Month: March 2022

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.

The nomination form is here.

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.

Questions? Please email Prof. Els de Graauw, Chair of the Student Awards Committee: Els.deGraauw@baruch.cuny.edu.

• An apology comparison: A case study of two different discursive leadership approaches. Sage Business Cases. 
• But…that’s not my job!: Power and illegitimate task requests. Sage Business Cases. 
• ​Applications for Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) in the Era of COVID. Thresholds in Educational Instruction. Co-written with D. Dyshko and T. Razuvayeva.

Minei’s research interests include leadership, high-reliability organizations, small-group/team communication, entrepreneurial issues, globalization and glocalization, and cyberterrorism. She says she’s fascinated by the intersection between interpersonal and organizational communication, and frequently studies High Reliability Teams (HRTs), leadership, supervisor-subordinate communication, small business growth, and message framing processes.  She has received numerous other research awards, including the Stanley L. Saxon Applied Research Award for her work assessing the communication practices between firefighters, and again for the interactions between supervisors and subordinates concerning illegitimate tasks. She also won the Ragan-Kramer-Wieder Qualitative Dissertation Award for her work with small businesses.

She holds a PhD from the University of Oklahoma.

Baruch Weissman is thrilled to announce the public reopening of Mishkin Gallery on March 21, 2022, two years after the pandemic shutdown of New York City forced the gallery to close its doors.

Mishkin reopens with Lamin Fofana: BLUES, the same exhibition that was up when the March 2020 shutdown hit. BLUES features work by the Sierra Leone-born, New York-based musician and artist Lamin Fofana.

“We are excited to physically welcome Baruch and New York back to the Mishkin Gallery for the exhibition Lamin Fofana: BLUES,” said  Alaina Claire Feldman, Mishkin’s director and curator. “The exhibition deeply resonates with the concerns of our students: those of racial and social justice, diaspora and displacement, and most importantly, how art and music is a conduit for coming together. The exhibition was forced to close after just one day in 2020 due to COVID-19, but we are thrilled to recommit to the artists involved and to this particular kind of artwork.”

Aiming for both physical and emotional resonance, the works attempt to challenge authoritative forms of representation and communication while drawing upon the artists’ personal experiences of diaspora, the coming and going of communities. Throughout the exhibition, Mishkin will hold live music performances, talks, readings, and listening sessions to collectively think through what Black studies scholar Christina Sharpe calls “wake work,” living with and attending to the paradoxical history of slavery and its afterlives.

A booklet with contributions by Feldman, Fofana, Dino Dinçer Şirin, and excerpts of primary source texts will accompany the exhibition. A zine including recent writing by the artists will account for and reflect on the past two years since the exhibition had initially opened.

Mishkin Gallery is located at 135 E. 22nd St., Monday–Friday, 11 am-6 pm.  Admission is free. It’s closed on days when classes are not in session.

Six terrific events of broad interest are taking place at Weissman in the next few weeks. Take a look!

CRIME FICTION: “Perspectives in Crime Fiction: Navigating the Past.” The renowned Belfast crime fiction writer Sharon Dempsey will be interviewed by Elizabeth Mannion, who teaches English at Baruch, in conjunction with the US release of Dempsey’s latest book, Who Took Eden Mulligan? Co-hosted by Baruch’s English Department and the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast, March 25, 1-2:15 pm ET. Register here.

EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT: “The Long Struggle for Gender Rights: The 50th Anniversary of the Congressional Ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment and its Legacy.” A discussion featuring women’s and gender studies faculty and Jay Berman, (Baruch Class of 1959 and Baruch College Fund Trustee), who served as aide and Chief of Staff for the late US Sen. Birch Bayh, who authored both the ERA amendment and Title IX legislation. Also on the panel: Baruch Black and Latino Studies Chair Shelly Eversley; Baruch/CUNY Graduate Center Presidential Professor Emerita of History Carol Berkin; Baruch/CUNY Graduate Center Professor of Economics Ted Joyce. Introduction by Baruch History Professor Katherine Pence, Director of Women’s and Gender Studies. March 28, 5 pm-6:30 pm ET. Register here.

HARMAN WRITER: Reading and conversation with the Spring 2022 Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence Ersi Sotiropoulos. All members of the Baruch community are invited to this in-person meeting, Thursday, April 7 at 6 pm, in Room 750, in the Baruch Library Building. A reception will be held at 5 pm, followed by the reading at 6. Sotiropoulos is an award-winning Greek novelist.

Khrystyna Melnyk graduated from Weissman in 2017 with a degree in biological sciences. She’s now a third-year medical student.

Last week, she posted on Facebook: “So, I felt like a secret agent this weekend. Specifically I was at the Polish-Ukrainian border where I crossed into Ukraine and brought 7 suitcases of aid.”

The Police Department in Ukraine’s Ternopil region thanked her for bringing them medicine, tactical gloves, and other protective equipment and supplies to help “fight the Russian occupier,” adding: “We thank you Khrystyna Melnyk for your civic position, for lifting the spirit of every Ukrainian! You are our Angel! You are a part of us!”

Melnyk was born in Ukraine and immigrated to the US with her family in 1998. “I still have very close family there and many friends,” she said. “My 83-year-old grandma is there as well as many, many uncles, aunts, cousins and so on.”

You can see her posts and images here and follow her plans on Facebook for other efforts. Her former professor, Pablo Peixoto (Natural Sciences), said that reading her posts filled him “with pride, inspiration, and a bit of worry.”

Baruch’s inaugural Mental Health Awareness Week will be held Monday, March 7, through Friday, March 11, 2022. Events include yoga, mindfulness, depression screening, a “body positivity” celebration, suicide prevention, and more. Details here: https://provost.baruch.cuny.edu/mental-health-awareness-week/.

This year’s theme is “Self-Care and Care for Others.”

This campus-specific week was developed within Baruch’s Suicide Prevention Taskforce and is offered in partnership with the Jed Foundation, a nonprofit organization that collaborates with schools and colleges to help protect the emotional health of, and prevent suicide in, student populations. The concept was expanded to include faculty and staff so the entire Baruch community can get to know the resources that are available to you, as well as the people around the College who are here to assist.

The Counseling Center and the Office Human Resources have planned events that are designed to help you manage stress, recognize warning signs in yourself and others, and more. Some events require registration.

The Office of Student Life at Baruch has collaborated with partners throughout the College to curate a calendar of events around the national Women’s History Month theme of “Providing Healing, Promoting Hope.” Please visit the Women’s History Month webpage for the full list.

Here’s a sample of some events.