QView #175 | March 19, 2024

Some 40 people from Queens College attended the tenth annual faculty retreat, held at Queensborough Community College on March 1. The retreat examined artificial intelligence in academia.

Experiencing Queens College on March 12, Brentwood High School students enjoyed a tour led by QC Ambassadors and heard presentations about academic programs. 

From left: Xiaoqi Ma; Rosa Figueroa, director of the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) at LaGuardia Community College; Congresswoman Grace Meng; Adrian Jones; Janeé Jones; Yvette Laboy; and Ying Zhou, interim associate director of the SBDC Queens College Outreach Center.

Congresswoman Grace Meng visited the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) Queens College Outreach Center, a satellite site of the LaGuardia Community College SBDC, for an interview with NY1 on March 15. QC and LGCC jointly established an SBDC presence on the Queens College campus in 2019, with support from Congresswoman Meng.

The president took on all student challengers in the Game Room during the latest session of Wu Vs. You on March 18.

Mark Levy ’64, MS ’73 spoke to seniors at Townsend Harris High School (THHS) on March 18 about his work in the Mississippi Summer Freedom Project in 1964 and voting rights today. The Summer Freedom Project brought volunteers to Mississippi to register Black voters and teach Black students in Freedom Schools. Forty-five years later, Levy donated his personal archive from that period—correspondence, photographs, curriculum, lesson plans, student essays and newsletters, printed materials, clippings, and more—to Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library. THHS seniors studied these materials last June as part of Frank McCaughey’s AP US History class.  

If you weren’t in the audience last week when Jamie Dimon, chairman and chief executive officer of JP Morgan Chase & Co., was interviewed on campus, you don’t have to miss out. Watch some highlights in this video from the Office of Communications and Marketing.

Nkiru Awaka Honored as ECC Women’s Basketball Rookie of the Year; Several Others Named to All-Conference Team

Queens College women’s basketball phenom Nkiru Awaka was selected as the East Coast Conference (ECC) Women’s Basketball Rookie of the Year and to the ECC All-Conference Third Team. Her teammate Brianna Davis, was named to the Second Team. On the men’s side, Sunnie Diamond was also a second-team selection and Malik Bentinck garnered third-team honors.

Awaka was a 10-time ECC Rookie of the Week selection and averaged 12.8 points, 8.8 rebounds, and 1.7 steals per game this season. Davis, who was last year’s ECC Rookie of the Year, averaged 15.1 points, 5.8 rebounds, 2.5 assists, and 2.5 steals in 2023–24.

Diamond led the men’s basketball team this season, averaging 17.6 points, 6.3 rebounds, and 4.8 assists per game, while Bentinck contributed 12.5 points, 9.1 rebounds, and 1.2 blocks per game to help the Knights to an ECC playoff appearance.

In other Knights athletics news, the men’s tennis team won its only match last week by a score of 7-0 against the University of the District of Columbia. The baseball team went 2-3 last week, earning two victories over Assumption College, while softball dropped a doubleheader to local rival Adelphi University. The women’s tennis team also lost a match to Division I Fordham University, 6-1.

Baseball will visit Caldwell University today at 3 pm and then will host a four-game series against Lincoln University beginning on Friday. Softball hosts a doubleheader against Mercy University on Thursday at 2 pm and goes on the road against St. Thomas Aquinas College for another doubleheader on Saturday at 12 pm.

Women’s tennis welcomes Jefferson University on Friday for a 12:30 pm match and men’s tennis travels to Monmouth University on Friday at 3 pm.

Outdoor track and field will get underway this weekend, competing at the Queensborough Relays on Sunday at 10 am.

For the latest Knights news, be sure to visit queensknights.com

Seeking Nominations for Carol Douglas Memorial Award

In honor of Carol Douglas—a QC and CUNY graduate, administrative executive assistant for the School of Social Sciences, and founding member and leader of the Black and Latinx Faculty and Staff Association (BLFSA)—friends and colleagues set up an endowment to support an award in her name. Now the college is accepting nominations for the inaugural Carol Douglas Memorial Award, recognizing an undergraduate student who has made significant contributions to diversity on our campus. Nominations can be submitted by faculty, staff, or fellow students who have witnessed the nominee's dedication to promoting diversity and inclusion at Queens College. Nominations can be made via this form; the deadline is April 5. 

Business Breakfast To Feature Caitlin King ’18

A talk by model-turned-business analyst Caitlin King will be the main course at the next QC Business Breakfast, to be held Wednesday, March 20, from 8:30 to 10 am at the QC Lounge. King has used her background in fashion and QC economics degree to work with major retailers such as Victoria’s Secret, Avon, Ann Taylor, and Burlington. A light breakfast, including kosher options, will be served at the event, which is cosponsored by the QC Blackstone LaunchPad Entrepreneurship Program. Seats can be reserved here.

