The Syrian President Bashar Assad and the Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud in Damascus earlier this month. Ho Sana / AFP Photo

A recent article in The National (Abu Dhabi) by Mohamad Bazzi, analyses the methods and motivations of Syria’s attempts to rejoin the Arab political order after years of isolation.
He graduated Magna Cum Laude in 1997 from CUNY BA with a concentration in Urban Studies and is presently an adjunct senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a journalism professor at New York University.

CUNY BACCALAUREATE FOR UNIQUE AND INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES Students, Alumni and Faculty Mentors are invited to attend our annual social gathering at the American Folk Art Museum. Join us for this evening of music, refreshments, the delightful art of the Folk Art Museum, and your friends from CUNY Baccalaureate. In addition to the Folk Art Museum’s permanent collection, three special exhibits will be open: APPROACHING ABSTRACTION, THOMAS CHAMBERS (1808-1869): AMERICAN MARINE AND LANDSCAPE PAINTER, and UP CLOSE: HENRY DARGER AND THE COLORING BOOK.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=289677450710&ref=mf

Cultural Anthropology

B.A., June 2002, cum laude

2008 Graduate Student Organization Best Grant Awardee, University at Albany; 2006 Best Paper Award, Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness; 2004-2008 Full Graduate Teaching Assistantship, University at Albany; 2002 Alumni Fund Scholarship, CUNY B.A./B.S.; Phi Beta Kappa; 2002 Study/Travel Opportunities for CUNY Students Grant, CUNY; 2002 Leonard & Claire Tow Travel Stipend, Brooklyn College; 2001 Olga Kattan Scholarship, Modern Languages, Brooklyn College; 2001-2002 Class of ‘37 Scholarship, Brooklyn College; 2000-2002 Ford Colloquium, Brooklyn College. 2000-2001 Class of ‘41 Scholarship, Brooklyn College

Christopher Lynn left a career in the music industry to complete his undergraduate degree and pursue his “dreams of further scholarship and exploration.”

He’d started college at Indiana University in the 1980s, and during his hiatus from school his interests in Cultural Anthropology blossomed.  Just prior to entering CUNY BA/BS in 2001, he started an internship at the Lower East side Tenement Museum to learn about anthropological research.  Under the direction of Prof. John Beatty, Anthropology, Brooklyn College/Graduate Center, Lynn completed a rigorous study of Cultural Anthropology, earning a perfect 4.0 in his chosen area.  He included two Independent Research courses, one on the evolution of human consciousness and social competition, and the other on cannibalism as a cultural practice.  Lynn also completed several courses in Brooklyn College’s Ford Colloquium, a curriculum that introduces students to the nature of academic research and academic professional culture.  In addition to Brooklyn College, Lynn completed some courses at the College of Staten Island.

Lynn received his Ph.D. from SUNY Albany in 2009.  His dissertation was called “Glossolalia Influences on Stress Response among Apostolic Pentecostals,” an investigation of the relationship between speaking in tongues as a form of dissociation or “trance” and health.  He says “Trance and dissociation are classic anthropological and psychological topics of study, but what made my research unique is using a biocultural model to test the long-standing hypothesis that trance states function to reduce stress; thus, cultural forms of trance are ways to reduce personal and social stress and maintain well-being or improve health.  I spent a year conducting qualitative research among Apostolic Pentecostals in the mid-Hudson Valley to develop a questionnaire for measuring glossolalia.  Then I administered this questionnaire and collected saliva samples to measure two biomarkers of stress response (cortisol and alpha-amylase).  My as-yet-unpublished data suggests that experiencing tongue-speaking over an extended period of time may reduce baseline stress and improve mood.  The research was supported by a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation and grants from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, SUNY Benevolent Association, University at Albany School of Graduate Studies, and the University at Albany Graduate Student Organization.  This research was essentially begun while I was part of the CUNY BA/BS under the guidance of my faculty mentor, John Beatty at Brooklyn College, and with the assistance of two Project ASCEND McNair Fellowships. My Master’s and Doctoral degrees in Anthropology (with a focus on biology) were earned at SUNY Albany under Professor Lawrence Schell.”

Immediately upon earning the Ph.D., Lynn started a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Biocultural Medical Anthropology at the University of Alabama.

Kim Smith, originally from Trinidad and now a U.S. citizen, applied to CUNY BA/BS at the age of 28, with five years of experience in the telecommunications field.  She was not working then, putting aside time to pursue a bachelor’s degree and research the right courses and experiences that would make her a more valuable employee in the future.  At the same time, she joined the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) becoming their student representative in New York City and getting involved with their Women in Engineering Chapter and Communications Society Chapter.  Smith remains active in Chapter development activities for the IEEE NY Section.

