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FOR QUEENS COLLEGE ALUMNI & FRIENDS
WINTER 2007 VOL. 3, NO. 2
Rabassa Receives National Medal of Arts at White House Ceremony
DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR
Gregory L. Rabassa (Hispanic
Languages), one of the world’s leading
translators of Latin American literature,
has been awarded the 2006 National
Medal of Arts. He received the nation’s
highest honor for artistic excellence from
President George W. and Mrs. Laura Bush
at a ceremony last November in the White
House Oval Office.
Nine other notable artists and organizations were honored along with Rabassa:
dancer Cyd Charisse, bluegrass musician
Dr. Ralph Stanley, Cincinnati Pops
orchestra conductor Erich Kunzel, classi-
cal composer William Bolcom, photographer Roy R. DeCarava, industrial designer/sculptor Viktor Schreckengost, arts
patron Wilhelmina Holladay, the
Interlochen Center for the Arts’ School of
Fine Arts, and the Preservation Hall Jazz
Band of New Orleans.
According to Dana Gioia, chairman of
the National Endowment for the Arts
which manages the National Medal of
Arts nomination process, these individuals
and organizations have “all made enduring contributions to the artistic life of our
nation. Whether by translating the masterpieces of Latin American literature or
WWII Memorial
Dedication
Arnold Franco ’43 (far left) with members of his family stand behind part of
the World War II Veterans Memorial
that was dedicated on campus on
Friday, November 10. Franco’s generosity made the construction of the
plaza possible. During World War II 60
percent of Queens College students
enlisted or were called to duty (942 out of a class of 1,600). Award-winning poet Samuel
Menashe ’47, a survivor of the Battle of the Bulge, read his poems during the ceremony.
Also on hand was Rosemary McCarthy, the sister of Robert Francis Minnick, Jr., who
was one of the first QC students to die in the war.
bringing genius to the design of everyday
objects or simply preserving the great
musical heritage of New Orleans, their
work has enriched our national culture.”
Now 84 years old, Rabassa has taught
at Queen College since 1968. In that
time, he has achieved widespread recognition for his translations of over 50 books
by some of the greatest Latin American
writers of the 20th century, including
Jorge Amado, Julio Cortázar, Mario
Vargas Llosa, José Lezama Lima, and
Gabriel García Márquez. He is perhaps
best known for his translations of
Continued on page 3
Gregory Rabassa with Laura and President
George W. Bush at the White House, where he
received the National Medal of Arts.
CBNS Receives $1.1 Million to Treat Sickened
World Trade Center Workers
The Center for the Biology of Natural
Systems (CBNS) recently announced a
major expansion of its medical monitoring program for emergency responders
and recovery workers at the World Trade
Center (WTC) disaster site. The program—the Queens World Trade Center
Medical Monitoring and Treatment
Program—will now offer diagnostic evaluation and treatment of WTC-related
health conditions at CBNS’s clinical facility on Horace Harding Expressway. It has
already provided health-monitoring
exams to over 1,000 former WTC workers.
The expanded program was made possible
by a $1.1 million award
from the National Institute for Occupational
Safety and Health
Markowitz
(NIOSH) of the
Department of Health and Human
Services—one of a series of NIOSH
grants totaling $40 million for this
Continued on page 5
student PROFILES Two Watson Fellows Set Their Sights on Careers in Public Service
This year’s Jeannette K. Watson Fellowship
winners come from backgrounds as different as night and day, but both have one
thing in common: Their internship experiences have motivated them to seek careers
in public service. As Watson fellows, they
receive paid internships over three summers that provide high-level work experience and participate in leadership forums.
CUNY Honors student NICHOLAS COPELI
’08, an anthropology major on a pre-med
track, believes medicine has become too
“scientific, objective, and
removed from all human
considerations.” Not too
surprising then that he
aspires to become a
“humanities-oriented
physician” and follow the
Copeli
footsteps of Dr. Paul
Farmer, whose mission is to conquer diseases among the world’s poor. At press
time, Copeli was applying to Mt. Sinai’s
Early Acceptance Program in Humanities
and Medicine, which provides liberal arts
undergraduates a path to medical school.
