The CUNY Baccalaureate Blog

Kayhan Irani: Theater and Social Change, B.A., June 2008; Sumasil Foundation Scholarship; Diego Hidalgo Scholarship for the Arts; FEZANA Arts Scholarship; ZAGNY Scholarship; Weston Community Engagement Fellowship; Thomas W. Smith Academic Fellowship; Kaye Arts and Humanities Fellowship; Fali Chothia Charitable Trust Scholarship; Dean’s List.

Kayhan Irani considers herself an “artivist,” fusing theater with activism and social change to activate audiences and transform society.

After graduating from the High School of Performing Arts, Irani longed for a way to combine her passion for the theater with her desire to make the world a better place. She dropped out of college after her first year to try to find a field that would satisfy her. In 2003 she created a one-woman show, We’ve Come Undone, which highlights the lives of immigrant women post 9/11, combining contemporary performance with participatory theater to engage audiences in political and social change. She has performed the show nationally and internationally for universities, non-profit organizations and at theater festivals. She then became a practitioner and trainer of the techniques of Theater of the Oppressed, a participatory form of social change theater developed by the Brazilian director and activist Augusto Boal. In 2004 Irani led theater workshops in occupied Iraq with Childhood’s Voices and Happy Families, two organizations teaching and healing children through the arts. After this immersion in using the arts for social change, Irani decided to return to the university to integrate her experiences with scholarship and research.

While in CUNY BA she was awarded an Asia Pacific Performance Exchange Fellowship at UCLA where she worked with artists from Asia and the U.S. She was awarded a grant from the International Center for Tolerance Education to train ESL teachers in how to use interactive theater to support ESL learning. Working with The Point, a community organization and cultural center in the South Bronx, she wrote and developed a children’s play about asthma and civic pride called Jackie ‘n’ the Beanstalk which combines theater with circus and aerial acrobatics. She was part of a team of educators and artists working on a three-year project with the Barnard College Education Program that created a curriculum to teach about race and racism through storytelling and the arts.

In 2007 Irani was awarded a certificate of recognition by Mayor Bloomberg as part of Immigrant History Week for her work in immigrant communities. She has led theater programs at public schools, for community groups, at juvenile detention facilities, for government agencies and with the general public and is often invited to present her work at major conferences.

She recently co-edited a volume of essays entitled Telling Stories to Change the World: Global Voices on the Power of Stories to Build Community and make Social Justice Claims, about projects around the world that use storytelling as a way of creating social justice, released in May 2008 by Routledge. Currently she is a writer and the Director of Outreach for an ESL TV show produced by the Mayor’s Office of Adult Education and CUNY; this is a project she volunteered for through her Weston Fellowship.

Irani’s degree was constructed with courses in Theater, Political Science, Media Studies, Anthropology and Urban Studies at Brooklyn, Hunter and City Colleges and CUNY’s School of Professional Studies, working with Profs. John Krinsky, Political Science, City and Dale Byam, Theater, Brooklyn.

Kelly Gola: Psychology and Literature, B.A., June 2008; Thomas W. Smith Academic Fellow; Dean’s List.

“My educational history has been a kaleidoscopic array of missteps and accidental fortune. I look back at all of my failures and accomplishments and occasionally indulge the inner self-effacing voice that laments, if I knew then what I know now. However, I would never know what I know now if I hadn’t screwed it up so much then.”

Prior to applying to the CUNY BA Program, Kelly Gola was a hairstylist employed on fashion photo shoots for magazines such as W, Vogue, French Vogue, Italian Vogue and Bizarre, working with the likes of Madonna, Britney Spears, Cameron Diaz and Muhammad Ali. “I looked into the face of Body Dysmorphia, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Histrionic Personality Disorder and Substance Abuse…I saw how ugly beauty can be.” On applying to CUNY BA, Gola was interested in studying writing “to get back,” as she wrote “at the glitterati that had offended me. It was only later after a number of psychology classes that I realized that I was part of that set. I had quixotic notions about the fashion world that left me disillusioned and it begged the question, why? All this questioning and self-reflection washed me up onto the shores of Narrative Psychology - the psychological study of how we narrate our lives. This field speaks to both my love of story and my pragmatic nature. It combines them in a way that is no longer entirely introspective and selfish, but produces generativity that, after all my years in fashion, I suddenly thirst for.” Working with Profs. Elaine Kauvar, English, Baruch and Suzanne Ouellette, Psychology, the Graduate Center, Gola’s coursework has been done at Brooklyn, Hunter and the Graduate Center.

