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

QView #220 | February 18

Kyriakos Pogiatzis, the consul general of Cyprus, and his executive assistant, Maria Vases ’00, visited campus on February 9 for World Greek Language Day and the announcement of the winner of the World Greek Language Day Essay Contest: Stavros Georgiou. A media studies major who is minoring in modern Greek, he’s familiar to the college community and beyond as one of the students featured in the QC episode of the Amazon Prime Video program, “The College Tour.”

From left: President Frank H. Wu, Cyprus Consul General Kyriakos Pogiatzis, Executive Assistant Maria Vases

President Wu congratulates Stavros Georgiou as Maria Vases and Modern Greek and Byzantine Center Interim Director Fevronia Soumakis (in red blouse) look on.

Consul General Pogiatzis talked with Sociology Chancellor’s Lecturer Nicholas Alexiou, founding director of QC’s Hellenic American Project.

The Godwin-Ternbach Museum fielded a great turnout on February 10 at the opening reception for LEGENDS: Athleticism in Asian/American Art. The first exhibition to focus on the relationship between art and sports in contemporary Asian and Asian American art, LEGENDS is a Queens College School of Arts Initiative funded by The Thomas Chen Family/Crystal Windows Endowment. Exhibition curator Jayne Cole Southard will lead a tour of LEGENDS, sharing insights into its inspiration, featured artists, and the dynamic intersection of art and sport, on February 23, 12:30 to 1:30 pm. (Advance registration encouraged; email gtmuseum@qc.cuny.edu.) The show will run through May 14.

From left: Emilia Lopez, Ashima Kant, Kate Pechenkina, Maria DeLongoria, Michael Nelson, Larissa Swedell

Associate professors learned about applying for promotion to full professor at a Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Leadership (CETLL) event on Wednesday, February 11. Moderated by Associate Provost for Academic and Faculty Affairs and Graduate Studies Maria DeLongoria, five panelists—Family, Nutrition, and Exercise Sciences Chair Ashima Kant, School Psychology Professor Emilia Lopez, Art History Chair Michael Nelson, Social Sciences Dean Kate Pechenkina, and Anthropology Chair Larissa Swedell—discussed the entire promotion process. This event was co-sponsored by the Provost’s Office.

More than 100 students from the Macaulay Honors College, Kessler Scholars Program, Freshman and Transfer Honors, BALA, and the Honors programs in Math & Natural Sciences, Humanities, and Social Sciences enjoyed themselves at the Office of Honors and Scholarships’ annual Spring Into Honors Welcome Back Event. Many attendees connected with peers from outside their own program for the first time. A multi‑room setup encouraged students to mingle through collaborative painting of the QC Knight and logo, QC Jeopardy, a hands‑on fragrance‑making workshop, and a lively games lounge. 

To encourage legislators to support QC and CUNY, President Frank H. Wu traveled to Albany last weekend. While there, he spoke about the importance of Asian Americans standing up and speaking out. President Wu cited advocacy against hate crimes during the pandemic.

Asian American / Asian Research Institute Dean John Chin (center) also went to Albany, where he met with (from left) Assembly Members Sam Berger, Nily Rozic, Grace Lee, and David Weprin.  

President Frank H. Wu shared a photo op with Assembly Member Sam Berger.

ECC Recognizes Track & Field Stars

Six Indoor Track & Field Knights earned All-ECC honors, highlighted by junior Carly Koprowski’s First Team performance. Koprowski delivered a standout effort, winning the 800-meter title with a career-best time of 2:10.75. The mark established both a program record and an East Coast Conference meet record while also fulfilling the NCAA provisional qualifying standard (2:13.30). Rookie Jordyn Cruz joined Koprowski on the podium, placing third in the 800-meter with a career-best time of 2:17.41 to earn All-ECC First Team recognition. On the men’s side, Jalen George, Nathanael Hansen, Dorian Boyd, and Daniel Degregori secured All-ECC Second Team honors.

