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Updating your
contact information: If you are an alumnus/a
of the Graduate Center, please send your new contact
information to develop@gc.cuny.edu.
Submitting Information to Alumni Notes: To
share information on your accomplishments, please email pubaff@gc.cuny.edu.
Be sure to provide us with your name (and your name
at time of graduation if different), degree received,
discipline, date of graduation, and news updates.
The Graduate Center’s newsletter, 365
Fifth, is now available to alumni via email. If
you would like to receive online copies of the newsletter,
please email
us. |
Alumni Survey Shows
Employment Trends
The results of a "Five-Year Post-Graduation Survey" of
Graduate Center alumni, conducted by the Office of
Institutional Research and Program Evaluation, are
in. Below is a summary of the data, showing employment
rates and distributions by type of job and field, for
alumni who received doctorates in 1999-2000:... [more] |
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Alumni Profiles Archives
Herman
A. Berliner |
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs,
Lawrence Herbert Distinguished Professor of Economics,
Hofstra University
CUNY Ph.D. in Economics, 1970
|
CAREER
PATH
I was graduate number six of the economics doctoral program;
when I started, the building on 42nd Street hadn't even
been renovated yet. I have worked in a whole host of positions
at Hofstra: assistant professor of economics, associate
dean of advisement, assistant provost, associate provost,
dean of the school of business, acting dean of education,
and finally provost. I'm now in my 15th year as the university's
chief academic officer; I've been here for thirty-five
years now. And I'm still having a terrific time.
ON STUDENT EVALUATIONS
When I began administrating at Hofstra, I was very interested
in replicating a program I helped start at City College
while I was a student there, whereby students evaluated
faculty. I'm still a great believer today that that's very
valuable. We have an expectation of scholarly productivity—but
when it comes to tenure and promotion, excellence in teaching
is still my number-one criterion.
ON THE GRADUATE CENTER
The reason I am where I am today has to do directly with
the advice and guidance I received during my time there.
A lot of my orientation as provost is based upon economic
thinking I learned as an undergraduate and then as a doctoral
student at The Graduate Center. When I look at budget and
contract matters, I really draw on my training as an economist.
It's been enormously useful.
|
Ramona
Hernández |
Associate Professor of Sociology, City College; Director,
CUNY Dominican Studies Institute
CUNY Ph.D. in Sociology, 1997
|
CAREER PATH
began teaching and research at UMass-Boston. The Latino
Studies department was newly created and I was the
only faculty member. So I was working hard, always
writing, always teaching. Then I found that the director
of the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute had accepted
another position, and I applied for it. I am here
24-7 now; I'm getting paid to do something I truly
enjoy.
CURRENT RESEARCH
The Dominican population of the U.S. is now 1.2 million,
the third-largest Latino group in the U.S. I am now looking
at how the blackness of color of skin affects Dominicans
in the labor market. Color does matter, we found. A "white" Dominican
does better than a "black" one from a socioeconomic
point of view. And what is really intriguing is, a Dominican
also does worse compared with a Colombian, a Puerto Rican.
We cannot understand why. Many people see Latino as a
single, homogenous group but it is not so. So the question
now is, why is being Dominican something that might be
a negative rather than a positive?
ON THE GRADUATE CENTER
The old building on 42nd Street truly felt like one big
family to me. I remember clearly the day we marched from
the building to the place where the graduation ceremony
was being held. We walked down the street, the police
stopped traffic, and everyone could see us—tourists,
businesspeople, beggars. All these different kinds of
people were lining up to congratulate us. I will never
forget it.
|
JaimeLee
Cohen |
Assistant Professor of Chemistry,
Pace University
CUNY Ph.D. in Chemistry, 2001
|
CAREER PATH
I started out as a medical secretary, and I realized
that I could do more. I thought I would study nursing.
I got my Associate's from Queensborough Community
College, then my Bachelor's and Master's from Queens
College, and my en route-Master's and Ph.D. from
The Graduate Center. I decided to send in my resume
to Pace as practice in searching for a job. That
was the only place I applied; I got a call from the
chair and was hired on the spot. Their organic chemist
of thirty years just happened to retire at that very
moment.
PRESENT RESEARCH
I'm collaborating with [Graduate Center faculty member]
Robert Engel and Karin Melkonian at C.W. Post. Our work
involves taking materials, including cloth, gauze, wood,
cork, and silk, and treating the surfaces of these fabrics.
We add antimicrobial agents that render the surfaces
anti-bacterial and anti-fungal. Our agent kills bacteria
on contact, and it killed 99.99 percent of anthrax spores
in our tests. The agent is cheap and effective, and it
doesn't wash off. Now we're working to market it. The
U.S. Army is interested.
