championship this weekend. The Championship meet will take place this Saturday, October 26, at Daemen at 10 am.

Meanwhile, the QC men’s soccer team’s outstanding season continues as they topped Daemen, 2-0 in its only match last week. They are 8-4-1 overall and a perfect 5-0 in the ECC. Harry Cooke added another goal and continues to lead the nation in goals with 15.

Despite having its winning streak snapped last week, the women’s volleyball team is also in first place with an impressive record of 15-6 overall and 5-1 in the ECC.

For the latest Knights news, schedules, statistics, and more be sure to visit queensknights.com.

Queer, About, and Out in October

LGBTQ History Month was observed on campus with the panel discussion Queering Disability and National Coming Out Day.

Queering Disability, held on October 9 in the Muyskens Conference Room and online, unpacked the specific intersection of being disabled, queer, transgender, and gender-nonconforming. The event was presented by the Office of LGBTQIAA+ Programs at Queens College in partnership with the CUNY Coalition of Students with Disabilities/CCSD and the Queens College Committee for Students with Disabilities/CDS.

Speakers included LGBTQIA+ and disabilities activist Nicole Adler, Jullisa Hibbert (Queens College), Luis “Junior” Alvarez (York College) and Emily Durand (Mt. Sinai SAVI). Arturo Soto, president of the Queens College Committee for Disabled Students, served as moderator. The discussion was followed by a screening of First X, a short film about dating as a queer person with a disability, produced by and co-starring Adler. Filmmakers Josiah Polemus and Peter Kangus joined via Zoom and took questions after the screening.

Vital Visibility 

The first 50 in-person attendees received a free copy of Disability Visibility, edited by disability rights activist Alice Wong. A copy of the book will be added to the Queer Studies Collection at the Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library.

The college’s annual National Coming Out Day celebration was held on October 16 in Klapper Circle by LGBTQIAA+ Programs at Queens College and the Queens College Gender Love and Sexuality Alliance/GLASA. Open to all CUNY students, faculty, and staff as well as the public, the program included student speakers, open sharing from the audience, and a GLASA-led activity designed to explore identity and self-expression. Students received free T-shirts and Pride flags.

The two October events were made possible through the generous support of the CUNY LGBTQIA+ Consortium in partnership with the New York City Council.

Queering Disability was co-sponsored by GLASA, the Alliance of Latin American Students, the Hispanic Club, Delta Phi Epsilon Sorority, Media Studies, and the CUNY Office of Student Inclusion Initiatives.

National Coming Out Day was co-sponsored by the Hispanic Club, the Alliance of Latin American Students, The Committee for Disabled Students, Delta Phi Epsilon Sorority, and the CUNY Office of Student Inclusion Initiatives.

Major/Minor Decisions

Students unsure of their academic concentration(s) can explore their options at the Major Minor Fair during free hour next Monday—October 28—in the Student Union Ballroom. Representatives of different academic departments will be in attendance to discuss their respective disciplines and how they can lead to career opportunities.

Health Center Helps QC Students Reach Optimal Health

Located on the third floor of Freese Hall, the Health Services Center provides free or low-cost resources, consultations, referrals, and educational programs to help students achieve optimum well-being.

Free walk-in services include general first aid; medical assessment and referrals; immunizations, including for influenza or MMR; vital signs testing; DMV vision tests; pregnancy tests; and over-the-counter medications as needed. In addition to those walk-in services, Planned Parenthood mobile medical units come to campus every other Wednesday and provide STI/HIV screening and treatment, family planning, and GYN exams.

The center also offers health education and counseling to students, staff, and faculty on an individual basis and in groups sessions on topics such as birth control, pregnancy, safer sex, drug and alcohol use, HIV/AIDS, nutrition, cardiovascular health, healthy eating, and health promotion. Until the end of October—Breast Cancer Awareness Month—Health Services will continue to offer education about the importance of breast cancer screening through monthly self-examinations.

All health records and consultations are strictly confidential.

More Health Matters 

Next month, on November 6, a blood drive organized by the New York Blood Center will be held in the Student Union in the Queens College Faculty/Dining Hall, Room 126 from 10 am–6 pm. All students, staff, and faculty are welcome to donate. And in the spring, Health Services will host its annual Health and Wellness Festival where students can interact with various vendors for preventative health measures.

For more information about any of these services or to request in-person education or counseling, email healthquestions@qc.cuny.edu or call the office at 718-997-2760.