Spring sports get underway this week as men’s and women’s tennis host local Division I opponents, while baseball travels to Myrtle Beach to compete in the Northeast Challenge.

Meanwhile, the regular season for men’s and women’s basketball enters its final stretch with both teams battling for ECC postseason berths.

Visit queensknights.com for the latest Knights news.

Observing the Centennial of Black History Month 

February was established as Black History Month in 1926, building on time-honored practices. Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, and Frederick Douglass on February 14; Black communities had been celebrating those dates for decades.

Today—Wednesday, February 18—from 4:30 to 6 pm, Africana Studies and SEEK are presenting Black to the Future: 100 Years of Black History Month and Beyond in Rosenthal 230 and over Zoom. The roundtable features panelists Regina N. Bradley, associate professor of English and African diaspora studies at Kennesaw State University; Stefan Bradley, Charles Hamilton Houston ’15 Professor of Black Studies and History at Amherst College; Kenton Rambsy, associate professor of African American literature at Howard University; Karsonya “Kaye” Wise Whitehead, professor of communication and African and African American studies at Loyola University Maryland; and scholar, activist, and filmmaker Ytasha L. Womack. Register for Zoom at QCBHM100.

Branches of the Queens Public Library are marking Black History Month with lectures, performances, craft-making sessions, and other events. For details, see the calendar.

QC Students Win Scholarships

Two prestigious programs have recognized outstanding Queens College students. 

St. George’s Society of New York Scholarships have been awarded this year to Altaf Mahmud, Tuba Raza, Huzayfah Hayyan Awan, and Kezia Prince. The St. George’s Society program provides critical lastdollar support to highachieving undergraduates facing financial barriers in their final year; the scholarship enables them to remain enrolled, complete their studies, and pursue their goals. 

Aylin Johnson and Laiba Mahmood have been selected as two of CUNY’s 30 recipients of the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship, a U.S. Department of State program that expands access to study abroad opportunities for students with financial need. The Gilman Scholarship provides up to $5,000 to support international study for students traditionally underrepresented in study abroad programs, enriching their academic journeys and broadening their global perspectives. 

Honoring Rolf Swensen Through a Gift to Queens College

A retired Queens College librarian who served the QC community for decades is now giving back in another way: by donating to the college in honor of her late co-worker and friend, Rolf Swensen.

The retiree, who wishes to remain anonymous, has made a gift that will benefit three areas of Queens College: the Drama, Theatre, Dance & Fashion Department; the Knights Table Food Pantry, which provides the Queens College and CUNY community with essential items at no cost; and the Barkai-Drora Pershing Scholarship in Music, an award given to deserving music students who are in financial need and demonstrate love and enthusiasm for the study of music.

She has dedicated the gift in honor of Swensen, a longtime social science librarian at Queens College who worked closely with the history department for many years and was known for his cheerful and helpful presence on campus. He passed away in March 2025.

Archivist, Scholar, Mentor 



In addition to his work at Queens College, Swensen served as an archivist for the National Archives of Papua New Guinea and Oregon State University and was a published scholar. His book, “And O’er Earth’s Troubled, Angry Sea”: The History of Christian Science in the United States, was published posthumously last May.

“Rolf was my informal mentor and sounding board during my tenure at the library,” she states. “He cared deeply about our students’ intellectual development and personal growth and taught his history and library science classes rooted in that overarching principle. Rolf was lionhearted, but he also had a steel spine regarding fairness and ethical behavior.”

The donor was inspired to support students in the arts after witnessing the talent and passion of Queens College performers over her four decades on campus.

“Our students are so remarkably talented,” she added. “I have been admiring their creative spirits and moxie for more than 40 years. I make a habit of attending the joyous and passionate performances held throughout Kupferberg Center. They are exuberant, earnest, serious, and committed to their artistic beings.”

Her admiration for Queens College’s young artists, she says, reflects the same pride and joy that Rolf took in the growth and accomplishments of students throughout his career.

