Conntections Vol.3 No.2

connections New York City College of Technology

Spring 2011

Vol. 3, No. 2

connections

Students’ Water Quality Research Yields Surprising Results Top Honors in 2010 International Restaurant Show

Dale Tarnowieski Editor-in-Chief Jeramie Barber Managing Editor

Research Casts Light on Asteroid Deflaction A National Response to Childhood Obesity NSF Grant for String Theory Research

Connections is the online magazine of New York City College of Technology, 300 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201-1909. Š 2011. All rights reserved.

Jewel Escobar Michele Forsten Contributing Editors Jamie Markowitz Graphic Designer

Fall 2010 Poster Session

STUDENTS’ HUDSON RIVER/GOWANUS CANAL WATER QUALITY RESEARCH YIELDS SOME SURPRISING RESULTS While their peers were going to beaches and lakes to get a respite from the summer 2010 heat, a group of New York City College of Technology students were going to the water, too — to the Gowanus Canal and the Hudson River. Under the direction of City Tech Professors Urmi Ghosh-Dastidar (mathematics) and Liana Tsenova (biological sciences), the nine students found that one of the Hudson River sites had surprisingly high levels of E. coli.

The project, “Bio-Math Mapping: Water Quality Analysis of the Hudson and Gowanus,” provided the students the opportunity to combine mathematics with epidemiology, microbiology and environmental studies through a four-week investigation of water quality in nearby bodies of water.

Their research included one day of gathering water samples from six different sites along the Hudson River and Gowanus Canal. Then, the project shifted indoors to a City Tech microbiology lab where the students tested and analyzed the water samples for the total number of bacteria and coliforms (including E. coli) present to gauge the level of fecal contamination of the two waterways. In addition, antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) were examined.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the water quality of the Gowanus Canal is currently extremely polluted and poses a serious threat to public health. In contrast, the water quality of the Hudson, a major recreation

water source, is “generally acceptable.” However, the students found statistically significant variations of E. coli and ARB among the Hudson River sites due to the varying levels of human and business activities along the shorelines.

While at most of the Hudson River sites sampled, the water was within the allowed range for recreational purposes, water taken from the 79th Street in Manhattan site showed E. coli counts high enough to suggest that an advisory needs to be issued. The Gowanus Canal water samples, on the other hand, showed higher numbers of total bacteria and lower levels of E. coli.

Students were able to see how the industrial waste and toxic material present in the canal have caused a decrease in oxygen levels, making it difficult for organisms requiring oxygen to live and reproduce. Both Professors Ghosh-Dastidar and Tsenova agree that further analysis of each site is recommended and they are hoping to receive funding to continue the project with their students.

This water quality research project was funded

by City Tech’s National Science Foundation (NSF) Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Talent Expansion Program (STEP) grant. Three of the nine students were supported through the CUNY Louis B. Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) grant. The Hudson-Gowanus project culminated with the students presenting their findings in Pittsburgh at MathFest 2010, an event organized by the Mathematical Association of America.

The Fall 2010 Poster Session at New York City College of Technology featured the results of 85 faculty and student research projects. The Poster Session has become a tradition at the College, and last fall’s session featured research in the areas of architectural, biology and health sciences, business, chemistry, computer science and engineering technology, hospitality, the humanities, library science, mathematics and physics.

Speakers included City Tech President Russell K. Hotzler, Provost Bonne August, Dean of Curriculum & Instruction Sonja Jackson, Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences Pamela Brown, and Dean of the School of Professional Studies Barbara Grumet, Esq. The event was funded in part by a grant from the City Tech Foundation.

For a complete listing of Fall 2010 Poster Session research topics, click here.

http://www.citytech.cuny.edu/alumni

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City Tech to Create NSF-Supported Mechatronics Technology Center and Increase Mentoring of High School Robotics Teams The words “mechatronics/robotics technology center” are now being heard on the New York City College of Technology campus thanks to a National Science Foundation (NSF) Advanced Technological Education (ATE) grant of $771,022 to establish just such a facility.

The three-year grant enables City Tech faculty members and students, as well as high school pupils, to participate in multidisciplinary engineering activities. For example, City Tech faculty members have the opportunity to train local New York City high

school students and teachers to develop innovative entries for the annual FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition. And City Tech students are working in teams to design and fabricate their own robots.

“Mechatronic technology has been identified as one of the most important emerging technologies of the 21st century,” says Mechanical Engineering Technology Professor Andy Zhang, project director and member of the New York City FIRST planning

committee. “There are 36 NSF-funded ATE centers around the country but none of them are in New York State. We hope we can be the first to turn the Mechatronic Technology Center into a NSF ATE center in New York.”

Mechatronics is a new product design field involving the integration of mechanical components, electrical/electronic systems, industrial design ideas, computer-control systems, embedded systems and intelligent software. It requires engineers, technicians and designers from diverse disciplines to possess broader knowledge beyond their specialized fields and to collaborate as a team. Robotics is an example of a mechatronic product.

Along with Professor Zhang, Mechanical Engineering Technology Department Chair Sidi Berri and Computer Engineering Technology Professors Iem Heng and Farrukh Zia will lead the project. They will adapt the successful program developed by the Robotics Academy at Carnegie Mellon University to the City Tech context, and expect to have the City Tech mechatronics technology center up and running by next fall.

In the meantime, they are offering free workshops, co-sponsored by New York City FIRST, to train City Tech faculty and students as well as high school teachers and corporate employees interested in mentoring high school robotic teams. They also offer sessions to train high school students participating in robotic competitions, including two student teams from City Poly High School, a school adjacent to the City Tech campus that the College helped launch in 2009 and in which the College remains actively involved.

WOMEN’S CENTER AND WOMEN’S COMMITTEE HOST SHARE PRESENTATION AND PERFORMANCE

BY ACCLAIMED ACOUSTIC GUITARIST Ivis Febus-Sampayo is a breast cancer survivor and has been director of the Latina SHARE program for the past 17 years. SHARE, or Self Help for Women with Breast or Ovarian Cancer, is an organization specializing in support, educational and advocacy services to women dealing with both forms of cancer. In her oncampus presentation in November 2010, Ms. Febus-Sampayo spoke about SHARE’s services and about the strong spirit of survival that so many women share.

Entertainment was provided by Francisco “Pancho” Navarro, who took a huge risk when he uprooted his family and moved to New York

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City from his native Argentina. His gamble paid off handsomely for the talented acoustic guitarist, and his résumé now includes recording and concert work for everyone from Placido Domingo to Celia Cruz, from Christian Castro to the Rolling Stones. His Soundbrush Records debut solo album, “Sweet Guitar,” featured little-known South American songwriters as well as a few of Navarro’s own elegant compositions.

The event was sponsored by the City Tech Women’s Center and Women’s Committee, and made possible, in part, by support provided by the City Tech Foundation.

CITY TECH RECEIVES U.S. DEPT. OF EDUCATION FUNDING FOR INTERNATIONAL NURSING EDUCATION PARTNERSHIP “Advancing nursing education in the areas of end-of-life palliative care (pain management) and medical selfmanagement (patients’ own management of their healthcare) is a key to raising the quality Dr. Patricia A. Cholewka of healthcare in the U.S. and abroad,” says Dr. Patricia A. Cholewka, assistant professor of nursing at New York City College of Technology.

Dr. Cholewka is project director of a new two-year policy oriented measure entitled, “Integrating Self-Management and Palliation Concepts (IMPACT): Health Policy and Nursing Education Implications.” This

project, funded by the U.S. Department of Education (DOE), seeks to discover and technologically disseminate best practices in palliative care and self-management nursing education here and in the European Union (EU).

City Tech will collaborate with Case Western Reserve University (Ohio), University of Dundee (Scotland) and Lithuanian University of Health Sciences (Lithuania, formerly Kaunas University of Medicine) on this study with the support of a grant from a Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) USEU/Atlantis Grant. City Tech’s proposal was one of seven policy-oriented measures to be funded during this cycle.

The collaborating educational institutions will work to create a trans-national, transcultural matrix of best practices in

FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON HEADLINES KLITGORD CENTER CUOMO PRE-ELECTION RALLY

Former President Bill Clinton and New York State Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo were on campus on Wednesday, October 27, 2010, for a Get Out the Vote Rally in New York City College of Technology’s Klitgord Center Gymnasium.

In addition to vigorously endorsing Cuomo, Clinton detailed the Democratic

Party’s ideals and objectives and the challenges confronting government at all levels at a critically tough time in the nation’s history. Cuomo, who served as the youngest Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in history during the Clinton presidency in the 1990s, talked about the difficult decisions facing New York’s next governor.

Other speakers and participants included U.S. House of Representatives members Carolyn Maloney, Jerry Nadler and Nydia Velázquez, former New York City Comptroller Bill Thompson, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, Cuomo running mate and Rochester Mayor Robert Duffy, and City Tech President Russell K. Hotzler, who talked about the importance of participating in the electoral process and of voting to an overflow audience estimated at more than 1,200 City Tech students, faculty and staff, many local, state and national officials, and hundreds of Democratic faithful.

evidence-based palliative care delivery to underpin policymaking. Their findings will be disseminated widely through professional nursing organizations in the US and EU. Then, these partners will begin curriculum studies on palliative care across their national nursing programs.

“Medical self-management and palliative care are among the fastest growing specializations in the fields of nursing and medical education in both the United States and the European Union,” Dr. Cholewka adds. “Our partners bring to the table complementary expertise arising out of their different education systems, healthcare delivery systems and cultural approaches to end-of-life care. We feel we can produce recommendations that will impact healthcare policy on two continents.”

‘Hip-Hop, Politics and Youth Empowerment’ Was Topic of Black Solidarity Day Observance City Tech students, faculty and staff observed Black Solidarity Day on November 1, 2010, with accomplished scholar and educationist Dr. David Kirkland of New York University, Mr. Chuck “Jigsaw” Creekmur, co-founder and co-CEO of AllHipHop.com, and City Tech faculty member Dr. Tshombe Walker, all of whom spoke on the topic of “Hip-Hop, Politics and Youth Empowerment.”

