QView #153 | April 25, 2023

Julissa Gutierrez, Chief Diversity Officer of New York State (left), seen here with QC Chief Diversity Officer and Dean of Diversity Jerima DeWese, gave the keynote address at the Dismantling and Combating Hate Conference on Friday, April 21. Those who missed the conference can watch highlights here.

The conference included a panel discussion with (from left) Nick Smith, first deputy public advocate, Office of the New York City Public Advocate; Wendy Garcia, deputy commissioner of Equity and Inclusion, New York Police Department; and Kajori Chaudhuri, deputy commissioner, Community Relations Bureau, Human Rights Commissioner, New York City Commission on Human Rights.

Chief of Staff Desirae Colvin, Director of the President's Office Stacey Romano, AVP of Facilities, Planning and Operations Zeco Krcic, Interim Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Patricia Price, President Frank H. Wu, VP for Institutional Advancement/Alumni Relations Laurie Dorf, VP for Communications and Marketing and Senior Advisor to the President Jay Hershenson, Director of Investigations/Title IX Coordinator Christine McKeithan, and VP for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management Jennifer Jarvis participated in person in Compliance Bias and Training for Campus Leadership on Tuesday, April 18. Interim General Counsel Judith Massis-Sanchez, Dean of Diversity/Chief Diversity Officer Jerima DeWese, and Chief Information Officer Troy Hahn took part remotely.

Bystander/Upstander Intervention, a workshop facilitated by the New York City Human Rights Commission on April 18, emphasized the roles everyone can play in creating safe public spaces for community members facing bias, discrimination, or harassment.

Passport to Diversity turned the Quad into a world's fair during free hour on Wednesday, April 19, presenting the cultures, traditions, music, and food of different countries. During LGBTQIAA+: Paint Your Pride, participants were given art supplies and encouraged to paint their Pride in a way that best expresses their identity.

For over 50 years, New York native and QC alumnus Corky Lee photographed his hometown’s Chinatown and Asian American communities around the country, recording the efforts of activists, celebrities, and everyday heroes. Dear Corky, a documentary screened by AAARI on Friday, April 21, examines the life and work of Lee, who died of COVID in 2021.

Mohamed Attalla, CUNY vice chancellor for Facilities Planning, Construction and Management (above, center right), visited Queens College on April 18, meeting with President Frank H. Wu and senior administrators to discuss capital projects on campus. 

Members of the QC community rolled up their sleeves to participate in the blood drive conducted in the Patio Room by the New York Blood Center on April 19. (Below) Participants were encouraged to swab their cheeks to join the Be the Match Registry operated by the National Marrow Donor Program.

Like President Joe Biden, President Frank H. Wu stuttered in childhood. On April 19, he spoke to Salvatore Brienza's Speech/Language/Hearing class about his experiences.

Students, faculty, alumni, staff, and family members gathered on Cooperman Plaza to commemorate Queens College community lives lost to COVID. At the end of the April 19 Ceremony, a plaque commemorating the people who passed away was unveiled, and attendees left yellow roses at the site.

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards joined Louis Armstrong House Museum Executive Director Regina Bain for a tour of the new Louis Armstrong Center and the historic Louis Armstrong House Museum in Corona on April 20. Set to open in late June, the center will house the Armstrong archives, exhibition space, a performance venue, and more. 

Students presented posters at Neuropsychology Research Day on April 21.

President Frank H. Wu welcomed the Queens Chamber of Commerce's Not-for-Profit Committee to QC on Friday, April 21. The committee seeks to advance the missions of the borough’s nonprofits—a category that includes many health care institutions, social service organizations, and of course, Queens College and its sister CUNY campuses. 

Admitted students enjoyed music, refreshments, and campus tours during Become a Knight Day on Sunday, April 23.

Queens Wins ECC Men’s Tennis Championship

The Queens College men’s tennis team defeated rival St. Thomas Aquinas College, 4-0, on Friday to win the 2023 East Coast Conference (ECC) Championship. With the win, the Knights earn an automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament.

The win avenged a loss to St. Thomas in last year’s championship match and gave the Knights their fifth title in six years and ninth overall.

QC got the early, 1-0 lead after winning two of three doubles matches. Victories by Roni Rikkonen, Moritz Borges, and Mariano Bibloni in singles play then clinched the match for the Knights.

Earlier in the week, the Knights also won some individual accolades. Cameron Henricy was named the ECC Co-Player of the Year following a season in which he went 18-6 in singles play. Borges, who held a 10-3 singles record, and Lucas Demuth (13-6) also earned All-Conference honors.