In CUNY BA/BS, under the direction of Dr. Mohammad Razani, Professor and Chair of the Electrical and Telecommunications Engineering Technology department, New York City College of Technology, Smith took over a dozen upper-level courses in Electrical Engineering, Telecommunications, and Computer Information Systems for her degree.

Having in mind from the very start to major in science at the graduate level, Smith chose to begin with engineering studies to build a solid foundation upon which she could pursue her main objectives.

Smith graduated from CUNY BA/BS in 2007 and was accepted to the Master’s program in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at City College.  In 2009, she will be finishing her last semester there.  Among many opportunities, she has been mentoring students under an NSF grant and has also received funding from The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – Cooperative Remote Sensing Science and Technology Center (NOAA-CREST) fellowship for her research that contributes to her master’s thesis, “An exhaustive database for the development of a Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) model over the Caspian Sea and the Baltic Sea.”  The main objective of this research is to explore the potentials of mapping ice cover with GOES-R ABI, a new generation of earth observation satellite, currently in the design stage with an expected launch date of 2012 by NOAA.  She has been presenting her research work at several conferences and also contributing in other related areas.  One that was particularly noteworthy was a paper she presented on Gender Dimensions of the Digital Divide at the National Center for Telecommunications Technologies (NCTT).  At this conference, she earned a fellowship award to attend the SAME-TEC Advanced Technological Education Conference in Austin, Texas in July 2008.

Smith anticipates completing her coursework and thesis by the end of the Fall 2009 and she hopes to then attend the Ph.D. program in Earth and Environmental Science at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Karalyn Shimmyo

Experimental Social Psychology

B.S., September 2007

Thomas W. Smith Academic Fellowship

Memorial Scholarship

Dean’s Certificate for Academic Excellence

Psi Chi Honor Society

Karalyn Shimmyo learned about CUNY BA/BS when she was in her first semester at Brooklyn College in 2005, having returned to school after a ten year hiatus.  Like many other students, she had found herself in an incredibly competitive job market, and had come to the conclusion that an undergraduate degree was essential.  She originally planned on studying Art Therapy and Nonprofit Arts Management, but soon became deeply interested in Experimental Psychology.

Shimmyo’s unique area of concentration was completed with courses in Psychology and Sociology at Brooklyn College under the direction of Prof. Aaron Kozbelt, Psychology, Brooklyn.  She credits Prof. Kozbelt with encouraging her to “dream bigger” and to pursue her own research interests, and so she included three undergraduate research projects, “Etiological Considerations in Body Dissatisfaction and Disordered Eating,” “Catholicism and Eating Behavior” (assisting Laura Rabin, PhD and Sarah Weinberger-Litman, PhD) and “Religious Orthodoxy, Social Desirability, and Homophobia,”  (with the assistance and collaboration of PhD candidate Michael Magee), along with two graduate-level studies, continuing her studies of Eating Disorders and Religious Orthodoxy and Homophobia.  Additionally, she worked as a research assistant in the Hunter Cognitive Psychology Department.  She took advantage of CUNY BA’s opportunity to earn credits in unconventional ways, earning credits by exam, as well as by portfolio review of her prior work and volunteer experience (Shimmyo founded Artists Paint for Peace, an organization that provides free murals and facility beautification to shelters, hospitals, group homes, treatment centers, etc., and arts training for the children who reside in them).

After earning her bachelor’s, Shimmyo attended NYU’s Silver School of Social Work and graduated in May 2009 with an MSW.  Prior to graduation, she was honored with the President’s Service Award and Silver Spirit Awards, and she recently learned that she was accepted to the Wagner School of Public Service for their MPA Program for September 2009 admission, where she will pursue a dual-concentration in nonprofit management and public policy.  About continuing on for another degree, she says, “I really do love academia, and have a feeling that I will never really be done with my education.”

While at NYU, Shimmyo founded a student organization called NYU Student Committee on Licensing Issues (NYU-SCLI), which worked with the NY State Coalition of LMSWs and other groups to lobby for changes to the NY State social work licensing laws (see http://nyscoalitionoflmsws.org/ ).  She joined their Board of Directors in January 2009, and is still serving.

