Claire Beresford (Poetics of Space / Sound into Language, The Articulatory Gesture) received the Catalina Paez & Seumas MacManus Award for her volume of poems Music You Don’t Need Ears For.  The award is sponsored by the Academy of American Poets and administered by Hunter College.  She was also awarded the Memorial Scholarship for Students in Education or Human Services from the CUNY Baccalaureate.

Jerin Alam (Marketing and Public Relations/ Business Administration) was recently given a CUNY Student Activities Award. She was also the only student invited to speak during the Feminist Majority Foundation’s “National Young Women’s Leadership Conference: What’s at Stake in 2008?” in Washington, DC, in which she moderated a panel on global feminism. The conference drew students from all over the country and included influential activists such as Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, NOW President Kim Gandy, and Feminist Majority Foundation President Eleanor Smeal.

George Farnum (Black Literature in a Global Culture/Creative Writing) received the Ottilie Grabanier Drama Award for his playwriting from Brooklyn College, in addition to placing second for a number of other Brooklyn College writing awards.

Kayhan Irani (Theatre and Social Change) co-edited a book that has just been published by Routledge Press and is available at http://www.routledge.com/books/Telling-Stories-to-Change-the-World-isbn9780415960809 or on Amazon (among other places). “Telling Stories to Change the World: Global Voices on the Power of Narrative to Build Community and Make Social Justice Claims” is a powerful collection of essays about community-based and interest-based projects where storytelling is used as a strategy for speaking out for justice. Contributors from across the globe—including Uganda, Darfur, China, Afghanistan, South Africa, New Orleans, and Chicago—describe grassroots projects in which communities use storytelling as a way of exploring what a more just society might look like and what civic engagement means. A book release party will take place on Friday, June 20th 2008 - 7:30 PM at The Brecht Forum, 451 West St. (on the corner of Bank St.). For more details visit http://www.artivista.org/

Jared Rodriguez (History of the Americas) has been admitted to and will attend a Summer Research Training Program at the University of Chicago where he will work with a faculty member in the history department to develop his research project on the development of Afro-Brazilian political consciousness in the post dictatorship period. In addition, he was named a Josh and Judy Weston Public Service Scholar.

Andrew Filippone Jr. (Studies in Film Form and Aesthetics) will be exhibiting his documentary film on April 20 at UnionDocs in Brooklyn. The film is called “Happy Monday.” Filippone describes it as a “documentary film object” because it’s a film that’s left the screen and become a tangible and physical thing; it is essentially a large light box that audiences walk up to and linger over. This documentary has been previously shown at the Rhode Island International Film Festival (August 2007) and the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival (October 2007). Information on the UnionDocs exhibit is here: http://www.uniondocs.org/blog/happy-monday/  Information and photographs of “Happy Monday” can be found here:  http://web.mac.com/afilipponejr/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/happymonday/ 

Rebecca Journey (International Politics and Humanitarian Development) received the Amelia Ottinger Award for Excellence in Public Speaking at the Harvard University National Model United Nations.

Heather McCown (Partnership for Social Justice) received John Jay College’s first Keith L.T. Wright Service Award for her work at John Jay on Darfur Day, 2006) and her community work on reinstating the ferry in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

Jared Rodriguez (History of the Americas) has just received both the Mellon Mays Fellowship and a Kaye Scholarship.  For the Mellon Mays Fellowship, he hopes to travel to Brazil this summer for a research project on “Black Political Consciousness in a Post-Dictatorship Society.”  Rodriguez is also a professional photographer who has had his first book cover published (”Road from ar Ramadi”).

NSEP/David L. Boren Undergraduate Scholarship
Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Fellowship
Jack Kent Cooke Transfer Scholarship
Freeman Awards for Study in Asia (Freeman-Asia)
Fulbright Scholarships
Goldwater Scholarship
Jacob Javits Fellowship
Kaplan Leadership Associate’s Degree Scholarship
Marshall Scholarship
Thurgood Marshall Scholarship
New York City Urban Fellows Program
Rhodes Scholarship
Jonas E. Salk Scholarship
Soros Fellowship
Truman Scholarship
Morris K. Udall Undergraduate Scholarship
Jeannette K. Watson Fellowship

If you received any one of the following nationally recognized scholarships but your name does not appear on the list at www.cuny.edu/prestigious (under CUNY recipients), please contact Beth Kneller at bkneller@gc.cuny.edu with the details.

Noah Ginsburg (Sustainable Energy)
Recipient of two scholarships through his service last year as a City Year corps member. City Year is an Americorps program. He received the standard Americorps education award of $4,725 plus the Seinfeld Scholarship of $10,000 per year, renewable for four years. This scholarship was awarded to five City Year corps members in NYC for outstanding service.

Catherine Granton (At Risk Females and Environmental Education)
Outward Bound Scholarship: Chosen by Outward Bound Wilderness for a scholarship matched by the Kingsborough Community College Foundation for an Outward Bound Wilderness course for women.

