Discimus ut serviamus: We learn so that we may serve.

QView #215 | November 11

Veterans and students currently serving in the military were recognized at QC’s annual Veterans Day lunch, held on Monday, November 10. Urban Studies Distinguished Lecturer James Vacca (front row, far left) hosted the event; New York State Assembly Member Samuel T. Berger (front row, far right) and New York City Council Member James Gennaro were among the speakers.

In keeping with its long history of supporting veterans, student service members, and their partners, Queens College has been designated a 2025–26 Military Friendly School and a Military Friendly Spouse School by VICTORY Media.

Men’s Soccer Headed to ECC Championship Game

The Queens College men’s soccer team has secured a spot in the East Coast Conference (ECC) Championship after defeating the University of the District of Columbia, 4-1, in their semifinal match. With the win, the Knights will host the championship against Roberts Wesleyan University on Saturday, November 15 at 7 pm. Tickets can be purchased in advance at eccsports.org.

In addition to their playoff success, the Knights were honored by the ECC, as nine members of the team earned All-Conference selections. Tommy Wagner was named Defensive Player of the Year and to the All-ECC First Team, Thanasis Shehadeh was selected to the All-ECC First Team and named Goalkeeper of the Year, and freshman Bradyn Brown was honored as the ECC Rookie of the Year while garnering a First Team All-ECC selection. Additionally, Miguel Soto Gonzalez, Kevin Johnson, and Andrew Johnson earned First-Team selections, Harry Cooke and Cillian Henry were named to the second team, and Carlos Villa earned a third-team selection. To add to the list of honorees, Head Coach Frank Vertullo was voted as the ECC Coach of the Year.

While the women’s soccer team’s playoff run ended in the first round, they did receive an ECC honor as well. Adriana Melgar was voted to All-ECC Third Team.

Coming up this week, in addition to the men’s soccer championship, the Knights’ basketball seasons will get underway. The men’s basketball team opens the year at the ECCxNE10 Conference Challenge where they will face Adelphi University on Friday at 5 pm and Pace University on Sunday at 3 pm. Both games will be held at Pace University. The women’s basketball team will compete in the ECCxCACC Conference Challenge this weekend. They take on Jefferson University on Saturday at 2:30 pm and Chestnut Hill College on Sunday at 2:30 pm. Both games will take place on the campus of Molloy University.

For the latest Knights’ news, visit queensknights.com/.

Commemorating Kristallnacht

November 9-10 was the 87th anniversary of Kristallnacht, or “Night of the Broken Glass,” when Nazis led a nationwide assault on Germany’s Jewish community, killing hundreds and destroying synagogues, businesses, and homes. Today (Tuesday, November 11), in connection with that somber anniversary, QC’s Center for Jewish Studies is presenting the lecture “‘White Jews’ and Red Flags in American Jewish History” at 12:15 pm in Rosenthal Library, President’s Conference Room 2. The speaker, Britt Tevis, Phyllis Backer Professor of Jewish Studies at Syracuse University, will explore how Jews in the United States have been racialized—sometimes cast as “white,” sometimes as “other.”

Show of Wonders

Quinceañera: Dress and Memory in Latine Culture may have attracted more news coverage, but it’s not the only show on display at the Godwin-Ternbach Museum. Wunderkammer III: The Language of Things, set up in the lobby through May 29, is the third installment of a series featuring artifacts from the museum’s permanent collection. Wunderkammern—cabinets of curiosities—date to the Renaissance, when scholars and members of the nobility assembled collections of items they found fascinating. In that spirit, GTM is exhibiting pieces that span millennia and continents, such as a 4,000-year-old hematite cylinder seal, a brass Turkish coffee grinder, and traveling hangers for stockings. In tribute to the late GTM board member Allen Rosenbaum ’58 QView 209, Wunderkammer III includes selections from his gift of over 200 Daruma—figures representing Bodhidharma, who founded Zen Buddhism in Japan in the fifth century.

Writers at Queens To Present Women Who Rock

Deborah Paredez

Ann Powers

Poet, performance scholar, and cultural critic Deborah Paredez and NPR Music critic and correspondent Ann Powers will read from and discuss their work on November 17, 7 pm, when the Writers at Queens series presents Women Who Rock. The hybrid event will take place in the Choral Room of the Music Building and online here.

Paredez is associate professor and chair of creative writing at Columbia University and the co-founder of CantoMundo, a national organization dedicated to Latinx poets and poetry. She is the author of the critical memoir American Diva (Norton 2024), the scholarly book Selenidad: Selena, Latinos, and the Performance of Memory, and the poetry collections This Side of Skin (Wings Press 2002) and Year of the Dog (BOA Editions 2020).

Powers has worked at the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice and many other publications. She is the author of four books, most recently Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell (2024). With Evelyn McDonnell, she edited the anthology Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Rap, and Pop (1995). In 2017 Powers co-founded the award-winning NPR series Turning the Tables, which shed light on marginalized, underestimated, and forgotten voices in popular music. 

MFA Director Jason Tougaw will conduct the conversation after the reading. The event will conclude with a reception and a book signing in the atrium. Women Who Rock is co-sponsored by the English Department, Aaron Copland School of Music, and QCArts.