Prior to the presentations, City Tech Professor Diane Wilson discussed the origins of Black Solidarity Day and students in City Tech’s Black Theater class performed. The event was co-sponsored by the Department of African American Studies, Black Male Initiative, Coalition of Black Faculty & Staff, Black Students’ Union and Black Women’s Networking Committee. The annual event was made possible, in part, by a grant from the City Tech Foundation. http://www.citytech.cuny.edu/alumni

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‘LIVING LABORATORY’ OF BROOKLYN WATERFRONT, DIGITAL LEARNING FOCUS OF $3.1 MILLION GRANT AWARDED TO CITY TECH

City Tech’s Title V team includes, front row (from left): Emma Moll, Peter Spellane, Shelley Smith; back row (from left): Barbara Burke, Julia Jordan, Matthew K. Gold, Robin Michals, Maura Smale, Daniel Wong. Not pictured: Provost Bonne August, Tammie Cumming and Richard Hanley.

New York City College of Technology’s students, faculty and curriculum will connect to the dynamic “living laboratory” of Downtown Brooklyn in new and creative ways thanks to a $3.1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education (DOE).

Professor Matthew K. Gold (English) is leading a project entitled “A Living Laboratory: Redesigning General Education for a 21stCentury College of Technology.” Building on a series of recent grants to City Tech from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) that have supported interdisciplinary study of Brooklyn’s shores, this project will help the College take advantage of its prime location at the foot of the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges.

“We’re taking an approach to learning that utilizes the natural and built environments around City Tech – and their social, cultural, environmental, political, professional and literary histories – as our classroom. In doing so, we build on faculty expertise in place-based education and student interest in new technologies,” Professor Gold explains.

The grant was awarded by the DOE’s Strengthening HispanicServing Institutions (HSI) Title V Program, which has the goal of improving retention and graduation rates of Hispanic and lowincome students. For City Tech, the additional goal is to prepare students for leading roles in the cutting-edge technological and professional workforce.

Toward this end, Gold and his team of faculty and administrators from across the College will conduct four major activities: a redesign of City Tech’s general education curriculum to enrich connections between the courses taken by students throughout their years at the College; the creation of a state-ofthe-art digital platform for teaching and learning; the integration of comprehensive outcomes assessment into the curriculum; and

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the establishment of a restricted endowment to support the recently-created Center for the Study of the Brooklyn Waterfront.

“City Tech’s new digital platform will forge bonds among students between courses, deepening their engagement with course materials,” Gold notes. ”It will also make the shared intellectual culture of the institution more visible to the College itself and to the wider public.”

The newly established Center for the Study of the Brooklyn Waterfront, whose three-fold mission is research, education and public programs, will be central to the new grant. Says Gold, “At a time when New York’s waterways and waterfront spaces are undergoing rapid redevelopment and redeployment, the Center will promote original scholarship that seeks to understand those changes from historical and interdisciplinary perspectives.”

The project team includes Professors Robin Michals (advertising design and graphic arts-ADGA) and Shelley Smith (architectural technology), who will steer work on general education, organizing annual seminars; Professors Maura Smale (library) and Daniel Wong (ADGA), who will spearhead the creation of the new digital platform; Tammie Cumming, director of assessment and institutional research, who will promote a culture of assessment across the curriculum; and Professors Richard Hanley (English) and Peter Spellane (chemistry), who will direct work done through the Center for the Study of the Brooklyn Waterfront.

Also playing key roles in creating this project are Provost Bonne August, Professor Julia Jordan, acting director of City Tech’s Faculty Commons, Ms. Barbara Burke, director of grants and contracts, and grants officers Patty Barba Gorkhover and Eleanor Bergonzo. The project will be evaluated by Professor Thomas F. Nelson Laird of the Indiana University School of Education.

‘IS CIVIL SOCIETY POSSIBLE IN A RADICALIZED, POLARIZED POST-ELECTION AMERICA?’ FOCUS OF BARBER LECTURE AT CITY TECH

Dr. Benjamin R. Barber

Last November, at New York City College of Technology, Dr. Benjamin R. Barber, one of the country’s major public intellectuals and an advisor to political leaders around the world, gave a lecture entitled “Is Civil Society Possible in a Radicalized, Polarized PostElection America?” An internationally renowned political theorist and author of more than 17 books exploring the role and function of democracy in modern societies, Dr. Barber’s work includes the international bestseller Jihad vs. McWorld, the controversial memoir The Truth of Power: Intellectual Affairs in the Clinton White House, Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole, and the classic Strong Democracy, reissued in 2004 in a 20th anniversary edition.

“Dr. Barber’s work,” said City Tech English Professor Camille Goodison, who coordinated the presentation, has always reflected his concern for democracy. Through his books and many articles for publications like Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Nation, The American Prospect, Le Nouvel Observateur, Die Zeit, La Repubblica and El País, Barber shares his interest in the ideals of citizenship, in particular its connections to issues of politics, culture and education in this country and abroad.

“As we are now seeing with rioting students in England and in other parts of Europe,”

Goodison added, “the world is in crisis. The economic crisis which began two years ago has led to civil unrest around the globe. Here in the U.S. this is further heightened by a country that grows ever more divided, ever more polarized and ever more angry. Dr. Barber addressed this growing disturbing trend towards ‘uncivility’ in his City Tech lecture. He first identified five essentials for a functioning society which values its members, then gave reasons showing how each condition has been weakened. For example, he talked about how civility and community had been weakened by multiculturalism, deliberation by antiintellectualism and sovereignty by globalization. Finally, he made suggestions for how we could look at each of those conditions, mostly by focusing on the greater problems we all share, and which threaten our future security unless they are resolved.”

Goodison noted that Dr. Barber began his talk by pointing out that the great diversity of City Tech’s student body prefigures the direction in which the United States is moving. He also noted, however, that unfortunately this trend is not universally welcomed by many Americans who view the ongoing advent of a multicultural nation as a threat that fills them with dread and cultural anxiety. It is these feelings that have recently contributed to a polarization of the American public that threatens civility and, with it, democracy itself.

In his talk, Dr. Barber went on to note that American democracy had been in crisis even before the recent midterm elections. This crisis is connected to structural trends, such as the globalization and growing cultural diversity that have in many ways forced us to rethink our traditional understanding of community and how we see ourselves as a nation. While providing a sobering analysis of the state of the country, he ended on a positive note by pointing out that reversing this crisis of belonging, of civility and of democracy is still possible through actively engaging with our neighborhood associations, community organizations and workplaces.

City Tech Conducts ‘Spooktacular’ Research at Last October’s ‘Haunted Hotel’ More than merely providing the many thrills and chills that have enthralled audiences for years, City Tech conducted research in October 2010 that examined emotional reactions to unusual experiences in conjunction with its Gravesend Inn Haunted Hotel theme park-quality attraction.

The hi-tech Gravesend Inn was produced by Theatreworks, City Tech’s resident theatrical troupe, with design, construction and operating support provided by students and faculty of the College’s nationally unique Department of Entertainment Technology. This highly popular Halloween attraction has been thrilling children and adults alike since 2000.

“We work hard each year to improve our audience’s experience,” said City Tech Entertainment Technology Assistant Professor and Theatreworks Production Manager Sue Brandt. “This year, we conducted research to examine emotional reactions to unusual experiences in conjunction with Gravesend Inn. Audience members had to be 18 and over to participate in the bonus research experience.”

New surprises awaited participants in the form of the attraction’s Haunted Suites: “Who or What Lurks Behind Those Closed Doors?” and “Beware of Ghosts in Your Midst!!” According to visitors, Gravesend Inn just keeps on getting scarier and scarier. http://www.citytech.cuny.edu/alumni

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ACCLAIMED SEATTLE POET AND NEW YORK PLAYWRIGHT LEAD CREATIVE WRITING CLASSES

Roberto Ascalon

Acclaimed poet Roberto Ascalon was on campus in October 2010 to lead New York City College of Technology Professor Jane Mushabac’s 1141 Creative Writing class.

Ascalon performed three of his poems and led the class in a discussion of the poet’s voice in his work, in Jamaica Kincaid’s poem “Girl,” and in the students’ own writing. “Girl” is a mother to daughter’s 63-line harangue and advice poem that covers everything from washing white clothes to making ends meet.

After student Kimberly La Force read the poem aloud to the class, all the students wrote their own advice poems in their distinctive voices, and with sass and detail.

“The students were great,” Ascalon later told Professor Mushabac, “keyed in and full of life. They exhibited great energy and profound feelings, and it was such an honor to be witness to that.”

A native New Yorker, Ascalon is a poet, arts educator and spoken-word performance artist who resides in the historic Youngstown/Cooper School in West Seattle, Washington. He uses his love of craft to transform the world that surrounds him and connects with audiences via universal narratives that encompass an array of topics. He has competed with two Seattle national Slam Poetry Teams and performed across the country with his unique perspective on love, language, race and culture.

He teaches young people in Seattle through organizations such as Writers in the Schools, The Richard Hugo House and Arts Corps.

On November 11, 2010, award-winning playwright Greg Keller led Mushabac’s class. In preparation for Keller’s workshop, three students each played a part in “Dutch Masters” during the previous class meeting for a onehour reading of Keller’s poignant, wry and startling play. In it two boys of high school age meet on a Bronx-bound D train in 1992, the black kid inviting the white kid to get off the train with him for a smoke, and the white kid agreeing to go along despite the risks entailed.

“Dutch Masters” was produced at the LAByrinth Theater Company in May 2010, and will be performed at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in summer 2011. Much of the November 11 class was devoted to the students’ lively series of questions of the playwright about writing the play, the language of the black kid, elements of actual vs. imaginative experience in the play, and how much of the play was planned when the author began writing it.

Keller said some playwrights like to plan everything before they start writing, but he avoids doing that because he would rather set his characters going to see where they take things. Writing the play itself becomes a process of discovery, and he himself feels a kind of suspense as to how things will end up.

