HIGHER ED TODAY
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New Yorkers are understandably worried
not only about the next few months but the years
ahead. Even as we finally see rays of hope in the
vaccines that could eventually vanquish the coronavirus,
many envision a long and uncertain
recovery for the city. But while there is no doubt
we face daunting challenges, one thing I am confident
about is the role CUNY will play in the city’s
recovery and renewal.
This is a conviction born of the belief I have in
our community of more than 300,000 students, faculty
and staff as an engine of economic strength
for the city—and of the pride I have in the impact
of our cutting-edge research institutes, graduate
programs and professional schools. The expertise
of our faculty and high quality of our graduate
and professional-school students are part of the
lifeblood of the city, and that has never been truer
than during this unfathomably hard year.
The CUNY Graduate School of Public Health
and Health Policy has made important contributions
to the battle against COVID-19. CUNY SPH
faculty, students and alumni have led and participated
in national studies, surveys of city residents
and projects to increase vaccine confidence. Partnering
with the Barcelona Institute for Global
Health and other international institutions, the
school has helped public health officials and other
decision makers track trends in the pandemic
and identify and correct weaknesses in their responses.
Several CUNY SPH experts, meanwhile,
have been influential voices in the media, contributing
much-needed trustworthy, science-based
information and guidance.
Scientists on CUNY campuses have been
hard at work on a range of research projects in the
battle against COVID-19. Among the most notable,
with national impact, is research at Queens College
that developed a process for monitoring the
level of coronavirus in New York City sewage to
assess its true prevalence, help identify new outbreaks
before testing does and guide health officials’
response.
Apart from the pandemic, CUNY expertise
and creativity continue to help drive innovation
in fields of importance to New York. At the
Graduate Center—one of the city’s great incubators
of ideas and research in the public interest—
the Center for Urban Research’s census “hard to
count” map is nationally acclaimed as an indispensable
tool helping civil rights groups, foundations
and local governments target communities
with low response rates for the 2020 Census. It’s
an especially critical innovation in a year when
the coronavirus made a fair and accurate count
even harder than usual in New York and across
the country.
Meanwhile, faculty researchers across CUNY
are making the University a leader in developing
climate-change solutions for urban and coastal
environments, and in growing New York’s green
economy. This year we launched a Climate Crisis
Research Grant program to tap the vast expertise
of our faculty and encourage collaboration across
disciplines and between campuses. With our
strong ties to city and state agencies and our integration
with neighborhoods throughout the city,
CUNY is uniquely positioned to inform the local
response to the undeniable threats of this global
problem. Among the 21 teams selected for funding
is a group of environmental engineers who
Caribbean L 22 ife, Nov. 27-Dec. 3, 2020
invented a method for turning evaporation into
energy. Another group is using flood sensors in
the Rockaways to develop strategies for the city’s
coastal neighborhoods to adapt to rising seas.
Another team will study the effects of a warming
climate on the health of older New Yorkers with
cardiovascular and pulmonary conditions.
CUNY’s professional schools, meanwhile, are
deeply committed to the service of the city and
its communities. Students in the CUNY School of
Medicine—one of the nation’s most diverse medical
schools—joined the coronavirus response at
the onset of the crisis, providing patient support
at St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx, video conferencing
with families of patients in the ICU and
staffing the COVID-19 test center at Staten Island
University Hospital. While medical schools across
the U.S. struggle to enroll students of color, more
than half of the CUNY School of Medicine’s students
are Black or Hispanic. We’re very proud of
the school’s mission of improving primary health
care in urban and underserved communities.
Similarly, the CUNY School of Law is the
country’s most diverse (53 percent of its students
are people of color and 26 percent identify as LGBQT+)
and ranks as the top public-interest law
school, with 59 percent of graduates working in
that area, more than three times the national
average. The benefit to the city is real: The law
school operates a dozen clinics that address critical
legal needs—everything from health justice
to workers’ rights. The clinics tap the expertise of
faculty and put law students to work representing
clients and staffing advocacy projects. Law school
faculty and students also work with CUNY Citizenship
Now!, the nation’s largest university legal
assistance program providing free citizenship
and immigration law services since 1997.
Students and faculty at the Craig Newmark
Graduate School of Journalism are employing
a range of digital techniques to report on New
York’s battle with the coronavirus. They’re part of
the future of journalism at a time when fact-based
reporting has never been more important. The
Newmark school and its centers—the Tow-Knight
Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism, the Center
for Community Media and the McGraw Center
for Business Journalism—form an important hub
for creating a sustainable future for high quality,
high impact journalism.
For its part, the School of Labor and Urban
Studies has been a leader in adult and worker education
for nearly 35 years. The school is affiliated
with the award-wining CUNY School of Professional
Studies, a national leader in online learning,
a role that has been of vital importance to the
University in the age of COVID.
These are just a few examples of CUNY’s
strengths, its commitment to New York—and why
I’m optimistic the University will help drive a robust
comeback from COVID-19.
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YEARS IN
THE MAKING
Medgar Evers College Prep to get
‘world class’ new school building
Medgar Evers College Preparatory School on Nostrand Avenue. Photo by Ben Verde
BY BEN VERDE
After years of hosting students in
makeshift classrooms out of trailers
in the school’s parking lot, Medgar
Evers College Preparatory School in
Crown Heights will fi nally add a new
fi ve-story, state-of-the-art building —
ending rampant overcrowding, and
providing “world class” resources for
Brooklyn’s young scholars.
“I am absolutely confi dent that it will
have a profound and signifi cant impact
on students’ performance in all areas,”
said the school’s principal, Dr. Michael
Wilshire, at a Nov. 23 press conference.
In addition to the new classrooms,
the new building — which will be completed
in time for the 2025 school year
— will feature four science labs, a gymnasium,
and spacious auditorium.
“This new space is going to include
all the amenities that one would expect
in a world class learning environment,”
said Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“This interagency partnership that
we are celebrating today will have a
huge impact and magnitude that we
cannot even start to imagine for generations
of students that will be educated
here.”
The announcement comes after
years of advocacy by parents and local
elected offi cials, who blasted the
overly-congested conditions in the Carroll
Street school — including at an October
2017 town hall meeting with Hizzoner
in Park Slope, when dozens of
students and parents voiced their concerns
about the state of the school.
Now, the Department of Education
and the City University of New York,
which runs Medgar Evers College,
have provided a $110 million investment
to build the new facility to alleviate
the deterioration.
“When we say that the facilities in
each community should be just as beautiful,
just as modern, just as conducive
to the greatness of our children, that’s
what Medgar Evers would have done
too,” de Blasio said, referring to the
mid 20th century civil rights leader
the school is named for.
Medgar Evers is a Title 1 school
with a majority-minority student body
that emphasizes Advanced Placement
courses, and has a graduation rate of
over 97 percent.
Amid a national reckoning over racial
inequality, local elected offi cials
underscored the importance of investing
in Black communities.
“The Black Lives Matter movement
is so powerful because what it showed
in so many ways is the inequality that
so many people were facing,” said
Crown Heights Councilwoman Laurie
Cumbo. “It wasn’t just about the fact
that we wanted police accountability,
or that we didn’t want to be choked to
death, it was also about fairness and
fair representation and investment in
our community, as well as the education
of the minds of our young people.”
The announcement comes just over
a month after city transit offi cials renamed
two Crown Heights subway
stations after Medgar Evers and his
namesake college.
“Medgar Evers deserves to be in
that pantheon of the great American
heroes who gave their all to change
us, to make us better,” said de Blasio.
“And so when we name something after
him, it takes on a very, very special
meaning.”
Education