Jennifer Zhu, who earned a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center with Baruch as her home campus, was recently hired as the Marine Habitat Resource Specialist at the Billion Oyster Project, which works to restore oysters in New York City waters with the help of students and community scientists. She’ll be leading the group’s scientific monitoring and data efforts.
“I think it’s a good sign our graduates are both getting these jobs and staying local to contribute,” said Baruch/GC Professor Stephen Gosnell, her PhD advisor. “My lab at Baruch has been working with the BOP for the past several years on outreach and research. We are currently developing new data collection and storage protocols for the group as part of a long-term plan to enhance our ability to inform oyster restoration in the city. Jenn and I will continue to collaborate in her new position.”
Zhu is also the lead author on an article in Restoration Ecology titled “Fear changes traits and increases survival: a meta-analysis evaluating the efficacy of antipredator training in captive-rearing programs.”
Her co-authors were Gosnell; Baruch/Macaulay student Micah Goltsman; and Baruch undergrad alumna Laila Akallal, now at Dartmouth in an MPH (public health) program.
The article looked at antipredator training for animals reared in captivity. These animals are supposed to replenish diminished wild populations once they are released, and the training is intended to help them survive in the wild. Zhu and the team reviewed over 3,000 papers to find the few that had data on whether the antipredator training works. They found that antipredator training typically leads to changes in prey traits and improves the fitness of released organisms, but further work is needed to understand the links among these changes.
From May 21 through Jan. 31, Baruch’s Mishkin Gallery is partnering with the art center Casa São Roque in Porto, Portugal, to present an extensive exhibition devoted to Andy Warhol and his influence on several generations of photographers, filmmakers, painters, musicians and multi-media artists.
Warhol, People and Things: 1972–2022 places Warhol and his contributions to experimental art, media, and critical art discourse in conversation with contemporary artists, while also giving a new generation in Porto an opportunity to encounter his work. The exhibition generates new possibilities for thinking about Warhol’s approach to image production and appropriation, commodity and icon fetishism, the social life of famous and marginalized people alike, and how the artist seamlessly moved between media throughout his career.
The show includes Warhol’s 38 Polaroids from 1972–1986 and 30 black and white gelatin silver prints from the ’70s and ’80s, which were gifted to the Mishkin Gallery directly by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts through their Photographic Legacy Program to expand scholarship on his work. This is their debut in Portugal and their first time on view in Europe. The last major exhibition of Warhol’s work in Porto was the traveling exhibition Andy Warhol: A Factory at Serralves Museum in 2000.
We are excited to announce that Baruch Weissman graduate students Ashley Bueno, Theresa Navalta, and Kimberly Rechter came in first place in the 2022 Human Capital Case Competition hosted by OHDCC (Organization and Human Development Consulting Club). OHDCC is a student-run organization focused on supporting Social-Organizational Psychology master’s students at Teachers College, Columbia University. The Baruch team beat two Columbia teams to win.
All three winners on our team are Masters of Science I/O Psychology students at Baruch. They received $300 worth in prizes and are given networking time to meet with the judges who are consultants at PwC and Deloitte.
In the annual case competition, student teams compete to present innovative solutions to a business case in the area of human capital management. The case requires participants to think as strategic Human Capital consultants, outline any changes that they might recommend to the client, identify problems, discuss Human Capital functions, recommend specific changes, and justify their recommendations.
CUNY is providing $142,000 to fund a new CUNY Climate Scholars fellowship for students from four schools: Baruch College, Bronx Community College, Brooklyn College, and Hunter College. The initiative will prepare students for careers in green energy, climate change mitigation, and climate resilience efforts.
Students can apply for the program here. The application deadline is May 13 and the program starts Aug. 22. Participants must commit to 20 hours a week for six months, with half the time spent on research and half on an internship. Students will receive a stipend of up to $8,400.
“CUNY students are New York’s future leaders,” said Baruch Psychology Professor Mindy Engle-Friedman, who is spearheading the project. “This program will prepare our students to take leadership roles in green energy. They will help protect our city from the impacts of climate change.”