The pairings for the NCAA tournament were announced late Monday evening. Be sure to check queensknights.com for more details on the tournament.

Bobbie Kabuto Appointed Dean of Education

After a national search, Bobbie Kabuto has been named dean of the School of Education. A tenured full professor and past chair of the Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education (EECE), she has served as the school’s interim since last year. 

“We are delighted that Professor Kabuto has accepted this appointment,” says President Frank H. Wu. “The School of Education is a large and dynamic part of our institution, and it holds central importance to our mission as a public institution. She has both the scholarly depth and proven administrative skill and initiative to lead it.” 

“I am so pleased that Dr. Bobbie Kabuto will become Queens College's permanent dean of the School of Education,” says Interim Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Patricia Price. “The quality of her vision and leadership have been apparent from the outset of her time as interim dean, and I only expect these to strengthen as she transitions into the permanent position. Dean Kabuto brings a fresh perspective tempered by her 17 years of service to the college. Based on the feedback gathered by Witt/Kieffer across all stakeholder groups, Dean Kabuto rose to the top of an outstanding group of national finalists for the position. I would like to thank Dean Daniel Weinstein for his outstanding service to the college by chairing the search committee, and the members of the search committee for their diligence and hard work.” 

Kabuto has a BS in biology with a concentration in education from the University of Richmond in Virginia, and an MS in education (literacy studies) and PhD in reading, language, and cognition (literacy studies) from Hofstra University; she holds a New York State permanent certification as a reading teacher. Prior to her academic career, she taught pre-kindergarten and second grade in Japan.

“Having served the Queens College community for almost two decades, I am deeply committed to the equity-minded and inclusive mission of the college,” says Kabuto. “I look forward to fostering a progressive community of learners and leaders grounded in social justice, advocacy, and the School of Education’s conceptual framework that centers on Equity, Excellence, and Ethics (3Es).”

True to Her School

Blanche Rothberg Wager ’42, who celebrated her 100th birthday last August, takes enormous pride in her alma mater. Graduating at 19, she became an executive assistant for Inter-Equipment, an international company, staying there until she had her first child. Seventeen years later, when the youngest of her three children was 11, Wager contacted her former boss, who welcomed her back, saying “Sometimes I think God is with me.” Subsequently, she became a legal secretary. Widowed in 2017 after a happy 66-year marriage, she resides in an assisted living facility and enjoys visits from her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

Representing Summer Session

Want to learn more Summer Session 2023? Talk to one of QC’s Summer Session ambassadors, distinguished by their T-shirts. Ambassadors are circulating around campus to tell their fellow students, and anyone else, about the hundreds of courses the college is offering this summer. With in-person, remote, and hybrid formats, students can set up schedules that fit them to a T.

Chancellor Elected to American Academy of Arts and Letters

CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as reported by the university. Founded in 1780, the academy assembles prominent people in academia, the arts, industry, policy, research, and science to explore critical issues and advance the public good.

This year’s cohort comprises 269 individuals—including former CUNY Chancellor James B. Milliken, Matos Rodríguez’s predecessor; Distinguished Professor of Psychology Virginia Valian and Philosophy Professor Linda Martín Alcoff, both of whom teach at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center; CUNY Graduate Center Professor Emerita of Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures and Urban Education Ofelia S. García; and playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda, a Hunter College High School alumnus.

“We are incredibly proud to have our very own Chancellor Matos Rodríguez represent the university among such a notable list of members who are leaders in their disciplines,” said CUNY Board of Trustees Chairperson William C. Thompson Jr. “This honor underlines the chancellor’s accomplishments throughout his career, particularly as a champion of accessibility, excellence and diversity throughout his two decades of service to the CUNY system, and we all congratulate him on this election.”

“It is a tremendous honor to be elected to such a distinguished body and join leaders who share an interest in advancing the common good, not unlike the work I am privileged to do every day as CUNY’s chancellor,” said Matos Rodríguez. “I am proud to lead a university that upholds such an essential mission and I look forward to bringing some of the lessons I have learned over the past two decades at CUNY to this storied society. We also congratulate the other members of our CUNY family who join me as new members and who will represent our University with distinction.”

Seeking Scholars in Dominican Studies

The CUNY Dominican Studies Institute (CUNY DSI) will accept applications for the 2023 Research Fellowships program through Friday, April 28. CUNY DSI is offering two grant opportunities: One research grant of $10,000 and one research grant of $10,000 for an NSA Fellow. Awards will be given to researchers who want to contribute to current CUNY DSI research projects, write about collections found in the university’s Dominican Archives and Library, or explore CUNY DSI’s quantitative survey data for research purposes. To learn more about these fellowships or apply.