ON THE GRADUATE CENTER
The Graduate Center was very helpful financially and
in sending us to professional conferences—we received
the opportunity to speak to audiences, which can be important
in a scientist's professional life. Both financially
and in terms of preparing me for a career, it was superb.
|
Garo
H. Armen |
President and CEO of Antigenics
CUNY Ph.D. in Chemistry, 1980
|
"Studying
science gives you the 'wiring' to be able to make determinations
that are based on good judgment."
CAREER PATH:
"I started out in science, with my graduate degree and
post-doctoral work, and, after a brief stint at Brookhaven
International Laboratories, I decided to go into the world
of finance. I was able to use my scientific background
in analyzing the highly technical chemical- and bio-sciences
industry, which was my specialty on Wall Street. I went
full circle, back to science, when I founded Antigenics
in 1993."
ON ANTIGENICS:
"Antigenics is primarily a cancer immunology company. We
are developing cancer vaccines, which are made individually
for each patient. The premise, which is borne from scientific
data, is that every person's cancer is a unique disease.
We take cancer tissue from surgery and harvest 'heat shock'
proteins, which carry individualized, unique signals, or
a 'fingerprint' of the person's cancer. Our product essentially
uses these signals to re-program the immune system to target
cancer cells."
WHAT'S NEXT:
"The next couple of years will bring an era of commercializing
the technologies that we've worked so hard to develop.
The prospect of being able to take something from the laboratory
to benefit patients and address a major unmet need is a
very exciting one. If all goes as planned, a cancer vaccine
could be available from Antigenics by the end of next year."
|
Carol
J. Oja |
William Powell Mason Professor of Music at Harvard University
CUNY Ph.D. in Music, 1985
|
"I
went to CUNY to study with H. Wiley Hitchcock, who remains
the eminent historian of American music. I also worked
with Barry S. Brook, and there was a host of luminaries
teaching at The Graduate Center in the late 1970s and 1980s."
RESUME INCLUDES:
Teaching at The Graduate Center and Brooklyn College in
the 1990s, before going to the College of William and Mary
in 1997. Appointed to Harvard's music faculty this year.
PUBLICATIONS INCLUDE:
Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s (Oxford
University Press, 2000). Currently editing a book with
another GC alum, Judith Tick, to be called "Copland's World," and
writing a book on Leonard Bernstein's work in musical theater.
ON MAKING MUSIC MODERN:
"The book looks at the generation of composers in America
who were coming of age in the 1920s, including Aaron Copland,
George Gershwin, Virgil Thomson, and many others. It's
a very rich period. New York was exploding with music in
all sorts of ways: race lines were being crossed, the high-low
divide was being challenged, and there was abundant newness,
enterprise, and daring in what composers were doing."
ON THE GRADUATE CENTER:
"New York gave me extraordinary access to composers and
concerts of contemporary music, and there was such a liberal
attitude at The Graduate Center about what a person could
specialize in, which was unusual in musicology at the time.
CUNY was a great place for studying American traditions
in music. It was one of very few places you could do this
and emerge with a credible degree."
|
Allyson
Purpura |
Curatorial Research Specialist at the Smithsonian Institution's
National Museum of African Art and co-curator of the exhibition, "Insights"
CUNY Ph.D. in Anthropology, 1997
|
"While
as a curator, it's your concept that you shepherd through
the whole process, meaning is really communicated in the
space of the exhibition--that's the collaborative work
of curating and design."
CURRENT EXHIBITION:
"'Insights' features groups of works from nine contemporary
African artists, drawn exclusively from our collection
here at the National Museum of African Art. It includes
about 40 works in a range of media. The premise of the
exhibition is to put the idea of 'ensemble' on display--showing
groups of works brings the creative process into view." ["Insights" is
on view through December 2004.]
PERSPECTIVE:
"The issues that most interest me here are questions of
the politics of representation, of how you tell stories
with objects. It's exciting to be able to tell these stories
and celebrate the aesthetic visions of contemporary African
artists to Smithsonian audiences--in most cases, this is
new for them."
ON GRADUATE STUDIES:
"I spent 22 months in Zanzibar doing research for my dissertation
on Islamic knowledge. That kind of experience--living in
Africa and working on a Ph.D.--teaches you how to turn
empirical data into some kind of narrative that speaks
to wider issues beyond your day-to-day observations in
the field. Similarly, at a museum, you've got to be able
to relate your exhibition and the art object to a wider
set of issues and debates." |
Adrienne
Munich |
Professor of English and Women's Studies, SUNY Stony Brook
CUNY Ph.D. in English, 1976
|
"Culture
adjusts the facts of individual lives and social events
to accord with its ideologies, frequently in paradoxical
ways. My research focus is on Victorian literature and
culture. Queen Victoria's Secrets (Columbia University
Press, 1996) is a study of how Victoria invented a new
form of monarchy and permeated the culture of her time;
and I'm co-editor of Victorian Literature and Culture,
published by Cambridge University Press. My other books
include Andromeda's Chains: Gender and Interpretation
in Victorian Literature and Art; Arms and the Woman:
War, Gender, and Literary Representation; and Robert
Browning: Critical Essays. I am co-editing with Melissa
Bradshaw, a former student of mine, a book of selected
poems by Amy Lowell, an early 20th-century American modernist,
and my collection of critical essays on Amy Lowell will
come out in 2003. I am presently also working on a book
on the meaning of diamonds in the 19th century.