The green energy effort builds on Baruch’s Climate Scholars program, which launched two years ago and is already sending students to internships, jobs, and graduate school in fields related to climate policy.
Sun shines on field with solar panels
The new CUNY Climate Scholars fellowship will place students in CUNY research labs for three months and in external internships for three months. They’ll meet with experts on topics including offshore wind, solar and geothermal energy; green energy financing and its impact on the economy, and how green energy affects habitats and ecosystems. They will present their research to fellow CUNY students and at professional conferences.
At least two students from each of the four schools will be chosen, and they’ll receive stipends so they can focus on schoolwork, internships, and research. Applicants can major in any subject. “We look forward to welcoming students across the CUNY majors including arts and sciences, business and public affairs,” she said. “We need students with a wide variety of interests, strengths and skills.”
The current crop of Climate Scholars at Baruch, for example, includes Julie Margolin, a Macaulay-Baruch honors student who interned at InsideClimate News. Margolin is majoring in statistics and quantitative modeling. Another Climate Scholar, Chelsea Wepy, is a Baruch business administration major. She’s done research on climate-induced migration and geographic information systems and interned at the Environmental Defense Fund and the United Nations Association.
“Students across CUNY are greatly concerned about climate change and how it will impact their lives,” said Engle-Friedman. “This program will give them the education and experience they need to make a difference.”
Engle-Friedman’s counterparts from the other three schools taking part in the fellowship are Bronx Community College Professor Neal Phillip (Chemistry, Earth Sciences, and Environmental Sciences), Brooklyn College Professor Brett Branco (Earth and Environmental Sciences) and Hunter College Professor William Solecki (Geography).
Engle-Friedman also leads the Baruch Climate Action Collaborative, which includes faculty from Weissman, Marxe, and Zicklin. The group has presented research, hosted speakers, written grants, and collaborated on interdisciplinary courses.
April is Poetry Month! So it’s a great time to celebrate Baruch’s poets. We’ve linked from their names to one or more of their published works. Take a look!
Several lecturers in the English Department are published poets, including Jimin Seo, Evan Gill Smith, Caitlin McDonnell, Chris Campanioni, and Safia Jama. Perhaps Baruch’s best-known poet is Distinguished Professor Grace Schulman. From Black and Latino Studies, we have Tonia Leon, who writes poetry in English and Spanish. And from the Physics Department, we have Sultan Catto, who won the European Medal of Poetry and Art.
Assistant Professor of Black and Latino Studies Dr. Rojo Robles has been selected as a 2022 Summer Faculty Fellow for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute for Higher Education. He will be participating in a professional development program titled, “Concepts of Black Diaspora in the United States: Identity and Connections among African, Afro-Caribbean, and African American Communities.”
Rojo Robles
Dr. Robles is a Puerto Rican professor, writer, playwright, and filmmaker. He graduated from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras with a BA in Theater and an MA in Comparative Literature. He holds an MPhil and PhD from the Latin American, Iberian and Latino Cultures Department (LAILAC) at the Graduate Center, CUNY. His research interests are located at the intersection of Latin American and Caribbean Literature and Film and Afro-Latinx Cultural Studies. With a Baruch colleague, Rebecca Salois, who also teaches in the BLS Department, he co-hosts a podcast called Latinx Visions.
He has published articles in SX Salon| Small Axe Project, Taller Electric Marronage, The Puerto Rico Review, Revista Cruce, Revista Iberoamericana and has been a cultural critic at 80grados.net for more than a decade. He is the editor of Nuyorican poet Pedro Pietri’s posthumous chapbook Condom Poems 4 Sale One Size Fits All (Lost and Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, 2019). He is currently at work on a book project about Boricua out-of-the-page poetics and dispersed archives of dissent. He is also developing a series of articles about cinegraphic and intermedial literature in Puerto Rico, Latin America, and US Latinx communities.
Since 2004 he is the artistic director of the independent group, El kibutz del deseo, dedicated to producing plays, films, and publishing fiction and poetry. He is the author of Los desajustados/The Maladjusted (2015) and Escapistas (2017) and the writer, director, and producer of the experimental film The Sound of ILL Days (2017).