Marking Transgender Day of Remembrance

Transgender Day of Remembrance—Thursday, November 20—commemorates those who were lost to anti-transgender violence and highlights the significant increase in hate crimes against trans people, especially those of color. QC will mark the date rain or shine with a candlelight vigil on the Quad. Candles will be distributed to participants at 6 pm at the flagpole behind Jefferson Hall. After opening remarks, the group will walk across the Quad to the fountain for the rest of the ceremony. Free transgender Pride ribbons will be provided.

This Transgender Day of Remembrance Vigil is sponsored by the Office of LGBTQIAA+ Programs at Queens College and the Queens College Gender Love and Sexuality Alliance/GLASA, in partnership with the CUNY LGBTQIA+ Consortium and the New York City Council. The event is co-sponsored by the Alliance of Latin American Students/ALAS at Queens College, the Queens College Hispanic Club, the Queens College Committee for Disabled Students, Delta Phi Epsilon Sorority at Queens College, and the CUNY Office of Student Inclusion Initiatives.

Writing Center Personnel Participate in Pennsylvania and Ohio Conferences

Accompanied by Writing Center Director and Associate Professor of English Andrea Efthymiou, Writing Center Peer Tutors Alexzandrya Bivona-Newton ’27 and Casey Mohabir (City Tech ’28) attended the 11th annual Naylor Workshop on Undergraduate Research in Writing Studies, held at York College of Pennsylvania on September 26-28. Bivona-Newton developed her research about increasing writing center accessibility for neurodivergent students, while Mohabir expanded her work on linguistic inclusivity for speakers of Guyanese Creole. The Naylor Workshop fully funded students and mentors to spend the weekend refining their research questions and developing appropriate methodologies for moving their work forward.

The intellectual excitement continued in Cincinnati on October 16-18, when Andrea Efthymiou was joined by Writing Center Coordinator Annalee Roustio and three student staff members at the joint MMO conference of the International Writing Centers Association and the National Conference for Peer Tutoring in Writing. With attendees from 47 states and four countries, the IWCA/NCPTW conference is the premier venue for scholarship and praxis exchange in writing center studies. Efthymiou, Roustio, and Bivona-Newton were joined by undergraduate tutor Alanis Bonar ’26 and graduate student tutor Nischal Pokhrel (LGCC ’22, QC BA ’24, QC MA ’25) for the panel presentation “When Policy and Practice Diverge: How Tutors Move the GenAI Conversation on Our Campus.” The panel, attended by more than 40 writing center professionals, earned high praise.

Alumna Takes Flight with NASA’s Supersonic Mission

Akosua Dufie ’21, MA’ 23, is helping NASA revolutionize the future of the airline industry. Dufie serves as an operations engineer for NASA’s Quesst (Quiet Supersonic Technology) mission, working on NASA’s X-59 aircraft, which is equipped with technology designed to reduce the sound of a sonic boom.

Akosua Dufie on the right

Lowering the Boom

Whenever a plane breaks the sound barrier, a loud sonic boom is produced with a force so intense it can damage glass and even buildings. Although supersonic technology has been around for decades, it has not been viable for commercial flights due to its noise output. With Dufie’s help, NASA is trying to change that.

The Quesst mission is divided into three phases. The first is aircraft development, which includes the design, fabrication, and initial test of the aircraft. In phase two, NASA will conduct acoustic validation flights to verify if the aircraft produces low sonic thumps as designed. In the final phase, NASA will fly over various communities to collect data on how the sound is perceived. The goal is to make supersonic jets available for commercial use in the future. With this technology, commercial airlines could fly from New York to London in just three hours.

Dufie works at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center located inside Edwards Air Force Base in California. She is heavily involved in phase two, putting flight test plans into place and working in the control room during test missions. On the ground, she’s organizing crews to service the ground recording system microphones that record the acoustics. Additionally, she serves as a flight test engineer and flies in the back seat of the F-15 aircraft that will probe through the shockwaves of the X-59. 

“If I'm not in the field or in the Mission Control Room, I'm in the back seat with the pilot collecting data,” Dufie explained.

SEEKing Success at Queens College

Born in Ghana, Dufie moved to Brooklyn with her family when she was 11 years old. Despite the challenges of being in a new country, Dufie thrived in school and was the salutatorian of her graduating class at the Clara Barton High School for Health Professions.

Queens College recognized her promise. Dufie was contacted by the college’s Percy Ellis Sutton Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge (SEEK) Program, which supports students who are academically capable but face educational and/or financial challenges, providing them with comprehensive resources to succeed in college. Dufie started at QC in the summer after high school to complete SEEK’s required Summer Bridge Program. She initially majored in economics in hopes of being a financial analyst and then added pure mathematics as a double major due to her love for the subject. She found the support from SEEK invaluable.

“I had amazing professors. The SEEK program has its own cohort of professors up until a certain level, so I took those classes. SEEK professors care a lot more,” noted Dufie. “They really embedded in your head how to study better, how to learn better, how to really absorb what is being taught to you, and good practices. The SEEK Summer Bridge Program really prepared me to get a jump start as a freshman.”

