City College Salutes First Master of Public Administration (MPA) Graduates
Fourteen students, some already in public service, are the first recipients of CCNY’s new Master’s Degree in Public Administration (MPA), designed to inspire and prepare City College students for leadership positions in public service.  All Rangel Scholars, the graduates completed the two-year program in CCNY’s Public Service Management Program (PSM) with support from The Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service.  Based at CCNY, the Rangel Center provides scholarships and paid internships, in addition to sponsoring career building activities, a speaker’s series, a public-policy writing workshop, and a statistics support program.  Interim President Dr. Robert E. Paaswell hailed the graduates.  "The College is proud of what you’ve accomplished and your strong desire to serve the public. CCNY also is indebted to the Rangel Center and the enormous commitment it has made to further public service."  U.S. Rep. Charles B. Rangel, whose congressional district includes City College, said: "It gives me great pleasure to congratulate these CCNY Public Service Fellows not only as alumni of this unique program, but as fellow New Yorkers passionate about service and dedicated to the public good.  They each have compelling stories as to how they got to this point in their lives, with many of them the first in their family to get a master's degree." More on this story.

Helen Levin, BArch ’10, Receives AIA Fontainebleau Prize
Helen Levin, a graduating fifth-year architecture student in the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, has been awarded the AIA Fontainebleau Prize.  The prize provides a full scholarship to the summer program for architects at the Fontainebleau Schools held in Chateau Fontainebleau, south of Paris.  A second graduating fifth-year architecture student at CCNY, Shengyi Pu, won a partial scholarship to attend Fontainebleau. The awards are given by the Center for Architecture Foundation, which is run by the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects.  This is the first time the Center has awarded a full scholarship to attend the Fontainebleau Schools. "I’m very excited about going back to France to study at Fontainebleau," said Ms. Levin, who studied French and worked as a nanny in Strasbourg before enrolling at CCNY.  "This will give me the chance to use what I’ve learned over the last five years to really get a grip on what I’ve accomplished." The Fontainebleau Schools were founded in 1921 to expose the best American students to the French tradition in music and architecture.  Since their inception, they have hosted more than 10,000 students at the Chateau de Fontainebleau, a 700 year-old chateau located 40 miles south of Paris.  More on this story.

CCNY Grad Takes Silver at Academy Award Ceremony
Rediscovering Pape," the MFA thesis film by City College of New York (CCNY) alumna Maria Royo, ’09, won a silver medal at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ 37th Annual Student Academy Awards ceremony June 12 in Beverly Hills. The medal came with a $3,000 prize.  The 25-minute film competed in the documentary category, and is the third CCNY student production to earn a silver medal at the student Oscars since 2006. Previous winners were "6 a.m." by Carmen Vidal Balanzat (2006) and Jeremy Joffee’s "The Bronx Balletomane" (2009).  In "Rediscovering Pape," Ms. Royo, who attended CCNY on a Fulbright Scholarship, documents her heartfelt attempt to reconcile memories of a close childhood relationship with her great-grandfather, who, she learned, had a Nazi past. She travels through Europe to trace his footsteps, break her family’s silence and discover the true nature of complicated choices.  More on this story.

CCNY Radio Station Completes $1.7 Million Facelift
WHCR 90.3 FM, CCNY’s community radio station, unveiled its new studios Wednesday, June 16, after a $1.7million facelift designed to boost service to listeners in upper Manhattan.  Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and his predecessor, C. Virginia Fields, whose offices helped fund work on the state-of-the-art facility, were guests of honor at the opening.  CCNY Interim President Dr. Robert E. Paaswell welcomed the dignitaries.  "This is a milestone in the history of the station and we are grateful to Presidents Stringer, Fields and Paaswell for making it possible," said Angela Harden, WHCR General Manager.  "A major voice in the community for over two decades, WHCR has just gotten louder."  Among the improvements are expansion of studio space from 850 square feet to 2,000 and the addition of video streaming capabilities.  "Our new facility will offer our programmers the opportunity to work in a technologically advanced environment that holds boundless possibilities," said Ms. Harden.  Since 1986, WHCR has provided educational programming and entertainment to its listeners, while offering radio broadcast training to CCNY students and members of the community. More on this story. 

CCNY Art Exhibit Opens in St. Nicholas Park
St. Nicholas Park on the slopes of the CCNY campus morphed into an open air art space this summer, thanks to a collaboration among CCNY, the West Harlem Art Fund, Inc., and other community partners.  On public view in the 22.74 acre park from June 16 through the end of July is the exhibit "In Dialogue," an arrangement of contemporary art installations by artists, including students from CCNY’s MFA Studio Art Program.  The artists participating in the exhibition include Dominican native Scherezade Garcia, whose work as a fine artist has been displayed in the United States, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean since 1990, and noted photographer Marcie Revens.  The installations in the park mix history, community and landscape for Harlem residents and other New Yorkers.  "This project is important to City College because it is another medium to further connect our students with this very important park and CCNY with the historic Harlem community," said CCNY Interim President Dr. Robert E. Paaswell.More on this story.