Professor Louis-Pierre Arguin (Mathematics) has won a $278,839 grant from the National Science Foundation to study extreme value statistics in probabilistic number theory.
The funding will be disbursed from 2022 to 2024 and will support Arguin’s research, travel, and conference and workshop participation. The grant will also provide funding for two PhD students and two Baruch undergraduate research assistants. The undergrads will work on codes of numerical experiments.
Louis-Pierre Arguin
Arguin is also on the faculty of the CUNY Graduate Center. He holds a PhD in math from Princeton and a master’s degree in physics from the University of Montreal, where he also earned a bachelor’s degree in math and physics. He serves as an associate editor on the editorial boards of Electronic Journal of Probability and Electronic Communications in Probability.
His research interests are number theory, probability, and statistical mechanics. He recently published a textbook, A First Course in Stochastic Calculus, and he is the recipient of the André Aisenstadt Prize for outstanding research achievement by a young Canadian mathematician.
Baruch College alumna Katsiaryna (Kate) Milashevich (’21) is among eight CUNY students who have won 2022 Jonas E. Salk Scholarships for their scientific research. Her work on “Mitochondrial Distribution of Glycine Receptors in Motor Neuron Cell Lines” was done under the mentorship of Professor Pablo Peixoto (Natural Sciences).
Noting her “brilliance, drive, scientific curiosity, independent thinking, and integrity,” Peixoto said his former student “embodies the qualities of a promising future medical student and professional. Kate’s track record of excellence in the classroom, the research laboratory and in clinical volunteering certainly catalyzed her acceptance into medical school. It also contributed to the research environment at my laboratory, leveraging preliminary results that will support a future grant application to the National Science Foundation. She shows an outstanding promise as a future physician scientist who embodies the qualities of an ideal candidate to the Jonas E. Salk Scholarship.”
Kate Milashevich in lab
Milashevich graduated from the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences with an an Honors in Biology major and Communication Studies minor. Her research examined the existence of a hypothetical mitochondrial glycine receptor in cultured motor neurons using immunofluorescence imaging. Preliminary findings identified a correlation between the localization of mitochondrial fluorescence and the glycine receptor in non-differentiated cells.
Milashevich is currently taking a gap year before starting medical school in August. She hasn’t yet decided which school to attend. In the meantime, she’s working with patients at CityMD Urgent Care as a medical scribe to further develop her clinical experience.
Milashevich was drawn to medicine as a career path after her younger brother was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. “I began to explore a multitude of contemporary studies to understand his diagnosis,” she said. One topic that intrigued her was neuroinflammation and the role of the anti-inflammatory amino-acid glycine. She sought out Peixoto’s lab as a place where she could pursue her interests.
Milashevich also shadowed an opthalmologist and decided to pursue a career as a physician “to empower families through knowledge and benevolence. I hope to consolidate what I have learned about autism— to study patients from various angles, and to offer individualized care because just like in autism, every person is their own puzzle to solve.”
Milashevich credited her science education at Baruch with nurturing her interests and helping her establish a foundation for her future career. “Building this foundational understanding takes great care, support, and time, which I was very fortunate to receive,” she said. The small size of Baruch’s Department of Natural Sciences creates a family-like atmosphere where “the students all know each other and gather to study in groups allowing for different opinions and resources to coexist and flourish. The faculty know each student and are more than accessible and considerate. They reach out to you with your best interests in mind, to ensure no opportunity evades you … No matter my future ambitions, I still have a family at Baruch who cares for my success and remains approachable even after my graduation.”
This is Peixoto’s third student to win a Salk.
Salk Scholarship winners receive a total of $8,000 over the course of four years to help defray the cost of study for M.D. and D.O. degrees, as well as doctoral degrees in biomedical sciences.
In 1955, the Jonas E. Salk Scholarship was created by the Board of Estimate of the City of New to honor Dr. Jonas E. Salk, world-renowned scientist, developer of the first vaccine to prevent polio, and a graduate of The City College of New York.
