QView #207 | August 5

From left: Christopher Zavodsky, stationary engineer; Jeff Rosenstock, assistant vice president for Governmental Relations & External Affairs; Frank H. Wu, Queens College president; Liza Marquez, manager for External & Governmental Relations; Denese McFarlane, interim VP for Facilities Planning and Operations; Patricia Price, provost and senior vice president for Academic Affairs.

Interim VP for Facilities Planning and Operations Denese McFarlane walked around campus with President Frank H. Wu on July 16 to look at pending capital projects, such as Delaney Hall renovations, a Remsen Hall laboratory remodeling, skylight replacement in the Aaron Copland School of Music, the Razran chiller plant, and LED conversion work.  

Incoming students got the lay of the land during Queens College orientations on July 9 and July 23. One more session is scheduled for tomorrow, August 6.

QC hosted the CUNY-Wide ADA Barbecue on Thursday, July 24, serving up food, music, and a raffle to mark the 35th anniversary of the world’s first comprehensive civil rights law for people with disabilities. Speakers included the leadership of the CUNY Coalition for Students with Disabilities, Arturo Soto and Josie Ramnanan; New York State Senator John Liu; and Assemblymembers Alicia Hyndman, David Weprin, and Catalina Cruz. CUNY Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Denise Maybank sang a tribute to the occasion and President Frank H. Wu utilized sign language for part of his presentation. City Council Member Eric Dinowitz spoke as did University Student Senate Chairperson Daniel Reden. Vice President for Communications and Marketing and Senior Advisor to the President Jay Hershenson moderated the event, which included students and staff from throughout the CUNY system and representatives from legislative offices. The Americans with Disabilities Act was signed by President George H.W. Bush on July 26, 1990.

Tuning in to LAHM

The Louis Armstrong House Museum (LAHM) has been enjoying a hot summer.

Music lovers and friends of LAHM gathered on June 25 at Dizzy’s Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center for the museum’s gala. The new Louis Armstrong Big Band, led by Danny Jonokuchi, provided the entertainment; the set included arrangements from the Armstrong Archives, restored by Jonokuchi.

The band’s trumpet section in action

LAHM Executive Director Regina Bain and Queens College President Frank H. Wu

New York State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Assembly Member Larinda Hooks toured the Louis Armstrong House Museum and Center on July 21. Hooks represents Assembly District 35, where LAHM is located.

From left: NYS Assembly Member Larinda Hooks, LAHM Executive Director Regina Bain, and NYS Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie in the desert with Lucille and Louis Armstrong.

The same date saw the opening of the second annual Louis Armstrong Summer Teaching Institute, supported by the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation in collaboration with the Queens College School of Education. Through the institute’s five-day program of workshops, research, and collaborative learning, secondary educators developed lesson plans integrating Satchmo’s legacy into their history, English, and arts curricula.

Celebrating Armstrong’s birthday two days early, LAHM presented a sold-out concert on August 2 featuring trumpeter Jon Faddis.

For upcoming LAHM programs, click here.

Kessler Program Receives $1.1 Million Grant Renewal

The Kessler Scholars Program at Queens College has won a four-year, $1.1 million grant renewal award from the Kessler Scholars Collaborative.

In 2020, the college joined the collaborative, rolling out its model of intensive, cohort-based support for first-generation, limited-income students. The model has been highly successful at QC, achieving a better-than 90 percent engagement and retention rate for participants, whose four-year graduation rate is more than double the national average for first-generation students.

“The Kessler Scholars Program at Queens College is a transformative opportunity that empowers first-generation students to thrive,” says Taruna Sadhoo, director of Honors and Scholarships at QC. “By fostering a strong sense of community and service, offering high-impact support, and honoring students’ unique backgrounds and journeys, the program reinforces QC’s commitment to equity—ensuring every student has the resources, guidance, and confidence to succeed and lead in a more just and prosperous society.”

QC is among the Kessler Collaborative’s 15 campus partners, which operate alongside the University of Michigan, where the program was inaugurated. Based on their positive results to date, all the partners were regranted, sharing equally in a $16.5 million investment from Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Wilpon Family Foundation. 

ASALH Honors Natanya Duncan

Africana Studies Director Natanya Duncan has received the Mary McLeod Bethune Service Award from the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH). Named after the first woman president of ASALH, the Bethune Award is presented annually to a member of the organization whose career has been highlighted with service to education, African American history, and the community. 