Another play of Keller’s, “The Seduction Community,” was performed at The Juilliard School, where he was a Lila Acheson Wallace Playwrighting Fellow and two-time recipient of the Lecomte Du Nouy Prize. Keller’s play “The Millers” was workshopped at The Colony, in Missoula, Montana, in July, and he is currently a semi-finalist for P73’s 2011 Playwrighting Fellowship. Keller wrote the lyrics for the hip-hop musical “Hater High” with writer/director Robert O’Hara.

Professor Mushabac has won a fellowship to write fiction from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and three PSC-CUNY Research Foundation grants in creative writing. Her stories and essays have been anthologized and have appeared in periodicals such as Chautauqua and Modern Philology. Her dramatic work has been performed on National Public Radio, at Jazz at Lincoln Center, and on tour in many cities here and abroad in Tovah Feldshuh’s “Tovah: Out of Her Mind!” A Short and Remarkable History of New York City, which Mushabac co-authored with Angela Wigan, is in its fifth printing.

The Ascalon and Keller presentations were made possible, in part, through support provided by the City Tech Foundation’s Distinguished Lecture Series Fund.

B. J. Denihan Tapper and Skifteri Lectures Draw Capacity Crowds On September 16, 2010, Lloyd Tapper, IT project manager with Denihan Hospitality Group and a graduate of the CUNY BA program at City Tech, was the first B. J. Denihan Lecture Series guest speaker. Mr. Tapper chronicled his days at City Tech, where he “received a solid education” that provided “the tools needed for upward mobility in the work place.”

Then, on October 7 Ekland Skifteri, a City Tech graduate and assistant director of housekeeping at The Intercontinental NY Times Square, was guest speaker at the lecture series’ second fall semester

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presentation. In his talk, Skifteri advised students at school and on the job “to work hard and keep your eye on the prize and good things will happen to you.”

Each semester Hospitality Management Professor Patrick O’Halloran hosts two B. J. Denihan lectures that feature leading hospitality industry professionals and are open to the entire College community and general public. The series is named for the founder of Denihan Hospitality Group, which owns and operates 13 hotels in New York, Chicago and Washington D.C. – Affinia Hotels, The Benjamin and The James.

Pictured from left are Professors Claire Stewart, John Akana and Marta Effinger-Crichlow, Nick Master, Lloyd Tapper, Professor Patrick O’Halloran, hospitality management student and B. J. Denihan Club President Sharada Winston, Gladys Roldan from City Tech’s Information Services Center, Professor Robert Cermele and Professor Amit Mehrotra

CITY TECH MARKS KRISTALLNACHT, END OF WWII ANNIVERSARIES WITH PRESENTATION

BY AUTHOR ANN KIRSCHNER New York City College Inner Force Student of Technology marked Leadership Institute, the 72nd anniversary of introduced Dr. Kirschner, Kristallnacht and the while Joel Levy, director 65th anniversary of the of development at the end of WWII on Vera Institute of Justice November 11, 2010, and former New York with a presentation by regional director at the Ann Kirschner, PhD, Anti-Defamation League author of Sala’s Gift: (ADL), presented the My Mother’s Holocaust awards to Dr. Blobel and Story, and the Mr. Jacobs. Other guest speakers included Dr. presentation of Horst Freitag, New York humanitarian awards Consul General of to Nobel Prize winner Kirschner with her mother, Sala Germany.

Günter Blobel, MD, PhD, and Interfaith Sala’s Gift recounts a Committee of Remembrance (ICOR) secret that Dr. Kirschner’s mother kept from founder and chairman Jerry Jacobs. her family for nearly 50 years – a priceless Dr. Kirschner spoke movingly about how collection of more than 350 letters and a her mother, Sala, had volunteered as a diary from her years in several Nazi young and adventurous teenage girl to concentration camps, documents that she report for what she thought would be a had kept carefully hidden in a cardboard six-week assignment in a Nazi work camp box. The book is about what happened to in place of her older sister. Sala’s Gift is the her in those camps, to the letter writers, story of the five terrible years Sala spent in and to Dr. Kirschner when her mother seven different labor/concentration camps shared the documents with her. and what kept her hopes alive for all that Günter Blobel, MD, PhD, is the John D. time. Of an extended family of 50 Rockefeller, Jr. Professor and an members, only Sala and two of her siblings investigator at the Howard Hughes survived the Holocaust, which claimed the Medical Institute (Laboratory of Cell lives of an estimated 11 million Jews and Biology) at Rockefeller University. He was other men, women and children. the 1999 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Gary V. Ellis, MD, co-founder and Physiology or Medicine for his discovery executive director of the Brooklyn-based that proteins have intrinsic signals that

govern their transport and localization in the cell. In 1994, Dr. Blobel founded Friends of Dresden, Inc., a charitable organization with the goal of raising funds to support the reconstruction of that German city decimated during World War II, and later donated the entire sum of his Nobel Prize to support the rebuilding of Dresden.

Jerry Jacobs is founder and chairman of the Interfaith Committee of Remembrance (ICOR) and executive producer of the annual Interfaith Holocaust Remembrance Concerts at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The son of a violist and assistant conductor of the pre-war Lodz Symphony who died in the Holocaust, Jacobs was a child survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. The St. John concerts are one of the ways Mr. Jacobs brings further attention to the abominations of the Holocaust in the hope of preventing future such horrors from happening.

The November event at City Tech was co-sponsored by the New York City College of Technology Foundation, Facing History and Ourselves, Interfaith Committee of Remembrance, Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, CUNY Macaulay Honors College, New York City College of Technology Honors Scholars Program, New York City College of Technology Office of Student Life & Development and New York City College of Technology Faculty Commons.

City Tech Fall 2010 Open House An estimated 1,500 prospective freshman, transfer, nonmatriculating and Continuing Education students, their parents and other family members attended New York City College of Technology’s Fall 2010 Open House on November 14. An information session in the College’s Klitgord Center Auditorium provided a wealth of information on the 62 degree and specialized certificate programs, scores of adult education and other educational opportunities offered at City Tech.

Speakers included City Tech President Russell K. Hotzler, Provost Bonne August and Paul Dorestant,

director of recruitment. The program also featured a media presentation, “Where Can Technology Take You?” produced by graphic designer Al Vargas and special presentations by computer systems technology graduate Eric Watts ’04 and Regina Ceo, financial aid counselor.

All three schools and the Division of Continuing Education were well represented and faculty and staff from all academic departments later met one-on-one with prospects and their parents in the College’s sprawling Klitgord Center Gymnasium. The afternoon concluded with departmental and campus tours as well as Q&A sessions.

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STUDENT ACHIEVERS MAKING THEIR MARK ON AND OFF CAMPUS

City Tech Student Was Finalist in National Cyber Security Awareness Week Competition City Tech computer systems technology student Ibrahim Sanou, 30, was named a finalist in the fall 2010 Cyber Security Awareness Week (CSAW) national student competition Quiz Tournament hosted by neighboring NYU-Poly in Downtown Brooklyn. Sanou, a native of Burkina Faso, West Africa, previously was a finalist in the 2009 CSAW competition and the only student of African descent in the 2010 finals.

Sponsored by the federal government and private sector companies, the CSAW competition participants will lead the next generation of computer science professionals who think of proper cyber-security measures as a necessity, not an afterthought. The Quiz Tournament tests the breadth and depth of their knowledge in a broad range of digital security topics, including network security, cryptography, malware, application and web security, protocols, the history of digital

security, digital forensics, policy, risk management and standards.

City Tech Professor XiangDong Li, coordinator of the College’s Security Course Module and NSF S-STEM program director, has helped to prepare students to participate in the national CSAW competition for several years. Previous City Tech student participants have done exceedingly well, and Pedro Peralta, who graduated in 2009 and is now employed as a security analyst for Goldman Sachs, placed second in the competition finals in 2008.

Students from some of the country’s top universities entered the final competitions, including NYU, Carnegie Mellon, Yale, Columbia, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Penn State, the University of Massachusetts, Case Western Reserve, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Georgia Institute of Technology,

CITY TECH FARES WELL IN NATIONAL SURVEY OF STUDENT ENGAGEMENT Results of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) administered at City Tech in 2009 show that City Tech students reported both greater satisfaction in key areas and higher levels of engagement in the learning process than the national norms, according to Tammie Cumming, the College’s director of assessment and institutional research.

On average, City Tech senior baccalaureate students reported greater satisfaction than did their counterparts elsewhere with respect to their engagement in active and collaborative learning. Students learn more, Cumming confirms, when they are intensely involved in their education and asked to think about what they are learning in different settings.

City Tech’s first-year baccalaureate students reported greater satisfaction than most other students participating in the survey with respect to the opportunities provided them to learn in a supportive campus environment. Cumming adds that students perform better at colleges that are committed to their success and that cultivate positive working and social relations among different groups on campus.

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the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Michigan. Sanou was in competition with students from some of them.

Sanou transferred from Borough of Manhattan Community College with an associate degree in computer and network technology and plans to pursue a master’s in cyber security following graduation from City Tech in June 2011. He is a trained student leader through City Tech’s NSFfunded S-STEM program.

City Tech Student Veterans Again Participate in 2010 Veterans Day Parade City Tech Professor Paul Schwartz, faculty advisor to the College’s Student Veterans Club, and student veterans Derrell Lee, Cathy Cortijo, La-Toya Smith, Victor Correa, Matthew Tsu, Kimberly Alonzo, John Liang, Ralph Harrison, Jacquetta Washington and Compton Grose joined more than 100 other CUNY student veterans and supporters on the CUNY Veterans float in New York City’s 2010 Veterans Day Parade on November 11.

MORE STUDENT ACHIEVERS City Tech Student Anna Acevedo Chosen for Malave Leadership Academy From helping her fellow students adjust to college and answering immigrants’ legal questions to working with survivors of domestic violence and rape, City Tech senior Anna Acevedo has demonstrated her talents as a leader time and again.

Her efforts were recognized last fall by The City University of New York’s Ernesto Malave Leadership Academy, which chose her from among hundreds of nominated students as one of 25 Malave Fellows for the 2010-11 academic year. Formerly the CUNY Leadership Academy, the program was renamed in memory of the late Ernesto Malave, former CUNY vice chancellor for budget and finance and a CUNY alumnus who devoted himself to mentoring and encouraging student leadership.