Featuring Faculty Poets

QView’s Poetry Month selections continue this week, with works by Ammiel Alcalay (CMAL), Nicholas Alexiou (Sociology), and Nicole Cooley (English).

From Controlled Demolition

many of those still sifting through the fines

at Fresh Kills in a job never truly completed

that would last for many more months wore

sweatshirts with this line from Virgil's Aeneid:

“Non ignara mali, miseris succerrere disco”

uttered by Dido as Aeneas reveals himself

seeking just a bit of respite after the ten year

fight in Troy & six more of wandering: “No

stranger to pain, I am learning to soothe the

miserable” but with so many already dead

& so many more to die along the fated trip

to find a land of promise the promised land

is respite even possible for such a driven one

so obligated to companions & kin left behind?

& even her own so dear sister Anna has to ask

after Dido took more land by sleight of hand

& rejected a noble African suitor “Doesn’t it

come to mind in whose land you are settled?”

as she nurses resentment’s “undying wound

deep in her heart” seeking more power in

the form of a coalition since even Bush said

“the good we can do together is more than

the good we can do apart” but who even

remembers all the dutiful anonymous expend-

able men pitched headlong into the sea dead

on battlefields or crushed by the weight of

a tree or a building & the lucky ones for

one country or another given the pomp &

circumstance of burial as THE UNKNOWN

SOLDIER & a coffin true of their very own

—Ammiel Alcalay

Controlled Demolition, a book-length poem, is due out next year.

Memory 2020

In a city ravaged by the coronavirus,

few places have suffered as much as central Queens.

-NYT, April 9, 2020

The free market

May not save us

But it always wins

From the smoked marbles

Of cemeteries

As we now

Try to stand upright

In the warm light of day

Let us remain next to those

Who breathlessly waded through

The deserted street

Till the cold shadow

Of the eternal stone

The sweet numbness

Of metaphysics

May not save us

Yet let us stay by those

Who with open wounds

Wander confined

In dark rooms

Unable to touch

The chrysalis of the sky

As we now

Try to stand up,

Fearless,

In the warm light of day,

Hold high the hidden words

That nurtured us

In doleful silence,

By measuring out disparities. 

Let the mirrors shatter.

—Nicholas Alexiou

From the forthcoming book Queens, NY

Sixteen Years to the Day Another Hurricane Reverses

the Mississippi’s course   my father waits in our house

beside the river   and I dream my mother     drowning

water closing over her head   in my dreams she is always

dying     in the too warm Gulf    then pricked alive again

fairy tale spindle   my friends and I text each other

to describe dreams   in which our mothers

ask us why they’re dead     New Orleans is the place

around which I uselessly orbit   after Katrina typing

my mother’s name    Missing Person  Jacki Cooley     

into search engines   sixteen years ago my daughters asked

what is a hurricane’s eye   what can it see   

then my mother was alive     refusing to leave the city    

now I text my father   how high is the water  are there tornadoes

phone and electric out    I wish for a slick of river

to spare our house   while in a new dream about my mother

she thrashes to the Gulf’s sand floor   where she can’t

burn or come apart

—Nicole Cooley

From the forthcoming book Mother Water Ash

Panel to Discuss Trump Indictment

A polarizing figure, Donald Trump was impeached twice while he held the highest office in the United States and now has the distinction of becoming the first president charged with criminal activity. On May 1 from 12:15 to 1:30 pm at Powdermaker Hall 121 and on Zoom, a Political Science panel of faculty and students will discuss the politics of the Trump indictment. This event is co-sponsored by the Political Science Club. To attend remotely, register in advance for the Zoom link.

Elaine Alberts ’70 MS, ’72 MSEd

Elaine Alberts, an elementary school teacher dedicated to environmental education, passed away on March 1 at the age of 87.

Born in Brooklyn, where her parents ran a grocery store, Alberts was shaped by the borough: She met her husband at Brighton Beach and earned her bachelor’s degree at Brooklyn College. Then she completed two master’s degrees from QC. Taking courses while raising two children, she was in school for a total of 13 years.

Alberts found her niche at PS 120 in Queens, teaching fifth grade and science. She won recognition from the Garden Club of America for excellence in environmental education and participated in Sony Corporation's expert teacher exchange in Japan. Her influence extended beyond her own classroom as, with colleagues from the Thomas J. Watson Ecology Workshop, she co-founded the Alley Pond Environmental Center in her basement.

