FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM NOVEMBER 26, 2020 • THE QUEENS COURIER 29 
 HIGHER ED TODAY 
  
  
  
 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  
 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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