Shimmyo had also been collaborating with an organization that is working to establish an LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) Center in Brooklyn (the only borough in NYC that does not have one).  She did a lot of proposal writing and wrote grants for public funds from the NY City Council, and had been serving on their Fundraising/Development Committee and Program Committee.  She was recently named the Program Director, and the organization is now in the process of securing a site for the facility.  In July 2009, Shimmyo was happy to announce that the new Brooklyn Community Pride Center (BCPC, http://www.lgbtbrooklyn.org/) was awarded over one million dollars in capital funds and $30,000 in discretionary funding from the City of New York, having recently been awarded $1 million from Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz.  These funds will be used to secure a building for the Brooklyn Center and enable the organization to begin providing essential services to the LGBT community.  In addition, the BCPC will host a series of panel discussions with the Brooklyn DA’s Office starting this fall.  The first one will be about the transgender community and interactions with law enforcement, and will feature some prominent speakers from the DAs office, NYPD, and several legal/activist groups.

Tolerance Studies

B.A., June 2007, cum Laude

Prior to enrolling in Queens College, Karen Shulman had studied at Santa Monica College, as well as in several colleges in Israel.  But she was most influenced by a Queens College course she took in 2005 called Politics of Identity; it convinced her that she wanted to make a real difference in the world.  From there she enrolled in CUNY BA/BS with a plan to pursue a self-designed degree in Tolerance Studies.  In her application to the program she wrote “I have come to realize that CUNY BA/BS will give me all the tools I need to pursue my goals, so I can be involved in social and community programming that uses informal education to bring people from different walks of life to understand our commonality through our diversity.”

Shulman put her concentration together with courses from Hunter and Queens Colleges and the CUNY Graduate Center, in Anthropology, Philosophy, Political Science, and Sociology, under the guidance of Prof. Erica Chito Childs, Sociology, Hunter.  She included an internship at The Simon Wiesenthal/New York Tolerance Center, where she assisted the Educational Outreach Coordinator with exhibits, tours, programming, curricula development, and training.  That opportunity, she says, changed the entire course of her life; in fact, it turned into a full-time job almost immediately, and opened up a range of other opportunities for her.

“Within the first two weeks of the internship, a job opened up to be the assistant education outreach coordinator.  I applied and was thrilled to get the position.  I had worked there for just less than a year, when I was promoted to the Education Outreach Coordinator.  I stayed at the Tolerance Center for an additional seven months before deciding to return to school.  That summer, before my Masters, I traveled to Tanzania, with an organization called Miracle Corners of the World, where I worked with a community center in rural Songea.”

Shulman moved to Israel to do a Master’s degree in Government with a specialization in Conflict Resolution and Diplomacy at IDC (Interdisciplinary Center) Herzliya.  ”After my M.A. degree I wanted to do some fieldwork, particularly dealing with post-conflict reconciliation through informal education, which was and continues to be my specific interest.  In September of 2008 I set out for Rwanda to work again with Miracle Corners of the World, this time as the Country Coordinator.  I worked supervising the construction of a new community center, while building the contextualized programming which focuses on youth empowerment and engagement.  From there I took a short contract as a research assistant for a journalist writing a book on the dissemination of Rwandan genocide denial ideology through the international media.  Most recently I have been able to link my passion for informal education with its role as a critical component in post-conflict societies as an education and development consultant at Aegis Trust/Kigali Memorial Center in their Education Department.”  The Kigali Memorial Center was opened on the 10th Anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide, in April 2004.  It is built on a site where over 250,000 people are buried and contains a permanent exhibition of the Rwandan genocide and an exhibition of other genocides around the world.

“At the Center I have the opportunity to help create programs that use the context of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, to learn from the past to build a better future.  We task the youth of Rwanda to look at issues of equality, discrimination, genocide and tolerance to strengthen Rwandan unity.  Many of the lessons of global participation and taking an active role in the world around us come directly from the courses I studied through the exploration into the idea of tolerance. CUNY BA/BS prepared me for the hard work ahead, and I am looking forward.”

Shulman is pictured here overlooking Kigali, wearing a traditional Rwandan dress called a mashanana.

Queer Women’s Studies

B.S., June 2006, cum Laude

Shawnta Smith said “Without CUNY BA/BS, I would have been lost, without direction, trying to find a program that I could fit into instead of a program that fits me.”  Smith found the right fit in CUNY BA/BS, and graduated with a Bachelors of Science in “Queer Women’s Studies.”  Her courses, taken at Brooklyn College, were drawn from the English, Health, Sociology, and Women’s Studies departments, under the guidance of Prof. Barbara Winslow, Women’s Studies, Brooklyn.  With the help of the CUNY Pipeline Program (http://web.gc.cuny.edu/oeodp/resources/pipeinfoapp.pdf), she went on to complete a Master’s in Library and Information Science with a Certificate in Archiving and Preservation Studies at Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies in June 2008.  She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Union Square Awards, the Urban Libraries Council, the NY Black Librarian’s Caucus, and the City of New York.