As a Malave fellow, Acevedo participated in weekly seminars with her peers and faculty from across CUNY to hone the skills, knowledge and experience necessary

Anna Acevedo

to develop leaders who will serve the city, state and nation with distinction.

Acevedo, a human services major, has distinguished herself as a volunteer and a mentor, both in the greater community and within City Tech. For the past six years, she was a volunteer advocate for survivors of

domestic violence and rape for the Mount Sinai Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention program. She also was a mentor for the Women’s Prison Association.

“Volunteering has exposed me to grassroots movements, public speaking and individual and community outreach,” she says. “The value of volunteering is immeasurable. Besides the satisfaction of making a difference, this unselfish act can help you develop skills that will enhance employment opportunities and give you a window into new career paths.”

Acevedo’s advocacy work at City Tech has taken many other forms. She has served as a senator in City Tech’s Student Government Association, is an active Women’s Center committee member and also helped provide immigration information as a volunteer for the CUNY/Daily News Citizenship Now! Call-in Initiative.

NINE CITY TECH STUDENTS NAMED ‘TEACHERS AS LEADERS PROJECT’ SCHOLARS Nine City Tech Black Male Initiative students received Teachers as Leaders Project (TALP) scholarships – the largest number of students from any City University of New York college to earn the awards for the fall 2010 semester.

Geared to cover student tuition and education-related expenses, the scholarships were offered with the generous support of the Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation and the Schott Foundation for Public Education.

In addition to the monetary awards, the students participated in New York State Teacher Certification Examination (NYSTCE) workshops as well as those in career development, public policy and clinical education. In addition, they were mentored by current and former New York City public school teachers.

Most of the current City Tech TALP scholars who were part of the program in previous semesters have passed all three teacher certification exams. The others, whose academic majors range from applied mathematics, computer systems, liberal arts and sciences, and human services, attended workshops last fall and then took the NYSTCE. The fall 2010 City Tech TALP scholars were Salim Arfaoui, Marlon Bailey, Evita Belmonte, Andrea Emmanuel, Gemma Hyacinth, Travion K. Joseph, Mark McCalmont, Sherma A. Soodeen and Michael Taiwo. For many of these students, the $2,500 scholarship, renewable for up to eight semesters of full-time study, was their only source of funding.

City Tech TALP scholars, from left: Travion K. Joseph, Michael Taiwo, Sherma A. Soodeen, Mark McCalmont, Kurt Sealy and Andrea Emmanuel

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MORE STUDENT ACHIEVERS NURSING STUDENTS HELP ORGANIZE ‘SENIOR NEW YORKERS ALIVE AND WELL HEALTH FAIR’ In November 2010, City Tech nursing students helped organize and host a “Senior New Yorkers Alive and Well Health Fair” at the Stein Senior Center in Manhattan, which serves hundreds of seniors each day. The Health Fair was a collaboration between Assistant Professor Aida Egues, RN, Department of Nursing students in her Community Health Nursing course, and Stein Center staff. The fair was designed to support the optimal health of seniors, while providing nursing students with an opportunity to engage in service learning.

Community and health care reps were available to discuss matters associated with bone, counseling, dental, dietary, emergency, heart, medication, nursing, nutrition, physical rehabilitation, vision, and other health issues. The New York City

Department for the Aging, Hospital for Special Surgery, Kings County Rehabilitation Center and Paramedic Services from New York PresbyterianCornell Medical Center were among the 22 health care organizations providing Stein clients with a vast array of guidance and information. Other City Tech faculty and staff were on hand to present on a variety of issues of interest to seniors, including Dr. Gwen Cohen-Brown, DDS, from the Department of Dental Hygiene, Professor Lynda Dias from the Department of Hospitality Management, and Ms. Cynthia Bink, director of counseling services.

Over 200 senior citizens attended the event, as well as Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer, District 4 Councilmember Daniel R. Garodnick, and members of the office of Assemblyman

Pictured: Aida Egues, Gwen Cohen-Brown, Lynda Dias

Brian Kavanaugh. “This was an incredible event for our seniors,” said Stein Senior Center Executive Director Jane Barry.

“What Dr. Egues and her students have managed to put together in such a short amount of time to serve our community is nothing short of phenomenal.”

CITY TECH NURSING STUDENTS MAKE FRACAS OVER FRACKING New York City College of Technology nursing students in the RN-BS program concluded a successful petition drive to enforce a temporary moratorium on hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”). More than 1,000 letters were signed by City Tech students, faculty and staff and sent to Albany.

Fracking, which mines natural gas resources and poses a severe threat to the New York City’s watershed, has contaminated millions of gallons of water, increased air pollution, and caused worker fatalities and numerous health problems for people who live near the drilling sites.

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The focus of the students’ advocacy was to protect New York City’s watershed. City Tech students and faculty involved in the petition drive are shown here with Josh Fox (center), director of the award-winning documentary Gasland, which uncovered a trail of secrets, lies and contamination concerning fracking.

In December 2010, New York Governor David Paterson vetoed a bill intended to curtail natural gas development using the fracking technique. However, the governor issued an executive order instituting a moratorium on fracking through July 1 of this year while additional research is being conducted.

MORE STUDENT ACHIEVERS CITY TECH TEAM TAKES TOP HONORS IN 2010 INTERNATIONAL RESTAURANT SHOW

CITY TECH ROBOTICS TEAM ATTENDS OCTOBER 2010 NSF ATE CONFERENCE IN WASHINGTON, DC

The College’s Team at the 2010 Restaurant Show

Competing in the Salon of Culinary Arts at the 2010 International Hotel/Motel & Restaurant Show at Javits Center in November, the New York City College of Technology student team took top honors in the Complete Buffet category, which features work from both the savory and confectionery kitchens. The students were able to participate through the generous support of a City Tech Foundation grant.

The College’s 2010 Confectionery Team was supervised by Department of Hospitality Management Professors Mark Hellermann, Anthony Smith ‘96 and Louise Hoffman. The theme was the “Brooklyn Botanical Gardens” and included works in various mediums – chocolate, sugar, pastillage, a wedding cake and two occasional cakes.

City Tech’s Garde Manger Team was supervised by Professors Thomas Harris and Jean Claude and created a number

of classical platters of formal meat, game and fish displays. City Tech earned the Grand Prize of the Salon, The Marc Sarrazin Award. This was the fifth year in the past eight years that City Tech earned the top prize.

Professor Hoffman competed in the Wedding Cake category and earned a First Place Blue Ribbon for her wedding cake.

Competing last year for the Medal of the French Government in pastry was City Tech graduate Ebow Dadzie ‘03, pastry sous chef at the Marriott Marquis. This was Dadzie’s third year in the competition, which he won.

Alumna Amanda Stiles ‘09 also competed in the Javits Center event and took a Second Place Prize for a lovely wedding cake. Stiles owns her own cake design business, Cake Stiles, and is planning to compete in the 2011 U.S. Pastry Competition.

Pictured here are City Tech students Maria Vanegas, Carla Araile, Anthony Francis and Peter Segal with Professors Iem Heng, Andy Zhang, Sidi Berry and Farrukh Zia at the October 27-29, 2010, National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education (NSF ATE) Conference in the nation’s capital.

NSF’s ATE program provides grants to improve and expand educational programs that prepare skilled technicians to work in the high-tech fields that drive the U.S. economy.

In addition to exhibiting several grant-funded applications of computer and mechanical engineering technology to robotics developed on campus, the City Tech team kept busy acquainting other conference participants from educational institutions, businesses and industries nationwide with the College’s forthcoming Mechatronics Technology Center. The new facility will enable students to participate in multidisciplinary engineering activities.

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FACULTY NEWS CITY TECH’S BENJAMIN SHEPARD ON ‘PLAYBOY’ LIST OF NATION’S 20 ‘MOST INNOVATIVE’ PROFESSORS

New York City College of Technology’s faculty has distinguished itself with awards like Fulbright grants to teach or conduct research.

Now, it has another kudo, as Assistant Professor of Human Services Benjamin Shepard has made Playboy magazine’s list of the 20 most innovative professors in the nation.

Shepard is a “street theorist,” according to the publication’s “2010 Honor Roll” article in the October issue. It credits him with not just studying the role of performance and play in social activism – he tests it for himself.

Shepard made the list along with professors from schools such as MIT, Stanford, UC, Berkeley, and Brown University who, according to Playboy, are “reinventing the classroom and shaping a future generation.”

Shepard holds a doctorate in social welfare from the CUNY Graduate Center and was trained at the William Alanson White Institute of

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Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology and the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration. He has been involved in social activism since the early 1990s with such groups as AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), SexPanic!, Reclaim the Streets, Times UP, the Clandestine Rebel Clown Army, the Absurd Response Team, Housing Works, the More Gardens Coalition and the Times UP Bike Lane Liberation Front as well as community garden organizations.

“The point of activism,” he says in the Playboy article, “is to make the conversation of democracy an interesting one.”

Shepard began writing about the AIDS crisis and published his first book, White Nights and Ascending Shadows, in 1997, and then co-edited From ACT UP to the WTO: Urban Protest and Community Building in the Era of Globalization in 2002. His forthcoming works include: Play, Creativity, and Social Movements: If I Can’t Dance It’s Not My Revolution, the second part of his study on play, as well as The Beach Beneath the Streets: Contesting New York’s Public Spaces (co-author). Shepard also is preparing an additional volume on creativity and community building for Sage.

“I study play. So it is fun to be selected by Playboy, a publication which has always featured great articles,” explains Shepard. “I was particularly touched that the magazine both designated me a ‘street theorist’ and featured a photo of the Brooklyn waterfront near City Tech.

“New York’s public spaces are both pulsing and in constant flux,” he adds. “Through City Tech, I enjoy a rich vantage point from which to consider the space from the street to the waterfront, between commerce and construction, at the intersection of work and play.”