Mary McLeod Bethune had a remarkable career. One of 17 children born to formerly enslaved parents, she was educated at seminaries and originally planned to serve as a missionary. Becoming an educator instead, she founded several schools, including the Daytona Beach Literary and Industrial School for Training Negro Girls, which subsequently merged with all-male Cookman Institute. Bethune lent her name to and was president of the new institution, Bethune Cookman College (the precursor of Bethune-Cookman University). She was an advisor to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who appointed her director of Negro Affairs at the National Youth Administration, making her the first Black woman to head a federal agency. She was also the founding president of the National Council of Negro Women, among many other achievements.

As the name implies, ASALH is committed to creating and disseminating knowledge about Black History. Recipients of the Mary McLeod Bethune Service Award must have been active supporters and contributors to ASALH’s work for at least ten years.

“I joined ASALH as a graduate student in 2003, and I have not missed an ASALH conference since,” said Duncan. “ASALH is life for me. All I know about the academy, I learned from the scholars, activists, and general membership of ASALH, which is not an exclusively academic organization. It has a lay membership with branches throughout the United States and the Bahamas. ASALH is the founder of Black History Month and produces The Black History Bulletin, the longest-running curricular periodical dedicated to Black History. We have an active membership of 3000 to date. The Bethune Award will be presented at our 110th Conference in Atlanta on September 24-28, 2025.”

“This is so exciting to me,” observed Duncan. “Honestly, I never imagined I would be getting an award like this. . . . There is so much I do that I never thought about in terms of the big picture. One of the elders wrote me an email at my personal address and reminded me how orchestrating the ASALH virtual conference in the pandemic “saved him” and got his grandson to want to go to school (so he could repeat everything he heard in the ASALH sessions). I am taking this one in for real. This award means a lot to me. I can't wait to

share the award and photos of the ceremony with the AFST majors.”

Andréanna Seymore ’05 Promotes Water Safety Education

With climate change seeing episodes of extreme summer heat becoming more intense and more frequent, New York City dwellers are increasingly flocking to city beaches. Yet for some, the waters that bring relief also bring the threat of drowning when dangerous rip currents are present.

This is particularly true for youth in some of the city’s most underserved neighborhoods who may be lacking the swimming skills and knowledge to cope with rip currents. But beginning Memorial Day, a first-of-its-kind in the city large-scale water safety and rip current awareness campaign created by a graduate of Queens College’s Urban Studies and funded by the Artemis Rising Foundation was working to help spare them from tragedy.

Andréanna Seymore (MA Urban Studies ’05) is media-advocacy director for the Brooklyn-based non-profit, The Rising Tide Effect. With eye-catching graphics created by Queens native Mary Hawkins, the informative message boards created for its Water Wise initiative’s RESPECT THE RIP campaign have been seen on MTA buses, Liveboards in subway stations, NYC ferries, Link NYC kiosks, before movie showings by Rooftop Films, on community screens in underserved neighborhoods, and, of course, on social media.

Messaging Matters

With accompanying images of a girl caught in a rip current, the message boards instruct:

RELAX Stay calm. Don’t panic. Control your breath.

RAISE Wave to shore. Signal for help.

RIDE Go with the flow & float. Never swim against the current.

An accompanying URL, RisingTideEffect.io, and QR code take people to a webpage with more detailed information about rip currents and where startling statistics document the urgent need for this life-saving public safety education (PSE) message: 2024 had record high drownings at new York City beaches; 95 percent of all drownings are preventable; New York City has 520 miles of coastline; 79 percent of children in families earning under $50,000 a year risk drowning. People can also sign up there for swimming lessons or make a donation to The Rising Tide Effect to advance its programs.

For Seymore the idea of learning to be acclimated to being in the water holds meaning on both personal and professional levels. 

Explaining how in 2023 she first became involved with The Rising Tide Effect, the Rockaway resident says, “I came onboard because basically I was trying to find swim lessons for my son, and they were giving free lessons at the Rockaway Hotel.” 

However, the lessons, she discovered, weren’t available to her son because they were meant only for kids who couldn’t afford swimming lessons. 

So, Seymore approached Kaitlin Krause, a former Division 1 swimmer and the founder of The Rising Tide Effect, which was providing the free lessons. Seymore told Krause that she’d heard that a recent Rising Tide presentation at a local school hadn’t gone well, because the kids weren’t engaged. “But I have an idea,” she said. 

