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June 23, 2022 marked the 50th anniversary of Title IX, the landmark legislation that prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded education programs. This is an important milestone in the history of both civil rights and higher education in this country, and one well worth celebrating.

Title IX is best known for transforming collegiate athletics in the United States—and, from there, all of sports. But that was not its original goal. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, as it is formally known, was designed to open doors for women across higher education. And by doing that, it didn’t just transform athletics; it also helped create new opportunities for generations of women in America.

Before Title IX, women were often excluded from certain high-status educational programs, like medicine or law. Women college students received fewer scholarships than their male counterparts. Women faculty were denied tenure at a greater rate than men. And in 1970, before Title IX was passed, only 8 percent of adult women in the United States were college graduates in 1970, compared with 14 percent of men.

Today’s higher education landscape is entirely different—thanks to Title IX and the leaders and advocates who fought for its passage.

Check out these resources:

• Events and Exhibits
• Programming
• Articles

Visit

New-York Historical Society | Now through September 4, 2022
A new exhibition immerses visitors in the spaces shaped by the groundbreaking 1972 legislation and reveals the crucial work of activists in demanding that their institutions live up to the law’s promises. Displays document the work of activists across the country whose personal experiences with sex discrimination in education and professional careers within federal government agencies made them uniquely qualified to advocate for meaningful regulations for Title IX and to defend the law against amendments intended to weaken it. Personal items, photographs, and a re-creation of a campus kiosk advertising Take Back the Night demonstrations over the last 30 years convey the passion and commitment of student activists.

Watch and Listen

The Fifty/50 initiative commemorates the 50th anniversary of the passing of Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in any educational institution that receives federal funding, and gave women the equal opportunity to play sports. Throughout June, ESPN will present a collection of stories focused on the intersection of women, sports, culture and the fight for equality.

Fifty years ago, Title IX banned discrimination based on sex in educational institutions. College sports had to change. Host and former NPR correspondent Emily Harris presents the story of coach Jody Runge, who drove that change in the women's basketball team at the University of Oregon, which is a powerhouse today. Harris teamed up with audio journalist Ida Hardin to report this story.

In Their Court
In Their Court, an NBC Sports and NBC News podcast that launched in May, examines the evolution of Title IX through women’s basketball, 50 years after the historic law passed. US Olympic fencing bronze medalist Ibtihaj Muhammad hosts the five-part series that looks at why the gender gap still exists.

Read

League of Legends, Valorant, Rocket League, Super Smash Bros Ultimate. These online, multi-player games have long offered a way to unwind and bond with friends, and their popularity is only growing. In fact, , there will be nearly 178 million monthly gamers in the US this year (read: about half the US population). But these games are more than just a casual hobby at ���ҹ�����—they’ve become the backbone of our new Esports Program. And the ���ҹ����� gamers (nearly 250 strong) are in it to win it.

Late last year, ���ҹ����� announced the launch of the official Esports program as its 15th varsity sport (alongside the more traditional football, basketball, and field hockey teams), but ���ҹ�����’s Esports community has been thriving since as early as 2015. Julia Cardillo ’22 joined the club in 2019 when it was run by Isil Ates ’19, ‘21. “Back then, it was a one woman show. She had a lot going for us. We would play 5 versus 5 in League of Legends, she would give out free prizes from companies like Riot Games, and she even had a partnership with G-Fuel Energy Drinks.” Some students gathered to practice for competitive play, but most were there for the sense of community.

“It’s taken overwhelming diligence and support from everybody, and I think that’s something that’s really unique about ���ҹ�����.”

Cardillo is now the Vice President of the club, and one of her closest friends, Mahir Kamal ’21, is the coach for the League of Legends teams. They have been in the club since they were first-year students and are thrilled that the club is now an officially recognized varsity sport.

“Now that we have the University’s support, we can get stuff that makes the players feel like they’re actually competing - like jerseys and in person practice spaces,” says Kamal. “Just having the college back this program, it makes me and the players feel more involved and ready to try our hardest in these tournaments.”

Jesse Bodony is the newly appointed Director of the program, and his enthusiasm matches that of the student players. According to him, this new program is especially exciting because of the level of support from ���ҹ�����. “It’s amazing, the energy and the drive that it’s taken for the program from conception—starting with Mark Brown from athletics four years ago, to Sue Maxam, Jonathan Hill, PhD, and other powerful voices along the way—to get it to where it now, live and engaging students,” he says. “It’s taken overwhelming diligence and support from everybody, and I think that’s something that’s really unique about ���ҹ�����.”