"My professors at The Graduate Center, aware of the challenges
facing a mother and part-time student, were able to make
me feel there was room for me in the profession. I owe
a tremendous debt to CUNY."
|
James
L. Kugel |
Harry Starr Professor of Classical and Modern Jewish and
Hebrew Literature, and Professor of Comparative Literature,
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations,
Harvard University
Director, Institute for the Study of the Hebrew Bible and
Meiser Professor of Bible, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan,
Israel
Recipient of The Graduate Center's first Distinguished
Alumni Award in 2002
CUNY Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, 1977
|
Kugel,
a celebrated biblical scholar, sought-after lecturer, and
renowned teacher at Harvard, is also a frequent visitor
to Israel, where he holds a professorship in Bible at Bar
Ilan University in Ramat Gan. A specialist in the history
of biblical interpretation, he is the recipient of many
awards and prizes, among them the 2001 Grawemeyer Award
in Religion for two of his books, The Bible As It Was (1997)
and Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible As
It Was at the Start of the Common Era (1998). He is
also the author of five other books including On Being
a Jew (1990) and In Potiphar's House (1990),
and some forty research articles. His course "The Bible
and its Interpreters" is one of the most popular at Harvard,
with an enrollment of 900-1000 students.
|
Robert
Kaplan |
Professor of Biology, Reed College
CUNY Ph.D. in Biology, 1978
|
Named
Outstanding Baccalaureate College Professor for 1996-97
by Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education
(CASE)
"Some of my former students are my colleagues now, and
that's wonderful. But working with students at a small
liberal arts college, I've learned to try to respect the
kind of education, the kind of life, each student wants.
Even very talented students have the right not to be pressured
to become, say, research scientists.
"I have a personal predilection to be out in the field
and study nature where it actually happens, which is not
in the lab. Being at The Graduate Center was like having
access to five universities -- the faculties of each of
the colleges, plus the American Museum of Natural History.
Stan Salthe and Paul Maderson at Brooklyn College were
great, rigorous professors. You could tell these were not
just local guys: they were connected to the community of
scientific scholars." |
Bruce
Saylor |
Professor, The Graduate Center and the Aaron Copland School
of Music, Queens College, CUNY
Composer
CUNY Ph.D., Music, 1978
|
"I
have not been an ivory tower composer. For the last 25
years I have written everything on commission. Interesting,
even offbeat compositional projects stimulate my creative
juices, as do collaborative activities. I can write fast
when I have to, but remain a meticulous craftsman.
"Some of the high notes of my career have been writing
compositions marking President Clinton's 1997 swearing-in
and Pope John Paul II's visit to New York in 1995; serving
as Composer-in-Residence at Lyric Opera of Chicago; and
being awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
"Within the last three years I've had three premieres:
my fourth opera The Scrimshaw Violin in New York
in 2001; Proud Music of the Storm for chorus and
orchestra for the Nashville Symphony in 2002; and Stretto after
Paul Celan at the 92nd Street Y in 2003.
"I went to CUNY to study with three great figures in American
music: composer George Perle, the Pulitzer Prize winner
and MacArthur "Genius"; opera composer Hugo Weisgall, one
of our most forceful spokesman for American music; and
theorist Felix Salzer, who invigorated Schenkerian analysis
in the U.S. Each one is a devoted teacher and a powerful,
inspiring personality.
"I am now at work on several projects: a violin concerto
for Gil Morgenstern for a 2004 premiere; a piano trio;
and for a festival at Queens College in the fall of 2003,
a setting of the poetry of YevgenyYevtushenko, which I
will fashion for mezzosoprano Constance Beavon, who founded
the Art Library at CUNY and who is also my wife." |
Ephraim
Feig |
Chief Technology Officer and Chief Marketing Officer
CUNY Ph.D., Mathematics, 1980
|
Ephraim
Feig is Chief Technology Officer and Chief Marketing Officer
at Kintera (NASDAQ: KNTA), a software-as-a-service provider
to nonprofit organizations.
He received a PhD in mathematics from The City University
of New York, and has spent 20 years at IBM conducting basic
research and developing products and solutions in the areas
of e-business applications, image and video coding, magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI), signal processing, coding for
communication and storage, radar, and design of algorithms
for fast computation.