“In Yiddish, there is an expression, kvell,” the donor explains. “It means to take pride in others’ accomplishments. I believe that Rolf, along with the entire Queens College community, is applauding and kvelling over our performing arts students each time they are on stage.”

Guiding Principal

For students in East Elmhurst, Queens, every day at MS Q419 starts with joyful affirmations of community and resolve. This thriving school, located within walking distance of Citi Field and two homeless shelters, is the brainchild and remarkable achievement of Soledad Montañes ’03, its principal. MS Q419 lies within District 24, which encompasses Corona, Elmhurst, Glendale, Long Island City, Maspeth, Middle Village, and Ridgewood—a diverse, historically under-resourced area that suffers from overcrowding in many schools. In 2021, when then-District 24 Superintendent Madeline Chan gave Montañes the chance to develop a new middle school in a largely Latino neighborhood of immigrant and working-class families, she jumped at it. She had a vision of providing a first-class public education steeped in arts, academics, mindfulness, and fellowship among teachers and learners.

Montañes brought a host of personal and professional credentials to the task, starting with the fact that she herself is an immigrant; resilience and identity matter to her. A native of Montevideo, Uruguay, she came to the United States at 3 months old because she had been born with a rare eye condition that could not be treated in her home country: blepharophimosis (BPES), a disabling genetic mutation that paralyzes the eyelids. Her mother identified it correctly, but was dismissed as simply suffering from postpartum depression; she persevered until she was able to secure a medical visa to the United States. Montañes underwent fifteen operations to correct it, the last one when she was 24.

“My mother would send me to school with stitches and buy me the quirkiest eyeglasses possible. She made me own that I was the luckiest girl on Planet Earth,” she recalls. “I’m in textbooks,” she adds. “At first, I didn’t want to share. It’s an intimate part of who I was before I even became an educator. But my mother said, ‘You have to acknowledge it. That’s the strength that you have within you that keeps you moving forward in life.’” Now Montañes makes a point of making herself available to others born with BPES.

9/11 Lessons

It was 9/11 that propelled her toward a career in education. “As an immigrant growing up in New York City, I wanted to achieve the American dream, and when we thought about the American dream we thought about corporate America and working your way up the corporate ladder,” she remembers. As a recent graduate of Newtown High School in Elmhurst, she was taking night classes and working as a receptionist at American Express in the World Trade Center when the planes hit. “That changed my entire view on who I wanted to be,” she says. “I perhaps experienced post-traumatic stress and didn’t even realize it at the time. I still think of my experiences walking home from the city on 9/11 and not knowing what the future was going to look like for anyone.”

When Montañes returned to work, she saw long-time employees get laid off, many nearing retirement. “That specific moment made me realize I wanted to do something more impactful with my life,” she remembers; she quit her job and traveled to Thailand for a month to think things over. A job at an after-school program convinced her to pursue education.

Pathway to Progress

She earned a BA in English and secondary education at QC, then went on to complete an MS in science, education, and special education at Touro College in New York City and an MA in education, leadership, and administration at the College of Saint Rose in Albany. She holds certificates in numerous specializations and is certified in therapeutic crisis intervention for schools (TCIS), trauma-responsive educational practices (TREP), and yoga and mindfulness. Finally, she is certified in Yale anchors of emotional intelligence—a component of RULER, an influential social and emotional learning program of Yale’s Emotional Intelligence Institute that helps students “identify how one is feeling, label it, and regulate it so that they can be the best versions of themselves,” says Montañes.

She also had years of experience as a teacher and administrator in diverse, multilingual city schools. From 2006 to 2016 she taught at IS061, Leonardo da Vinci Intermediate School, in Corona, with outside appointments teaching English language arts and ESL (English as a Second Language). From 2016 until 2021, she was middle-school assistant principal at PS/IS 226, Alfred De B. Mason, part of District 21 in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn—a position that involved a wide remit, from curriculum, clubs, and innovative programming to everyday management of the school, staff committees, and professional development. She had just joined a program on Advanced Leadership for Aspiring Principals (ALPAP) when she was recruited by Superintendent Chan, who remembered her from an administrative internship some years previously.