Hospitality Management Professor Karen Goodlad Inducted into Les Dames d’Escoffier New York City Tech Hospitality Management Professor Karen Goodlad, was one of eight new members inducted into The New York Chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier at a ceremony and reception held in September 2010 at the Mandarin Oriental in Manhattan. At the College, Professor Goodlad teaches food, beverage and hospitality courses and is widely regarded as an expert in fine wines.

Les Dames d’Escoffier New York, with 136 members, is the founding and largest chapter of a unique professional culinary society that became Les Dames d’Escoffier International, with 27 chapters and 1,500 members in the U.S. and Canada. It was founded in 1976 by prominent food journalist Carol Brock and its mission is advocacy, education and philanthropy. It strives to achieve these goals through programs and activities conceived and implemented by a fully-engaged membership.

Les Dames d’Escoffier awarded over $90,000 in scholarships in 2010.

VOICES Toward a National Response to ‘Childhood Obesity’ Jean F. Claude, MA, CCE, CHE Associate Professor Department of Hospitality Management ore and more adult Americans are beginning to eat lighter, healthier diets that emphasize foods higher in fiber and lower in fat. Those who adopt diets which include more vegetables, fruits, grains and legumes and less meat and fewer eggs can expect to live longer, healthier lives and possibly avoid heart diseases, cancer and other debilitating conditions. But what can we do to help the younger generation?

Childhood obesity is a growing concern in the United States, with nearly 18 per cent of 12 to 19 year olds, for example, considered obese, according to a National Health and Nutrition Examination survey. There are many factors that contribute to obesity, including poor diet, inactivity, hereditary traits and socio-economic status.

More often than not hereditary traits are the least common contributor to childhood obesity, while diet, lack of exercise and socio-economic status contribute more to a youngster’s expanding waistline. One could imagine it this way: a family making less than $20,000 a year would have a more difficult time providing its household with higher quality foods. The children would then receive subpar foods packed with chemicals and artificial flavors.

Factor in that a family with a smaller income would most likely live in a neighborhood where many schools are no longer able to fund sports teams or even a gym class.

M

all of the various factors that contribute to childhood obesity. The campaign is designed to engage every sector of society that impacts the health of children in providing schools, families and communities with the simple tools they need to help kids be more active, eat better and get healthy.

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At City Tech, the Department of Hospitality Management is working diligently to develop new courses in nutritional and vegetarian cooking to be unveiled with the opening of our new state-of-the-art teaching kitchen.

Fighting against childhood obesity falls on the shoulders of both government and citizens. Recently, First Lady Michelle Obama challenged the nation to change its eating habits and to start fighting childhood obesity. She initiated Let’s Move – a comprehensive, collaborative campaign and community-oriented initiative that addresses

Parents of obese children have the responsibility to be more conscious of the foods they purchase and make available to their little ones. Children need to consume fewer processed goods and more fresh fruits and vegetables, fewer carbonated beverages and more water. Parents who can do so also can grow their own vegetables and include their children in the process, as the First Lady

did with her kids and other youngsters. In participating in this manner, the children take on a sense of responsibility over what they do and don’t eat.

Culinary schools need to develop curriculums to educate future generation of chefs in cooking with healthier alternative ingredients. At City Tech, the Department of Hospitality Management is working diligently to develop new courses in nutritional and vegetarian cooking to be unveiled with the opening of our new state-of-the-art teaching kitchen. Students and faculty also are working with local farmers in performing cooking demos, developing new recipes using fresh ingredients while teaching new cooking techniques to patrons in the marketplace.

Professional chefs need to educate restaurant diners and develop menus that reflect locally grown produce, advocate nutritious and low-calorie dishes designed to promote health, longevity and long-term weight management. And all of us need to remember that we are what we eat. http://www.citytech.cuny.edu/alumni

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Who’s News?

Professor Mary Alice Browne, chair of the Department of Radiologic Technology & Medical Imaging, was honored by Brooklyn’s Mount Moriah Baptist Church in October 2010 for her dedicated service to New York City College of Technology and the radiology industry at a black tie affair held at Russo’s on the Bay. In September, Professor Browne was preselected for inclusion in the 2011 edition of National Registers Who’s Who, which each year recognizes leading executives, professionals and organization in all disciplines for superior business and professional achievements.

Professor Richard Hanley, English, project director of the National Endowment for the Humanities-funded Landmarks workshop Along the Shore: Changing and Preserving the Landmarks of Brooklyn’s Industrial Waterfront, was part of a December 8, 2010, panel discussion following a Museum of the City of New York screening of New Work, two contemporary 3D short films capturing the City of Newark,

NJ, and the Brooklyn Waterfront by award-winning filmmakers Marylou Tibaldo-Bongiorno and Jerome Bongiorno.

Professor Louise Hoffman, Hospitality Management, won a First Place blue ribbon for her wedding cake in the 2010 International Hotel, Motel & Restaurant Show in November at Javits Center in Manhattan.

The event is the largest hospitality industry trade show in the world, attracting an estimated 35,000 industry professionals and other visitors.

Assistant Professor Niloufar Haque, Biological Sciences, was profiled in the “Faculty Spotlight” section of The City University of New York’s fall 2010 Research Newsletter in recognition of her extensive research in the fields of biodiversity in Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal and stem cells and neurodegenerative disease, specifically Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Assistant Professor Laureen Park, Social Science, participated in the First Annual Women Leaders Summit in

October 2010. Sponsored by the United Nations Foundation, UNIFEM and UNFPA, the summit, which was at held the Won Buddhist Center in Manhattan, brought together 50 influential and inspirational women leaders from religious, spiritual, academic and secular feminist backgrounds to engage in multigenerational, inter-religious and interdisciplinary dialogue to strengthen women’s leadership.

The summit looked at the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, which make up the largest promise that organization has ever made to the world.

Nona Smith, director of City Tech’s ACCESS for Women program, was recipient of the 2010 Excellence in Training Award presented by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation through its annual recognition of partners in education, training and employment who provide services to Work Experience Program clients in the Parks Opportunity Program.

In Memoriam Robert Geary Adjunct Lecturer, Humanities Barry Keating Adjunct Assistant Professor, Human Services Charles Mengel Professor Emeritus, Hospitality Management Tibor Mingovits Professor Emeritus, Advertising Design & Graphic Arts

ALUMNI INSURANCE PROGRAM The Alumni Insurance Program is an excellent resource for quality auto, renters and home insurance products for alumni and their families through Liberty Mutual. When you purchase insurance through their alumni program, you not only get quality coverage but also help raise funds for the City Tech Alumni Association.

You can review the valuable features, affordable rates and convenient application process by clicking here.

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GRANTS & RESEARCH CITY TECH AWARDED CLOSE TO $5 MILLION IN FEDERAL GRANTS City Tech is entering an exciting period in its history, having recently won six competitive grants totaling close to $5 million. The funding will be used to strengthen and reimagine the academic offerings of the College as well as provide cutting-edge research opportunities for faculty and students.

U.S. Department of Education (DOE) – Two Grants The largest grant is $3.1 million from the U.S. Department of Education’s Strengthening Hispanic-Serving Institutions (Title V) Program to connect the College’s curriculum to the dynamic “living laboratory” of Downtown Brooklyn. The funding will support the creation of an innovative teaching and learning platform that will strengthen social and intellectual bonds among students and deepen their engagement with course materials. In addition, this grant will build on the recently created Center for the Study of the Brooklyn Waterfront, which will sponsor interdisciplinary research into present life and past history along the shores of Brooklyn.

City Tech received a second DOE grant for a new two-year policy-oriented measure entitled “Integrating Self-Management and Palliation Concepts (IMPACT): Health Policy and Nursing Education Implications.” The goal of this project is to discover and

technologically disseminate best practices in palliative care and self-management nursing education here and in the European Union (EU). Professor Patricia A. Cholewka (Nursing) is the project director.

National Science Foundation (NSF) – Three Grants The words “mechatronic/robotics technology center” will be heard often on campus thanks to a National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education grant of $771,022 to establish just such a facility. The three-year grant will enable City Tech faculty members and students, as well as high school pupils, to participate in multidisciplinary engineering activities, including robotics competitions.

Professors Andy Zhang (mechanical engineering technology) and Farrukh Zia (computer engineering technology) are the project co-directors.

Also winning an NSF grant is Professor Huseyin Yuce (mathematics) who received $199,559 to create an interdisciplinary science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) course, “The Brooklyn Waterfront 2050,” for first-year students.

City Tech faculty will work with the Urban Design Lab at the Earth Institute of Columbia University to create the course content.

City Tech Professor Justin Vazquez-Poritz (physics) was awarded a $60,000 NSF grant over a three-year period for “Constraining Gravity Dual Models of Strongly Coupled Plasmas” to further his research in string

theory. He is using string theory – the leading candidate for a “theory of everything” – to understand the properties of a new form of matter known as quarkgluon plasma, which is currently being produced at particle colliders, such as the one at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Grant The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has awarded City Tech $442,000 over three years to expand research opportunities for faculty and students at NASA, with the aim of attracting more students to careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

The project, “Achieving Proficiency in Engineering Research and STEM Education Through NASA Initiatives,” will be led by Professor Gaffar Gailani (mechanical engineering and industrial design technology), in collaboration with Hostos Community College and its Proyecto Access Pre-freshmen Engineering Program (also funded by NASA). NASA-related research components will be added to three City Tech core courses, two Hostos core courses and two new multidisciplinary courses.

Students will do summer internships at several partnered space centers around the country. The grant’s co-directors are Hostos Professor Nieves Angulo and City Tech Professors Sidi Berri (mechanical engineering technology) and Reginald Blake (physics). http://www.citytech.cuny.edu/alumni

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GRANTS & RESEARCH

CITY TECH RESEARCH TEAM CASTS LIGHT ON ASTEROID DEFLECTION In 2029 and again in 2036, the asteroid Apophis, discovered in 2004 and measuring at least 1,100 feet in diameter and weighing an estimated 25 million tons, will make two close bypasses of Earth at a distance of about 22,600 miles.

While calculated to be statistically unlikely, it is possible that Earth’s tidal effects on Apophis as it passes might endanger the planet’s safety.