CCNY Art Professor Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship
Hajoe Moderegger, associate professor of electronic design & multimedia, has been named a 2010 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow.  He will share the fellowship with his artist wife, Franziska Lamprecht, with whom he collaborates under the name "eteam."  Guggenheim Fellowships support men and women who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.  Professor Moderegger and Ms. Lamprecht are among 180 artists, scientists and scholars named Fellows this year, picked from approximately 3,000 applicants.  He said the fellowship would support the creation of a new work called OS Grabeland.  The project deals with issues of existing and missing resources related to two pieces of land, one located in northeastern Germany; the other in northeastern Nevada.  Eteam are in the second phase of the project, which started in 2006.  "In 2009, the current tenants went on a transatlantic land cruise which brought everyone to America," explained Professor Moderegger, who will be on sabbatical next semester.  "This year the journey continues in order to reach Nevada. All these travels happen hypothetically, most of the gardeners have never left their village. In order to travel, we, together with the gardeners act out the journey to turn it into a reality.  All efforts are being videotaped, photographed and turned into a document of what has happened." More on this story.

CCNY Alumni Honor John Lee & Robin Villa
Dr. John J. Lee, Distinguished Professor of Biology at The City College of New York (CCNY), received the 2010 Faculty Service Award from the CCNY Alumni Association at the Association’s 158th Annual Meeting June 10, in The Great Hall.  In addition, the Association presented its second Administrative Service Award to Robin Villa, ’75MA, Director of the Honors College.  An internationally recognized researcher in marine microbial ecology, Professor Lee was honored for his 40 years of service to CCNY and CUNY.  Ms. Villa was lauded as an indispensable member of the CCNY administration in her capacity as Director of the Honors College.  In addition to the awards for Professor Lee and Professor Villa, Alumni Service Awards for outstanding service to the College and Association were presented to: Dr. Bruce Billig ’70, ’72MA, ’75MSE, secretary, Education Alumni Group; Gloria Feerst ’51E, Chair of Programs, South California Chapter; Allen J. Rothman ’68, co-founder and President, ROTC Alumni Group, member Alumni Association Board; Jacob (Jack) Seidman ’49CE, member Engineering School Alumni Board, and Jack N. Sachs ’41, executive board member Southern California Chapter.   More on this story.

Professor Tang Studies New Jersey Tidal Power Potential
With a coastline stretching from New York Harbor to Cape May, New Jersey stands to benefit from a new study designed to pinpoint the top 20 sites for hydrokinetic energy, a renewable resource produced by the movement of tides, waves and currents in oceans and other bodies of water. Dr. Hansong Tang, assistant professor of civil engineering in CCNY’s Grove School of Engineering, is partnering with Natural Currents Energy Services, LLC (NCES), a leader in tidal power technology, to locate these sites. Professor Tang will perform computer modeling for the project. NCES will conduct field measurements. The 18-month effort is supported by $260,415 from the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) and the CCNY-based University Transportation Research Center. Site selection is critical to hydrokinetic energy projects because the kinetic energy in a current is related to its speed cubed. Because measurements cannot be obtained from every cubic meter of the study area, Professor Tang will apply his computer modeling skills to produce refined estimates. "One of our goals is to successfully and accurately integrate macro-scale and small-scale models to reliably predict multi-scale and multi-physics coastal ocean flows, which is a unique approach that has not been done before," Professor Tang said. More on this story.

CCNY Theatre Professor Makes Cinematic Directing Debut
CCNY Professor of Theater David Willinger is making his cinematic directorial debut.  His first film, "Lunatics, Lovers and Actors," will have its world premiere Tuesday, June 22, at the New Hope Film Festival in New Hope, PA.  The film was shot on location at CCNY and in adjoining St. Nicholas Park.  Many CCNY students have roles in the production.  The film is a socio-political satire about an imaginative drama professor who uses a topical approach to teach William Shakespeare’s "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" by changing the play’s setting from its original setting in Athens to modern Kuwait.  "This is a film about intolerance," says Professor Willinger.  "Why does a Muslim look at a Jew and see an enemy?  Why do we see an Arab as a terrorist?  People fix roles onto themselves and onto others making them opposites.  When the students go into the park, a new, truer reality emerges from the mayhem and chaos.  You love what you thought you hated." More on this story.

