MARK YOUR CALENDAR:
This Mother's Day, Honor the Hunter Women in Your Life
Hunter women pass their love of learning down to their own children and now many of those sons and daughters and husbands too are saying “Thanks for everything” by donating to the Hunter College Mother’s Day Scholarship Fund. It’s a great way of giving the gift of education to the next generation in honor of the Hunter graduate in your life.
Connect with and directly affect the life of a promising Hunter student. How your donation helps:
$100,000+ Endow a permanent scholarship in your honoree’s name
$25,000+ Establish a full scholarship for five years
$15,000+ Provide a full scholarship for three years
$5,000+ Support two students with a scholarship for one year
$2,500+ Sponsor a student with a scholarship for one year
Gifts of $2,500 and above received by May 1st will be acknowledged in Hunter’s ad in the New York Times on Mother’s Day Sunday, May 10, 2009.
For more information or to make a donation, contact Kevin Melchionne at 212.650.3956 or mothersday@hunter.cuny.edu.
Online contributions can be made by visiting: http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/alumni/mothersday
Come Celebrate the 139th Birthday of the College and the 137th Birthday of the Alumni Association on May 2, 2009
If you are a member of a class whose year of graduation ends in a 4 or 9 (e.g. 1944, 1959, 1994, etc.), you’re celebrating your milestone this spring!
Whether it is your 5th, 25th, 50th or 75th reunion, come catch up with former classmates, network with new friends and join the festivities.
To reserve your place at the Luncheon, download this form, complete it and send it along with your check to: Alumni Association of Hunter College, 695 Park Avenue, Room 1314E, New York, New York 10065
Aspen at Roosevelt House Hosts Leadership & the Economic Crisis: An Evening of Conversation
Moderated by: Lesley Stahl, 60 Minutes and CBS News Correspondent
Monday, May 18, 2009 at 6:30pm
What Next? Bringing the American Economy Back to Life
Featuring: Felix Rohatyn, President, Rohatyn Associates, LLP and Former U.S. Ambassador to France
Robert Steel, Former President and CEO, Wachovia, Former Under Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, Chairman, Aspen Institute Board of Trustees
Hunter College Assembly Hall (enter on 69th Street between Lexington & Park Avenues)
Admission is free, but tickets are required. To request tickets, email AspenRH@hunter.cuny.edu or call 212.396.6342 or RSVP online at www.roosevelthouse.hunter.cuny.edu/
Hunter Alum wins Pulitzer Prize for Criticism
Hunter alumnus Holland Cotter (MA, Art History ’88) has won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for his wide ranging reviews of art, from Manhattan to China, “marked by acute observation, luminous writing and dramatic storytelling.”
Cotter has been a staff art critic at the New York Times since 1998. Between 1992 and 1997 he was a regular freelance writer for the paper. During the 1980s he was a contributing editor at Art in America and an editorial associate at Art News. In the 1970s, he co-edited New York Arts Journal, a tabloid-format quarterly magazine publishing fiction, poetry, and criticism.
Art in New York City has been his regular weekly beat, which he has taken to include all five boroughs and most of the city’s art and culture museums. His subjects range from Italian Renaissance painting to street-based communal work by artist collectives. For the Times, he has written widely about “non-western” art and culture. In the 1990s, he introduced readers to a broad range of Asian contemporary as the first wave of new art from China was building and breaking. He helped bring contemporary art from India to the attention of a western audience.
Cotter was inducted into the Hunter Hall of Fame in 2005. He received an AB from Harvard College, where he studied poetry with Robert Lowell and was an editor of the Harvard Advocate. He later received an M. Phil in early Indian Buddhist art from Columbia University, where he studied Sanskrit and taught Indian and Islamic art.
Two Hunter Professors Awarded Guggenheim Fellowships
Benjamin Hett Jonathan Shannon
Hunter professors Benjamin Hett and Jonathan Shannon have won the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, grants for those “who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.” The fellowships enable highly accomplished artists, scientists and scholars to pursue specific research projects over the course of a semester.
Hett, an associate history professor at Hunter and the CUNY Graduate Center, and Shannon, an associate professor of anthropology at Hunter, are two of six CUNY professors to win the fellowships, awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Only 180 fellowships were granted to nearly 3,000 applicants.
CUNY tied with Princeton and Johns Hopkins for first place in the nation for number of Guggenheim winners.
“All of us at CUNY take enormous pride in the outstanding work of these faculty members," said CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein. "Their scholarly and creative contributions advance understanding and stimulate thought across disciplines and across society, and foster lively centers of learning within CUNY's classrooms.”
Hett is a former trial lawyer. His research on criminal law in modern Germany, the history of popular culture, and the history of Berlin contributed to his prize-winning book “Crossing Hitler, the Man who Put the Nazis on the Witness Stand.” The book won the 2007 Fraenkel Prize for an outstanding work of contemporary history. It describes the 1931 trial of four Nazi soldiers, an event known as the Eden Dance Palace Trial. Hett is also the author of “A Death in the Tiergarten.”
Shannon is an ethnographer who has been working in Syria on ethnomusicology, performance and popular culture. He examines how Syrian musicians and other artists “draw on their heritage to assert their modernity.” Studies of Andalusia, 700 years of Moslem rule in Spain, which ended in 1492 and included a flowering of music and poetry, and the pan-Arab effect and impact on Syrian culture, are a focus of Shannon’s research and expertise.
