The Weissman School of Arts and Sciences is proud to share exciting news about several alumni and instructors from the MA in Corporate Communication program. Lemuel Brewster (left), an adjunct instructor and Baruch alum, was selected as a finalist for the “Distinguished Communicator of Color” Award by the Diversity Action Alliance.
Jocelyn Jackson (MA ’13) has been promoted to Vice President of Creative Strategy at WE Communications, a remarkable achievement in her career. Additionally, Chioma Okpara (MA ’19) has also advanced professionally, earning a promotion to Senior Program Manager at The New York Times. These successes reflect the strength and impact of our Corporate Communication program as it prepares graduates for top leadership roles in the field.
Els de Graauw, Professor of Political Science at Baruch College and the CUNY Graduate Center, and co-author Shannon Gleeson, have just released their new book, Advancing Immigrant Rights in Houston with Temple University Press.
The book explores how the diverse city of Houston navigates the challenges of advancing immigrant rights within the context of a politically mixed, organizationally underserved, and largely anti-immigrant state. Focusing on issues such as local law enforcement’s interactions with federal immigration officials, local public-private partnerships around federal immigration benefits, the development of a city immigrant affairs office, and collaborations to combat wage theft, the book offers new insights into the complex dynamics shaping immigrant rights policies today.
This work will be of particular interest to scholars and practitioners in the fields of immigration, urban politics, and civil society.
Mary McGlynn, Professor and Chair of the English Department, together with a board including Associate Professor of English Matthew Eatough, organized the 2024 ACIS Mid Atlantic & New England Regional Conference held at Baruch on October 4th and 5th, 2024. The conference focused on the theme of risk in contemporary Irish culture, exploring topics such as environmental hazards, economic precarity, and access to reproductive healthcare. This interdisciplinary event brought together scholars from literary studies, geography, history, and the social sciences to discuss how risk has shaped Irish culture, both historically and in modernity.
On September 26, The Weissman School of Arts and Sciences launched its new Strategic Plan for 2024-2029, setting the stage for a future guided by its four core values: collaboration, inclusion, care, and exploration. The launch event was designed as an interactive workshop, engaging faculty, staff, and administrators in strategic discussions that offered tangible and practicable steps toward Weissman’s mission to empower students and faculty for long-term success.
After opening remarks by Provost Essig and Dean Jessica Lang, members of the Strategic Planning Committee, chaired by Ken Guest, Elizabeth Edenberg, Jamel Hudson, Leslie Hunt, Hagop Sarkissian, Charles Scherbaum, Cheryl Smith, and Pablo Soberón Bravo, lent their voices in sharing the overarching objectives of the plan.
The centerpiece of the event was the strategic planning activity, where each table was assigned a specific priority area. Working together, participants collectively brainstormed ideas to move closer to achieving the outlined goals. Each group then shared their ideas with the larger assembly, further emphasizing the importance of cooperative effort to the creation and execution of the Strategic Plan.
Professor Tim Aubry of the English Department at Baruch College will once again run his “Essentials of Publishing” course this Spring, offering 12 selected students a unique opportunity to engage with the contemporary publishing industry. This time, thanks to the support of a private donor, each student will receive a $2,000 fellowship to support their work.
This competitive program, originally launched in 2022 with support from a Mellon Foundation BRESI grant, features a weekly seminar focused on the intersection of publishing and literary culture, alongside a 10-hour-per-week internship with major and independent publishers, including commitments from FSG and Verso.
“I would say it’s a win-win for Baruch and the publishing houses that work with us.” Aubry said. “We open up new career pathways for our students, and the publishing houses benefit from their unique and diverse perspectives.”
The course aligns with Weissman’s ambition to bridge the gap between academic study and career opportunities by leveraging Baruch’s proximity to the U.S. publishing hub, connecting students with industry professionals, and showcasing how the critical thinking skills developed in the study of English Literature can be applied in successful careers.
The Weissman School of Arts and Sciences is proud to celebrate one of its own, Milton Gordon, a standout graphic communications major, who has taken a leading role in designing the visual identity for CUNY’s new OurCUNY initiative. Set to graduate in May 2025, Gordon is not only excelling academically but professionally as a key contributor to CUNY’s marketing department.
The culmination of Gordon’s work so far, the OurCUNY logo (above), is the centerpiece of the university-wide anti-hate campaign. The initiative stretches across all 25 CUNY campuses and is designed to foster an inclusive environment that embraces diversity and promotes open dialogue – ever more crucial values at a time when the predominant political and social discourse seems to neglect perspectival multiplicity and intellectual curiosity. The campaign and its visual assets aim to reach students and encourage an inclusive environment where critical inquiry can prosper.
In addition to his work on OurCUNY, Gordon has created over 50 unique graphics for the University’s marketing department, significantly boosting the university’s social media presence which now boasts over 10,000 followers. His passion for design and commitment to impactful messaging has played a pivotal role in this campaign’s early success and its ability to resonate with students across the system.
