The CUNY Baccalaureate Blog

B.A., January 2006, Theatre Production/Psychology

• Summa Cum Laude
• Thomas W. Smith Academic Fellowship
• Diego Hidalgo Scholarship for Art
• First Prize, Lou Rivers Drama ContestTeachers Memorial Prize
• Yue San Kan Scholarship
• Dean’s List

Chi Kuen (Jimmy) Kwok, who comes from Hong Kong, worked for ten years there as a dubbing artist, providing Cantonese voice-overs for English films, utilizing his writing and translation skills for such famous actors as Jim Carey, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Mike Myers. At the same time, he was a performer for Zuni Production and Edward Lam Dance Theater, giving over 100 performances in Hong Kong, Beijing, Macau, London, and Okinawa, in the native tongue of each city. Then, he founded the production company “Jimmy’s Style,” where he worked as the director, writer and performer, using the stage to educate the community about social issues that had no other forum in Hong Kong, such as AIDS, homosexuality, women’s rights, and the former colony’s identity crisis. He achieved success and recognition in Hong Kong and other parts of Asia but wanted to play to a broader, more sophisticated international audience, so he came to New York to pursue a higher education.Kwok completed two areas of concentration in the CUNY BA Program, one in Theater Production, with courses at New York City College of Technology (NYCCT) and Brooklyn College, under the guidance of faculty mentor Prof. David Smith, Chair of Entertainment Technology, NYCCT, and Psychology, with courses at Brooklyn and Hunter Colleges, under the direction of faculty mentor Prof. Jeffrey Parsons, Psychology, and Chair of the Center for HIV/AIDS Educational Studies and Training (CHEST), Hunter.

In his Psychology area, he completed an independent study that included work at the Center for HIV/AIDS Educational Studies and Training, work at the Drag Initiative to Vanquish AIDS (DIVA) Project, and course work on line with the National Institutes of Health and with the CUNY Research Foundation. He also completed an independent research project entitled “Studies on Male Couples: A Brief Review,” and, for his senior year honors course, a research project entitled “Comparing Men in Same-Sex Relationships Based on Relationship Agreement and Seroconcordance: Their Sexual Communication, Jealousy, Satisfaction and Compulsivity.”

Among many accomplishments in his Theater Production area, Kwok designed the sound for two plays while in a senior year sound design class, wrote and directed “Longing,” his first English written play, for which he won the 2004 Lou Rivers Drama Contest at NYCCT, and worked on the award-winning 2003 Haunted Hotel designed by NYCCT students and faculty.

In the spring 2004 semester, Kwok wrote “The more psychology classes I take, the more I believe there is a strong connection between theater and psychology. When studying child psychology and social psychology, I learned not only the psychologies of children and human interactions, I also found most of the theories behind those psychologies could be used as themes for plays. This experience convinced me that I have correctly structured my CUNY BA degree.”

Kwok has been accepted to the MSW programs at NYU, Columbia, and Hunter College.