However, the opportunity offered by the city came with an enormous challenge. Hired in January 2022 as a project director, Montañes explains, “I had six months—six months literally—to prepare to open up a brand new middle school in District 24 and to do everything from the ground up: every memo, every system, process, hiring, crowdsourcing, meeting with the community, developing a consensus on what the vision of the school would be, understanding what the needs of the community were. It was boots on the ground.”

Montañes thinks that having roots in the area helped her meet these challenges. “Having a real understanding of the community was a key factor. I had been a teacher in District 24 and I grew up in District 24; my parents still live in District 24, my sister Victoria Montañes ’00 teaches in District 24, my sister-in-law is a pathologist in District 24. I have strong ties to this district, and I had a strong pulse of what the community’s needs were. Despite the fact that I was then an assistant principal in Brooklyn, I was still living in Queens. That was an advantage that kept me grounded throughout this entire process.”

Meeting the Challenges

Against the odds, Montañes opened MS Q419 that fall as its founding principal, having successfully fundraised, worked with elected officials, parents and local stakeholders, and unions, and hired teachers in the midst of a teacher shortage. “I walked into my building on August 29 and we didn’t even have computers, papers—it was bare bones. We had furniture, yes, but that was it,” she recalls. “I was welcoming my staff September 5, and September 7 the students were coming. You just had to make it work.”

In fact, Montañes soon was bringing in grants and partners who helped take the school far past its limited initial budget. Most strikingly, she has been able to offer students an enhanced curriculum and teachers meaningful opportunities for a voice in the school and professional development. She has achieved all this in a district with many opportunity gaps and educational challenges. The student body at MS Q419 includes a large number of English-language learners and students with disabilities, children in temporary housing, asylum seekers, and others with diverse issues, such as interrupted education and reading below grade level.

The school moniker, “Home of the Brave Tigers,” was created by Montañes, who was inspired by the school’s founding in 2022, the Year of the Tiger. “I really wanted to celebrate inclusivity and diversity as well as this notion of being brave. Life is hard and life will challenge you, but ultimately your bravery is what will propel you forward and give you the sense that you can overcome the adversities that you are faced with. Knowing my community, knowing the challenges and the trauma our students carry, I wanted it to resonate with their narrative just as much as my own,” she says. “I was also thinking in two languages as I was developing the idea of being brave, bright, adaptable, virtuous, and empowered.”

Education = Empowerment

That vision of empowering students underlies the curriculum and programs. “Holistic education is something I hold dear to my heart,” says Montañes. “You want to be able to provide students access to being able to regulate their emotions and also develop strong skillsets so that they can deal with the conflicts and the trauma and the issues that may arise, as well as celebrate their successes in ways that will make them feel proud.”

Academically, the curriculum supports students’ inquiry- and research-based learning. It addresses traditional needs through a Strategic Reading Program, aimed at ensuring that all students read at or above grade level, and a Strategic Math Program that, she says, is “designed to build strong analytical and numeracy foundations so students remain competitive in a global economy.” Similarly, MS Q419 seeks to expand students’ future opportunity structures by offering language programs in Spanish and Mandarin, with a pathway toward the New York State Seal of Biliteracy. In addition, the school offers a lively visual and performing arts program, aligning with her strong commitment to “ensuring that creativity and cultural voice are central to learning.”

Perhaps most strikingly, Montañes has negotiated many grants and partnerships across the curriculum, extending what the school would be able to offer on its own. After-school partnerships with the Louis Armstrong House Museum and the Godwin-Ternbach Museum support instruction in the arts (see QView #146). In the past year, she has added a partnership with Brain Power Wellness, pivoting toward what she calls “a neuroscience-based direction grounded in neuroplasticity, brain development, and emotional regulation.”