In winter 2007, Gola traveled to Argentina to learn Spanish and to study the country’s rich history and social evolution. Since her return, she has been assisting David Frost in his dissertation research on the narratives of gays and lesbians in rural and urban areas.

B.S., June 2006, Marketing Anthropology

• CUNY Pipeline Fellowship
• Dean’s List

Susan Van Brackle is an entrepreneur who went back to college after 9/11 had a devastating effect on her small business. She had opened a niche cosmetics brand in 1997, ultimately gaining distribution in boutiques and department stores. She later opened her own store in Harlem after obtaining  a $100,000 government sponsored small business loan. Before opening her business and before jobs in the marketing arena, she studied retail marketing at Rochester Institute of Technology from 1979-82 and fashion buying and merchandising at Fashion Institute of Technology from 1982-89.

In the CUNY Baccalaureate Program, Van Brackle designed the unique area of concentration Marketing Anthropology with the support of her two mentors, both of whom are at York College: Profs. Linda Perry, Accounting and Business and William Divale, Social Science. Her marketing courses were taken at Brooklyn and York Colleges. Her Anthropology courses, all taken at York, included “Techniques of Cross Cultural Research, Medical Anthropology, Anthropology of Sex, The Caribbean” and “Alcohol and Obesity.” She used sociology methods courses to pull the two disciplines together. She states that “the ethnographic research methods used to gain understanding of a culture can be similarly applied to consumer research. Moreover, the seeds of marketing were sown through a series of evolutionary cultural experiences.” For each of her courses, she has explained how the two disciples throw light on each other as, for example, in studying medical anthropology, she examined how shamans in Peru “marketed” their healing powers, how competition among healers produces an ‘”ideology of consumerism.’” Van Brackle published a commentary on her unique “major” in The Society for Applied Anthropology’s August 2005 Newsletter; she is a CUNY Graduate Center Pipeline Fellow who recently presented her senior thesis at the Graduate Center: “Psychographics and It’s Impact on 21^st Century Asian Market Consumerism.”  CUNY Pipeline prepares minority students for the professorate. Van Brackle has applied to MA, MBA and Ph.D. programs.

B.S. June 2006, A Sociological Approach to Human Services

• Thomas W. Smith Academic Fellowship

Raul Garcia started out at New York City College of Technology in computer science but felt unsatisfied. He eventually found his calling in human services; he says, “I believe that everyone comes to this Earth with a calling and that mine is to help others and be an asset to society, especially my community.” Garcia is now working for Alianza Dominicana, Inc. in the high school that he graduated from, providing recently arrived students the same help he once got when he arrived from the Dominican Republic not knowing English nor anything about this culture. Upon his graduation, he was promoted to after school coordinator. Before Alianza Dominicana, he worked in an AIDS program; among his many other extracurricular activities he directs the activities of the Youth Ministry in his church. Garcia has fashioned a unique area of study: “A Sociological Approach to Human Services,” and he is mentored by Prof. Justine Pawlukewicz in Human Service at New York City College of Technology (NYCCT) and Prof. Madeline Moran in Sociology at Lehman College. His courses include Human Services courses at NYCCT and such sociology courses “Social Movements,” “Population Problems,” and  “Race and Ethnicity” at Lehman College and, in Africana Studies, “Dominican Identity” at Hunter College. In addition to rounding out his perspective, he is taking electives at Hostos Community College: “History of Latino America” and “Hispanic Migration.” Garcia is applying to the Hunter College School of Social Work

B.A. June 2006 , Latin American Studies/Economics and Finance

• Summa Cum Laude
• Thomas W. Smith Academic Fellowship
• Belle Zeller Scholarship
• Goldman Sachs Scholarship for Excellence
• Diego Hidalgo Scholarship for Political Science/International Affairs
• Dean’s List

Ladylaura Simao has areas of concentration Latin American Studies and in Economics, mentored by two professors from Baruch, Myrna Chase, Dean of the Weissman School of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor of History, and Terrence Martell of the Zicklin School of Business. Her GPA in both areas is 4.0 and have mostly included honors and graduate-level courses.Simao’s choice of study was influenced by her early years in Brazil where she “saw the human faces of poverty and social inequality” up close. At Baruch she organized a chapter of Mercado Global, a fair-trade organization whose mission is to help rural, community-based cooperatives in Latin America benefit from globalization. In addition, she organized seminars with business leaders at Baruch to discuss corporate philanthropy and social activism. She did this with Net-Impact, a global network of business students committed to promoting ethical business practices, and in which Simao is a member. Simao believes “business can transform society through a social activism driven by an expanding sense of corporate social responsibility.”