Gifts That Keep on Giving

Preserving the Past and Making It Accessible

In our fast-paced, high-tech times, Rosenthal Library’s Special Collections and Archives (SCA) preserve the past for twenty-first century use. Once consigned to a small corner of the library, SCA has become a highly visible gem of archival best practices, public outreach, community partnership, and computer-assisted access, research, and education. Its stunning holdings—more than 5,000 linear feet of college records, special collections, and rare books—have grown through an active program of acquisition, and they have made QC’s contributions to social change and the arts far better known both on and off campus.

Much of that growth is due to the generosity of loyal donors and the dynamic leadership of Annie Tummino (MLIS ’10), head of SCA since 2018. With the help of Development and key funders—notably the Pine Tree Foundation of New York, Shirley Klein, and Freda S. and J. Chester Johnson—SCA has raised more than $650,000 during her tenure. Tummino’s strategic plan for 2023–2028 outlines a number of ambitious objectives, from systematically digitizing the collections to securing more research and storage space.

SCA had modest beginnings. According to Tummino, in 1987 many institutional documents were transferred to the library in honor of the college’s 50th anniversary, but there was no dedicated library staff until the 1990s when Steve Barto was hired as a part-time archivist. He accomplished the transfer of many more records saved by departmental and administrative offices. Benjamin Alexander—assistant professor and director of archival studies in the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies (GSLIS)—headed SCA from 2008 until 2014. He founded the enormously successful Civil Rights Archive and began to include GSLIS students in the work.

SCA finally achieved stable, full-time leadership with the appointment of Tummino. She was previously the archivist at SUNY Maritime College as well as a project archivist at Columbia University, the Museum of the City of New York, and Queens Museum. Before entering the library field, she completed a BA in women’s studies and in social thought and political economy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, later earning her MLIS and Certificate in Archives and Preservation of Cultural Material at QC. Having worked for SCA part time during her studies, she was brought back as director and assistant professor. In her first five years, she hired Caitlin Colban-Waldron as a full-time archivist and special collections specialist. SCA also has two part-time staff: Lori Wallach, the Queens Memory outreach coordinator, and Reign McConnell, graduate archives assistant.

SCA collects in several areas, but Tummino describes them all as rooted in the college’s history. “The institutional records are really the core of what we do. We preserve the history of QC through all these materials­—the yearbooks, newspapers, publications, reports, and so on,” she explains. “We also have collections of rare books, and we have personal papers and papers of organizations. In most cases those are donated by faculty or alumni. In that way we really feel that the areas that we collect in relate to the strengths of the QC community.”

Alumni Achievements

Two collecting areas with especially strong records of alumni donations have high public profiles: the Civil Rights and Social Justice Collections, and the Music and the Arts Collections. As Tummino sees them, “Those areas really come down to what QC is known for. Dating back to the beginning of the college, our motto was ‘We learn so that we may serve,’ and I think you see that in the history of so many students and alumni being engaged in social movements and having careers in public service or politics.

“For Music and the Arts, also from the earliest days of QC, Paul Klapper was dedicated to a well-rounded liberal arts education. I think that that strength in the liberal arts helped creative people flourish, which is why we have such a strong record of alumni going on to successful careers as writers, artists, and musicians. We also have a strong record of achievement among the faculty in those areas.

“These are areas the college has excelled in for a long time, and therefore we want to showcase those areas through the archival collections that we take. Whether it’s students who participated in the civil rights movement and donated their materials, or artists and writers who donated their papers, that’s where I feel our collection strengths are.”

Symbolic of SCA’s growing stature, students and visitors now find it on the main floor of Rosenthal in spacious, brightly lit rooms funded by the Pine Tree Foundation of New York. Pine Tree trustee and QC alumna Szilvia Szmuk-Tanenbaum ’68—who formerly served as special collections librarian at St. John’s University—has backed much of SCA’s development. The first new space it helped create was the Charles J. Tanenbaum Room, used as both a classroom and conference room. “There are large tables where you can easily spread out materials to examine. That’s a great room,” says Tummino.

Also on the main floor is the newer Pine Tree Foundation Special Collections Area, complete with its own HVAC system. As Tummino explains, “It’s a new storage environment for our collections plus two processing labs. It’s a beautiful glass-walled space.” She adds that “This room has climate control, it has condensed shelving that allows us to store a lot of materials, and it’s also just very beautiful. And because it’s a glass wall you’re able to walk by and say, What’s that? What’s in there? We try to have a few things facing the glass to keep people’s interest.” She adds, “That’s really been a huge change because we’re able to reassure any donors that these materials are going to be stored, kept, and enjoyed properly.”

