The CUNY Baccalaureate Blog

The Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation, an independent foundation that began in 1979 as the result of a bequest from the estate of Mrs. Newcombe, a Philadelphia philanthropist, supports students as they pursue degrees in higher education by maintaining scholarship and fellowship programs that are in keeping with her lifelong interests. In Spring 2008, Hunter College chose CUNY BA student Nikola Berger as one of the 2008 Newcombe Scholarship recipients.

Nikola Berger, originally from Stuttart, Germany, is a senior in CUNY BA who is completing a dual Area of Concentration in Globalization / Environmental Sciences with courses from Hunter and Baruch Colleges. She has been mentored by Professor Kenneth Erickson, Political Science, Hunter and Professor Haydee Salmun, Geography, Hunter, and her professors consistently refer to her work as “outstanding.” After working for a number of years as a graphic artist and freelance designer, Berger’s art and interests changed to deal more and more with social issues. She plans to continue to study environmental science after graduating, to be able to work on environmental issues. Berger was previously named a Diego Hidalgo Scholar and Thomas W. Smith Academic Fellow through the CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies. Berger is scheduled to graduate in January 2009 with honors.

For further information contact Beth Kneller, Deputy Director, 212-817-8238, bkneller@gc.cuny.edu

CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies 2008 Commencement

Journalist John Hockenberry to speak

Time and Place: Monday, June 9, 10:30 am, The Great Hall at The Cooper Union, 7 East 7th St. at Third Avenue (the Foundation Building), Manhattan

Graduates: 250

Speaker: John Hockenberry, three-time Peabody Award winner, four-time Emmy award winner and Dateline NBC correspondent; now co-host of an NPR morning news program, “The Takeaway”

Faculty speaker: Professor John Krinsky, Associate Professor of Political Science, City College

Student speaker: Easter Z. Wood (Area of Concentration: The African Diaspora in the Americas)

The CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies (CUNY BA), administered by the CUNY Graduate Center, is a university-wide individualized bachelor’s degree where students work one-on-one with faculty. This small program, with an annual enrollment of 600, is intended for self-directed, academically strong students who have well-formulated academic and career goals. Most are working adults, many of whom are raising families; 80% are over 25 years old (49% are over 35 years old); and a significant number are returning to school, often after a hiatus of anywhere from 5 to 30 years. Since its inception in 1971, over 6000 students have earned their degrees through this route; almost 50% have gone on to graduate school.

Four students have received major graduate school fellowships: Aaron Brower will attend Harvard Divinity School with a Presidential Scholarship - free tuition plus a $20,000 stipend; Sharif Corinaldi will attend the University of California/Berkeley for a Ph.D. in Physics/Quantum Information and Computation with the Chancellor’s Fellowship – five years of free tuition plus a $25,000 stipend; Corey Lamont will attend Howard University for a Ph.D. in English with the Frederick Douglass Fellowship - five years of free tuition plus an $18,000 stipend; and Diana Kachan, a 2008 Jonas E. Salk Scholar, will attend the University of Miami School of Medicine for an M.D./Ph.D. with a Dean’s Fellowship, covering four years of the medical degree.

117 students will participate in the ceremony, during which several scholarships will be awarded. Guests are coming from all over the U.S. including the Virgin Islands, as well as Antigua, Australia, Barbuda, Belize, The Canary Islands, Dominica, Ecuador, England, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Israel, Jamaica, and Trinidad.

For further information contact Beth Kneller, Deputy Director, 212-817-8238, bkneller@gc.cuny.edu

This year, two hundred sixty students are graduating from the CUNY BA/BS Degree; twenty, representing diverse experiences from around the University, the city and the world, are featured here. Some are career changers, others are advancing in their current professions; several have overcome amazing odds in the pursuit of their bachelor’s degrees. Each story is an inspiration.

profiles-in-excellence-2008.pdf 

January 2007

The Gilman International Scholarship Program offers grants for U.S. citizen undergraduate students of limited financial means to pursue academic studies abroad. Such international study is intended to better prepare U.S. students to assume significant roles in an increasingly global economy and interdependent world.

In 2007, two CUNY Baccalaureate Program students - Dulce Wechsler and Lei Yu — earned this prestigious honor; their profiles follow.

Dulce Wechsler was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela. Upon her high school graduation, her father refused to pay for college because she wanted to study journalism; he felt that was no career for a woman. Wechsler applied to an English program in Los Angeles (earning a full scholarship) with the idea of returning to Venezuela as an English teacher; then she would use the money she earned to pay for her own further education. But instead of returning to Venezuela, she relocated to Miami to work in the music industry promoting Latin American music which she did from 1997 on. (She received 15 credits from the CUNY BA Program for her work in Media Planning, Copywriting, Public Relations, Advertising and Marketing). She earned a few credits at Miami-Dade Community College and entered Hunter College in 2005. In 2006, she entered the CUNY Baccalaureate Program.