Simao started college in Brazil, working toward a bachelor’s degree in Law. Prior to resuming college in the U.S., she worked as a paralegal at one of the top international law firms, Debevoise & Plimpton, LLP. There she was encouraged to do pro bono work which she did often with human rights organizations and agencies assisting low-income and abused women.

In Spring 2005 Simao completed an independent study with Prof. Alfonso Quiroz (History and Latin American Studies, Baruch and the Graduate Center), entitled “Economic History of Latin America in the 20^th Century.” That same semester, she was awarded the Goldman Sachs’ Scholarship for Excellence. She, along with a Baruch sophomore, were the first Baruch students to win that award. Simao was also given an offer to join Goldman Sachs’ internship program in the summer 2005; after an intense round of interviews, she was placed as a Financial Analyst in the Investment Banking Division where she learned how to develop financial models to perform business valuations and create client presentations and proposals. Simao was eventually given, and accepted, an offer to join the Legal Group of Goldman Sachs’ Investment Banking Division upon her graduation.

Simao completed a senior thesis that covered the privatization of telecommunications in Argentina and Brazil, the use of New Institutional Economics as a theoretical tool to analyze those transactions, and how the institutional design of privatizations may influence foreign investors’ perception of the credibility and bargaining power of the privatizing state.

Throughout college, she stayed active in extracurricular events, from being Vice-President of Baruch’s Corporate Responsibility, Ethics and Governance Association to being a student representative on the College’s Curriculum and Academic Integrity committees; for more than a year, she has worked as the Internship Coordinator at Baruch’s Weissman Center for International Business. Simao intends to go to law school and dedicate her career to the implementation of international fair-trade organizations in Latin America.

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.

B.S., January 2006, Volunteerism and National Service in International Perspective/Music, Business

• Magna Cum Laude
• Thomas W. Smith Academic Fellowship
• Dean’s List

The oldest of eight children, April Deller she moved to New York City from Texas to study Music Business at New York University. At the time of her application to the CUNY BA/BS Program, she was recording an album at Divine Inspiration Records, but she had also just completed a year of volunteering in Americorps Vista, where she discovered a passion for the concept of volunteerism and national service. She came to the CUNY Baccalaureate Program to “blend two unlikely passions,” two sides of herself: the musical and the political

Deller takes an activist approach to her education: among many things she participated in she wrote for The Envoy, the Hunter College newspaper and later become its News Editor; she did an internship at the Forest Hills Community House in Jackson Heights, Queens where she was immersed in working with immigrants and later researched what protections they had against discrimination and where they could go for assistance; she interned at the New York City Office of the Comptroller where she learned about “green” buildings and environmentally friendly initiatives; and she completed an independent study about national service in nine different countries, which included interviews with the directors of several service organizations.

At the same time as attending college, she continued to apply her strong music, writing and teaching skills, giving music lessons as well as tutoring in the NYC public school system. She writes for various art and music projects, and has served as an assistant editor for the literary magazine “The Reading Room.” A singer, songwriter and composer, she has performed for children and adults at venues including the Brooklyn Children’s Museum and the United Nations. And in 2004, Deller represented the USA in a Service and Beauty Pageant called Mr. and Miss University International, held in Seoul, Korea.

Deller completed two areas of concentration, and was mentored by Professor Kenneth Sherrill, Political Science, Hunter College, and Prof. Stephen Jablonsky, Music, City College. One of her goals now that she has her degree is to promote national and international volunteer service to high school and college students. “I love the CUNY BA Program!” she says. “It gave me the freedom to design an academic program suited to my own interests and dreams, as opposed to forcing my interests to fit into a pre-set academic major.”

Media Studies/Political Science, B.S., January 2006

• Dean’s Certificate for Academic Excellence
• Dean’s List

After completing his first year of college at University of Oregon and uncertain of the field he wanted to pursue, Adam Stiles moved to London where he worked for six months at odd jobs and traveled throughout Europe. His desire to find meaningful work, combined with his exposure to various art forms and political contexts during this time, led him to an interest in media as a vehicle to address social issues. Stiles returned to the U.S. to study film and video production at Columbia College in Chicago. Ultimately he left Columbia, both because he found the curriculum too “uncritical” and because financial aid did not meet the costs of studying and living, even while working. He spent the following year in Paris as an au pair where he became fluent in French and continued to study communications and politics.