As Gordon moves forward with this campaign and his career, we look forward to seeing what else he will accomplish.
For more information on the OurCUNY initiative and to access resources, visit the assets toolkit here.
The Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College is thrilled to announce the receipt of a transformative grant of nearly $2 million from the Edmond J. Safra Foundation. This generous gift, the largest received by the Weissman School since its naming, will support the housing and digitization of the newly acquired Edmond J. Safra Republic National Bank of New York (RNBNY) Archives, provide scholarships for undergraduate and graduate students, and establish a prestigious visiting professorship rotating between five academic disciplines.
Jessica Lang, Dean of the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences, expressed her gratitude for the Edmond J. Safra Foundation’s support. “This grant is a monumental achievement for our school and a testament to the strength and dedication of our entire community. The opportunities it will create for our students and faculty to engage in archival research and scholarship are unparalleled,” she said.
Dov Schlein, Baruch class of 1970 and former CEO of Edmond J. Safra’s Republic National Bank, underscored the significance of the new partnership, “This collection offers enduring lessons of success and ethics in business for current and future generations, and they need to be housed in an institution of higher learning with a mission that is aligned with Edmond J. Safra’s values. As a top-ranking institution in New York, and a part of CUNY, the country’s first free public institution, Baruch offers academic excellence and access to qualified, underserved students – low income, first generation, and immigrants – all values that resonate deeply with Edmond J. Safra’s commitment to empower individuals from diverse backgrounds.”
The EJS RNBNY Archives, which will now be housed at Baruch College’s William and Anita Newman Library, chronicle the banker’s remarkable legacy, who founded Republic National Bank of NY and guided it from its inception in 1966 to its sale to HSBC in 1999. The archives encompass extensive documentation of the bank’s growth, including a complete set of all Republic Annual Reports and Capital Transactions and Acquisitions, business ethics, institutional leadership, and Edmond J. Safra’s support of immigrant communities. The collection thus offers an extraordinary window into the evolution of banking and finance in the late 20th century, as well as an uncommon model of leadership rooted in integrity, care, generosity, and community.
The grant will also fund the creation of the Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professorship, a rotating position designed to bring distinguished scholars and practitioners from various disciplines to Baruch College. These visiting professors will utilize the RNBNY Archives in their research, teach courses related to the archival themes, and contribute to the academic and cultural life of the departments of Communication Studies, Philosophy, History, Psychology, and Law.
Furthermore, the grant will go to provide much needed scholarship opportunities for students, facilitating their involvement in research projects tied to the archives. These scholarships will be available at both the undergraduate and graduate level, fostering a new generation of scholars, leaders, and financiers who will explore and expand upon Safra’s singular legacy that changed the face of banking forever.
High school journalism plays a pivotal role in nurturing curious and creative young minds, those that will one day keep the world informed and engaged, and maybe have a crack at that notorious first draft of history.
Last month, Baruch College hosted The Newsies—a competition organized and run by Prof. Geanne Belton recognizing excellence in public high school journalism across New York City. It honored winners from 11 different high school newspapers across the five boroughs, selected by a panel of distinguished journalists and educators. One of those educators was Christian Lewis, Baruch ’21, who now serves as a teacher at Bay Ridge High School.
Before taking up teaching, Lewis was a journalism major who picked up the bug during his own stint at a high school newspaper. Now, three years on from his own graduation, he’s doing his part to inspire the writers of the future, restarting a newspaper in his own high school at Bay Ridge, Brooklyn — a passion project that is showing some serious promise.
“When I first started teaching, it was at the high school that I went to. When I was a student there, we had a newspaper. When I came back to teach, it was gone. So I started pushing to start one back up, and we eventually got it off the ground this year. This is a full circle moment for me – and I’m hoping it will do for my students, what it did for me.”
The second incarnation of the Bay Ridge High School newspaper will launch its first online publication in June. And, if things go to plan, a printed version will be published every six weeks or so. It’s a lot of pressure, on both the educators and the budding young journalists. But Lewis believes in the cause, and of the many transferable skills journalism provides.
“My pitch to everyone is: even if you don’t want to be a journalist, you can still learn something from journalism. Whether it’s how to approach and talk to people, how to take photos, how to edit or how to write. In journalism, there’s a useful tool for everybody.”
In the azure waters surrounding the Caribbean island of Dominica, scientists are making headway toward unraveling the language of the sperm whale, an endeavor that could pave the way for improved conservation strategies and may even transform long-held beliefs about human exceptionalism on our planet. In a paper published on May 7th, Baruch College’s Distinguished Professor of Biology and Environmental Sciences David Gruber, a leading figure in this research and president of the Cetacean Translation Initiative (CETI), says the findings are uncovering the “phonetic alphabet” used by sperm whales to construct complex vocal sequences, akin to human words and phrases.