Wechsler designed her concentration in Latin American Literature with Prof. Maria Hernandez-Ojeda, Romance Languages, Hunter College. Her specific study is of the Latin American canon from pre-Columbian to Contemporary Literatures, within the themes of multicultural interaction such as Coloniality, Post-Coloniality and Border Thinking. This is an area she hopes to pursue in graduate school.

Wechsler received a highly competitive Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship from the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the Institute of International Education. With this, she will study in Argentina during the January 2007 winter break. Her other honors include receiving a Thomas W. Smith Academic Fellowship, induction into HAT (Hunter Achievement Team), election as president of the Hunter Spanish literary magazine, a CUNY President’s award for academic achievement in Romance languages, and a place on the Dean’s List. Wechsler is expected to graduate summa cum laude with her B.A. in January 2008.

Lei Yu was born in a small village in China at the end of the Cultural Revolution. Limited by the economic, political, social and intellectual disruptions of the revolution, she left China for the U.S. in 1997, belatedly pursuing her intellectual interests (and recently receiving American citizenship). She had to learn English here and attributes her success to the many teachers and support staff at Hunter who pushed her to excel. Lisa Tolhurst, Hunter College Lecturer in English, wrote that Yu is “one of the most outstanding students I have taught my fifteen-year teaching career at Hunter, NYU and the University of Melbourne, Australia.”

Yu is particularly interested in religion, especially Eastern religions, a subject of course vigorously discouraged in her native communist China. Believing that “politics and spiritual searching are inextricably linked,” she designed a concentration in “Religion and Politics” under the mentorship of Prof. Barbara Sproul, Religion, Hunter with courses from City, Hunter and Baruch Colleges.

Thanks to the Gilman International Scholarship, Yu will study at Humboldt University in Germany, desiring to absorb German history and culture as well as a study of some of the great philosophers, including Kant, Hegel and Heiddeger. Yu’s other honors include the Harriet Brows Scholarship, the Women’s Forum Educational Award, and the Charlotte W. Newcomb Scholarship. Yu’s goal is to work for the Foreign Service or a human rights organization. She is expected to graduate with her B.A. in June 2008.

For further information contact Beth Kneller, Deputy Director, 212-817-8238, bkneller@gc.cuny.edu

Keisha Toms: Studying “Marginalized” Peoples

B.A., January 2005, Cross Cultural Studies

• Institute for International Public Policy Fellow
• Thurgood Marshall Scholar
• All American Scholar Award
• Silver Medal, Egyptian University Athletics, Women’s Basketball, American University in Cairo
• NCAA Leading National Rebounder, Division III, Women’s Basketball
• CUNY All Star Team, Women’s Basketball, Medgar Evers College
• Dean’s List
• Fulbright Fellow

Keisha Toms entered the CUNY BA/BS Program in the spring of 2002 and received a $65,000 Fellowship from the Institute for International Public Policy Fellow in 2003. As an IIPP Fellow, she studied at CUNY and Clark Atlanta University, and she traveled to Egypt and studied Arabic and Anthropology at American University in Cairo (AUC).

She says she chose Egypt “to investigate the contributions of the now marginalized indigenous Africans who are now living on the outskirts of Egyptian society.” That was followed by the offer of an internship with the Defense Intelligence Agency. Toms took an internship with the America Prepared Campaign, a non-profit organization that promotes terrorism preparedness.

“The CUNY BA Program’s flexibility gave me the freedom to choose courses and design my major,” she said. “I was challenged academically and respected as an older student.”

Toms also captained the Medgar Evers College women’s basketball team and led the nation in rebounding for Division III. She received a silver medal while playing for the AUC women’s basketball team, and was named to the CUNY All Star Team.

Her faculty mentors were Profs. Patricia Canson, Psychology, and Delridge Hunter, Interdisciplinary Studies, at Medgar Evers College. She was accepted to Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and to Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Toms graduated with her BA in January 2005 and is currently pursuing research in Yemen through a Fulbright Fellowship. She will begin her graduate studies at Columbia in Fall 2006.

Toms joins the ranks of several other CUNY Baccalaureate students who have won Fulbright Fellowships, including Victor Muallem (London), Stephanie Trudeau (Italy), Cecilie Finkelstein (Norway), and Daisy Rosenblum (Mexico).

For further information contact Beth Kneller, Deputy Director, 212-817-8238, bkneller@gc.cuny.edu