CUNY DSI Produces Special Edition of Prestigious Journal
At the invitation of the Instituto Franklin of the University of Alcalá, Spain, the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute will produce a special issue of the prestigious journal, "Camino Real," devoted to multidisciplinary monographs on Dominicans in the United States.  CUNY DSI Director Dr. Ramona Hernández and Associate Director Anthony Stevens-Acevedo will edit the edition and conduct a national call for papers. This is the first such agreement between the CUNY DSI, which is housed at CCNY, and Instituto Franklin, Spain’s renowned center for research on Latin American and Caribbean immigrant communities in the United States. "This is an important recognition for the emerging field of Dominican Studies and Dominicanists, as well as for the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute," said Dr. Hernández.  "It furthers CUNY DSI’s stature as the leading institution in the United States devoted to study of people of Dominican ancestry."  The Dominican population in the United States, defined as people who trace their ancestry to the Dominican Republic, is one of the largest Latino immigrant groups in the country at more than 1.5 million.  More on this story.

Korean Singer Gives Colin Powell Center $10,000
Kim In-soon, the acclaimed Korean R&B vocalist, came to The City College of New York (CCNY) Thursday, June 3, to visit with students and to present a $10,000 gift to the Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies.  The gift will support the Center’s mission of developing new generations of leaders from populations previously underrepresented in public service and policy circles.  Popularly known by her stage name, Insooni, Ms. Kim’s donation coincides with the development of the Center’s new Korean Insights and Issues program, set to launch in 2011.  The program will help introduce students to the rich traditions of the Korean Peninsula and to innovative Korean approaches to some of the world’s most pressing policy concerns.  In speaking to students, Insooni, who began her singing career at age 20, shared her wish to have attended a college like CCNY, and she emphasized the value of education. In particular, she encouraged students to appreciate their opportunity and urged them to find ways to give back over time.  "You have received fellowships from the Colin Powell Center," she said, speaking through student translator Yoo Jin Lee, an architecture major and Dobrich New Americans fellow. More on this story.

Colin Powell Center Screens Transportation Future Film
President Paaswell, an internationally recognized transportation expert, joined award-winning executive producer Kathleen Hughes and Aaron Woolf, director of PBS’s "Blueprint America: Beyond the Motor City," for a panel discussion at the New York screening of the eye-opening documentary, Monday, June 14, hosted by CCNY’s Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies.  "Beyond the Motor City" examines how Detroit, portrayed as a grim symbol of America’s diminishing status in the world, may come to represent the future of transportation and progress in America.  Narrated by Miles O’Brien, the film explores Detroit's historic investments in infrastructure—from early 19th century canals to the urban freeways that earned it the nickname "The Motor City" and made America's transportation system the envy of the world.  But over the last 30 years, much of the world has left Detroit -- and America -- behind, choosing faster, cleaner, more modern transportation.  In a journey that takes viewers into the neighborhoods of Detroit and then beyond to Spain, California, and Washington, D.C., the documentary urges Americans to ask how they can finally push the transportation system into the 21st century. More on this story.

Professor Alfano Briefs Navy on Ultrafast Light Propagation
Dr. Robert R. Alfano, CUNY Distinguished Professor of Science and Engineering at CCNY addressed a gathering of U.S. Department of Defense (U.S. Navy) researchers and officials meeting Wednesday, May 26, at Lockheed-Martin offices in Garden City, NY.  He discussed the potential application of his work in ultrafast propagation of light through dielectric media and seeing through scattering and absorption walls to improve underwater navigation systems for the U.S. Navy Trident–class submarine program. "The Trident submarine program is one of the keystones of America’s strategic defense," Professor Alfano noted. "It is intensely gratifying, from both a professional and patriotic standpoint, to learn that your research has the potential to make a significant contribution to our nation’s security." In his presentation, Professor Alfano described some of the basic properties, key equations and lengths governing light propagation through water, fog and clouds. He also presented his research on ways to have light travel longer distances in water and on improved detection of light by gating out photons that blur useful signals.   In addition, he discussed new and novel ways to see further under water by using specially formed light pulses. More on this story.

From the President

Commencement is a true moment of joy for our grads, who have worked so hard and overcome many obstacles to earn their degrees. It is also a moment of tremendous pride for their parents and family members. For some, their children are the first in their families to graduate from college.

We have a tradition of playing "New York, New York" at the end of commencement. This year, in addition to Frank Sinatra’s version, we added a hip-hop version that brought a rousing cheer from our grads. The song has a line that has a special meaning for CCNY alumni: "If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere." One more time: Congratulations to the Class of 2010. And, if you missed commencement, you can watch it here.

Robert E. Paaswell
Interim President

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