Seymore, as it happens, is co-creator and executive producer of the popular Netflix docuseries “MerPeople,” which chronicles the lives of the fascinating and diverse people who perform as mermaids and mermen at aquariums and underwater shows, such as the legendary mermaids who for six decades have performed at Weeki Wachee Springs in Florida.  

Seymore offered, “Why don’t I have one of the mermaids from the TV show come and do a water safety lesson at the Rockaway Hotel. Krause said, ‘That sounds great!’” The event, says Seymore, was a great success.

She went on to begin documenting Krause’s pioneering efforts to bring about greater inclusivity and accessibility to water safety education for the city’s youth. The work included lobbying with city and state agencies. Last summer, Seymore was filming Krause on the boardwalk at Beach 91st Street in the Rockaways holding up a sign showing passersby what a rip current was. It occurred to them both that there simply had to be a more compelling way to reach more people with this message. So, with considerable effort they brainstormed what became the RESPECT THE RIP campaign.

While gaining traction from government agencies for The Rising Tide Effect’s efforts has been challenging, Seymore singles out three elected officials for their support: City Council Member Shekar Krishnan, Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, and State Assembly Member Stacey Pheffer Amato, herself a Rockaway native. Pheffer Amato saw to it that Krause was appointed to the New York State Temporary Commission to Prevent Childhood Drowning, established in December 2021 by a bill she co-sponsored with State Senator Timothy M. Kennedy. The commission is charged with evaluating and creating programs to educate children and caregivers about water safety protocols.

A 1997 graduate of the School for Visual Arts, Seymore brings considerable experience putting images before the public eye to her media-advocacy role, including as a photographer who has done work for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, Fortune, O, Wired, McGraw Hill, Getty Images, and others. Her photos have appeared in numerous exhibitions, and she has taught photography at New York Film Academy, Suffolk Community College, and Brookhaven Technical Center. She was also an associate photo editor for Psychology Today.

Space for Safe Swimming 

Seymore points out that in New York City, there is a great lack of fairness in the availability of public pools where people can learn to swim. She cites a recent Pratt University study that correlates the significant disparity between the available square footage of city pool space and the number of swimmers. (Think very little to very large.)

In 2023, City Council Member Selvena N. Brooks-Powers developed a city map highlighting the lack of public pool access throughout 32 districts, particularly in underserved communities. The map showed that 18 New York City districts have no public pool access.

“That’s why swimming in New York is a for-profit industry,” says Seymore. “People who can afford to swim are able to swim. People who can’t afford to swim? Well, you’ve got to wait in line and there’s a long list. The accessibility isn’t really there.”

Seymore is currently at work filming a documentary that highlights how there are more drownings at city beaches among youth from districts with limited pool access or no pools at all. “And they just happen to be the most underserved communities in New York City,” she says.

By the middle of the summer, Seymore says, the city would typically have seen as many as five youth drownings. This year, during the Memorial Day to July 7 period in which funding permitted the campaign to run, there were none. “I would like to think it’s because of these PSEs,” she says.

But on the evening of July 25, as Seymore was filming Krause preparing to conduct a water safety demonstration at Beach 17th Street in Far Rockaway, a man in his early 20s was suddenly in distress in the water and soon disappeared. A search for his body ensued for days.

“The irony is, I was there to give a water safety talk. I was literally setting up my handouts when I saw the firetrucks charging down the boardwalk," Krause told The Gothamist. "All the locals know that’s a treacherous spot. At the top it looks calm, but under it’s moving."

The Rising Tide campaign is not Seymore’s first foray into using art in public service. At Queens College, she was the recipient of the Herbert Bienstock Research Award for her work on the LAMP (Literacy and Mathematics through Photography) program. Funded by a Kellog Foundation grant received by Seymore’s then-instructor Lillian Moncada-Davidson (SEYS, emerita), the program sprang from another “I have an idea” moment.

Trying to engage Latin American students at nearby John Bowne High School in education, Moncada-Davidson was unhappy with the results she was getting by taking them to cultural attractions in the city. Seymore suggested using photography as a means of engaging their interest. The final piece, which was displayed in galleries, involved using individual portraits of the students over which were superimposed words they had written about the challenges they encountered in their lives.

“It was a really powerful piece,” say Seymore, who following graduation accompanied Moncada-Davidson to her home country, El Salvador, to do a similar program in San Salvador.