Ready to expand his practical knowledge after returning to Chicago, he chose to spend a small part of his would-be tuition costs on video equipment and began teaching himself to edit with help from friends. Shortly after, he became involved with Street-Level Youth Media, a non-profit community media organization. From volunteering in the afterschool program, he eventually became the organization’s In-School Program Coordinator, implementing a program of art and technology integration in Chicago public schools. He says “Working in the public school system during a time of increased youth militarization and defunding of social services had a profound effect on my development as a media producer and educator, as well as my commitment to social activism.”

When Stiles left that work, he knew he needed to develop his theoretical understanding of the issues he was encountering. He found the CUNY Baccalaureate Program an ideal solution–both to continue his studies and to earn credit for the unconventional but deeply educational path he had taken to get there. (As part of his degree, Stiles earned 15 life experience credits for his prior work in digital media, media literacy, classroom teaching, and youth development.)

Stiles designed his areas of concentration with Hunter College Professors Kenneth Sherrill (Political Science) and Tami Gold (Film and Media). This included three internships (HC MEDI 498): two with Chicago-based magazines Lumpen and Stop Smiling, and the third with Refuser Solidarity Network (RSN), a Middle East peace organization. Through Lumpen and Stop Smiling, Adam gained insight into two different publishing models in which writers and editors (rather than corporate sponsors) determine content, allowing alternative viewpoints to reach wide audiences. His internship at Stop Smiling has evolved into a regular position as a copy editor and he continues to assist RSN in a freelance capacity as a Web and graphic designer. Since graduating in January, he has been hired as a copy editor for two magazines published by Scholastic: Parent & Child and Early Childhood Today. He plans to eventually launch a magazine in collaboration with friends in the media/activism community.

B.S. September 2005, Arts and Entertainment Management

• Cum Laude
• Thomas W. Smith Academic Fellow
• Solomon Toubin Memorial Scholarship
• Dean’s List

“I have been involved in the arts from my earliest memories. Falling asleep at the symphony, Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera or Indiana University, summer nights at the outdoor musicals or my mother’s impromptu vocal outbursts around the house are some of my most vivid recollections.” Jeffrey Reynolds has had a twenty-five year career in the performing arts, appearing in musicals and operas all over the world, including two Broadway shows and as the Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera in Hamburg, Germany. He has received grants from the Santa Fe Opera, George London Institute for Musical Theatre, and the Pittsburgh Opera. With a career in arts production and administration in mind, he returned to New York and Baruch College. In the CUNY BA/BS Program, his focus has been on the business, marketing, and production aspects of the entertainment arts. “I would love to help re-invent the mass delivery of arts in a hipper format to attract a younger age group and I feel this is possible using cable or satellite access. Great music, personalities, interviews, exotic locations, up-to-date close-ups and exposés with a more contemporary flair could re-ignite flagging interest in the arts. I also consider public relations and policy experience a must for the future promotion and funding of the arts. After I graduate I hope work at the National Endowment for the Arts or The Kennedy Center.” Reynolds has continued his singing career while in school and works as an English and Communications tutor at Baruch. He mentor was Prof. Andrew Tomasello, Fine and Performing Arts, Baruch.

B.A. June 2005, International Politics

• Magna Cum Laude
• Thomas W. Smith Academic Fellow
• Diego Hidalgo Scholar
• Ross Alexander Playwriting Award
• Golden Key Honor Society

Dana Agmon came to the CUNY Baccalaureate Program with diverse life experiences. The member of a distinguished Israeli family, her great-grandfather was the leading rabbi in Morocco. She served as a first lieutenant in the Israeli Defense Force and is the founder of The Conspiracy of Hope, an organization that seeks solutions for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. She was recently accepted to Yale University’s joint MA/JD program in foreign relations and to the University of Chicago. “I found my interest in international affairs and politics fairly quickly when I took a course in Global Perspectives with Professor Chudi Uwarurike at City College,” she said. She noted that the CUNY BA Program exposed her to a wide range of academic environments. “While CCNY is my home college, I was able to take courses at Hunter, the CUNY Graduate Center and the New School,” she said. Last summer she conducted research in the Middle East on the impact of generational differences on the relationship between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, as well as on the peace process. Her faculty mentor is Professor Jacqueline Braveboy-Wagner of CCNY’s Political Science Department. Agmon received her CUNY BA in June 2005 and is currently attending the University of Chicago.