In recent years, Tummino has curated or designed inventive and well-received exhibits of SCA materials—everything from original manuscripts, correspondence, and news clippings to photographs, drawings, and posters. Mounted in the library, these exhibits have explored such topics as McCarthyism on campus, protest during the 1960s, the Percy E. Sutton SEEK Program, the college’s 85th anniversary, and the trailblazing women’s basketball coach Lucille Kyvallos. These shows are outreach that “really fits in with our values,” says Tummino. “We don’t want these archives to just sit on a shelf, to just be dusty. We don’t have them for the sake of having them. We have them because they enrich our community. So we actively create programming that involves the archives; that can really turn people on to this history and also provide opportunities for students to engage with it in a new way. It’s an important part of our work. I think it’s mission critical to us.”

Mission Matters 

In fact, work with students has increased under Tummino’s direction. As SCA’s mission statement reads, “Our vision is to facilitate moments of discovery and connection with primary sources; provide experiential learning opportunities for future archivists; and collaboratively engage campus and community partners in the archival process.” In 2023–2024, SCA gave the most instructional sessions in its history, hosting 23 undergraduate class visits from across the curriculum.

It also sees part of its remit as training future archivists. This is achieved by making SCA a learning lab for graduate library students through classes, practicums, and part-time positions. In addition, fellowships enable graduate students to gain archival experience. Four fellows are funded this year. Bianca Oliva holds the Asian/American Center Fellowship and is processing their records and producing a finding aid for them. Olivia Zisman, who holds the Shirley Klein Rare Book and Manuscript Fellowship, will arrange, preserve, and create a finding aid for oversized holdings like posters. Nancy Lambert is a Freda S. and J. Chester Johnson Civil Rights and Social Justice Archives Fellow; she is processing the papers of alum Edward M. Cohen for the Queering the Archives Project, and will conduct interviews for the Queer at QC oral history project. Mundo Rivera, an MFA Writing Fellow, will spend three months in residence conducting research on the BlackMass Publishing section of SCA’s Zine Collection.

SCA’s public outreach also includes working closely with Queens Memory, the community archiving project cosponsored by the Queens Public Library and QC. Volunteers interview individuals connected with QC and the borough. “Our collaboration with Queens Memory has been an incredible way to document the history of the college, especially through oral history,” says Tummino. Such partnerships also help address archival silences and gaps, helping to attain greater representation of diverse communities and events.

What’s Next?

Over the next few years, Tummino hopes that SCA will raise the funds to be able to renovate and move into the Rosenthal Library room that formerly housed the Louis Armstrong Archive. Located at the front of the library, the space includes a dedicated reading room, a workroom, and storage. It would allow SCA to offer a central office and open access hours. 

Maximizing public access is a primary goal for Tummino, whose major project over the next year will involve digitizing the collections. She has a big job ahead of her. “People’s expectations a lot of times are that everything’s online,” she says. “That’s just not the case when it comes to our archives. We have a small amount of materials online, but it takes a lot of work to get those digitized and catalogued and accessible.” The scans that exist were done before a strategic plan existed, and they often ended up fragmented across different platforms. Undertaking a systematic digitization involves detective work and “a lot of human labor” to identify, evaluate, prioritize, and catalogue SCA’s holdings before they can be scanned and uploaded consistent with best archival practices.

That said, the number of digitized items available online has risen dramatically—from about 500 in 2018 to almost 7,000 at present. Tummino is also enthusiastic about working with JSTOR, in a partnership funded for all CUNY archives by CUNY Central’s Office of Library Services. Researchers can find SCA materials on JSTOR through the database itself or even reference them in a Google search, making QC materials much more readily accessible to researchers on a platform used by millions. Equally important to Tummino, digitized material can potentially degrade with time, but JSTOR Portico protects against that; it backs up collections in a “dark archive,” then monitors them for any sign of deterioration.

In the meantime, interest in SCA holdings is growing. In 2017–2018, there were 81 requests for reference requests, which can mean extensive remote research assistance or, alternatively, hosting researchers in person in the archive. In 2023–2024, those reference requests rose to 211, the highest number ever.

Tummino always encourages alumni to donate materials to the college. An admirer of the history captured in the college’s institutional records and special collections, she values keeping that legacy alive for students, faculty, and the public. “We have these collections because of the people who will be able to benefit from the stories they tell.”

Cathy Savage-Dunn (Biology) is cited in These Tiny Worms Account for at Least 4 Nobel Prizes - The New York Times . . . . The Knights Table Food Pantry ribbon cutting received coverage from WPIX, MSN, and QNS . . . . Queens College Computer Science students secured wins at two recent hackathons—YHack, held at Yale during October 5-6, and HackHarvard, October 11-13.