He is a Fellow of the IEEE (Institute for Electrical and
Electronics Engineers), an Executive Committee Member of
the IEEE Computer SocietyÕs Technical Committee
on Service Computing, a member of IBMÕs SMB (Small
and Medium Businesses) Advisory Board, an Associate Editor
of the International Journal of Web Services Research,
and a Master Trainer of the ePhilanthropy Foundation.
He is author of 19 US patents and over 20 pending applications,
over 100 technical articles, and numerous more non-technical
articles in trade magazines. He has taught at seven institutions
of higher learning, including Columbia University, The
City College of New York, and New York Polytechnic. |
Anthony
M. Johnson |
Director, Center for Advanced Studies in Photonics Research
Professor of Physics and Professor of Computer Science
and Electrical Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore
County
CUNY Ph.D. in Physics, 1981
|
"Currently
(2002) I am the 67th President of the nearly 16,000 member
Optical Society of America. In addition, I recently completed
6 years as editor-in-chief of Optics Letters, one
of OSA's world-class journals. None of this would have
been possible without the first-class graduate education
that I received at City College / CUNY Graduate Center
undergirded by the Bell Laboratories Cooperative Research
Fellowship Program. In 1981 nearly 1000 physics Ph.D.s
were granted to U.S. citizens. Only 4 of these Ph.D.s were
granted to African-Americans -- I was one of the four!
Similarly abysmal statistics could also be cited for other
minority groups and women. Today, more than two decades
later, the number of physics Ph.D.s granted annually to
an under-represented minority rarely exceeds 10 nationally.
In addition to continuing a state-of-the-art program in
ultrafast optics and optoelectronics, I hope to provide
a nurturing environment to enhance the production of physics
Ph.D.s granted to under-represented minorities and women."
|
Sharon
E. Sutton |
Professor of Architecture, Urban Design, and Planning,
and Director, Center for Environment, Education and Design
Studies (CEEDS), University of Washington, Seattle, and
fellow in the American Institute of Architects
CUNY Ph.D. in Environmental Psychology, 1982
|
In
1994, after ten years on the faculty of the University
of Michigan, Sharon E. Sutton became the first African-American
woman to be a full professor of architecture in the U.S.
She is today the only woman among six African-American
architects in Seattle. Her achievements have been recognized
by her elevation to Fellowship in the American Institute
of Architects (1995), receipt of the Distinguished Professor
Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture
(1996), and induction into the Michigan Women's Hall of
Fame (1997).
As a young woman, Dr. Sutton became concerned with issues
of race, environment, and social change, and she soon realized
that both individuals and communities benefit when children
and adults organize and intentionally seek to transform
their surroundings. "Powerlessness, in both poor and affluent
neighborhoods, comes from ignoring a problem and letting
someone else fix it," she said. Her belief in the possibility
of social change through control of one's environment is
reflected in two books: Learning Through the Built Environment:
An Ecological Approach to Child Development (1985),
and Weaving a Tapestry of Resistance: The Places, Power,
and Poetry of a Sustainable Society (1996).
In 1998, she moved to Seattle to join the faculty at the
University of Washington, and to head the Center for Environment,
Education, and Design Studies (CEEDS). Under her dynamic
leadership, CEEDS confronts the issue of race in a constructive
way by bringing together K-12 and university students,
design educators and practitioners, government officials,
and residents to address timely community design problems.
Dr. Sutton claims that her experience as a doctoral student
at The Graduate Center has had a lasting impact. "I am
an effective educator because I had a great doctoral education
that encouraged me to integrate my roles of artist, teacher,
scholar, and community activist."
|
Brian
Boom |
Senior Science Development Officer and Honorary Curator,
The New York Botanical Garden
CUNY Ph.D. in Biology, 1983
|
"Upon
obtaining my doctorate from CUNY in 1983, I held a variety
of curatorial and administrative appointments at The New
York Botanical Garden. Those experiences could be plenty
complex, but then I recently took my current position based
at Columbia University, and now complexity has a whole
new meaning for me.
"My position, Associate Director for Research of CERC (Center
for Environmental Research and Conservation) has me dealing
not just with botanical topics, but also zoological, microbial,
earth sciences, sociology, anthropology, and economics!
CERC is a consortium consisting of the American Museum
of Natural History, Columbia University, The New York Botanical
Garden, Wildlife Conservation Society, and Wildlife Trust.
Just to get a grasp of the breadth and depth of the intellectual
talent and physical resources in the consortium, not to
mention those of our collaborators around the world, makes
for very stimulating challenges.