Kayhan Irani (Theatre and Social Change)
In 2007 she was awarded a certificate of recognition by Mayor Bloomberg, as part of Immigrant History Week, for her arts work in immigrant communities. She is currently co-editing a volume of essays, to be published by Routledge in 2008, “Telling Stories to Change the World” about projects around the world that use storytelling as a way of creating social justice.

Linda Jandejskova (Multimedia Arts and Cultural Studies)
Kaye scholar with CCNY and a Thomas W. Smith Fellow; now preparing for VSC art residency in January - a 4 week studio painting at the Vermont Studio Center.

If you’ve won any award, scholarship, honor, etc. this year and have not yet notified me, please send an email with the details ASAP to me at bkneller@gc.cuny.edu.

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

Jeffrey Reynolds (2004 Smith Fellow,) Melissa Marlin (2002 Smith Fellow,) Thomas W. Smith, Tyleen Kelly (2007 Smith Fellow), Meghan Duffy (1995 Smith Fellow)

On October 1, 2007, Thomas W. Smith and CUNY BA Program hosted a reception in celebration of 500 Thomas W. Smith Fellows. Entertainment was provided by Smith Fellows (see photo above.) The party was quite a success and everybody had a wonderful time.

Lots more photos are available in our Photo Gallery.

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Thomas W. Smith Academic Fellowships are funded through a donation by Mr. Thomas Smith to the CUNY Baccalaureate Program to recognize academic excellence within the Program. Subject to maintenance of good academic standing, awards are renewable until the recipient completes all degree contract credits and graduates from the Program. Because the Smith Fellowship recognizes academic excellence, significant weight is given to the applicant’s GPA and to the seriousness of the applicant’s academic interests and plans. The next application will be available for download in November, and the application deadline will be in February 2008.

Brianne Baker (History of War and Violence/English Literature) and Ian Caskey (Writing: Fiction) had papers published in John Jay’s Finest, Spring 2007 issue, a compendium of outstanding John Jay student writing from across the curriculum.

Kojo Davis (Ethics/Communication and Law) has received the first Candace J. Groudine Human Rights Award, which will give him both a scholarship and an internship in Human Rights in Washington, D.C.

Sarah Lippek received second place in the the Paul LeClerc Best Library Research Paper Award and was “honorably mentioned” for the Bernard Cohen Short Story Prize and the Mary M. Fay Poetry Award, both through the Hunter English department. Her short story “Dead Wasps” was recently published in the Olive Tree Review. In addition, Lippek was accepted into the Central European University in Budapest, an elite study abroad designed for advanced undergraduate students (usually honors students), where she will complete her last year of college. Central European University, www.ceu-budapest.edu, is a US-style graduate university located in the heart of Budapest, Hungary with almost 1000 M.A. and Ph.D. students from nearly 70 countries. Lippek is one of a small group of students accepted for 2007-08, all coming from top U.S. universities and colleges including: Princeton (Woodrow Wilson School), Cornell, Columbia, Harvard, John’s Hopkins, Bard, Swarthmore, Sarah Lawrence, Denison, Scripps, and Lewis & Clarke. Students in this group who achieve and maintain a B+ average during the program are admitted to the CEU for their graduate studies.

La Shon Stockton (Social Work) was named one of “The Best People in NYC” by the Mayor’s Volunteer Center of NY for her extensive volunteer service to Safe Horizon, the nation’s leading victim assistance organization. Congratulations La Shon and Safe Horizon for being the “Best People in NYC!”

Camille Watson (Philosophy/Justice Studies) won the Humanities and Justice Award for an Outstanding Senior Thesis at John Jay College in Spring 2007.

Dulce Wechsler (Latin American Literature) received the Miguel de Cervantes Award from the Romance Languages department at Hunter College.

On Wed., May 23, BMCC’s Video Arts and Technology Department held its 2007 Student Video Festival in the Media Center’s Studio II. There were five categories: Documentary, Video Graphics, Audio, Alternative/Hybrid, and Fiction. The projects entered originated as assignments given in the department’s beginning and advanced production courses. Each student was responsible for conceiving their own project, writing the script, casting, shooting, and editing the footage (including adding music, effects, etc.). Entrants were nominated by their fellow students. Each class was asked to vote on their favorite videos produced by their classmates. 23 students were finalists in the festival. Festival judges were BMCC’s Executive Director of Public Affairs Barry Rosen, VAT professor Judy Noble, and Media Center Director John Gallagher.

Diane Ingino’s (CUNY BA area of concentration: Modern History and the Moving Image) 9-minute documentary, entitled Buskerville, portrayed the history and personal experiences of New York City street musicians. Combining historical research with interviews and performances, Buskerville won Best Documentary and Best in Show. The prizes were sponsored by former BMCC President Joshua L. Smith. The winner in each category received a Joshua Smith Award for Excellence certificate. For Best in Show, Ingino received a complete package of Avid Express Pro Video Editing software.