Predeceased by her husband of 57 years, Myron Alberts, she is survived by her daughter and son, their spouses, and three grandchildren.

Francis Brancaleone ’79 MA

Scholar, pianist, and music critic Francis Brancaleone, professor emeritus at Manhattanville College, died in February. He was 86. 

An alumnus of the Eastman School of Music, Manhattan School of Music, Queens College, and the Graduate School at CUNY—where he earned his doctorate—Brancaleone had a diversified career. He taught at Manhattanville for 40 years, serving as the college’s organist for much of that time. He gave solo piano recitals at Town Hall and Tully Hall and performed concerti with orchestras, including the Detroit Symphony; his repertoire extended from Baroque music to contemporary compositions. As music critic for Gannet’s Journal News, he wrote more than 500 reviews.

Brancaleone is survived by his wife, sister, five nieces, and great-nephew.

Robert Trotman

Robert Trotman, a QC alumnus who led Nu-Finmen Swimming, preparing children from diverse backgrounds to swim competitively, passed away on March 22. He was 82.

A native New Yorker, Trotman was 8 when he saw the ocean for the first time, an experience he found frightening. Upon learning to swim at a club in the Bronx, he loved the water, becoming the first Black swim team captain at the borough’s DeWitt Clinton High School and competing through the Amateur Athletic Union. In 1959, he and his friend Charles Simmons launched Finmen at a recreation center in Brooklyn.

After serving in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division from 1962 to 1964—a period he spent stationed at Fort Bragg, where he taught officers’ wives and children to swim—Trotman returned to New York. He attended QC for two years and expanded on Finmen, which for years operated out of Hempstead, Long Island, and now is based in Cambria Heights.

Athletes Trotman trained became all-state swimmers, NCAA All-Americans, and Junior Olympic champions, among other distinctions. Recognizing his success in introducing his sport to members of underrepresented groups, USA Swimming, which administers competitive swimming and selects the Olympic team, gave him the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Award in 2014.

“He wanted to get rid of the myth that Black people can’t swim,” his daughter Jennifer Ann Trotman told the New York Times. “He grew up swimming not seeing someone who looked like him. He felt it was important to see an example of what you can be.” Emulating him, she coached swimming at York College from 2002 to 2016, assisted by her father. Among their mentorees: Paulana Lamonier, co-head swimming coach at York and founder of Black People Will Swim, which gives lessons to people from any ethnic group, age 2 to 65. 

#23

Natalia Candelo-Londono (Economics) and the University of Arkansas’ Sherry Xin Li were awarded the Research Foundation’s Con Edison Social and Behavioral Research Award of $35,000 for “Understanding Volunteering Behavior in Emergencies: Experimental Evidence from Heterogeneous Neighborhoods in New York City” . . . . Yoko Nomura (Psychology) is the subject of a profile published by CUNY’s Office of Communications and Marketing . . . . Núria Rodríguez-Planas (Economics) and her team were recently awarded a 2.49 million Euro ERC Advanced grant to understand how different factors, such as motherhood, gender norms, and income increases for low-wage working women, affect a woman’s risk of experiencing domestic violence . . . . Justin Santory ’20 was selected for an intensive mentorship with the Latinx Playwrights Circle for his play, Time, Don’t Take It Away, as reported by Broadway World . . . . Fidel Tavarez (History) is among this year’s recipients of CUNY’s Feliks Gross Awards for Outstanding Research for Assistant Professors. He will present research in a talk, either alone or in conjunction with other awardees, as part of the university’s Feliks Gross and Henry Wasser Lecture Series. He will also receive an honorarium and a plaque. . . . the IMA QC Student Chapter, in collaboration with the Center for Career Engagement and Internships, sponsored 29 QC students to attend the Long Island IMA CFO panel and networking dinner on April 11 at the Mansion at Oyster Bay. Seen in photo: Jian Xiao (Accounting & Information Systems), far right; Zavi Gunn (Center for Career Engagement and Internships), third from left; Jim Smith, Sr., director of Canon USA and past president of IMA LI Chapter, second from left; Randy DeYulio, Long Island managing partner, Deloitte & Touche LLP, Deloitte Northeast Recruiting, second from right; Michael Valveri, senior manager, Deloitte & Touche LLP, president of IMA LI Chapter, third from right

. . . . Deborah Dwork, director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity at the CUNY Graduate Center, spoke about American relief and rescue workers during World War II on Thursday, April 20. The Center for Jewish Studies presented the lecture to mark Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.