“A collision with an object of this size traveling at an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 mile per hour would be catastrophic,” according to National Aeronautics and Space Administration researcher and New York City College of Technology Associate Professor of Physics Gregory L. Matloff, whose long-term research interests include the best means to avert disaster should a collision be a distinct possibility. “Either destroy the object or alter its trajectory,” adds Matloff, who has concluded that diverting such objects is the wisest course of action to follow.

Space is filled with everything from dusty particles to chunks of ice and rock of different sizes left over from the formation of the solar system. While the dust poses no particular problem, it’s the bigger chunks of space debris that whiz by the planet – what are called Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) – that are of real concern.

We don’t always know that they’re coming that far ahead of time. On

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September 8, 2010, for example, two fairly small asteroids, discovered only four days before by NASA’s Minor Planet Center in Massachusetts, sped by the Earth – one within 154,000 miles of the planet’s surface and the second only 49,000 miles away.

Both were small and NASA determined that there was no chance of a collision with the planet.

According to NASA’s Near Earth Object Program, NEOs are comets and asteroids nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter Earth’s neighborhood. Composed mostly of water ice with embedded dust particles, comets originally formed in the cold outer planetary system while most of the rocky asteroids formed in the warmer inner solar system between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

The scientific interest in comets and asteroids is due largely to their status as the relatively unchanged remnant debris from the solar system formation process 4.6 billion years ago. The giant outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) formed from an agglomeration of billions of comets, and the left over bits and pieces from this formation process are the comets we see today. Likewise, today’s asteroids are the bits and pieces left over from the initial agglomeration of the inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars).

Dr. Matloff favors diversion because blowing up an asteroid with, say, nuclear explosives risks creating another problem to worry about later on – the creation of debris that might bathe the Earth in a radioactive shower.

“One method of diverting asteroids that might impact the Earth,” says Dr. Matloff, “is the Solar Collector. Suggested by H. J. Melosh, I. V. Nemchinov and Yu. I. Zetzer in 1994, the Solar Collector would function by concentrating sunlight on an asteroid’s surface. For certain types of asteroids, an energized jet of evaporated material would be created. By Newton’s Third Law, the Gregory L. Matloff

reaction to this jet would alter the asteroid’s solar orbit, hopefully converting an Earthimpact to a near miss.”

In 2007, Dr. Matloff worked with a team at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, to investigate methods of deflecting the asteroid Apophis, when it makes those coming two close approaches to Earth. One parameter in modeling the efficiency of the Solar Collector is the penetration depth of concentrated sunlight on an asteroid’s surface. Matloff’s literature search revealed that penetration depth for

GRANTS & RESEARCH

many terrestrial soils is around 100 microns or 0.000328084 feet (there are a million microns in a meter and one meter is equal to about three feet), which indicates that the Solar Collector would function well for an asteroid consisting of terrestrial soil.

But because asteroids are definitely not coated with terrestrial soil, Dr. Matloff approached Dr. Denton Ebel, meteorite curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Dr. Ebel graciously provided samples of rock and simulated soil (groundup rock) from the Allende meteorite that impacted Mexico in 1969.

Using green and red lasers, optical transmission measurements (the fraction of light that passes through a material) of these samples were made at City Tech by Assistant Professor of Physics Lufeng Leng, a photonics and fiber optics researcher, and one of her students, Thinh Le. The research showed that optical transmission for Allende rock is less than 10 percent for a sample thickness of 0.000098425 feet for both laser colors. As the simulated soilsample thickness was varied from 0.000098425 feet to 0.000164042 feet, very preliminary results revealed that transmission in green light fell from 2.35 percent to 0.59 percent and in red light from 5.78 percent to 0.79 percent. These experimental results indicate that light’s penetration depth in this type of meteorite will not be dissimilar to the 0.000328084 feet approximate value measured for terrestrial soils by A. Ciani, K.U. Goss and R.P. Schwarzenback in 2005.

In a related study, the team narrowed the laser beam as much as possible and scanned

the surface of the thin-section Allende rock sample.

Transmission differences between dark “matrix” and mineral-rich “chondrules” in red light indicated that lasers on a space probe positioned near an asteroid could be applied in determining surface composition, as transmitted light varies with composition.

“To my knowledge,” says Dr. Matloff, “this is the first experimental measurement of the optical transmission of asteroid samples. Dr. Ebel is encouraging other researchers to repeat and expand on this work, for meteorites like Allende and others.”

Dr. Matloff notes that the coming close passes of Apophis demonstrate that robotic and peopled missions to near-Earth asteroids should test the performance of the Solar Collector and other means of asteroid diversion in space. “At present,” he adds, “a debate is underway between American and Russian space agencies regarding Apophis. The Russians believe that we should schedule a mission to this object probably before the first bypass because Earth-produced gravitational effects during that initial pass could conceivably alter the trajectory and properties of the object. On the other hand, Americans generally believe that while an Apophis impact is very unlikely on either pass, we should conduct experiments on an asteroid that runs no risk of ever threatening our home planet.”

These results were presented in a paper by Drs. Matloff and Leng and Thinh Le delivered on July 29, 2010, at the 73rd Annual Meeting of the Meteoritical Society held at the American Museum of Natural History and the Park Central Hotel.

FEDERAL STIMULUS GRANT IS “JEWEL IN THE CROWN” FOR ACCESS FOR WOMEN PROGRAM Maintaining grants and contracts for gender equity programs is a challenge in the best of times and more than just a challenge in current times, according to Nona Smith, director of the City Tech Division of Continuing Education’s ACCESS for Women program. But by meeting those challenges over the years, Smith created an opportunity for ACCESS to receive a 2009-2010 Federal Stimulus award from New York City to train residents seeking to recover from hard times and achieve self-sufficiency.

A one-year training contract was successfully completed through partnerships with New York City’s Departments of Small Business Services and Parks and Recreation, Human Resources Administration and The City University of New York. Last summer, thirty-one trainees completed a comprehensive electrical technician training program conducted through lecture sessions and extensive lab and hands-on projects, enhanced by field activities at Con Edison, the NYC Transit Museum, Carpenters Technical College, Metro-North Railroad and City Tech’s Voorhees Theatre.

While Smith described the stimulus award as “the jewel in the crown for 2009-2010,” she also spoke enthusiastically about successful work with women studying for degrees in engineering technologies and a special program for youth.

Reports for the year show that 160 college women received academic support services and participated in professional development activities offered through coordinated sponsorships with departments of the College and a network of speakers and mentors in business and industry.

The youth program was made possible by an award from NYS Senator Velmanette Montgomery and a subcontract with a local community agency. In-school youth received college prep and career education activities to help facilitate the transition from high school to post-secondary education and career endeavors, and out-of-school youth were the beneficiaries of a comprehensive 16-hour per week educational program providing academic skills classes in reading, writing and mathematics, coupled with family life and career education workshops. Both youth groups were introduced to educational and career options in technical fields and a wide range of affordable degree programs offered by City Tech and other CUNY and SUNY colleges.

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GRANTS & RESEARCH

More on Professor Vázquez-Poritz’s String Theory Research Project City Tech Assistant Professor of Physics Vázquez-Poritz has been awarded a 3-year NSF grant entitled “Constraining Gravity Dual Models of Strongly Coupled Plasmas” to conduct his research in string theory. In addition, Nobel laureate David Gross named Dr. Vázquez-Poritz a 20102012 Scholar at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) in Santa Barbara, California. This distinction funds a total of three round trips and up to six weeks of local expenses over a period of up to three years in order for research to be conducted at KITP. Dr. Vázquez-Poritz has 50 publications in theoretical physics. He has presented his work at various international conferences and seminars. His research focuses on the subject of gauge-gravity duality, an emerging approach for using string theory to model strongly-coupled quantum systems. Gravity dual models have already uncovered analytical connections between a variety of dynamic variables that were not realized with

Dr. Vázquez-Poritz

conventional gauge theory. For the past several years, Dr. Vázquez-Poritz has been applying gauge-gravity duality towards the challenge of understanding the dynamics of strongly-coupled quarks within the quark-gluon plasma that is being created at particle accelerators such as the one at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island.

SMART SCHOLARS EARLY COLLEGE HIGH SCHOOL GRANT A $447,471 Smart Scholars Early College High School grant recently awarded City Tech as part of a funding program administered by the University of the State of New York (USNY) is designed to support its collaboration with Downtown Brooklyn’s City Polytechnic High School of Engineering, Architecture and Technology (City Poly) and enable, among other things, up to 76 City Polytechnic graduates to receive full tuition for their first year of college at City Tech. City Poly is an Early College High School partnered with City Tech to offer high school students the opportunity to complete their high school requirements in three years and to earn an associate degree at City Tech in the following two years. City Tech faculty and staff have been involved with City Poly since summer 2008.

The grant funded an eight-month planning process. City Poly students will begin taking college courses at City Tech through this grant in summer 2011.

The first cohort of City Poly students to enroll full time in City Tech associate degree programs is expected to begin in fall 2012. Grant funding will continue to support such students through August 2013.

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Dr. Vázquez-Poritz has collaborations with scientists around the world, including Distinguished Professor Christopher Pope (Texas A&M University and Cambridge University), Professor Mirjam Cvetic (University of Pennsylvania), Professor Hong Lü (Central University, China) and Professor Philip Argyres (University of Cincinnati). In addition to string theory, he is also publishing papers with City Tech Physics Department Chair Professor Roman Kezerashvili on formulating ways in which solar sails could be used to test certain predictions of General Relativity.

Over the past year, Dr. Vázquez-Poritz has involved three City Tech students – Mir Ali, Frenny Ruiz and Carlos Saint-Victor – in a research project on the behavior of strings on a wormhole background. This work resulted in two publications and was presented at an international conference in Lexington, Kentucky, last year. He looks forward to continuing mentoring students in research.

65TH ANNIVERSARY PLAQUE City Tech will be celebrating 65 years of providing quality education to students and is providing alumni, friends, faculty and staff an opportunity to support the college by having your name listed on the 65th anniversary plaque through a gift of $65 or more to the City Tech Foundation.