"My Ph.D. training at CUNY was excellent preparation for
the career I have had over the past two decades, and I
believe it has positioned me well for what lies ahead:
a research environment that is increasingly interdisciplinary
and multi-institutional in composition, and scientific
and social problems that are ever more complex and begging
a team approach to their solution."
|
Lorraine
G. Hiatt |
Independent consultant on the design of facilities and
programs for seniors
CUNY Ph.D. in Environmental Psychology, 1985
|
"Life
as a consultant places one in surprising contexts. I work
with conservative religious groups one day and more culturally
liberal ones the next. Or, one group is low income, and
another has piles of money. Being able to work with diverse
problem sets keeps me interested and alive.
"A recently completed project of mine -- I have 30+ others
I'm working on -- is The Village at Waveny Care Center
(in New Canaan, Connecticut; the subject of a New York
Times feature). This facility for caring for people
with memory impairment contains a residence, which consists
of four 13-14 person 'neighborhoods' or assisted-living
suites, and a large common area called Main Street with
open store-front style spaces. With its character of a
New England town, Main Street provides safe, interesting
things to do each day and a sense of serendipity.
"The Graduate Center was an embracing community. Once a
person entered, the support for a student's area of interest
never flagged. While in those days there was no one who
did what I wanted to do (i.e., work on actual projects
all the time, without necessarily being on a faculty),
the faculty and students understood. We were mostly focused
on developing questioning or research tools to tackle tough
problems."
|
Patricia
Chapple Wright |
Professor, Department of Anthropology, and Executive Director,
Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments
(ICTE), SUNY-Stony Brook
Research Associate, Duke University Primate Center
Executive Director, Consortium for Research and Training,
Madagascar
MacArthur "Genius" Award, 1989
CUNY Ph.D., Anthropology, 1985
|
"When
I was a doctoral student, I studied mammals at the Museum
of Natural History and the Bronx Zoo and tropical botany
at The New York Botanical Garden. Warren Kinzey, my adviser
at The Graduate Center, who is now deceased, and John Oates
provided me with a much broader education than you get
in anthropology or physical anthropology departments. They
taught me to look not just at primates but at the whole
ecosystem.
"In 1986, after I earned my Ph.D., some colleagues and
I were in Madagascar and we discovered a new species, the
Golden Bamboo Lemur. I was looking for the greater bamboo
lemur, a gray animal with white ear tops. Then I saw a
red animal on the bamboo; I remember this animal twirling
its tail around like a windmill and making a sound I had
never heard before and then it was gone! Such an amazing
thing! I knew I had never seen it before, I knew I had
never heard it before. This discovery paved the way to
my establishment of Ranomafana National Park in 1991, a
43,500 hectare reserve of primary rain forest and Madagascar's
third national park. Inspired by Warren Kinzey's wish that
I take over some of his students, I organized the SUNY
Institute for Conservation of Tropical Environments to
support research in this park. So far seventeen Ph.D.s
from ten universities (including CUNY), 87 master's theses,
and 298 scientific publications have come out of it.
"In 1989, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
made me a MacArthur Fellow, and in 1995 I was awarded the "Chevalier
d'Ordre National" (National Medal of Honor of Madagascar)
from the President of Madagascar. When you win a MacArthur,
you don't know who nominated you, who wrote the recommendations.
So you've got to be nice to everybody for the rest of your
life! Any of my colleagues could be the one who wrote the
letter that made it possible!" |
Peter
J. Delfyett |
University Distinguished Professor of Optics, Electrical
and Computer Engineering, and Physics; School of Optics/Center
for Research and Education in Optics and Lasers; University
of Central Florida
Winner, 2000 Black Engineer of the Year Award
CUNY Ph.D. in Engineering, 1988
|
"I
do research in the area of ultra-fast photonics, dealing
with the generation of very short bursts of light. We process
information using these light bursts. In the same way that
computers use electrons to move information from here to
there, we believe we can do a better job, moving more information,
perhaps even more cost-effectively, with light. We use
semi-conductor lasers, the size of a human hair, and we
can send a trillion bits of information per second from
one little laser device, through glass, by turning the
laser on and off extremely quickly.
"In our lab, we just recently showed that we could transmit
a terabit of information (a trillion bits of information
per second) using one little laser, and that is a world
record. How much information is this? About 25,000 books
the size of the Bible -- boom -- in a second. That would
also be about 20,000 cable TV channels.