As a Watson fellow, Copeli interned this
past summer at Global Kids, Inc., a New
York City-based nonprofit educational group
that helps urban youth become global citizens and community leaders. He was
responsible for maintaining Newz Crew, the
organization’s Web site that promotes
media literacy and political dialogue among
young people around the world. He enjoyed
the experience so much that he continues
to work part-time for the organization.
Copeli looks forward to his next two
Watson internships, one of which will give
him an opportunity to study abroad, perhaps in Russia. “I hope to get more
involved in the public health sector on an
international level and gain better crosscultural understanding,” he says. Copeli’s
mother is Bukharian, so he and his brothers—Joseph, a graduate student at Hunter,
and Eric and Frank, also QC undergrads—
speak Russian at home. Copeli also knows
Spanish, which he learned on his own when
he went to Peru this past August as a
CUNY Honors scholar and taught English at
a remote orphanage in San Miguel. “I need
to master both languages if I want to truly
succeed in my field,” he says.
JESSENIA VAZCONES ’09, a political science major, hopes to make her mark in
law. Her parents, originally from Ecuador,
played a huge role in her choice of career.
“It was my parents’ struggle with the
inequities of the immigration process to
become U.S. citizens that precipitated my
interest in legal reform,”
she says.
Unlike other legal
internships that
Vazcones had investigated that were only for college seniors and firstyear law students, the
Vazcones
Watson Fellowship was
open to freshmen and sophomores. This
past summer she interned for State
Supreme Court Judge James Yates in lower
Manhattan, which she describes as an
“incredible learning experience that helped
reverse [what had been] my cynical impressions of the criminal justice system.
“I was permitted to sit in on fascinating
courtroom trials and, just like his law student clerks did, research statutes and
cases which helped the judge make his
decisions,” she says. “Now I’m eager to
explore other areas of the law.”
Armstrong House Museum Receives $5 Million for Visitors Center
An empty lot across the street from the
Louis Armstrong House Museum will be
the site of an 8,500-square-foot visitors
center, thanks to an award of $5 million
from New York State.
“The visitors center will provide substantial benefits not only to our visitors,
but to our community,” says Museum
Director Michael Cogswell, referring to
plans for additional exhibitions, concerts,
lectures, and other services and programs
in the new space. “We’ll be able to present more community-oriented programs.
Plus, cultural tourism has long been recognized as an important contributor to
economic development. More visitors to
the Louis Armstrong House Museum
means that more visitors will stay in local
Q WEBZINE 2
hotels and eat in local restaurants.”
The new center will provide another
benefit.“We currently hold concerts and
special events in our beautiful garden, but
only in warm months and we hope for
nice weather,” says Cogswell. “With a
visitors center we can hold events all year
long and never be rained out.”
The center will also allow for restoration of the house’s garage to its original
state. That space now contains a gift shop,
which will be moved to the visitors center. Once restored, the garage will house a
1967 Lincoln Town Car, like the one
Armstrong drove.
“We are deeply grateful to Senators
John Sabini and Serf Maltese, Assemblymen José Peralta and Jeff Aubry, and all
the other elected officials who worked so
hard to acquire this essential funding,”
says Cogswell.
The estimated total cost for design and
construction is $9 million; the college
must raise an additional $4 million for the
center, which is expected to be completed
in 2009. Lord Cultural Resources, one of
the world’s top museum design firms, and
Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates developed the center’s master plan. The project
will be administered by the CUNY
Department of Design, Construction,
and Management.
“When we created the master plan for
the visitors center in 2003,” says
Cogswell, “we held more than 20 interviews with community leaders, elected
Louis and Lucille Armstrong at home
officials, and block residents to learn what
they wished for there. Many wonderful
ideas came out of those interviews and we
are excited about realizing them.”
QCpeople
NANCY AGABIAN (English) and
LARISSA SWEDELL (Anthropology)
have been named Fulbright Scholars.