Contributions to the Foundation are used to fund scholarships and provide other financial assistance to students in need.

Your gifts also support facility upgrades, technology enhancements, improved student services and faculty development.

For more information contact the City Tech Foundation at 718.260.5025.

WHAT’S NEW IN CONTINUING EDUCATION? City Tech’s Wind Power Courses Provide Window into New Careers

Who’s Cooking at City Tech?

Seasoned foodies and amateurs alike learned the tricks-of-the-trade that make for great meals at New York City College of Technology last fall. Award-winning culinary instructor, chef, author and food writer Michael Krondl led three demonstration classes – “Twenty Minute Entrees, Ten Minute Desserts,” “Mediterranean Vegetarian” and “Italian Regional Cooking: A Taste of Tuscany” – with tastings, offered through the College’s Division of Continuing Education.

Cullen Kasunic, vice president of NYC-based Wind Analytics, explains the principles of a small wind study to City Tech students. The pair of 95' water towers in Red Hook, Brooklyn, is tall enough to produce good wind power and is ideally located by the water, where wind is strong.

While the country focuses on the disastrous Gulf Coast oil spill and similar accidents, City Tech is in the forefront of a grassroots effort toward workforce training in alternative, clean energy. The College has introduced new classes in wind power — perhaps the city’s only such college classes.

Carol Sonnenblick, dean of City Tech’s Division of Continuing Education, explains the College’s decision to offer “Wind Power Workshop: A Hands-on Introduction to Small Wind Turbines (Residential and Commercial Buildings)” and “Urban Energy: Road Map for a Sustainable NYC,” which debuted in spring 2010 and were offered again last fall.

“We are committed to preparing the unemployed for work, upgrading workers’ skills for job advancement and assisting career changers in finding viable sectors for employment in this challenging economy,”

she explains. “Our research, conversations with industry representatives and active participation in economic development activities clearly indicate that sustainable energy and environmental concerns will shape the workplace of the future.”

Asked how the new classes appeared in such a timely manner, and whether the College might eventually offer such subjects as credit-bearing courses, Sonnenblick says, “One of the many interesting aspects of working in Continuing Education is that we can get courses, often in non-traditional formats, up and running very quickly. Working with faculty who have great expertise, as well as with industry experts, Continuing Ed can act as an incubator for new curricular projects. Some of them are then developed into credit courses or certificate or degree programs.”

Michael Krondl

Long recognized for its hospitality management degree programs, which include a culinary component, City Tech designed the new classes for the general public. Chef Krondl, who taught them during the launch season, was a longtime instructor in the New School’s Culinary Arts program and was voted “Best in New York” for his intro cooking classes by New York magazine. For more information on these and other City Tech Continuing Education course offerings, go to http://www.citytech.cuny.edu/academics/ continuinged/index.shtml.

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FOUNDATION CORNER Helena Rubinstein Foundation: 10 Years and Counting Since 2000, the Helena Rubinstein Foundation has provided scholarships to outstanding female City Tech baccalaureate degree candidates studying in fields in which women are statistically underrepresented. These fields include architectural technology, computer systems, computer engineering technology, facilities management, career teacher education, entertainment technology, electrical engineering/telecommunications technology, technology teacher education and most recently applied mathematics, which is preparing students for careers of great promise in another area in which women have certainly been dramatically underrepresented.

Helena Rubinstein, whose name and accomplishments are legendary, was a beauty authority, industrial pioneer, patron of the arts, philanthropist and inveterate collector. She established the Helena

Rubinstein Foundation in 1953, in affirmation of a principle she often expressed: “My fortune comes from women and should benefit them and their children, to better their quality of life.”

Convinced that education was vital to career development, she made scholarship grants to encourage young women to undertake higher education and to pursue nontraditional careers.

The foundation was a major beneficiary of Helena Rubinstein’s legacy, when she died in 1965 at the age of 94. Its directors have further developed and broadened the philanthropic concepts she initiated and, sensitive to the changing needs of society, continue to support new and forward-looking programs. In carrying out her mandate, the Helena Rubinstein Foundation is a living tribute to the achievements, generosity and vision of its founder.

Painting of Helena Rubinstein Wearing a Yellow Shawl, 1934, by Marie Laurençin (1885-1956)

2011 Best of New York Award Dinner

Alan Aviles

Julia Jordan

New York City College of Technology will honor Alan Aviles, president and CEO, NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation, Salvatore Cassano ’70, Commissioner, New York City Fire Department, and Julia Jordan ’82, founder and president, Spoons Across America, at the 2011 Best of New York Award scholarship fundraising dinner at the Hilton New York on May 16, from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m.

The theme of this year’s dinner is “Here’s to Your Health!”

Celebrity chef Michael Lomonaco, a 1984 graduate of City Tech’s award-winning hospitality management program and managing

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Salvatore Cassano

partner of Porter House New York, again will serve as Dinner Chair and Master of Ceremonies. Julian Niccolini, a 1974 graduate of the College and co-owner of The Four Seasons Restaurant in Manhattan, will serve as Honorary Dinner Chair.

The Best of New York Award Dinner is hosted by the New York City College of Technology Foundation, established in 1981 to raise funds for the College. Proceeds from the annual dinner help fund foundation-sponsored scholarships and other student financial assistance and professional development projects.

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How Your Gifts Help In addition to scholarships and other student financial assistance programs, the City Tech Foundation was pleased to make the following grants during the spring and fall 2010 semesters.

African American Studies Department n Black History Month and Black Solidarity Day Programs n Black Theater Performance – Through the Night Department of English n Distinguished Speaker Series n Literary Arts Festival Department of Hospitality Management n Hotel/Motel & Restaurant Show Leadership Forum n Christian Help in Park Slope Shelter (CHIPS) Holiday Meal Department of Humanities n Annual Speech Competition Jewish Faculty & Staff Association n Distinguished Speakers Series

2010 DONORS The City Tech Foundation’s work is supported by private contributions from corporations, foundations and individuals. We extend our deepest thanks to all donors whose generosity made possible our many accomplishments during 2010.

For a complete list of 2010 donors, click here.

Latin American Studies Program n Distinguished Speakers Series Department of Restorative Dentistry n CAD/CAM Student Training at Nobel Biocare n Student Participation in Yankee Dental Congress Conference School of Professional Studies n Fall 2010 Alumni Reunion Dinner Dance Student Affairs n Women’s Center and Women’s Committee Latin American Cultural Week Celebration n Student Emergency Food Program n Student Revolving Loan Program Academic Affairs n Fall 2010 Faculty/Student Research Poster Session

2010-2011 CUNY CAMPAIGN

Thank you for joining the thousands of friends and neighbors across New York City who responded enthusiastically to the 27th Annual CUNY Campaign for Voluntary Charitable Giving. CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein reminds us that at a time when so many across our city are experiencing the effects of a severe national recession, CUNY continues to give generously to the more than 1,200 agencies that assist in making a significant difference in the lives of New York’s families.

Those who gave can be proud to count themselves among the 3,000 CUNY donors who will raise more than $650,000 – $250,000 of which will support campusbased agencies such as the City Tech Foundation and Our Children’s Center that continue to provide needs-based scholarships and other financial assistance to students as well as much-needed child care and development services on which so many students depend.

A Conversation With Ntozake Shange In November 2010, the African American Studies and English Departments, the Black Women’s Networking Committee, the Office of the President and the City Tech Foundation co-sponsored a “Conversation With Ntozake Shange,” moderated by Felicia Lee of The New York Times.” Ms. Shange’s appearance at City Tech was part of the city-wide African American Women in Cinema Film Festival. The evening included the showing of a video of the off-Broadway performance of Ms. Shange’s original Obie Award-winning play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf.” The event was made possible, in part, through support provided by the City Tech Foundation. http://www.citytech.cuny.edu/alumni

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Plaque Unveiling Draws 200 Distinguished Donors On November 6, 2010, more than 200 donors gathered in the College’s Atrium Gallery for the unveiling of the Distinguished Donors Plaque. The plaque lists the names of the more than 450 individuals who made contributions to the College during that academic year. Each subsequent year alumni, faculty, staff and other good friends of City Tech will be invited to be listed on a donor wall plaque to be permanently displayed in the College’s new Welcome Center.

Proceeds from Professor’s Publication to Support Foundation General Scholarship Fund Proceeds from Hospitality Management Assistant Professor Patrick O’Halloran’s guide to developing a proactive defense against today’s economic challenges, available for purchase in the City Tech Bookstore at $1.50 per copy, go to provide scholarships for deserving City Tech students through the City Tech Foundation’s General Scholarship Fund.

Professor O’Halloran plans to update and expand the 24-page booklet twice a year to include the latest information potentially helpful to readers in managing their finances. “My goal,” he says, “is to

lay a solid foundation for sensible financial and educational strategies so that students and other readers can develop a proactive defense in light of today’s economic challenges.”

The booklet is in response to a presentation that Professor O’Halloran made during 2009-2010 that covers a variety of financial topics running the gamut from facts about credit card debt and how your credit history matters when you’re applying for a job to tips for first-time homebuyers and where an unemployed person should look for work in these troubled times. The guide also examines new regulations governing overdraft coverage on ATM and debit card transactions, the potential benefits of credit unions and making the right moves when starting a small business.

Grainger Support for the ‘Ones Who Get It Done’ Extends to City Tech The City Tech Foundation received a scholarship grant in the amount of $10,000 for students majoring in environmental control technology from Grainger, the nation’s leading supplier of facilities maintenance products. The grant is part of the firm’s ongoing commitment to helping stem the growing shortage of skilled workers while supporting the

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increasing technical demands of today’s manufacturing workplace. Since 2006, Grainger has contributed more than $600,000 in support of technical education in the form of scholarships, classroom

equipment, supplies and funding for technical program start-ups.

The check was presented to Professor Anthony Treglia, department chair, and Jewel Escobar, foundation executive director, by Grainger representative Karla Vasquez. Professor Treglia and the Foundation will work closely with Grainger in coming semesters on training and career opportunity and other initiatives.