Seymore describes herself as an “activist producer,” which explains her decision to come to Queens College after graduating from The School for Visual Art. She was looking for a way to combine her art with her highly developed social consciousness. “I picked Queens College because it’s known for its activism work. It’s known for bringing the ball down the court. Coming from a very elite private school where it’s all about you, you, you as an artist, it was now about the common good, and society. Why, I learned about unions for the first time!”

Peter and the Wolf To Tour Local Parks

Following an open preview on campus yesterday—Monday, August 4—a new adaptation of the beloved musical fairy tale Peter and the Wolf is making the rounds of 15 Queens parks this month. Elyse Price (Drama) directs a three-person cast comprising two recent alumni and a current student from QC’s Drama, Theatre and Dance Department. The plot revolves around a young boy’s adventures in the woods and his encounter with a dangerous predator.

“The tour highlights the power of live performance to create connections and wonder in public spaces,” said Price. “We’re proud to share this experience in the parks and neighborhoods that shape our Queens College community.”

As part of its mission, the School of Arts seeks to connect academic learning with civic engagement. “This series exemplifies what Queens College does best: nurturing artistic talent while enriching the communities we serve,” added Julia del Palacio, associate dean of the School of Arts. “By bringing theatre into public spaces, we’re expanding access to the arts and helping our students grow as performers and citizens.” 

As reported in QNS, Peter and the Wolf is the latest production made possible through the partnership between Queens College School of Arts and NYC Parks, which is presenting free concerts, dance classes, and visual arts workshops in neighborhood green spaces throughout the year.

For the complete schedule, click here and, under Upcoming Events, click on “Peter and the Wolf Production Tour.”

Shakespeare on the Quad

Hip to Hip Theatre, a Queens-based company dedicated to staging classic plays in public settings, is bringing two Shakespeare productions to campus this month. Tonight—August 5—Hip to Hip will stage The Tempest, a tale of magic and monsters that takes place on a deserted island. On August 12, the company will present Hamlet, a tragedy about murder and palace intrigue. Both performances will start at 7:30 pm, preceded at 7 pm by Kids & the Classics, brief interactive workshops for children ages 4 to 12.

Learning Online from QC Experts

At Home with QC, a series sponsored by the Office of Institutional Advancement, will offer two programs over Zoom next month.

On Thursday, September 4, at 4 pm, Thomas Plummer (Anthropology) will present “New Thoughts on Ancient Tech: Oldowan Archaeological Sites in Southwestern Kenya.” Plummer’s ongoing excavations on the Homa Peninsula are shedding light on toolmaking by ancient human relatives. To see this talk, register here.

At the same time slot two weeks later, Lori DeBella Wallach, Queens Memory outreach coordinator at Rosenthal Library’s Department of Special Collections and Archives, will present “Preserve Your Family Memories Through Personal Digital Archiving.” Wallach will discuss digital methods for saving photos, documents, letters, home movies, and more. To see this talk, register here.

Watch for “The College Tour”

television show about Queens College. Coming soon!

Getting Ready To Vote

New York City’s general elections are less than three months away: Early voting is scheduled for October 25-November 2, and Election Day will take place on November 4. To help choose the city’s next mayor and other positions, you must be a registered voter. You can register until October 25. Eligibility requirements include U.S. citizenship, at least 30 days of New York City residency, and reaching the age of 18 on or before Election Day. Register online, by mail, or in person at Board of Elections offices; details are posted here.

Barry Blechman ’63

Nuclear power expert and think tank founder Barry Blechman died on June 27.

Son of a plumber and a bookkeeper, Blechman worked his way through college, achieving such success as a Fuller Brush salesman that he was told he could eventually become a manager, with perks that included a Cadillac. Nonetheless, upon graduating with a degree in political science, he moved to Washington, DC. He earned a PhD in international relations at Georgetown University and, in positions at the Pentagon and the Center for Naval Analysis, built computerized simulations of warfare.  

Blechman’s ascent was swift. He went on to head the Defense Analysis Project at the Brookings Institution, serve as assistant director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency for President Jimmy Carter, and work for several think tanks before founding his own consulting firm, DFI International, the 1980s. He subsequently co-founded the nonprofit Henry L. Stimson Center, which focuses on security and other global issues.

An expert on the defense budget, the importance of the armed forces in supporting the nation's foreign policy, and on nuclear policy, Blechman won the admiration of Republicans as well as Democrats. He wrote or edited more than 20 books and 200 articles; his op-eds on defense policy ran in the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, and other publications.

