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Grads who attended the June 9, 2008 commencement ceremony should consider donating their cap and gown back to CUNY BA if those items are still in very good condition and no longer needed; your donation may help a future student defray part of the cost of attending the ceremony. Bring or mail your cap and gown to: CUNY Baccalaureate, 365 Fifth Ave, Suite 6412, New York, NY 10016. Thank you.
Monday, September 15, 2008, 6pm
Room 9204; Refreshments following in Room 6412.
Submerged: Tales from the Basin, is an anthology of literature, memoir, and art created by more than thirty women to benefit those who survived Hurricane Katrina. The title refers to a fear many of us had as young children, of having our heads submerged under water while our mothers washed our hair. The stories, essays, poems, and art of Submerged are an exploration of each contributor’s relationship with her hair, in most cases emotional, often humorous, and consistently generated from youth. An African American writer discusses having her hair ironed straight in the 1960s, with her mother trying hard to keep her from looking like a Black Panther. A Southern writer laments her childhood braid lying in a box in perpetual youth while she, herself, ages. A young woman watches her aging grandmother go bald. A lonely widow rediscovers intimacy from the remote touch of her wax technician. A New Orleans performance group talks about Hurricane Katrina, gender stereotypes, and hair as stagecraft. Artist Lorien Jordan has created a series of drawings in response to these essays, memoirs, and poems. A percentage of the book’s proceeds will help support charities based in New Orleans that work with ongoing relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina survivors.
Readers:
Kelly A. Gola, Lauren González, Ellen Hagan, Rebecca O. Johnson, Carla Porch, Alyssa Robbins.
Kelly A. Gola is a recent graduate of the CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies; read more about her here.
About the book:
Edited by Lauren González, Images by Lorien Jordan
Available September 1, 2008
ISBN 978-0-9802300-2-4/LCCN 2008932593
Soft cover/US $19.95
For the first time, we have made arrangements for students, alumni, faculty, etc. to purchase various items with our new logo. Go to http://www.cafepress.com/cunyba where you can purchase t-shirts, sweatshirts, mouse pads, mugs, notepads, tote bags and baseball hats, all quality materials with the CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies logo! Not only is each item reasonably priced, but a percentage of each sale directly benefits the CUNY BA Alumni Fund (which supports Alumni Scholarships and other alumni activities).
We are very pleased to announce that we’ve created a new Meetup for all CUNY Baccalaureate students and alumni.
Would you like to connect with other alumni in your area? Organize a campus event for fellow student? Find an alum in your field to mentor you? Hang out with other students and alumni? Meetup is the perfect tool!
Click on the link below to join. Each request needs to be approved to make sure only CUNY Baccalaureate alumni join the group, so please include your name, date of graduation and your home college when you request to join.
Dear CUNY Baccalaureate,
I am a CUNY BA grad ‘05 and also a Thomas W. Smith Fellow. Since graduating with dual concentration in Cultural Anthropology and Comparative Literature, I went on to receive an MA degree from Columbia University’s Paris campus in French Cultural Studies.
After completing the degree in September 2006, I worked at the International Rescue Committee with youth from all over Africa and Asia. In May 2007, I began a 6 months internship with UNHCR in Dadaab, Kenya — a group of refugee camps near the Somali border. In February I was hired by Mapendo International and now work as a consultant. I am currently seconded to UNHCR and am working in Kakuma, another refugee camp near the Sudanese and Ugandan borders.
Working and living in refugee camps is not easy, but the rewards are well worth it.
CUNY BA was so instrumental in both my academic and professional trajectory and I really support the program. I also wanted to send a special thank you to Mr. Smith, if you can pass along my gratitude.
Kind regards,
Jaylene Ney
From David Morgante (International Crime / Terrorism Studies), graduating June 2008
“I owe great thanks to the CUNY BA Program. Today I received my formal ‘conditional offer of employment’ from the U.S. Department of State Diplomatic Security Service. I could be heading off to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center as early as this summer. (I was also recently offered an internship with the Regional Security Officer in Skopje, Macedonia through the State Department, but cannot do both, unfortunately.) The CUNY BA Program has been nothing less than phenomenal. I’ve been able to focus in on very unique coursework, and I’ve been able to progress with extreme efficiency. I couldn’t have made a better decision with my education.”
From Charmaine Lezama, B.A., January 2008 (Holistic Psychology)
“I would like to thank the CUNY BA Program for allowing students such as myself the opportunity to design a degree and create a career based on their personalities and creative talents and abilities. Thank you for doing a great job of being a service for so many students. I continue to encourage students to enroll in CUNY BA so that they can not only design a career based on their skills, but also based on the changing trends in these times.”
From Michael Kramberg, B.S., September 2006 (Financial Operations)
“For the past 21 years, I have worked at one of New York’s finest community and cultural institutions, the 92nd St. Y. Now, two years after graduation, I am pleased to let you know that I will be leaving the Y to accept the position of Chief Financial Officer of the Stamford, CT Jewish Community Center where, as a member of the senior management team, I will be responsible for all aspects of the finance, human resources and facility operations departments. I am very excited to be taking this major step in my professional career, and I am grateful to the CUNY BA Program for having made my college experience so rewarding and so relevant.”
From Shawn Guin, B.S., June 2006 (Health Care Reform / Music)
“I was accepted at several medical schools. I have chosen to attend SUNY Upstate Medical University in the fall. I wanted to thank you and the Program for being so supportive. I was a non-traditional student who went back to school to pursue my dream of becoming a physician. It was very difficult going back to college after being out in the real world, but I took the plunge and did it. When I found the CUNY BA Program I knew that I had found exactly what I needed: a dual concentration degree. I chose Music/Health Care Reform as my areas of concentration. I was able to complete the music degree that I started years earlier at Indiana University and also create a new concentration in Health Care Reform. I knew that if I chose courses I was passionate about, it would make working towards my B.S. exciting and challenging. And as a Thomas W. Smith Fellow, I was able to focus less on working and more on my studies; I am so grateful to have received support from Thomas Smith.