"The Graduate Center gave me an opportunity to perform
cutting-edge, state-of-the-art research. I studied with
Distinguished Professor Robert Alfano at City College,
and the facilities and infrastructure that Professor Alfano
had were the world's best. If you're in that kind of environment,
you can really exercise creativity and push the forefronts
of knowledge." |
Ted
Selker |
Associate Professor, M.I.T. Media Laboratory
Director, Context Aware Computing Group
Worked for IBM (1985-99), Xerox PARC, and Atari Research
Labs
IBM Fellow 1996-99
CUNY Ph.D. in Computer Science, 1992
|
"My
Context Aware Computing Group strives to create a world
in which our desires and intentions are enough to cause
computers to act on our behalf. My work has produced some
20 issued patents. Some recent prototypes include a bed
that has a computer in it; an electronic threshold that
is an administrative assistant; and dice for teaching children
about mathematics. I continue to put technology into machines
that get produced. The Graduate Center was wonderful because
it allowed me to integrate my academic and professional
work. My dissertation committee chair, Miriam Tausner,
was a great mentor. I couldn't have wished for a more insightful
and helpful advisor." |
Ewa
Lajer-Burcharth |
Professor of History of Art, Department of History of Art
and Architecture, Harvard University
CUNY Ph.D. in Art History, 1993
|
"While
writing my first book, Necklines: The Art of Jacques-Louis
David After the Terror, I discovered that David's painting, The
Sabine Women, was originally exhibited in front of
a huge pivoting mirror, which I saw as a connecting device,
both literal and metaphorical, between art and society.
When I took part in a BBC series called Art of the Western
World, they rented the Louvre and a mirror, and filmed
me in front of the painting explaining my interpretation.
"For my next book I am examining the 18th century notion
of the self, particularly the idea of the relation between
selfhood and sexual difference. By the 19th century, bourgeois
culture had created unambiguously defined expectations
of what men and women should be and how each sex should
behave. But in the 18th century, sexual difference was
understood in many complicated, unstable, and ambiguous
terms.
"I have two areas of interest: 18th and 19th century art
and contemporary art. Having these two specializations
keeps me sane. If I were to find a point at which my interests
converge, it would be the notion of the body, the self,
and sexual difference. For example, contemporary art emphasizes
the way in which the self can be imagined in relation to
technology, and examines the question of what it means
to live in the era of the ubiquitous monitor.
"The Graduate Center was a fantastically important school
for me, because academic life mingled with the necessities
of everyday adult life. All of us did something besides
study -- we taught, wrote, lectured -- and everything was
connected. Also being in New York allowed me to keep alive
my contemporary art interests. That remains the great advantage
of The Graduate Center--it's right in the middle of the
city." |
Claude
Brathwaite |
Project Administrator, NYC Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority
Participation
CUNY Ph.D. in Chemistry, 1994
|
"At
the Louis Stokes Alliance, we're trying to increase the
number of minority students who come to CUNY for science,
math, engineering, and technology. We want them to understand
that their ideas are currency. Maybe out of 15 ideas, one
will work, but they have to continue to generate ideas.
And for the ideas to spring up, they have to listen to
other researchers, attend seminars, and read the literature.
"The great thing about The Graduate Center is its at-large
faculty. I enjoyed being able to sit in on a biology class
or pick up a chemistry seminar that wasn't on my home campus.
The different CUNY campuses are mostly a subway ride away.
"While an undergraduate student, I played on the City College
varsity soccer team. That team was like the UN. We had
players from Afghanistan, Russia, Jamaica, Antigua, and
El Salvador. Even though we came from different cultures,
we all understood how to play together.
"During my formative years, in my high school chemistry
lab, I tried to make 'soda pop' by mixing bicarbonate,
acid, and some food coloring. I drank it, but no one else
would. It was one of many unauthorized experiments. Thinking
back now, it was pretty dangerous. After that, my interest
in chemistry continued." |
Janice
Hamer |
Composer
CUNY Ph.D. in Music, 1994
|
"For
the past few years, I've been engaged in the demanding
and fascinating project of composing a full-length opera, Lost
Childhood, based on a Holocaust memoir by Yehuda Nir.
To Nir's wartime story of his experience as a hidden child,
my librettist Mary Azrael and I have added a dialogue between
the survivor, looking back fifty years to his boyhood during
the war, and a German born after the war to a prominent
Nazi-sympathizing family. The dialogue is inspired by the
real-life friendship between Nir and Gottfried Wagner,
great-grandson of Richard Wagner, who publicly criticizes
Wagner and his descendants and who is our stage director
and dramatic advisor. This contemporary layer allows us
to address such post-Holocaust issues as how two people
from opposite sides of the abyss (any abyss, not necessarily
this historical one) can confront their fears, guilt, denial,
and need to mourn and learn to listen to each other.
"This is an all-consuming project, not only musically but
also intellectually and emotionally. I've had to steep
myself in the Holocaust, reading memoirs and history, talking
to survivors. We are lucky to have the support of American
Opera Projects, a development company that offers workshop
performances as we write, giving us a chance to test our
work. New York City Opera included us in their annual series
of readings of new operas-in-progress. Now in the final
phase, we are seeking an opera company to bring the work
to production.