The New York Times and NPR Features Professor’s Work with Immigrant Students
Sociology Professor Nancy Foner teaches her students that some of life’s most valuable lessons are learned in the most unlikely of places at home. Each student is required to interview a close relative about the family’s recent history. Foner’s students, mostly immigrants or the children of immigrants, are absolutely amazed by the discoveries they are making.
One student, Aleksandr Akulov, learned that his mother had given up a promising career in mechanical engineering in Russia to migrate to New York, where she first found work in a laundromat. But shortly after her arrival, she earned a degree and now works as a senior accountant.
Another, Danila Rojas learned that his father fled poverty in Honduras by sneaking over the Mexican border and worked three jobs -- dishwasher, superintendent and construction worker. When speaking about his dad, Mr. Rojas said, “He never thought about himself, he thought about making things better for his family. I think most people today don’t think about more then themselves. It’s hard to be that selfless, especially in today’s world.”
“There’s kind of an image of immigrant kids born and raised in America as being kind of ashamed of their parents,” said Dr. Foner. “But these students are proud of their parents and their parents’ experiences. In some ways, the proudest students are those who had the most difficult time.”
For full story, click on: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/nyregion/16hunter.html?em
To hear interview with Professor Nancy Foner: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102039380
Obama Taps Hunter Alumni for Key Administrative Posts
President Obama has nominated Hunter alumnus John U. Sepúlveda (BA ’77) to be Assistant Secretary of Human Resources for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Sepúlveda brings to this position over 25 years of experience as an innovative leader in the public and private sectors.
Sepúlveda previously served as deputy director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) during the Clinton administration. In that office he led various initiatives to promote greater diversity throughout the U.S. government. While at OPM, he served on the White House Interagency Task Force on Asian American and Pacific Islanders, the President’s Council for Y2K Conversion, and the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency.
Early in his career, Sepúlveda taught political science at both his alma maters, Hunter College and Yale University, where he earned two master’s degrees.
President Obama has also announced his intent to nominate Hunter graduate, Lorelei Boylan (BA ’98) for Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division in the Department of Labor. Ms. Boylan is currently the Director of Strategic Enforcement at the New York State Department of Labor, Labor Standards Division. In this capacity she supervises the Apparel Industry/Fair Wages Task Force, a state-wide specialized unit charged with investigating low-wage industries where workers are at risk of exploitation.
Boylan practiced law as an Assistant Attorney General in the New York State Attorney General's Office. She graduated cum laude from Hunter with a degree in political science and received a J.D. from Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School.
Hunter Alumna Mildred Dresselhaus Wins Major Science Award
The National Science Board has presented Hunter alumna Mildred S. Dresselhaus (BA ’51) — once dubbed the “Queen of Carbon Science”-- with the prestigious Vannevar Bush Award. Dresselhaus is a national expert in the multifaceted field of carbon science.
The longtime Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor says she is excited every day for her “adventure with the endless frontier of science.”
The National Science Board (NSB) presents the annual award to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to “the welfare of mankind and the nation" through public service in science and technology.
Dresselhaus graduated from Hunter College High School and Hunter College before going on for graduate studies at Cambridge, Harvard and the University of Chicago. She joined the MIT faculty in 1967, when women comprised just four percent of the student population. She became a pioneer in the field of condensed matter and materials physics.
Dresselhaus is known for her work on carbon nanostructures and is credited with helping to spark resurgence in thermoelectrics research 15 years ago. Her investigations into superconductivity, the electronic properties of carbon and new physics at the nanometer scale have led to numerous scientific discoveries. She has won numerous awards and distinctive titles and worked to advance the role of women in the sciences.
Hunter Bio Major Named Goldwater Scholar
Alena Leitman, a junior majoring in biological sciences, is one of 278 college sophomores and juniors to be awarded a scholarship from the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation. The Goldwater Scholars were selected on a basis of academic merit from a field of 1,035 mathematics, science, and engineering students who were nominated by the faculties of colleges and universities nationwide. The scholarship covers the cost of tuition, fees, books, and room and board up to a maximum of $7,500 per year.
Leitman said that her career goal is to get a joint MD/PhD in biology so she can conduct biomedical research and “build my own laboratory at a hospital or university.”
The Goldwater Foundation is a federally endowed agency whose purpose is to provide a continuing source of highly qualified scientists, mathematicians, and engineers by awarding scholarships to college students who intend to pursue careers in these fields. The Goldwater Scholarship is the premier undergraduate award of its type in these fields.
Hunter Senior Receives Coveted Fellowship
The latest award granted to Catherine Zinnel (BA ’09) a member of both the Macaulay Honors College and the Thomas Hunter Honors Program, as well as a Jeannette K. Watson Fellow is a 2009 Humanity in Action Fellowship, which she will pursue this coming summer.
Humanity in Action (HIA) “works to build global leadership, defend democracy, protect minorities and improve human rights.” HIA sponsors educational programs for university and post-graduate students in the U.S., Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland, which are designed to “…inspire, engage and empower the human rights leaders of tomorrow.” One of HIA’s core programs is the paid summer Fellows program, which affords students the opportunity to study and travel abroad.
“I’m excited to study human rights in Europe with students from around the world. I'm particularly interested in exploring how urban planners can promote human rights and mediate conflict. The HIA Fellowship is the perfect opportunity,” said Zinnel.
The political science major also has local humanitarian experience, having had researched affordable housing policies with both the New York State Senate and the New York City Council. Following graduation and her HIA Fellowship, Zinnel will continue to advocate for affordable housing in New York City and pursue a master’s degree in urban planning.