Agabian will lecture and conduct research
on the topic “Writing Armenia: Personal
Stories” at Yerevan State University in
Armenia. Swedell will investigate “Female
Behavior of the Chacma Baboon” at the
University of Cape Town in South Africa
. . . Before a Nov. 28 gathering of legislators and pre-K students in the Arkansas
state capitol rotunda, CLIVE BELFIELD
(Economics) presented the findings of his
cost-benefit analysis of the state’s prekindergarten program, in which he
declared that universal pre-k “would, conservatively, yield an impressive $1.58 for
every state dollar invested” . . . ANDY
BEVERIDGE (Sociology) was interviewed
June 14 on “The Brian Lehrer Show” on
WNYC AM-FM in a segment examining
the substantial exodus of young adults
from upstate New York. He was also
quoted in stories appearing August 4, 15,
and 16 in the New York Times concerning
newly released census data describing
various demographic changes in the New
York metropolitan area . . . JOE
BROSTEK (Special
Events) contributed a
number of personal anecdotes about his and his
family’s experiences as
Met fans to For Met Fans
Only (Lone Wolf Press),
a book by sportswriter
Brostek
Rich Wolfe . . . NICK
COCH (Earth & Env Sci), who received
considerable media attention for proposing a catastrophic scenario in the event a
Katrina-size hurricane struck NYC, was
invited by the Congressional Research
Q WEBZINE 3
Service to give an informational presentation at the
Library of Congress for
members of Congress and
their aides . . . The Louis
Armstrong House Museum
was one of five 2006 recipCoch
ients of the Mayor’s
Awards for Arts & Culture. Director
MICHAEL COGSWELL accepted the award
from Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a ceremony Oct. 30 at
Jazz at Lincoln
Center. The awards
were created in
1976 by the
Cultural Affairs
Advisory
Commission “to Cogswell and Bloomberg
honor individuals and organizations that
have made significant contributions to the
cultural life of New York City” . . .
MICHAEL LIPSEY (Music) has been chosen as an ASCAPLUS Award recipient
this year. These awards, made by the
American Society of Composers, Authors
& Publishers, are granted by an independent panel and are based upon the unique
prestige value of a writer’s catalog of
original compositions . . . YIN MEI
(Dance) captivated Sunday visitors to the
Queens Museum of Art by creating
images of ink on paper
using her body as a brush.
Called “Magic in the
Square World,” her creations were part of the
exhibit Queens International: Everything All
Mei
at Once. A photo of her
at work appeared Oct. 19 in the Queens
Continued on page 5
Nobel Prize Winners at Evening Readings
The November 7 QC Evening Readings was an especially notable event as it featured
this year’s Nobel Prize-winner for literature, Orhan Pamuk, and Nobel laureate Salman
Rushdie. They were joined by writer Norman Manea for “A Roundtable on the Art of
Writing,” moderated by Leonard Lopate. L-r: Manea, Pamuk, Rushdie, Evening Readings
Director Joseph Cuomo, and Leonard Lopate backstage following the roundtable.
Rabassa from page 1
Cortázar’s Hopscotch and García
Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.
In April 2005 Rabassa published a
memoir of his life and celebrated career
called If This Be Treason: Translation and
Its Dyscontents, which received the 2006
PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of
the Memoir.
Eschewing such modern technological
conveniences as the computer for a conventional yellow writing pad, Rabassa
describes himself as a “temporal immigrant from the 20th century” who will
“translate Elvis into Frank Sinatra, and
. . . the Beatles into Count Basie and get
along very fine that way.”
A product of multilingual parents—his
father was Cuban and his mother was of
Scottish and English ancestry—Rabassa
knows French, Latin, Portuguese,
Spanish, and German. His facility with
languages earned him an assignment during WWII as a cryptographer for the
Office of Strategic Services (predecessor
of the CIA). Rabassa has also taught
Spanish and Portuguese at Columbia
University.
Newly Endowed Professorship in Jewish Studies
Will Emphasize Study of the Holocaust
William Ungar (l) addressed students
recently in a philosophy class on campus
and distributed copies of his book Destined
to Live.
William Ungar, a successful entrepreneur,
and his wife, Jerry (a QC graduate), have
endowed Queens College with its first
named professorship in Jewish Studies.
The emphasis of the professorship will be
on Holocaust Studies.