I would add that every single interviewer asked a lot of questions about the Program. Most, in one way or another, told me that being a Health Care Reform major showed that I am aware of the current situations affecting our current delivery system and that it is important to have a realistic view of it when deciding to become a physician. One interviewer said that I was brave to major in a controversial topic. I know that being a CUNY BA student helped me get the interviews. I am so excited to start this new chapter in my life.”
On your job applications, resumes, graduate school applications, etc. you MUST identify that you have graduated from THE CUNY BACCALAUREATE PROGRAM. Of course, we know most of you strongly identify with your home college, and so you can include that as well…as your home college (see below for an example).
Why is this important? Because potential employers are likely to call to verify your college degree and if you write that you received your degree from “Brooklyn College” or “Hunter College,” that college will receive the call and they will NOT verify your degree because that college did not confer it. Upon graduation, your degree is conferred by the CUNY Baccalaureate Program under the auspices of the Graduate Center. Employers or agencies who need to verify your degree will have to phone the CUNY BA Program (Registrar’s Office, 212-817-8227).
How you might indicate your degree on resumes, job applications, etc:
Degree (B.A. or B.S.), Graduation Date, Title(s) of Area of Concentration, The CUNY Bacclaureate Program (Home College: xyz College), any Honors received.
So, if Jane Doe graduated “cum laude” in January 2007 with a B.S. in Nonprofit Accounting while she was at Baruch, her resume might look like this:
B.S., Nonprofit Accounting, January 2007, The CUNY Baccalaureate Program (at Baruch College), cum laude
or
B.S., cum laude, Nonprofit Accounting, January 2007, The CUNY Baccalaureate Program / Home College: Baruch College
Finally, note that we have three different graduation dates each year (September, January, June) so be sure you have the correct month on your records.
For graduate school applications (other than law, medical, dental schools), please use the Program’s College Board (CEEB) code: 2479, to indicate the CUNY Baccalaureate Program.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions on this.
Beth Kneller
Deputy Director
bkneller@gc.cuny.edu or 212-817-8238
If you graduated from the CUNY Baccalaureate Program and are now employeed at CUNY as either a faculty or staff member, please let us know. Contact Lidija Markes, Alumni Affairs Coordinator, lmarkes@gc.cuny.edu or 212-817-8223. Thank you.
You are invited to a special evening for students, staff and friends of the CUNY Baccalaureate Program
“Gilded Lions and Jeweled Horses: The Synagogue to the Carousel”
The exhibition traces the journey of Jewish woodcarvers and other artisans from Eastern and
(No RSVP is necessary. Guests are welcome.)
On Oct 1, 2007, the CUNY BA/BS Program celebrated the awarding of the 500th Thomas W. Smith Academic Fellowship. That same evening, the third annual Thomas W. Smith Graduate Scholarship was awarded to David Hamilton Golland, a former CUNY BA/Smith Fellow currently enrolled in the CUNY Graduate Center. Here is David’s acceptance speech; it includes a wonderful tribute to the Program:
Seven years. Seven. Must be my lucky number. Twenty-one years ago–a multiple of seven–I started on my high school soccer team–as #7. And it’s been seven years since I was a Smith Fellow, in the year 2000. In seven years, I’ve taken my Smith Fellowship and earned my BA, taken an MA at the University of Virginia, and am now only a year or so away from a PhD here at the CUNY Graduate Center. Seven years ago, as a senior in college, I started seeing another student very frequently; today we’re married, and my wife was kind enough to join us today, as was my father, who has also been an unfailing ship’s counselor, you might say, as I have navigated the rocky shoals of doctoral education. It’s also a pleasure to be once again among friends like Steve Brier, with whom I worked for several years as a leader on the Doctoral Students’ Council.
I should speak in brief about the topic of my research, which recently took me to musty libraries all over the country, but currently keeps me sequestered most days in front of the computer. I am writing a history of equal employment opportunity in the construction industry during the 1960s. As the Civil Rights movement picked up steam, with freedom rides, church bombings, lunch-counter sit-ins, and the showdown at the schoolhouse door, African-American workers were being railroaded out of a chance for a better future by segregated union locals, whites-only hiring policies, and Jim Crow apprenticeship programs, in Northern cities at least as much as in the South. What made the situation even more intolerable was the high visibility of federally-funded construction projects in the urban renewal areas, where blacks lived but whites worked. My research is on the attempts of Civil Rights organizations, as well as organized labor, to address the issue, and the public-policy response of the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Now that my archival research is completed, I intend to use this fellowship to travel for interviews with people who were part of this important aspect of our nation’s history.
Where will you be in seven years? Some of you might be, like me, on the verge of a PhD. Some of you will be doctors, some lawyers, and some will already be successful entrepreneurs. One of you will be standing here speaking to new Smith Fellows. But I know for sure that every one of you will be doing something important. I say this with confidence, because you are Smith Fellows and CUNY Baccalaureate students. You know, the Honors College may get all the press, with its fancy laptops and subway-car advertisements, but CUNY BA students are what this university is really all about–strivers trying to get something more, with the creativity and passion that has already earned you the admiration and respect of your peers and professors. You are the real reason for CUNY’s existence. I am honored to stand with you tonight and to once again thank Thomas W. Smith and the CUNY Baccalaureate Program for everything they do. Thank you very much.
–David Hamilton Golland, Oct 1, 2007
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