Campus Conversations Continue This Week

Debates and dialogue are to be expected at a college as diverse as ours. The key is to express opinions and listen to them in a civil way. You can meet college staff often involved in helping with appropriate arrangements during the next Campus Conversation, Community Building 101, presented on Wednesday, March 20 from 12:15 to 1:30 pm in the Midway Court, Dining Hall 400, by the Office of Compliance and Diversity. Representatives from the Offices of Student Affairs, Public Safety, Compliance and Diversity, and the Counseling Center will participate in the event. Coffee, tea, and cookies will be served. To attend, email complianceanddiversity@qc.cuny.edu.

Putting Queens on the Jazz and Hip-Hop Map

With substantial funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Louis Armstrong House Museum (LAHM) is embarking on the next phase of developing an interactive digital jazz and hip-hop map of Queens.

NEH recently gave the museum a $100,000 grant to prototype the idea. Two years ago, LAHM was awarded $30,000 to support the project, which builds upon the Queens Jazz Trail Map commissioned in 1998 by Flushing Town Hall and the Louis Armstrong Archives.

As the Jazz Trail showed, Armstrong had plenty of musical company in Queens. Nat and Cannonball Adderley, Ella Fitzgerald, and Benny Goodman were among the jazz stars who lived here. In later decades, numerous rap artists—including Nas, Marly Marl, and LL Cool J—grew up in the borough. The digital map will document this rich artistic community and illustrate musicians’ interconnections.

Kathy Goldman ’86

Kathy Goldman, who co-founded the pantry that in 1983 became the Food Bank for New York City, died on March 5. She was 92.

Born in the Bronx to Eastern European Jewish immigrants—the Jewish Telegraphic Agency called her a “red-diaper baby”—Goldman was raised with a social conscience.

“It was a time when people lived in neighborhoods that they gave a damn about, with people that they gave a damn about,” she said in a profile for Workers Write, Unheard Voices from the Workplace. “Both my mother and father were big influences and activists in our community. She started a Hungarian-American women’s magazine that many of her friends contributed to and read while he worked as the secretary treasurer in one of the carpenters’ unions that existed at the time.”

Goldman graduated from Bronx High School of Science, where she was a member of its first co-ed class, and attended New York University, City College, and Hunter College. As a young mother, she joined forces with United Bronx Parents, who complained to the Board of Education about the substandard school lunches given to their children. The group ended up creating a free summer meals program that received federal financing in 1971 and was rolled out nationally eight years later.

Having found her niche, Goldman devoted her career to reducing food insecurity. The New York Times credits her with opening the Community Food Resource Center, a pantry, leading it until 2003; another pantry, the precursor of the Food Bank for New York City; the Community Kitchen of West Harlem, now part of the Food Bank; and in the 1990s, programs for older adults in Chinatown and Harlem. In the middle of all this, she earned a master’s in urban studies from QC.

In recognition of her work, Goldman was tapped as an Olympic torch bearer in New York City in 2002 and celebrated as a “White House Champion of Change” by President Barack Obama in 2012.

Goldman’s marriage ended in divorce. She is survived by her daughter, two sons, five grandsons, and two great-grandsons.

Keaton Bell (Physics) is the subject of a faculty profile on the CUNY Graduate Center website . . . .

Hostos President Daisy Cocco De Filippis ’75, MA ’78 joined the White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence and Economic Opportunity for Hispanics in a March 8 conversation focusing on the delayed rollout of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). Spearheaded by President Cocco De Filippis and President Frank H. Wu, this collaborative effort brought together representatives from 25 Hispanic Serving Institutions across New York City, including members from CUNY, SUNY, and private colleges . . . . George Held, who taught at QC from 1967 to 2004—a total of 40 courses, in English and SEEK—released his latest poetry collection, Some Birds. “It’s rare that a writer publishes a book at the age of 89,” he observes . . . . Nerve Macaspac (GSLIS) will be presenting his research at the Feliks Gross/Henry Wasser Award lecture on Friday, March 22, 12:30-2:30 pm In the Graduate Center’s Segal Theater . . . .

Mary Murphy

Ed Smaldone

Jian Xiao

Mary Murphy ’81 was one of the honorees at the Queens Chamber of Commerce’s annual St. Patrick’s Day luncheon, held on March 13 . . . . Ed Smaldone (ACSM) will be represented this weekend when the Trio from the American College of Greece plays works by Greek and American members of the Composers Collective. The trio will perform free concerts at LeFrak Hall on Friday, March 22, at 3 pm—click here for the livestream—and at the Manhasset Library on Sunday, March 24, at 2 pm. The programs will include Three Scenes from the Heartland, a piano solo Smaldone wrote in 1994, and a brand-new work for cello and piano, Sareri Hovin Mernem, based on an Armenian folk song . . . . Jian Xiao (Accounting and Information Systems) presented an IMA Inside Talk, Advancing into the Future: A Digital-first Blueprint for Superior Performance and Readiness, on March 18 . . . . Queens Public Television is airing the video series Big Ideas at Queens College .