COLLEGE NEWS
Class of 2008 Graduates at Hunter's 197th Commencement
Approximately 2,700 graduates, their friends and families packed Radio City Music Hall for Hunter's June 4, 2008 commencement ceremony.
The College celebrated the achievements of two of its most distinguished alumni - Joel Katz (BA '66) and Abbe Raven (MA '77). Katz is the chair of Greenberg Traurig, regarded as the world's largest entertainment law practice, whose client list includes 50 of the world's top entertainers such as Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow and James Taylor. Mr. Katz serves as general counsel for the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences and is special counsel to the Country Music Association and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Raven is President and CEO of A&E Television Networks, which encompasses A&E Netork, History, Bio, History International, Military History Channel, The History Channel en español, Crime & Investigation Network, AETN International and AETN Consumer Products. Over the last five years, Ms. Raven was named to The Hollywood Reporter's Women in Entertainment Power 100 list and Cable World's Top 50 Most Influential Women in Cable.
Both talked about their early struggles before reaching the prominent positions they now hold in the entertainment industry - and urged the graduates to pursue their own dreams. Katz was the recipient of a Doctorate of Laws, and Raven was honored with a Doctorate of Humane Letters.
TV news anchor Chris Matthews delivered the keynote address. The star of Hardball with Chris Matthews on MSNBC, The Chris Matthews Show on NBC and a regular commentator on NBC's Today show - told the graduates they were going out into the world at a historic time when Barack Obama had just become the first African-American to be nominated for President.
"This is one of those moments in history, people always remember where they were when it happened," Matthews said. "You'll always be able to say, "I was at Radio City Music Hall graduating from Hunter College."
Matthews hailed the diversity of the Hunter graduating class and compared the hard work they had done to get there to the challenges facing all of the immigrants who had made America great. "It's absolutely remarkable how immigrants move up in this country, how much this country owes to immigrants," he said.
And he urged the graduates not to be afraid to start at the bottom - pointing out he bagan his career in Washington as a Capitol police officer before working his way up to presidential speechwriter, aide to the House Speaker and eventually a successful broadcast journalist.
Vote for Peter Carey's Book as Best Novel
You can vote for Hunter's own Peter Carey - executive director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing and an award-winning author - in a prestigious competition to select the most outstanding novel written over the past four decades.
Carey's Oscar and Lucinda was nominated in May for The Best of the Booker. This competition - based on voting open to the public - will select the top novel to have won the Booker Prize since it was first awarded in 1969. Carey has won the Booker Prize twice - for Oscar and Lucinda in 1988 and True History of the Kelly Gang in 2001 - as well as numerous other major awards and distinctions. He is one of only six authors chosen to compete for the The Best of the Booker Prize, a select list which includes such famous writers as Salman Rushdie and Nadine Gordimer.
To submit your vote, simply go to this website:
http://www.themanbookerprize.com/news/vote
Voting will end at noon on July 8. The winner is to be announced on July 10.
Aspen at Roosevelt House
On May 19th, The Aspen Institute and the Roosevelt House Institute for Public Policy at Hunter College held its fourth installment in a series of discussions called "Conversations on Presidential Leadership." NBC Nightly News anchor and managing editor, Brian Williams, moderated a stimulating discussion between Harvard University Professor and former presidential advisor David Gergen and presidential historian and noted biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Approximately 1,200 Hunter alumni and distinguished guests were on hand in Hunter's General Assembly Hall to enjoy the thoughtful discussion, strategically planned to invite further dialogue during this presidential campaign season.
Conference on Hip-Hop Culture Held at Hunter
On May 6, a panel of artists and scholars gathered at Hunter for a one-day conference which examined hip-hop from its roots to the route it may take in the future.
With this event, Hunter joined over 300 colleges and universities around the country which have held hip-hop conferences, offering insight into a phenomenon that has global youth appeal and a growing influence on society.
Speakers included Hunter Acting Dean of Diversity John Rose, alum and playwright David Lamb, Hunter Distinguished Lecturer Karen Hunter, hip-hop performer Talib Kweli, hip-hop/spoken word artist Bryonn Bain, director Summer Hill Seven, and educators Marcella Runnell-Hall and Kersha Smith.
Professor Hunter, who has co-written books with hip-hop giants LL Cool J and Queen Latifah, showed hip-hop video clips with images of wealth, prison culture, violence, and misogyny. She explained that as hip-hop goes global, so too does the notion that black culture is exactly what these mainstream hip-hop images convey. "This is not what hip-hop was ever meant to be," she said.
Read More...
Hunter Partners with the Red Cross
Twenty Hunter students and staff took part in disaster relief training at Hunter College in April as part of "Ready When the Time Comes" - an American Red Cross initiative to train volunteer teams to respond to local disasters.
Hunter is the first college or university in New York City to collaborate with the Red Cross on this campaign. Adam Runkle, a senior coordinator in the Disaster Volunteer Partnership of the American Red Cross, called the collaboration "an exciting new step."
"We hope that this partnership with Hunter will be a model that other campuses can follow to be ready to assist victims of disaster when the time comes," he said.
At the Hunter training, Runkle covered disaster response procedures and policies as well as approaches to comforting people affected by disasters at a shelter.
Read More...
ALUMNI NEWS
Hunter Alumnus Wins National Competition for Uncovering the Mysteries of Learning
Erich Jarvis (BA '89), an associate professor of neurobiology at Duke University Medical Center, has been named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator. He is one of 56 scientists to be chosen in a highly selective national competition that occurs every three years.