Currently, Smith is a Young Adult Reference Librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library at the Grand Army Plaza Central Branch, is a Coordinator at the Lesbian Herstory Archives, and is Memberships and Fellowships Coordinator at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Smith finds equilibrium as co-coordinator of a queer women-of-color writing group in Brooklyn, NY and as a producer and collective member of Rivers of Honey, a women-of-color Cabaret at WOW Cafe Theater.  Smith is also a blogger and creative writer, currently working on commissions about Librarianship, Queer Archiving, and Lesbian Young Adult Fiction.

Before obtaining her Bachelor’s degree, Smith was co-founder and Director of Sister Outsider, a collective organization that employs self-supporting young women to develop social justice projects and earn living wages in Brooklyn, New York.; was a founding board member of FIERCE, a lesbian, bisexual, gay, and transsexual youth activist organization in NYC; and was founding member of YA-YA Network, a network for NYC-based youth organizations.

Smith has also been a presenter at several conferences including the Barnard College Scholar and the Feminist Conference.

Did you know? 50% of CUNY BA/BS graduates go on to graduate school!

“CUNY BA/BS enabled me to secure a research internship at Rutgers (my top-choice for grad school) which helped me gain acceptance to the graduate program and turn my internship into a long-term position.  So once again, many thanks to the program, as this route to completing my undergraduate studies and transitioning onward could not have worked out any better!”       -K. Daya Bill (Urban Sustainability), B.A., January 2009

Anika Altmann, M.S., Urban Affairs, Hunter College/CUNY

K. Daya Bill, M.C.R.P., City and Regional Planning, Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University*

Arthur Coleman, Ph.D., Economics, CUNY Graduate Center

Ronda Collins, M.S., Clinical Psychology, Howard University

Maureen Durkin, M.S., Speech Language Pathology, Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions

Gabriela Etzensberger, M.S., Speech Pathology, Lehman College/CUNY

Sam Friedman, M.S., Interactive Telecommunications, New York University, with a $20,000 scholarship

Kelly Gola, Ph.D., Developmental Psychology, Univ. California at Santa Cruz, with a teaching assistantship and scholarship support ($40,000 of funding)

Julia Gomez, Ph.D., Comparative Literature, University of Oregon, with a Tuition Scholarship, Beall Scholarship, Graduate Teaching Fellowship (over $33,000 of funding)

James Green, M.S., School Counseling, Brooklyn College/CUNY

Charles Greene, M.S.W., Hunter College School of Social Work*

Anthony Harper, M.P.H., Lehman College/CUNY

Kemile Jackson, Ph.D., History, CUNY Graduate Center

Frank J. Jefferson, M.P.H., Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health*

Aashish Jethra, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, with a merit scholarship.

Rebecca Journey, M.A., Oral History, Columbia University*

Tyleen Kelly, Master of Studies in English Literature, Oxford University, U.K. and Ph.D., English, UC Berkeley*

Sibongile Kenyatta, J.D., University of the West Indies

Rachel Klapper, M.A., Government and Counter-Terrorism, IDC (Interdisciplinary Center) Herzliya, Israel*

Salma Malik, M.S., Occupational Therapy, New York University

Erica Plass, M.A., English Literature, Queens College/CUNY

Azriel Relph, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism as a Sulzberger Scholar*

Michelle Sahli, Ph.D., Epidemiology, SUNY Buffalo

Cosim John Sayid, Ph.D., Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center

Vanessa Smarth, Postbaccalaureate Premedical Program, Columbia University

Deidre Spahr, Waldorf Education Teacher Training, Micha-El Institute

Meredith Stockman, M.S., Negotiation and Conflict, Columbia University

David Wilson, M.F.A, Studio Art (Combined Media), HunterCollege/CUNY

 *Recipient of a CUNY BA/BS Alumni Fund Scholarship

CUNY BA/BS students:  Please make sure you let us know when you are accepted to graduate school. Thanks!

CUNY Baccalaureate Commencement Speech-June 3, 2009

Mohamad Bazzi

Thank you very much for that kind introduction President Kelly, and for having me here today. I’m honored to be speaking at my alma mater.