“It is crucial that the history of the
Holocaust not be forgotten,” says
President James Muyskens. “The Ungars’
generosity will ensure that generations of
students learn about this terrible time in
human history and the importance of tolerance among all people.”
Born in Poland in 1913, William
Ungar served as the only Jewish soldier in
a Polish military unit fighting the Nazis at
the onset of World War II. He survived for
a time with false documents that showed
he was a Catholic, but in 1942 he was
taken to the Janowska Concentration
Camp, from which he later escaped. More
than 60 members of Ungar’s family perished during this time, including his wife
and baby son.
In 1946, penniless and with little
knowledge of the English language,
Ungar arrived in New York aboard the
first displaced persons ship to the United
States and began working with a company
that manufactured machinery to produce
Q WEBZINE 4
envelopes. He took night courses at City
College, eventually earning a degree in
mechanical engineering. In 1952, with
three plunger machines, he started the
New York Envelope Corporation. Today,
known as National Envelope Corporation,
it is the largest privately owned envelope
manufacturer in North America. Ungar
chronicled his life story in the book
Destined to Live (2000).
Ungar’s achievements in business and
philanthropy have been recognized with
many awards, including the Ellis Island
Medal of Honor and the 1996 National
Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
In Sliding to the Right: The Contest for the
Future of American Jewish Orthodoxy
(University of California Press), SAMUEL
HEILMAN (Sociology) offers a highly
detailed snapshot of the current state of
Orthodox Judaism in America, particularly
in the New York metropolitan area.
Thought to be in serious decline after
the Holocaust claimed about a third of the
world’s Jewry—including 90 percent of the
Orthodox kehillah of Eastern Europe—
Orthodox Jewry, by Heilman’s account, has
taken root and thrived in the United States.
He presents a picture of an Orthodox
Jewry that has gained
in both numbers and
intensity and has moved
further to the religious
right as it struggles to
define itself and maintain age-old traditions in
the midst of modernity,
secularization, techno-
Mural Celebrates Education
An 8-x-20-foot mural celebrating education, created by the graduate students in
one of Rikki Asher’s (Secondary Education) art education classes, was dedicated
September 18. The mural appears on the west wall of the Student Union Building.
QCauthors
logical advances, and American culture.
In his Sept. 20 review in the Jewish Press,
Aharon ben Anshel, calling Heilman “the premier social-anthropologist and demographer
for the Jewish community,” notes that he
presents his extensive and scholarly study
“without recourse to any ‘trade lingo’; but
rather in a quite readable and very interesting exposition of the subject.”
Queens College’s familiar Spanish-style
buildings, in their original incarnation as
the New York Parental School, provide the
setting for ROBERT WELLER’s (Emeritus
Director of ACE) two-volume novel An
Abundance of Devils (Author House). Book
one is subtitled “Just West of the Terminal
Moraine”; book two is subtitled “Just East
of Eden.”
An Abundance of Devils follows the
adventures of ragamuffin Odie Hart who,
by virtue of the “scientific charity” of the
early 20th-century “progressive era,” finds
himself consigned to the stucco-and-terracotta enclave out on the terminal moraine
in Queens. “Intended to eliminate warehousing of ‘bad
boys,’” says Weller,
“this institution quickly gives way to terror
and fear.”
The novel is the
product of research
Weller did over a 10year period while he
was a teacher and
administrator at Queens College. For those
with an interest in our campus’s early history, book two offers a lengthy set of
Author’s Notes in which Weller separates
fact from fiction regarding the New York
Parental School. His narrative also contains considerable detail gleaned from his
fortuitous acquaintance with a man in his
nineties who had been incarcerated in B
Building around 1910.