Jarvis earned this honor for his innovative approach to understanding how language is learned - drawing on comparative studies using songbirds, other bird and mammal species and humans.
"I have come to the conclusion that the brain pathways involved in the singing of songbirds have functional similarities to the pathways involved with speech in humans," he said.
Jarvis—who earned his BA in biology and mathematics from Hunter and his PhD in neurobiology and animal behavior from Rockefeller University—is one of the preeminent scientists in the country.
Read More...
Hunter Grad Wins NSF Fellowship
Hunter alumna Mitsy Chanel-Blot has received a 2008 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Chanel-Blot, a May 2007 anthropology major, is currently a doctoral student in social anthropology at the University of Texas-Austin.
Her research focus is the Afro-Caribbean diaspora in Europe, examining the notions of exclusion and invisibility as it pertains to the Haitian diaspora in France, and the broader impact of immigration in Europe.
The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program provides approximately 1,000 students with three years of funding - up to $121,500 - for research-focused Master's and PhD degrees in the social and physical sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics fields.
Make a Difference; Become a Hunter Mentor
This fall marks the 5th anniversary of Hunter's Mentoring Program, which offers students the invaluable opportunity to form a relationship with accomplished alumni.
Hunter's Mentors make a great impact as they offer students advice about their field of interest and related career options, assist students in planning with a continued course of study and share experiences about the challenges of working in the real world.
Mentors are asked to dedicate two to three hours per month to meetings with their students and are expected to keep in touch throughout the year by phone and email.
To apply, please contact Deborah Davis, Director of Alumni Relations: 212.650.3162 or email deborah.davis@hunter.cuny.edu
Hunter's Alumni Weekend
Hunter's 36th annual Hall of Fame induction ceremony took place on May 17th, and honored Hunter Biology Professor Benjamin Ortiz (BA '90) as well as William T. Aguado (BA '71), Lorraine Cortes-Vazquez (BA '75), Marilyn A. DeLuca (BS '71), Linda S. Francis (BFA '65, MFA '69), Stephen E. Freeman (MSW '75), Shirley L. Mow (BA '55), Eileen Boylan Taylor (BA '58), Mary Baranowski Walsh (BS '74, MS '79) and Cathy Weinroth (BA '74) - who were all recognized for their outstanding professional achievements and contributions to the community.
On Sunday, May 18th, Hunter welcomed over 530 alumni to its 138th birthday celebration, at New York City's Grand Hyatt Hotel. Alumni from sixteen milestone classes celebrated their reunions. The two distinguished Hall of Fame recipients honored on May 18th were Terry Drucker - for distinguished service to the Alumni Association and the College, and Augusta S. Kappner - for outstanding professional achievement. President Jennifer Raab made a speical acknowledgement to honor Sarah Neumark ('31), the oldest alumna in attendance. Four classmates from the class of 1933 also joined the festivities.
We are all looking forward to your joining us next year as the College celebrates its 139th Birthday.
STUDENT NEWS
Hunter Student Joins "Gossip Girl" Cast
The cast of the hit TV show "Gossip Girl" has added a Hunter girl to its ranks - junior Yin Chang has landed the recurring role of "Nelly Yuki" and had her debut on the show's April 28 episode.
A teen drama that airs on the CW network, "Gossip Girl" follows the lives of young socialites attending elite schools on the Upper East Side. Chang, a creative writing and media studies major, describes her "Gossip Girl" role as a "stereotypically nerdy Asian who wears dorky oversized glasses."
"I'm excited about the nerdy character, though," she said. "I've never played anything like that in my work. I'm having a great time - the people are so nice. They are considered celebrities, but they're so down to earth."
Although she only began acting two years ago, Chang has already appeared in episodes of "Law and Order" and "Six Degrees," and in commercials for Best Buy, Master Card and Verizon.
Chang is juggling school with her acting schedule, and plans to graduate in spring 2009. She hopes to incorporate writing into her career, and - if acting doesn't work out - become a casting director.
Two Hunter Pre-Med Students Awarded Salk Scholarships
Two outstanding Hunter College pre-med students have been awarded prestigious Jonas E. Salk Scholarships to attend medical school.
May Kong, a biology major and chemistry minor at the William E. Macaulay Honors College, will study at the University of Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. Kong, who emigrated to the U.S. from Myanmar with her family at the age of 11, has done research work with New York University physicians at Bellevue Hospital Center; participated in a summer research program at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass and is currently working on a Barrett's esophagus project at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Samia Mohammed, a biochemistry major and German minor in the William E. Macaulay Honors College, will study at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Mohammed joined the lab of Frida Kleiman, an assistant professor in the Hunter chemistry department, and participated in research on the coordinated response of mammalian cells to DNA damage - which resulted in the publication of a scientific paper of which she is co-author. She later joined Professor Hiroko Matsui's lab at Hunter to do bionanotechnology research involving electronics and sensors.
Read More...
Sign Up Now for Summer Classes
Summer Session II:
Arts & Sciences:
July 21 - August 21
Education: July 7 - July 30
Health Professions: July 21 - August 21
Social Work: June 30 - July 31
If you have questions about the summer session at Hunter College, please contact the Welcome Center at WelcomeCenter@hunter.cuny.edu or by telephone at 212.772.4490.