Blechman is survived by his partner, Katherine (Kitty) Bean Yancey, and his three daughters.

Raymond Franklin

Economics Professor Emeritus Raymond Franklin passed away on June 10. He was 104.

Franklin’s academic career began inauspiciously: He dropped out of the University of Michigan after three semesters and hitchhiked to Seattle, where he worked on the Boeing assembly line. Returning eventually to his native Detroit, he enrolled at Wayne State University. He completed a BA in sociology and an MA in economics while employed in the auto industry and playing an active role in organized labor. Next, he earned a doctorate at University of California, Berkeley.

After teaching at Vassar and City College, Franklin joined the QC faculty. “I was there for 30 years and my time there was just great,” he said in a Queens College oral history recorded by Sociology Professor Emeritus Dean Savage. “I got up every morning and said to myself, 'Thank God I don't work for a living.'”

Among other contributions to QC, Franklin co-founded and ran the Monday Lunch, a popular, informal faculty lunchtime seminar on political and social topics of the day, often with guest speakers, that took place throughout the 1980s. In 1990, he became the founding director of the college’s Michael Harrington Center for Social Justice, where he remained until his retirement in 2002. Productive even at an advanced age, he published his last book, The Changing Shape of History from the New Deal to the Conviction of Trump, in September 2024.

Franklin is survived by his wife, Margery Franklin, professor emerita of psychology at Sarah Lawrence College; sons Ken and David Franklin; granddaughters Kamalka and Hannah Rose Franklin; and grandson Sebastian Franklin.

Charles I. Lloyd 

Charles I. Lloyd, long-time SEEK staffer and executive officer of the Office of Student Advocacy and Appeals, passed away on July 19. 

Lloyd joined Queens College in 1969 as a SEEK counselor and advisor. He went on to establish and chair the SEEK Academic Scholastic Standing Committee, which monitored students' academic progress. In light of the committee’s success in helping SEEK students stay on track for graduation, QC rolled out the program across campus in 1996 as the Queens College Undergraduate Scholastic Standards Committee (USSC), subsequently renamed the Office of Student Advocacy and Appeals. Lloyd was appointed its director and retired as its executive officer in 2018.

Lloyd is remembered for his commitment to the college and to its students. His goal at the USSC was to reach the most just and fair result for all QC students, whatever had to be done to achieve that. Outside of the college, he umpired for disabled softball leagues and events.

A Celebration of Life for Charles I. Lloyd will be held on Friday, August 8 (prelude and gathering at 10 am; processional at 11 am) at J. Foster Phillips, 179-24 Linden Boulevard, Jamaica, New York.

Former Queens College Women’s Basketball Coach Lucille Kyvallos was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in a ceremony on Saturday, June 14, in Knoxville, Tennessee. The event was reported by QNS, Queens Chronicle, and other periodicals . . . . Jeff Maskovsky (Urban Studies; chair of the doctoral program in Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center) has been named president-elect/vice president of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). He will assume the AAA presidency at the organization's annual meeting in November 2027 . . . . Anna Skarpelis (Sociology) was named a co-winner of the 2025 Charles Tilly Best Paper Award in Comparative Historical Methods from the Comparative and Historical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association (ASA). She was recognized for her article, “Horror Vacui: Racial Misalignment, Symbolic Repair, and Imperial Legitimation in German National Socialist Portrait Photography,” published in the American Journal of Sociology . . . . Academic Advising received a $45,000 grant from the Summerfield Foundation toward continuance of the AAC Peer Ambassadors freshman peer-to-peer program . . . . The Asian American / Asian Research Institute (AAARI) received $625,000 in funding from the New York City Council to develop Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) studies curriculum for New York City public schools. AAARI will collaborate with the Asian American Education Project and the Coalition for Asian American Children + Families . . . . The School of Education received a five-year New York State Workforce Development Grant of $1,671,180 for the Queens-Grown Upskilling Paraprofessional Program . . . .

From left: Jenna Citron Schwab, executive director, QC Hillel; Ofir Akunis, ambassador and consul general of Israel in New York; Frank H. Wu, Queens College president

Ambassador and Consul General of Israel in New York Ofir Akunis visited the college for lunch and a tour on July 16, when he praised QC for its efforts to combat antisemitism. Speakers included New York City Council Member James Gennaro and Rabbi Joseph Potashnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis. President Frank H. Wu moderated the event held with community organization leaders, students, faculty and staff in the Agora, Student Union. QNS gave coverage to the event.