Sperm whales communicate through a series of rapid clicks often classified into larger groupings called codas — sounding something like an underwater Morse code. Scientists believe these sounds serve dual purposes. On the one hand, they act as a form of echolocation for hunting, and on the other they seem to represent an intricate system of communication within their tightly-knit social groups.
To gather the necessary data on this language system, Gruber’s team set up a vast underwater recording studio. This setup included microphones arrayed at multiple depths and tags attached to the whales to record their position and behavior during vocalizations — to see whether they were diving, sleeping, or interacting with others of their species.
From this extensive dataset of recorded whale codas, Gruber and his team discovered that the vocalizations possess both “contextual” and “combinatorial” structures. This means that the whales adjust their codas based on the perceived social context and often use different combinations of vocal elements to create a wide variety of signals, much like words in a sentence.
One significant finding of this study was the identification of unique features within the codas, what have been termed “rubato” and “ornamentation.” Rubato in whale communication involves subtle timing variations within a coda; ornamentation refers to the addition of extra clicks at the end of codas, which appear to serve specific communicative functions not previously recognized. These discoveries suggest that sperm whale communication is not only about emitting basic cues but involves a sophisticated use of vocal patterns, tones, and contextual meaning that can convey detailed information and possibly emotional expression.
Gruber’s enthusiasm is clear when he talks about the potential of this research not only to protect these animals but also to offer insights into the evolutionary aspects of communication systems across different species. “We’re now starting to find the first building blocks of a whale language,” he said. By shedding light on how sperm whales communicate, this research expands our knowledge of marine biology and provides insights into our own place in the unfolding chain of cognitive development.
The bustling heart of New York City may seem a far cry from the remote deserts and rivers that mark the boundaries between nations, but Dr. Lizbeth De La Cruz, a newly appointed Assistant Professor in Baruch College’s Black and Latino Studies Department, has spent years working on a project that bridges communities and distance through the power of art and storytelling. Her latest endeavor, The El Paso del Norte mural project, captures transnational migration narratives, freshly illuminating the intricacies of U.S.-Mexico migration policies and their impacts on individuals’ lives.
Soon to span a vast canvas of concrete along the Rio Grande, also known as Río Bravo in Mexico, the mural vividly portrays the diverse experiences of Latinx and Black migrants—each with a unique story of migration, incarceration, or deportation. This project, according to Professor De La Cruz, is “not just about creating art; it’s about telling stories that need to be heard, about humanizing the dehumanized.”
The mural features thirteen large portraits, each ten feet by ten feet, bringing to life the faces and voices of deported veterans, asylum seekers, and undocumented youth drawn from the archives of Humanizing Deportation, a community based digital audio storytelling platform. By depicting the Rio Grande/Río Bravo not just as a geographical marker but as a symbol of ongoing socio-political strife, this project endeavors to capture the pathos of the often-faceless statistics of migration.
Equally poignant is the project’s harnessing of the collective efforts of Baruch students, almost 90% of whom are either the children of immigrants, or immigrants themselves. De La Cruz emphasizes the importance of this collaboration: “It’s about layering the skills these students are going to be able to use later on in life—to say, ‘I understand this on a different level than just indifferently studying it. I understand it emotionally.” Students from her classes on the “U.S.- Mexican Border” and “Latinx Communities in the U.S” have been directly involved in painting the portraits, making steady progress each week, turning theoretical knowledge into practical, empathetic application.
A unique aspect of the mural is its interactive component. QR codes accompany each portrait and link to detailed stories of the individuals depicted, allowing passersby to hear directly from the migrants in their own voices. “This digital narrative is crucial,” De La Cruz notes, “because it turns passive observers into active listeners, bridging the distance between the subject of the mural and the viewer.”
By focusing on deported U.S. military veterans and families affected by migration policies, the mural also ventures into the darker sides of the United States’ policies on citizenship, challenging viewers to reconsider the human cost of stringent immigration laws and the realities of deportation. The inclusion of diverse narratives, from young activists to veterans, invites a broader discourse on citizenship, community, and belonging, especially poignant in an election year in which immigration is a hot issue.
With the mural’s installation set for May 2nd, Professor De La Cruz’s vision is nearing its most critical phase—bringing the collaborative creation to fruition at the border itself. In this endeavor, Professor Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana extends an open invitation for all to experience the mural and to engage with the stories it tells.
“Yes, these are stories of extreme hardship,” she said, “but I think they also say something about the enduring spirit of these storytellers to overcome barriers, both physical and metaphorical.” Her project too underscores the indispensable role of art in education as well as advocacy. Once installed, they will provide a site where the personal impacts of migration policies are drawn up in sharp relief against the impersonal landscapes that bear witness to them.