QC People from page 3
Chronicle . . . PYONG
GAP MIN (Sociology)
was selected as a visiting scholar for the
2006–07 academic year
by the Russell Sage
Foundation. He will
Pyong Gap Min
write a book examining
how the involvement of immigrants in
ethnic businesses affects ethnic attachment, solidarity, and conflict among
Chinese, Indian, and Korean immigrants
in New York City . . . LILLIAN
MONCADA-DAVIDSON (Secondary
Education) will be taking the LAMP
Program (Literacy and Mathematics
through Photography) she directs to El
Salvador, where it will be introduced as a
way to prevent violence among young
people. This is being made possible by a
grant from a foundation in Belgium to the
Hilda Rothschild Foundation, of which
Moncada-Davidson is president and
founder . . . EUGENIA PAULICELLI
(European Languages), the editor of
Fashion and Modernity:
From the Middle Ages to
the Renaissance (Rome:
Meltemi, 2006), presented two seminars at the
University of Stockholm
in Sweden for their gradPaulicelli
uate program in fashion
studies . . . STEPHEN PEKAR (Earth &
Env Sci) received the Feliks Gross
Endowment Award for Outstanding
Research by CUNY junior faculty. He studies
climate change from
thousands to millions of
years ago. Pekar is currently making a proposal
to the National Science
Foundation for a new
Pekar
Q WEBZINE 5
drilling program in the Antarctic . . . The
German Academic Exchange Service
(DAAD) of the German Studies
Association awarded JULIA SNEERINGER
(History) the 2006 DAAD Article Prize
for “The Shopper as Voter: Women,
Advertising, and Politics in Post-Inflation
Germany” . . . A certificate was presented
to ZAHRA ZAKERI (Biology) by Senator
Carl Marcellino in recognition of her
nomination for the 2006 Woman of
Distinction award presented annually by
the New York State
Senate. The Senate’s
Woman of Distinction
program was created in
1998 to honor New York
women who exemplify
personal excellence, or
whose professional
Zakeri
achievements, acts of
courage, selflessness, integrity, or perseverance serve as an example to all New
Yorkers . . . YAN ZHENG (Earth & Env
Sci) is among a group of researchers at
Columbia University’s Mailman School
of Public Health, Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory, and Center
for International Earth
Science Information
who have been awarded
a five-year, $16.9 million grant renewal from
the National Institute of
Environmental Health
Zheng
Sciences Superfund Basic Research
Program. The funding will be used for
the group’s ongoing investigations into
the health effects and geochemistry of
arsenic and manganese exposure, particularly in the groundwater of New England
and South Asia.
WTC from page 1
purpose. Other recipients include the Fire
Department of New York, Mount Sinai
School of Medicine, and medical institutions in the New York/New Jersey area.
“This new grant allows us to move
beyond simply documenting WTC-related
illnesses to offering concrete medical
assistance to people in need,” says CBNS
Director Steven Markowitz. “Continued
monitoring will also promote a much-
needed scientific understanding of the
nature of WTC health effects.”
The new diagnostic evaluation and
treatment services will include occupational health evaluation; references for
pulmonary, gastro-intestinal, and other
specialty care; medical tests, medications,
and in-patient hospitalizations for WTCrelated health conditions specified by
NIOSH.
New Fitness Center Opens
Cutting the ribbon officially opening QC’s newly renovated $200,000 Fitness Center
in FitzGerald Gymnasium are (l.-r. ) Athletics Director Rick Wettan, Vice President for
Institutional Advancement Sue Henderson, Councilman James Gennaro, and three
Queens College graduates: Assembly Member Nettie Mayersohn, Councilwoman
Helen Sears, and Nazia Tabassum.
Alumni Notes
1956: Fran
Vardamis notes
that “My fourth
detective novel
was recently
published by
Silk Label
Books in
Unionville, New
York. Vermont
Sea Glass is the latest in a series featuring
Greek detective Yannis Lavonis, who,
used to dealing with urban crime in the
Balkans, finds himself out of place in a
rural New England ski town where everyone he meets seems vibrantly fit and
mindlessly content, and where promised
rest and recuperation quickly become
murder and mayhem. This book, and the
others in the series, can be purchased, or
investigated at www.silklabelbooks.com”
. . . 1960: Eleanor Jacoby (MA) is an
editor and writer for The Reporter in
Deerfield Beach, FL. A former principal
for the New York City Board of
Education, she wrote the education column “Teacher Says” for the New York
Post in the late 1970s and 1980s. She was
also in charge of the Title I program for
District 17, Brooklyn. Her novel No, My
Darling Daughter (Harper & Row) was
published in 1975 under the pen name
Sally Newman . . . 1965: Philip Zuchman
Q WEBZINE 6
Zuchmans had a two-person show of over
40 oil paintings of Colombia, De
Philadelphia Con Amor, at Galeria de
Arte Los Communes in La Ceja last
August. They have both exhibited internationally and their work is in many private
and public collections. Their residence
and studios are in the University
and his wife Deborah Gross-Zuchman
(right) recently spent two months painting
the landscape in La Ceja, Colombia. They
were invited to exhibit with Colombian
artists in the first Salon Independiente de
Arte en El Oriente Antioqueno at the
Galeria Callejon de San Bartolo in
Rionegro Colombia last August. The
Continued on page 7
A Vintage Homecoming
Maybe it was the
wine.