One of those amazing professors was Anisha Clarke (Mathematics). Clarke took Dufie under her wing and helped her thrive in math. 

“She just made me love math. The way she taught it, I understood it,” Dufie explained. “I've always loved math growing up, but I also understood that whoever teaches it carries a lot of weight into how you're going to experience the subject.”

Clarke also encouraged Dufie to apply for an internship at NASA. When Dufie was looking at internships, she had never even given NASA a thought. She had mostly been looking for financial analyst internships, with no success. 

“I said to Professor Clarke, ‘If the banks don't want me, what makes you think NASA is going to open my application?’” Dufie recalled. “That was my thought process at the time, but the worst thing you can hear is ‘no.’ Let someone else say no to you. Don’t sell yourself short.”

To Dufie’s surprise, after applying for a 2020 NASA summer internship and going to an interview, she was offered the position. She accepted a three-month internship as an operations engineer on the Quesst mission, working with the emergencies that were being designed into the X-59 simulator. She later completed a second internship as a systems engineer in the fall of 2020, where she worked to ensure the logical and systematic conversion of stakeholder requests into requirements needed for verification.

Clarke’s help didn’t stop with the NASA internship. When Dufie was preparing to graduate in Spring 2023, she noticed that a class she needed to complete her master’s degree had been canceled. Clarke worked with the program director to re-open the class for Dufie and about 10 other students who needed the class for graduation.

Dufie earned her master’s degree in May 2023 from Queens College. She wasn’t thinking about pursuing a career at NASA at the time. She was working as a supplemental instructor/teaching assistant for the SEEK department.

Sought by NASA

But NASA came calling again and offered Dufie a full-time position to work in California on the Quesst mission beginning in the summer of 2023. Dufie was enjoying teaching and was unsure of what to do, but Professor Clarke gave her some good advice once again.

“She pushed me to go to NASA and said, you know, you can always come back to teaching,” Dufie said. “Had I never met Professor Clarke, I probably would have never been in this position. My life would have probably been something different.”

Dufie has now been at NASA for two years and appreciates the incredible opportunity.

“At NASA, I love the opportunities—I mean, where else would I get to fly military fighter jets like the F-15s and F-18 regularly? Also, people really want to see you do well. It’s comparable to the energy I felt at Queens College, especially in the SEEK program. Everyone wants to help you open doors and see you do well. I 100% have faith that it is Queens College SEEK that got me to where I am because they’re the ones who guided me to the path I'm on now. In this entire journey, God has been and continues to be my rock.”

Dine Like It’s 1772

The Queens County Farm Museum (QCFM) is bringing back its 18th Century Tavern Night with seatings this month and next. January dates will be announced.

Held in Adriance Farmhouse—the oldest surviving structure on the museum’s property, built circa 1772—the meals feature four courses of traditional recipes, served by waitstaff in period attire. Flame-free candles add to the ambience.

Advance online tickets are required; QCFM members are eligible for a discount.

Noelle Crumlish ’06

Noelle Crumlish, who in her Queens College career worked at the Murphy Institute, Academic Advisement, and most recently, the Office of Veteran and Military Support Services, passed away in July. She was 61.

While studying history at QC, she was part of a group that researched the names and biographies of Queens College students who served and died in World War II.

Crumlish is survived by her husband John; her son Jack, daughter Hannah, and their spouses; and her five brothers and sisters.

Stephen Karetzky ’67

Stephen Karetzky, who taught library and information sciences at colleges on both U.S. coasts, died on September 17. He was 79.

After graduating from QC, where he studied history and social sciences, Karetzky completed a master's and doctorate in library and information services at the Columbia University School of Library Service. He subsequently earned a master's in history/humanities from California State University, Dominguez Hills.

Karetzky held faculty positions at colleges in upstate New York, Haifa University, San Jose State University, and Felician University in Lodi, New Jersey, serving as Felician’s library director for more than twenty years. He also wrote widely, publishing books on the Middle East and librarianship.

Karetzky is survived by his wife, sister, two nephews, and extended family.

Jenna Citron (right) with CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez

Jenna Citron (QC Hillel) is quoted in ”Innovative program at CUNY colleges retools Hillels as social service hubs for students,” published by the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent. The article was also published by the Jerusalem Post and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency . . . .

Professors Emeritae Frances Curcio and Myra Zarnowski co-wrote The Case of Antonio Meucci & the Telephone: Just the Facts, recently published by Idea Press. Drawing on available information, the book raises questions about who should be credited for the invention of the telephone . . . . James Vacca (Urban Studies) was part of a team providing live Election Day coverage for WABC7’s “Eyewitness News” . . . . The Department of Computer Science hosted its 32nd Annual Fall Workshop on Computational Geometry on November 7-8, featuring speakers from NYU, Columbia, Rutgers, and Harvard. Participants came from institutions across the United States, as well as Canada and Israel.

The Louis Armstrong House Museum was named to New York City’s Cultural Institutions Group (CIG) this fall, as reported by QNS. CIG members—all of them privately managed cultural organizations that operate on city-owned property and provide public programming—receive substantial subsidies and capital investments.