"Composing an opera wasn't in my mind when I did my doctoral
studies at The Graduate Center. But my preoccupation as
a composer, then as much as now, was with the combination
of voice with instruments, for which I had mentoring from
two distinguished composers. Thea Musgrave, my composition
teacher, has written many operas and profoundly understands
the interaction of voices and instruments. David Del Tredici,
my orchestration teacher, imparted principles based on
his extensive, successful writing for orchestra.
"The Graduate Center provided a climate of intellectual
rigor and stimulation. My studies of set- and twelve-tone
theory with Joseph Straus and of Schenkerian analysis with
Carl Schachter provided a kind of ear-training that continues
to clarify my own compositional procedures. And in my consideration
of musical and textual meaning and implications, Leo Treitler's
remarkable insights and influence remain prominent." |
Catherine
Liu |
Mellon Fellow
Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and Comparative
Literature and Associate Professor of French and Italian,
University of Minnesota
Visiting Professor of French and Comparative Literature,
Bard College, 2002-03
CUNY Ph.D. in French, 1994
|
"I
published my first novel in 1997, and I'm finishing revisions
on a second novel, Suicide of an Assistant Professor, which
will be published by The Other Press in 2004. I also published
a book of theoretical and scholarly essays on 17th- and
18th- century French literature: Copying Machines: Taking
Notes for the Automoton (Univ., of Minnesota Press,
2000). Recently I updated the Random House Modern Library
translation of Hunchback of Notre Dame. The Graduate
Center was a place that allowed me to conceive of myself
as a scholar and a writer in the broadest and most interesting
terms. And having the resources of New York City around
was an unbelievable advantage." |
Lowery
Stokes Sims |
Executive Director, Studio Museum in Harlem
CUNY Ph.D. in Art History, 1995
|
"Being
activist-minded, I decided I could best make an impact
through curatorial work. Academe tends to stereotype museum
curators as second scions of wealthy families, social butterflies.
But you cannot make choices about forming a collection
or an exhibition without having a good solid background
in art history.
"As for breaking into museum work, the ignorance of youth
is your best armor. I just sent my résumé to
museums, put on my best dress, white gloves, and a little
bag (this was the 1970s, after all), and showed up at the
Personnel Department.
"I felt that the fit for me, as a working professional,
at The Graduate Center, was perfect. The Ph.D. Program
in Art History was always a department that supported students
who had professional careers, and I loved the size and
diversity of the faculty."
Photo: Robert Hale |
Carlos
Ramírez-Sosa |
Assistant Professor of Biology, Saint Lawrence University
CUNY Ph.D. in Biology, 2001
|
"I'm
interested in issues of knowledge of medicinal plants in
El Salvador and how that knowledge is transferred from
generation to generation. Lately very few ethno-botanists
have studied the question of who is actually doing the
job of telling children about medicinal plants.
"I'm studying a medicinal plant that is only found in a
small forest there. People use it to treat cholera symptoms.
It's found nowhere else in the world, and I want to see
how the species is maintaining itself in, basically, this
patch of forest. I'm interested in the ecology and the
reproduction of the plant. We don't know how many people
are using it, and it's in danger.
"For my dissertation, I did a forest inventory, an ecological
study of what is probably one of two forests still remaining
in El Salvador. I have about 174 species of trees in my
study. I tagged them all with permanent labels, so my plan
is to go back and repeat the study and see how the forest
is maturing. I will eventually re-do the entire inventory
to study what we call 'forest succession.' I expect to
go back in about two years.
"My family moved to New York City from El Salvador in 1980
and we started a new life. The new life included attending
college, and I went to Lehman College for undergraduate
work. I then went to Michigan State University for a master's
degree in Botany. Later, I got my Ph.D. at The Graduate
Center. Lehman was my home campus, and I studied in the
joint program with The New York Botanical Garden, so I
took advantage of three of the great places to be for someone
in my field. I received the Humana Fellowship, which was
what made my Ph.D. possible." |
Vincent
Henry |
Former NYC Police Officer
Now Associate Professor, Department of Criminal Justice
and Sociology, Dyson College-Arts and Sciences, Pace University
CUNY Ph.D. in Criminal Justice, 2002
|
"Police
have so much to do with death. They confront death--their
own mortality and the mortality of others--on a regular
basis. And those kinds of confrontations change the
individual. My dissertation was
called 'The Police Officer as
Survivor: The Psychological Impact of Exposure to
Death in Contemporary Urban Policing.' It was the
first systematic exploration of police officers'
encounters with death. I defended it before September
11th, before this became such a compelling issue.
I'm now finishing an adaptation of it for publication
by Oxford University Press, tentatively titled 'Deathwork:
Police, Death, and the Psychology of Survival.'