According to
Alumni Affairs
Director Nancy
Rudolph (left), when
this year’s busy
schedule of
Homecoming activities concluded, many of the approximately
150 alums in attendance seemed more
inclined than in previous years to want to
linger, enjoy each other’s company, and
bathe in the afterglow of the day’s events.
“At the closing reception President
Muyskens remarked to me that nobody was
leaving too quickly,” she says. “They were
having a little wine; there was wonderful
food. All in all, it was a very nice ending to
a great day. It was a marathon, but great!”
Wine was the principal focus of attention at one of the receptions held for three
individual classes. The class of ’81, marking
the 25th anniversary of their graduation,
was treated to a tasting of several vintages
provided by Martha Clara Vineyards of
Riverhead.
The classes of ’46 and ’56 also received
special receptions during a day that included a musical performance, a women’s soccer game, presentations by Robert Ball ’62
and Stephen Pekar ’86 (Earth & Environmental Sciences), visits to campus art exhibitions, campus tours, and more.
The scheduled activities culminated late
in the afternoon with the dedication of the
new Alumni Plaza in front of Jefferson Hall.
Always a factor critical to the success
of Homecoming is the weather: “It was fabulous,” says Rudolph.
COURTING MILLENNIUM GRADS
Rudolph was equally enthusiastic in her
assessment of a special event held three
days earlier for “millennium grads.”
The Sept. 27 evening reception in the
atrium of the Music Building was for alumni
who have graduated since 2000. “In looking at some of the past events,” Rudolph
says, “we saw that not a lot of our recent
grads came. At any school the millennium
grads are a difficult group to get because
they’re all too busy with their careers. So I
wanted to do something to make this group
feel special.
“Over 100 alums showed up and they
brought about 50 guests,” she says,
describing the well-received event that was
also attended by Assemblyman José
Peralta ’96. “It was a cocktail reception
with finger foods from 7 to 9 pm. People
didn’t want to go home; they were all just
so thrilled to be back on campus.”
Another way Rudolph hopes to maintain
the group’s connection to QC is with the
impending launch of inCircle. This is an
online social networking program that
allows alumni to remain in touch with one
another and their alma mater.
“inCircle is like MySpace and
Facebook,” she says, referring to two
social networking Web sites that are enormously popular among teenagers and
young adults. “Many of our younger alums
are more computer-savvy and they’re
already involved with these kinds of programs. We’re in the process of fine tuning
inCircle right now.”
Alumni Notes from page 6
City section of West Philadelphia. Philip
is a professor at the Art Institute of
Philadelphia and a cultural ambassador
with the U.S. State Department’s Art in
Embassies Program . . . 1968 Reginetta
Haboucha has been named vice president
for academic affairs at the Fashion
Institute of Technology (FIT). She joined
the college in 2000 as dean of the School
of Liberal Arts. Under her leadership, FIT
developed its first liberal arts major, in
visual art management. Before joining
FIT, Reginetta was dean of humanities at
Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY. She
also served as an ACE Fellow and special
assistant to the acting president at Hunter
College, CUNY. A classroom professor
for many years, Reginetta was chair of the
department of romance languages at
Lehman College, CUNY. She received her
MA and PhD degrees in Spanish from
Johns Hopkins University and is the
author of Types and Motifs of the JudeoSpanish Folktales (Garland Publishing,
1992) and co-editor of King Solomon and
the Golden Fish: Tales from the Sephardic
Tradition (Wayne State University Press,
2004). Reginetta has received grants
from the National Endowment for the
Humanities, the American Council of
Learned Societies, the CUNY Research
Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute
. . . 1973: Michael J. Oliviero is first vice
president of the tax department of New
York Life Insurance Company. He is
responsible for overseeing the accounting
section of the tax department, including
federal, state, and local tax compliance.