I’d like to share a story with you that took place in October 2003 when I was the Middle East bureau chief at Newsday. I was travelling from Amman, the Jordanian capital, to Baghdad.

Back then, the airport in Baghdad had not yet reopened to civilians. The best way to get to Baghdad was to drive for 12 hours from Amman. I had made this trip a half dozen times since the US invasion in April 2003, and I knew how essential it was to have a good driver. On this particular trip, I was quite happy with the driver I had hired.

About halfway through the drive, we were approaching Ramadi and then Fallujah. Both cities later became centers of the Iraqi insurgency. We were on a comfortable six-lane highway that was built by Saddam Hussein in the 1980s.

The biggest problem on this road was bandits. They figured out that many foreigners were coming in and out of Iraq after the invasion. Foreigners were carrying computers, cameras, satellite phones, and most important of all-a lot of cash. At this point, the banks in Iraq were not functioning. No travelers’ checks. No wire transfers.

Journalists and aid workers had to bring in thousands of dollars at a time. On this trip, I was carrying about $12,000 in cash. I was going to be in Iraq for two months and I had to keep the small Newsday bureau there running.

The bandits-the Iraqis called them Ali Babas-had lookouts on the highway overpasses and the rest stops. They would try to pinpoint cars that had foreigners in them and could be lucrative targets.

You would be in an old GMC Suburban that can do 90 or 100 miles an hour. But the bandits would be in BMWs that could do 120 miles an hour. They would chase you and cut you off with two or three cars.

My driver, Khalid, told me that a week earlier he was driving a group of German aid workers who were chased and robbed by bandits.

As we neared Ramadi-we both got tense-Khalid reached over, and opened the glove compartment. He took out a grenade. He put it next to him on the seat.

He saw that I looked concerned. So he said, “This is only in case the Ali Babas chase us.”

He thought that would make me feel better.

I asked, “What exactly are you planning to do with this?”

“Well,” he said, “if we see one of these cars creeping up behind us, I’m going to pull the window down, stick the grenade out and show them that I mean business.”

I didn’t think that was a good idea at all. I pointed out that the Ali Babas have AK-47s and there will be a lot more of them than the two of us.

“Once I show them the grenade, you’ll see they’ll leave us alone.”

“What if they don’t?” I asked.

“Well, then I’ll take the pin out of the grenade, stick it out of the window again, and that will show them that I really mean business.”

So we went back and forth for 10 or 15 minutes. For the most part, I kept calm trying to convince him that this was a really bad idea. At that point, the Ali Babas were not killing people, only robbing them. I tried to convince Khalid that the grenade was much more likely to instigate them than it was to scare them off.

Finally, when I pointed out that if he threw the grenade the wrong way, it could destroy his beloved car-with us inside it-he relented and put the grenade back in the glove compartment. Fortunately, we made it the rest of the way to Baghdad without incident.

I tell this story because-as cliche as it might sound-sometimes you have to be prepared for completely unexpected things. There I was, on the road to Baghdad having to talk a driver twice my age into putting away a live grenade. No one really teaches you these things.

I also share this story today because I believe that all of you CUNY Baccalaureate graduates have known-and will know-how to react when you encounter your own version of this story, whatever form it might take. You know how to think on your feet, to handle enormous pressure, and to deal with the unexpected.

I’m not going to present you with a cliche list that you should take with you as newly minted graduates, or to share pearls of wisdom about how you can survive in the “real world.” You’ve all been living in that real world.

CUNY as a whole-and the CUNY BA program in particular-is unique in the way that its graduates are often driven by their life experiences to pursue their education. All of you had a major share of the responsibility for the content of your CUNY Baccalaureate degree. It takes guts to design some of those areas of concentration, and to get them past the CUNY BA staff!

I also don’t want to present an entirely rosy picture of our world today. This is a difficult time. The US economy is in terrible shape: housing values have plummeted, foreclosures are rising, unemployment is nearing double digits.

But let me remind you that many of you have overcome incredible obstacles in order to graduate today. Keep in mind that your personal experience and struggles are a tremendous source of strength. They will make you more creative-and give you an edge over those who might not have had to struggle in the same way.

I graduated from the CUNY Baccalaureate program 12 years ago. When I entered the program, I was already working in journalism, freelancing for community papers in Queens and later for Newsday, but I decided that I wanted a different area of concentration: urban studies. I was a Thomas Smith Academic Fellow. I took courses at four different campuses, and at every one I found dedicated faculty members who were eager to work with me. I co-authored a study with one of my mentors, Professor Philip Kasinitz, which was later published in a national journal. Professor Kasinitz would tease me that I was the first undergraduate with whom he had ever agreed to share an author credit.