These and other partnerships that contribute to the school’s success are introduced with care. “You don’t want it to be a revolving door,” says Montañes. “You want to believe in the partners that you develop and establish strong relationships with them so that they become part of the school’s narrative. I don’t want it to be just a one-off experience. If I brought them in, I want to believe that we have a mutual understanding of the important work that we’re going to be co-creating.”

A signature innovation is the use of mindfulness and wellness techniques. MS Q419 is one of more than 280 sites participating in PROSE (Progressive Redesign Opportunity School for Excellence), a program that encourages administrators and faculty to collaborate on innovations they believe will help students achieve. At MS Q419 that includes an advisory curriculum that “supports students in understanding how their brains learn, grow, and strengthen over time,” says Montañes. Each day begins with Brave Mornings: small groups meet with their advisors, including for guided self-reflection. Once a week the students have Tiger Time, which uses RULER techniques to strengthen critical thinking, perseverance, and social and emotional competency. The health and physical education curriculum also fosters wellness. “It’s a multilayered, hand-selected and -crafted design,” says Montañes. “We’re doing a mixed methodology of research-based strategies that fit our school needs.”

These efforts pay off in happy children, centered and ready to learn. “Our students come in; they have morning wellness, they have different activities that they can do between sports, Zumba, library, open access for enrichment. Warm breakfast in the cafeteria, and activities in the schoolyard, all focusing again on wellness—getting our students to the right mindset prior to beginning their academic day.”

Lofty Goals 

The challenges of urban schooling and tight budgets have not prevented Montañes from aiming high for her students. “I want them to understand that they are global citizens and that they have the ability to pursue their heart’s dreams and desires because they live in the greatest city of all—New York City. Now that they have this opportunity, what are they going to do with it? It’s easy to conform and follow everyone else, but when you single yourself out, you stand out. You understand that you have to have tiger stripes that are distinct to yourself. You’re proud of who you are; you have a strong sense of self and voice. They will then be able to navigate high school and all the complexities that brings.”

Robert “Bob” Scally ’61

Bob Scally, the first academic director of Glucksman Ireland House at New York University, has passed away. In a tribute posted by NYU, colleagues recalled Scally as a distinguished historian who brought leading scholars, writer, and poets to Ireland House and made it a center of public events. His own books included The End of Hidden Ireland: Rebellion, Famine, and Emigration.

Kristy Caldwell (Art), recipient of a Grolier Club Library William H. Helfand Fellowship last year, will be giving a public talk at the club on Thursday, February 26, at 6 pm. She designed a set of illustrated bookplates inspired by the Grolier archive. To attend in person or virtually, RSVP here . . . . Taylor L. Rubin, a doctoral student in biology at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center, is among the winners of the 2026 Katherine S. McCarter Graduate Student Policy Awards from the Ecological Society of America (ESA). Recipients receive an all-expenses paid trip to Washington, DC, in the spring to receive policy and communications training at ESA’s headquarters followed by meetings with congressional policymakers on Capitol Hill to discuss the importance of federal investments in the biological and ecological sciences . . . .

Kara Schlichting (History) is quoted in the New York Times article “Negro Coney Island: The New York Amusement Park That Never Opened” . . . .

“MLK, Jr. Day 2026 Celebration: Where Do We Go From Here?,” a one-hour special produced by QC, will premiere on CUNY TV on Tuesday, February 24 at 10:30 am and will repeat in the same time slot on Wednesday, February 25 and Thursday, February 26 . . . . QC’s Chaney, Goodman, Schwerner Clocktower and Civil Rights Archives and the Louis Armstrong House Museum are highlighted in “Welcome to Queens: Black History in the World’s Borough,” debuting on NY1 on Thursday, February 19, at 9 pm. Part of NY1’s Black History Month programming, “Welcome to Queens” toured six locations in the borough.