Q WEBZINE 7
Prior to joining New York Life, Michael
was a revenue agent for the Internal
Revenue Service. Michael is a member of
the American Institute of Certified Public
Accountants and holds an MBA from
Hofstra University. He lives in Garden
City, NY, with his wife and their two children . . . 1975: Garo Armen received the
2006 Sabin Humanitarian Award, which
recognizes extraordinary figures in
biotechnology, medical research, and
medical reporting. The award celebrates
those who “found new ways to further
medical science, reaching out to help a
greater cross-section of humanity.” In
1994 Garo cofounded Antigenics, which
develops healthcare products for cancers,
infectious diseases, and autoimmune disorders. He is also founder and chairman
of the Children of Armenia Fund, a charitable organization dedicated to the positive development of the children and
youth of Armenia. Garo holds a PhD in
physical chemistry from the City
University Graduate Center, which he
earned under the supervision of Queens
College professor Dave Baker . . . Bert A.
Rothman has been named the 2006
Clinician of the Year by his employer, the
Children’s Village, which is a residential
treatment center in Dobbs Ferry, NY . . .
1976: Martin E. Gellender directs the
Queensland Sustainable Energy Innovation Fund. This fund aims to assist in
the commercialization of new products
and technologies that reduce adverse environmental impacts resulting from the use
of fossil fuel. Martin lives in Brisbane,
Australia . . . 1979: The Foundation for
Accounting Education (FAE), the educational arm of the New York State Society
of Certified Public Accountants (NYSSCPA), recently elected Alan D. Kahn to its
board of trustees. Alan is
president of the AJK
Financial Group, a financial services firm serving
the professional and
business community. He
joined the NYSSCPA in
1987 and served as chair of its estate
planning and public relations committees
and as a member of the tax division oversight and finance committees. Alan
received FAE’s Outstanding Service
Award in 2000. A member of the
American Institute of Certified Public
Accountants, Alan holds the MBA from
St. John’s University. He and his wife
have three children and live in Woodbury,
NY . . . 1982: Brian M. Posner is executive vice president and chief financial officer of Pharmacopeia, which develops
small molecule therapeutics. Brian, who
previously worked for Phytomedics, has
more than 20 years of experience in public accounting and financial management.
A certified public accountant, he holds an
MBA from Pace University . . . 1997:
Dean Radinovsky (MFA) had a show of
his paintings, The Spirit of Dance, on display at the Queens Theatre in the Park in
Flushing Meadows Corona Park last April
. . . 2006: Amy Goldstein recently
received the 2006 Anne Marie Brown
Memorial Scholarship from the NassauSuffolk Hospital Council.
SEND US YOUR NEWS!
We want to hear more from graduates—
especially our recent graduates. Tell us
where you are and what you are doing,
and enclose a photo. Be sure to let us
know when you move.
Email: alumni@qc.edu
Mail: Alumni News, Office of Alumni
Affairs, Queens College, 65-30 Kissena
Boulevard, Flushing, NY 11367
Phone: 718-997-3930
Fax: 718-997-3602
LOOK FOR US ON THE WEB.
We are always adding information about
news at the college and upcoming
events. And be sure to click on
Entertainment Alumni Updates. You
will be pleasantly surprised. Alumni
Affairs Web site:
www.qc.cuny.edu/alumni_affairs
MISSING ALUMNI
We have lost touch with
many of our over 110,000
alumni. In most cases
they did not let us
know when they moved.
Addresses can be updated online
by going to
www.qc.cuny.edu/QC_Foundation.
If you know alumni who do not hear
from the college, please let us know.
Send your letters to Q Webzine,
Queens College, Kiely Hall 1307,
Flushing, NY 11367 or email to
John.Cassidy@qc.cuny.edu.