Each year, Salk Scholarships are awarded to eight graduates of CUNY senior colleges who have been accepted by, and plan to attend, U.S. medical or graduate schools. Students are selected for the awards based on academic performance, especially scientific research conducted as undergraduates, along with their potential to make significant contributions to medical research.
Baruch College Associate Professor Mark Rice (History) has received a fellowship from the Fulbright US Scholar Program to conduct research in Peru. His project, “Seeking Roads to Progress: Highway Construction and Social Change in Peru, 1920-1960,” investigates the social and political consequences of road construction and infrastructure development in 20th century Peru.
Mark Rice in the Archivo General de la Nación in Peru
Rice’s field is Latin America and Caribbean history, with a focus on the Andean region and modern Peru in particular. He researches and writes about the history of tourism, travel, and infrastructure in the Andes. His work has been published by academic journals, collaborative projects, and the media, and he has presented research at academic conferences in the US, Latin America, and Europe.
His book Making Machu Picchu: The Politics of Tourism in Twentieth-Century Peru (University of North Carolina Press) examines the transformation of Machu Picchu into a global tourist attraction. Rice’s research emphasizes the important role travel and tourism has played in elevating Machu Picchu into a global symbol of Peru, and casts new light on the role that tourist-centered development plays in regional and national politics in the developing world. A revised version of the book was recently published in Spanish. He plans to write another book using research from his Fulbright fellowship.
Mark Rice, Inca Wall, Cusco
Professor Rice also studies and teaches the history of material culture, economic history, and social history. His work at Baruch’s Weissman School of Arts and Sciences includes teaching introductory courses on global history and the history of Latin America as well as classes focused on US-Latin American relations, economic history, and the history of tourism.
He was recently quoted by The New York Times for his expertise on Machu Picchu for a story about new research on the site’s name. The new findings “dispel the myth that Machu Picchu was an eternal lost city,” Rice told the Times. “Like most of the Andes, the site was, and continues to be, a dynamic place with a shifting history.”
Professor Rice completed his PhD at Stony Brook University and earned his BA in history from Cornell University.
The Fulbright award was originally announced in 2020, but his travel was delayed to Spring 2022 due to the global pandemic, and he is currently in Peru doing research.
The Political Science Department at Baruch College welcomes nominations and self-nominations for the Soléi Spears “Excellence in Action” Award for the Advancement of Social and Racial Justice. This award recognizes a Political Science major who has advanced social and racial justice through (1) their academic work, (2) on-campus extracurricular activities, and/or (3) service/activism in the larger community outside of Baruch College. The award winner will be recognized and celebrated at the department’s Annual Reception and at the college’s Student Achievement Award Ceremony, both taking place in May 2022. The award also comes with a modest monetary prize.
This award is named after and honors the life and legacy of Soléi Spears (’21), a beloved and cherished student in the Political Science Department, who was murdered (along with her sister and mother) in April 2021. Soléi had a passion for racial, ethnic, and gender justice, which served as the lens through which she approached her coursework. Her passion also fed a deeper mission and purpose to identify core injustices and to take action to make our world a better place, using Political Science tools to make that happen.
** CRITERIA **
This competitive award recognizes a student’s talent and hard work in the classroom, on the Baruch campus, and/or in the wider community outside of Baruch to advance social and racial justice.
Nominated students must be Political Science majors who graduated in Fall 2021 or who will graduate in Spring 2022.
** NOMINATION/SELECTION PROCESS **
Eligible students are encouraged to nominate themselves; nominations can also be made by fellow students, Baruch staff, or Baruch faculty (in any department).
All nominations must be submitted online using this form, and they must include all of the following: (1) a statement explaining why this student nominee is deserving of The Soléi Spears “Excellence in Action” Award; (2) a current resume of the nominee; and (3) the name and email address of one Baruch faculty member (in any department) or a community member whom we may contact for a reference for the student nominee.
Nominations must be submitted by Saturday April 2, 2022, at 11:59pm EDT.
Soléi Spears
Questions? Please email Prof. Els de Graauw, Chair of the Student Awards Committee: [email protected].