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PROFILE: MARTIN JAFFE ’65, CTF BOARD CHAIRMAN

Martin Jaffe served as the chief operating officer of Silvercrest Asset Management Group LLC until his retirement several years ago. Prior to that he was the chief operating officer of DLJ Asset Management Group and later chief financial officer of Credit Suisse Asset Management LLC, after Credit Suisse acquired DLJ in November 2000.

Jaffe began his career at U.S. Trust Company, before joining Mitchell Hutchins and later moving to Wood, Struthers & Winthrop, DLJ’s investment management subsidiary, where he helped substantially increase the firm’s private clientele. Later, at DLJ, he was responsible for building and overseeing systems, operations and tax and financial planning activities.

A long-time participant and board member of the International Association for Financial Planning (now known as the Financial Planning Association), Jaffe served as its president and chairman from 1994 until 1996. In addition, he served as an adjunct associate professor of financial planning at New York University for more than 20 years. Jaffe graduated from City Tech with a degree in accounting and went on to Pace University, where he earned his BA in accounting and his MBA. He met his wife at City Tech, while both were students at the College.

Mr. Jaffe has served on the City Tech Foundation board for a quarter of a century and as board chairman since 1992. It was through his support, dedication, commitment and leadership that the Foundation was able to strengthen its programs and develop new and innovative projects to serve more City Tech students, faculty and staff.

“My City Tech experienced laid the foundation for my further education and a successful business career,” says Mr. Jaffe, “as well as a happy and successful marriage. Through my work with the College foundation, I’m doing all that I can to create an experience for today’s students that will do for them what my experience did for me.”

COMING FALL @2011 GALA TASTING EVENT Featuring signature dishes and desserts by some of America’s finest chefs to mark the opening of the City Tech Department of Hospitality Management’s newly renovated main teaching kitchen and Janet Lefler Dining Room.

Watch your mailbox and e-mail for details.

New York City College of Technology Foundation Board of Directors Martin Jaffe ‘65 Chair Lorraine Beitler Vice Chair Hon. Alice Fisher Rubin Secretary Andrew I. Namm Chair Emeritus Garey Ellis, MD Caroline Forte George Gresham Michael Lomonaco ‘84 Leonard Maisel ‘64 Rhona Noll Yvonne Riley-Tepie ‘92 Terry Tang Barbara M. Tillman Grace Volckhausen David Walsh, Esq. Terel Watson Antonia Yuille Williams Andrew Fisher, Esq. Legal Counsel Russell K. Hotzler President New York City College of Technology Development Office Staff Jewel Trowers Escobar Director of Development & Foundation Executive Director Jeramie Barber Assistant Director of Development & Director, Annual Giving Programs Norma Khoury Assistant to the Executive Director Shavon Atchison Database Manager Sonya Warren Alumni Relations Coordinator Diana Duvivier Date Entry Coordinator

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ALUMNI NEWS

More than 225 School of Professional Studies alumni, current students, faculty, staff and other guests attended a “Tastes of New York/Casino Night” Alumni Reunion Dinner Dance on Saturday, November 6 in the Namm Hall Cafeteria in Downtown Brooklyn. The event featured fine foods of New York’s great neighborhoods, live entertainment, a live DJ and dancing, plus casino games, an auction and a raffle. Visual displays and a video produced by graphic designer Al Vargas included scenes from New York City and photos from City Tech yearbooks featuring School of Professional Studies students and faculty.

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ALUMNI NEWS

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ALUMNI NEWS

2011 Distinguished Alumnus: Professor Julia Jordan ’82 Professor Julia Jordan is a 1982 graduate of New York City College of Technology’s awardwinning Department of Hospitality Management. In the classroom at the College, she specializes in teaching courses in culinary arts, food and beverage purchasing, dining room operations and service management, and co-coordinates the department’s international work/study and internship programs.

Professor Jordan currently serves as acting director of City Tech’s Faculty Commons established in 2009. The Faculty Commons provides programs and other opportunities designed to enhance faculty development and support faculty research and other efforts. The office combines the Grants & Contracts and Assessment Offices under Jordan’s able oversight, providing members of City Tech faculty with one-stop shopping for their grants, assessment and professional development needs.

The ultimate benefactors, of course, are the College’s students. By strengthening faculty’s

ability to teach and conduct research, City Tech is strengthening the ability of students to engage in and profit more greatly from learning. The Faculty Commons publishes a quarterly online newsletter, Nucleus, which profiles outstanding members of faculty and their achievements, reports on new federal grants for innovative faculty/student research projects, and identifies valuable resources both on and off campus that can serve to enhance faculty development and enrich the overall teaching/learning experience.

In addition to her administrative and teaching responsibilities on campus, Professor Jordan is on the Advisory Board of the American Institute of Wine & Food/NY Chapter and a professional member of The James Beard Foundation, and was presented the American Institute of Wine & Food’s Outstanding Leader Award in 2002. She is active in Days of Taste, a nationally recognized taste exploration program for elementary school children that enables them to learn about food and how it weaves its way through daily life from the farm to the table. She also founded Spoons Across America, a notfor-profit organization dedicated to educating children, teachers and families about the benefits of healthy eating.

City Tech Student Alumni Association The City Tech Alumni Association will establish a student chapter beginning in the fall 2011 semester. The goal of the Student Alumni Association (SAA) will be to facilitate interactions between students and alumni and to enhance the student experience by providing opportunities that strengthen their lifelong loyalty to City Tech. While SSA membership is free, students will need to complete a personal data form and attend three SSA events. In addition, active SSA members will be eligible for an annual scholarship given to a rising senior. For more information, contact the Alumni Relations Office at 718.260.5006.

ALUMNI NETWORKING EVENTS & OTHER OPPORTUNITIES Watch your e-mail for announcements of upcoming Alumni Association networking events and other opportunities.

Class Act! Norman Russell ‘76 Restorative Dentistry City Tech graduate Norman Russell ‘76, senior product systems representative for Nobel Biocare, was honored by the College’s Department of Restorative Dentistry at the School of Professional Studies November 11, 2010, reunion in recognition of his role in securing state-of-the-art equipment over the years for the department from which he graduated. The City Tech program in restorative dentistry is regarded as one of the finest such

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programs in the country and its training labs among the nation’s best.

Nobel Biocare is a dental medical devices group and the world leader in innovative restorative and esthetic dental solutions. The firm is built upon two Swedish innovations: the discovery that titanium integrates with living bone and Procera, a process for the industrial production of individualized dental prosthetics. Headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, the company enjoys the largest share of the global dental market and the highest percentage share of the U.S. and Asian markets.

ALUMNI NEWS

ALUMNI NEWSMAKERS Chuck Bartolo, a City Tech graduate and realtor whose earlier career focused entirely on business and marketing, hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony in October 2010 in Chatham Village, NY, marking the relocation of his current business venture, Beach & Bartolo, to this picturesque hamlet. Beach & Bartolo is very likely Columbia County’s oldest, largest and most active realtor.

Ebow Dadzie, a graduate of City Tech’s award-winning hospitality management program, won the French Medal Award in November at the 2010 International Hotel, Motel & Restaurant Show at Javits Center in Manhattan. The annual event, the world’s largest showcase and exchange of products, trends and developments, attracts every segment and facet of the industry.

William R. Ford, a graduate of the College’s restorative dentistry (formerly dental laboratory technology) program was profiled in the August 30, 2010, online edition of Queens Courier as the longest serving member of the Jamaica Rotary Club, where he has held every office except treasurer, and one of the founders of United Black Men of Queens County, Inc. and the Association of Minority Enterprises of New York.

Debra Sardinha-Metivier, a graduate of City Tech’s hospitality management

program, recently served as consulting chef for Trinidad and Tobago’s Taste TT 2010, a culinary festival centered around creating a distinctive and widely recognized international brand for that country’s gastronomic identity and indigenous flavors while preserving the two-island republic’s rich culinary identity.

Following graduation, she worked for Ladies Home Journal, Tribeca Grill and the United Nations among other concerns before returning to Trinidad and Tobago to become the first female executive chef at the Hilton Trinidad as well as the first woman to hold such a position in the Caribbean and the Americas.

Amanda Stiles, a graduate of City Tech baccalaureate program in hospitality management took second prize for her wedding cake in the 2010 International Hotel, Motel & Restaurant Show at Javits Center in Manhattan in November.

City Tech alumnus Ronald Williams, who recently completed his 27th year of continuous service as doorman at one of Brooklyn Heights’ largest residential buildings, has been named Brooklyn Doorman of the Year by 32BJ SEIU, the city’s largest property service workers union. More than 400 of the building’s residents threw Williams a big party two years ago to commemorate his 25th year of service.

Free Membership Membership in the City Tech Alumni Association is now FREE to all graduates of the College’s baccalaureate, associate and specialized certificate programs. To receive your membership card and start taking advantage of all that the College and association offer alumni, contact the Alumni Relations Office at 718.260.5006 and request a Data Update form, which must be completed and returned in the postage pre-paid envelope provided, or visit www.citytech.cuny.edu/alumni and complete the online “Keep in Touch” form. It’s as easy as that.

As a City Tech Alumni Association member, you’ll receive invitations to many College-sponsored networking and educational events and can take advantage of the comprehensive services offered by the Placement Office and library. We’re always busy planning new events and developing more services that provide our graduates additional opportunities to remain connected with City Tech. So activate your FREE membership today! You’ll be glad you did.

City Tech is now on Facebook! Become a fan by clicking here, to join our community and stay plugged into what’s happening at CityTech. If you don’t have a Facebook account, you can set one up at http://www.facebook.com/.

We hope to see you on our page!

Calling All Volunteers Through the City Tech Alumni Association, you can serve your alma mater and give back to others by helping to mentor current students, participating in the annual Phonathon, providing internship opportunities, or even serving as a guest speaker or panelist on campus. The opportunities are endless. If you are interested in becoming a City Tech Alumni Volunteer, please contact the Alumni Relations Office at 718.260.5006 or email us at alumni@citytech.cuny.edu.

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