I had an undergraduate experience that was unique to CUNY-being able to tap into the resources of this great university, in this great city. I could not have done this anywhere else.

Attending CUNY instilled in me a sense of social responsibility-as I know it has for many of you here today.

How do I know that? You only need to leaf through today’s graduation program to see the range of CUNY Baccalaureate students who managed to fit some form of social justice or awareness into an area of concentration. Some of you are already working-or soon will be-in social service careers: as counselors, social workers, and teachers.

Whatever you do, you’ll need to have a keen sense of empathy and compassion for others, especially in these difficult times. During the six years I spent covering conflict in the Middle East, I always tried to portray in my articles what it was like to be a civilian trapped by war.

I was attuned to that because I had grown up during the Lebanese civil war, and I often felt trapped in Beirut. As a civilian, without a foreign passport, you’re stranded. This is the one feeling that’s the most difficult for foreign correspondents to understand. Your passport is your ticket out if things get very bad. But the civilians have to stay behind.

It’s always sobering to run into the limitations of your profession. Be prepared for that. And be ready to re-invent yourself over the course of your career.

I love journalism. I’ve been doing it since I was in middle school. But over the past few years, I’ve had to move away from newspaper reporting-people say it’s a dying industry. I’ve had to reinvent myself as a teacher of journalism, a political analyst, and a researcher. I miss the rush of daily newspaper reporting; sometimes I even miss talking a stranger into putting away his gun or a grenade.

Jimmy Breslin, my friend at Newsday and one of the greatest columnists in the history of American journalism, once explained the importance of doing what you love far better than I could. He wrote after finding his perfect job: “I busted out of the place in a hurry and went to a saloon and drank beer and said that for the rest of my life I’d never take a job in a place where you couldn’t throw cigarette butts on the floor. I was hooked on this writing for newspapers and magazines.”

That’s the message I’d like to leave you with today: there’s going to be setbacks and unexpected twists. You may never find a job where you can throw your cigarette butts on the floor like Jimmy Breslin. But try to have a high tolerance for the pain. Be willing to adapt, and use everything that you’ve learned at CUNY and from your rich life experience to do the things that you love.

Thank you again for having me. And congratulations to all of you in the class of 2009.

Listen to the podcast of Mohamad’s speech here

Susan VanBrackle, B.S. ‘06 (Marketing and Anthropology) has just completed her Master’s in International Management at Manhattan College; she now works for Cornell Weill Medical School.

Charles Greene B.S. ‘09 (Human Services: Alcohol and Substance Abuse Counseling) has been accepted to the Hunter College School of Social Work.

K. Daya Bill (Urban Sustainability) has been accepted to Rutgers University Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy for a Master’s of City and Regional Planning.

McNair Scholar Ozlem Yuksel-Sokmen (Cognitive Psychology and Language Acquisition) will present her research on May7-8, 2009 at John Jay College’s first Undergraduate Research Conference, as well as at the 5th Annual Forensic Psychology MA Student Research Conference, on Friday, May 15, 2009 at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Anika Altmann (New York City Politics, Policy and People) has been accepted to the Master’s program in Urban Affairs at Hunter College.

Havalah Collins (Vocal Studies, Performance and Ethnomusicology), with her Brooklyn-based trio, Tres Leches, has a first album coming out:  Tres Leches: Songs, Chants & Lullabies for All Our Relations consists of originals, re-envisioned traditional songs, and sacred chants that span the globe.http://cdbaby.com/cd.tresleches

Michelle Sahli BA ‘09 (Environmental Issues) has been accepted to the Ph.D. program in Epidemiology at SUNY Buffalo.

Wendy Walter Galgan BA ‘97 (English Literature) has completed her Ph.D. in English at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Grigor Sargsyan BA ‘03 (Mathematics: Logic and Set Theory) has completed his U.C. Berkeley Ph.D. and is headed to National Science Foundation-supported post-doctoral study at UCLA.http://cunyba.gc.cuny.edu/cuny-babs-alum-heads-to-ucla/

Simon Mairzadeh (International Relations and Cultural Studies) has received the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship. http://cunyba.gc.cuny.edu/simon-mairzadeh-%e2%80%93-benjamin-a-gilman-international-scholarship-winner/ ]]> http://cunyba.gc.cuny.edu/blog/more-spring-2009-student-and-alumni-achievements/feed/ 0