"I just retired from the NYPD, where I worked for 21
years, and made the transition to academia, which is
a whole new world. I've come out of a very rigid organization--very
intense, goal-oriented, and fast moving--into an area
that's much more relaxed. I've had a foot in both worlds
for a while, and I'm comfortable moving back and forth
between the two.
"During my years at The Graduate Center, I was very
happy and gratified to study under such people as,
among others, Robert Jay Lifton, Distinguished Professor
Emeritus of Psychology and Criminal Justice; James
Levine, Professor of Political Science and Criminal
Justice; Dorothy Bracey Professor of Criminal Justice.
I really feel as if I got a world class education at
a public university." |
Brian
O'Neill |
Associate Professor of Criminal Justice, West Chester University
of Pennsylvania
CUNY Ph.D. in Criminal Justice, 2001
|
CAREER
PATH:
After college I did social work with teenagers for ten
years before deciding that I wanted to teach and needed
an advanced degree. Now I teach in a criminal justice program
which has 350 enrolled students, and I'll be teaching a
college class on race and criminal justice in Graterford
Prison, Pennsylvania's largest maximum security prison.
ON "EL PADRE Y LOS HOMIES":
This one-hour radio documentary which I produced combines
my long-standing interest in radio with my knowledge and
study of the criminal justice field. It records the work
of Father Greg Boyle with the fierce gangs in Los Angeles.
Through his help many gang members become contributing
members of society. I use it in my classes on theories
of criminal justice and juvenile delinquency because it
refutes all the stereotypes of gang members. My students
are astounded when they hear it.
ON THE VALUE OF RADIO DOCUMENTARIES:
This medium reaches people who would not read academic
journals or go to academic conferences. My documentary
has been played on seven radio stations, including WBGH
in Boston.
ON GRADUATE STUDIES:
The program was excellent. I could take electives at different
schools; I wasn't limited to John Jay. The faculty members
had such diverse interests, and in New York you get the
best of the best. I enjoyed the class experience and just
being in the City was very stimulating.
|
Arthur
B. Weglein |
Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor
of Physics, University of Houston
CUNY Ph.D. in Physics, 1975
|
CREATIVITY:
To do truly creative things, you have to trust your intuition,
jump outside the box, beyond logic.
WORKING FOR THE INDUSTRY:
For twenty years, working for the petroleum industry, I
helped identify new sources of oil, mostly found today
in deep water. We found a way to remove the multiply reflected
energy from signals sent into the ocean so that it became
easier to identify what was beneath the earth's surface.
DEFINING THE PROBLEM:
I learned to trust the operating units, the people working
hands-on in the oil rigs. They pinpointed the real problems
more succinctly than other researchers.
PRESENT RESEARCH:
In the Mission-Oriented Seismic Research Program we are
developing methods to see underneath a medium, particularly
under bodies of salt where oil is often found. People looking
for tumors and those looking for oil have similar objectives
and methodologies. Despite leading edge medical imaging,
surgeons can cut into people and find nothing, or what
they find is at variance with their imaging diagnostics.
Our research can help with that. We publish in journals
that people outside of petroleum read.
ON DOCTORAL STUDIES:
I earned a B.S. from City College where my professors were
role models for a whole world of civility different from
the South Bronx of my youth. I then went on to the doctorate
at The Graduate Center where, because of CUNY's unique
consortium, I was able to continue my studies at City College,
working with such leading researchers in physics as Marvin
Mittleman and Harry Soodak.
|
Jill
Beck |
President, Lawrence University, Wisconsin
CUNY Ph.D. in Theatre, 1985
|
CAREER
PATH:
As a director of dance repertory, I wanted to learn about
diverse directing techniques, and when I started teaching
at CCNY in 1979, I was able to simultaneously work my way
through grad school. The Graduate Center's Ph.D. Program
in Theatre supported dance research under the greater umbrella
of studies in theatre. My study of dance notation led into
a very enjoyable career reconstructing repertories from
various countries and companies. I joined the Juilliard
faculty in 1985 and taught there and at CCNY until the
mid-1990s when I was drawn into administration and arts
education.
ON BEING AN ADMINISTRATOR:
I have turned my life towards providing increased access
and quality in higher education. I do a lot of public speaking.
My theatre background made it possible for me to lead effectively,
work collaboratively, develop vision, and to maintain the
public personality to implement all of that.
ON FOUNDING ARTSBRIDGE AMERICA:
In this outreach program in arts education, university
students are placed in K-12 classrooms as instructors and
mentors. Our pilot program began with seven students. Now
there are 1,000 in 17 institutions in 10 states.
ON DOCTORAL STUDIES:
I remember The Graduate Center with blazing affection.
The quality of education I received there was exceptional,
and it equipped me to do what I've been doing ever since.
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