While online gaming may seem like just a fun pastime, ���ҹ�����’s Esports program is actually creating opportunities for students to compete, enrich their academic experience, and explore vocational pathways in the growing gaming industry.

“Watch us. In six months, we’re going to be breaking records.”

Cardillo, Kamal, and Bodony all expressed their happiness at yet another student-driven program that helps students come together in an increasingly digital world. Bodony says, “We want students to connect—whether you’re a competitive gamer that wants to join one of the teams, or a casual gamer that just wants to chill and find people to play with.” Cardillo lights up as she recounts casual gaming nights and the thrill of seeing club members become friends. “One of my favorite things is seeing people who didn’t know each other at all… and suddenly I see them hanging out on campus.”

But these teams aren’t here just to play. The Super Smash Bro Ultimate Gold II team reigned victorious over a previously undefeated team in the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) East Open Division Grand Finals. Kamal is convinced this new level of support and access to better resources will empower the teams to make waves in the industry. “Watch us. In six months, we’re going to be breaking records.”

Join the to keep up to date with everything Esports, and show your support for the teams on their .

Since March 2020, our workforce has undergone a number of dramatic short-and-long-term shifts; ranging from the sudden, necessary move to remote work, to larger questions surrounding work-life balance and the overall relationship between employers and talent.

Lubin Professor and Management and Management Science Chair Ibraiz Tarique, PhD, is well-positioned to tackle many of these vital questions. He is an expert on global talent management, (the science behind developing and maintaining a team of high potentials, A-players, Stars and top-notch professional contributors), and is the author of several textbooks, including , and .

We sat down—or rather fittingly, chatted over Zoom—with Professor Tarique to discuss the emerging field of talent management, workplace changes accelerated by pandemic, and what work might look like in our (hopefully) post-COVID future.

Broadly speaking, what is talent management?

Talent management is a relatively new field, which has different meanings to different organizations. It’s a continuum with two extremes. One is what we call the exclusive approach to talent management, which is when you focus on a small group of high potential employees, stars and A-players, and employees that are more valuable in their performance—what they bring to the organizations. On the other side, there is the inclusive perspective, where the argument is that everyone is talented, and should be managed based on the skill set they have. That in turn becomes HR, and some people have argued that talent management is a new term for human resource management.

My philosophy, and the way I teach talent management, is that it’s a subset of human resource management that focuses on your most valuable employees. The argument is based on the exclusive approach—that is talent should be managed according to his/her contribution to the organization and that there is a small group of highly valuable employees in key or strategic positions that differentially contribute to organizational success. Similar to Pareto’s Principle or the 20/80 rule, where 20% of the employees bring 80% of the revenue or profit.

What impact has the COVID-19 pandemic had on talent management?

Like most other things in human resource management, the use of technology and mobility really impacted how we manage people and how work is done. I think there are important takeaways post-COVID:

• Through technology and remote work, talent is geographically dispersed. Before, you would bring talent to work, now you can take work to talent. If you want talent that is in a different country or location, you now can, through technology, take work to that person, develop that person, and retain that person. This trend was there for a while, but COVID accelerated this trend.
• It’s my observation that employees have more control over their work now—how they work and where they work. If you’re a high potential employee or high performer, you’re controlling the conversation. You’re dictating the terms. Employers are now listening.
• Organizational culture. There has been a discussion going on—Harvard Business Review has had a lot of articles around this—the question of, what is organizational culture now? Culture had been people together in meetings, in the same buildings—but if that’s disappearing, the organizational culture is changing and evolving. We still do not know what the new culture looks like. It’s evolving.

Talent analytics will play a larger role. Everything is being measured all of the time. The question is, what do we do with this data? Real-time decisions will be increasingly made on data.

What are some ways that companies and can adapt to these radical shifts in the way work is done and talent is managed?

From a company perspective, there’s now a focus on virtual leadership. We are moving from a traditional leadership model, to virtual and hybrid. How do you develop virtual leaders? And who will be able to manage and engage a geographically dispersed workforce and talent through technology?

From an academic perspective, we’re developing new content. We’re thinking about how to manage and lead people who you’re not meeting and observing behaviors throughout the day—because one aspect connected to that is also the issue of performance management.

Traditionally, performance management has had two components: results and behaviors. Now with remote and virtual work, observing workplace behaviors is challenging. Whether that’s negative or positive is debatable, but there is a lot of focus on results. But focusing on “results” takes personality and other individual traits out of the equation. When I teach performance management, I mention something called the likeability factor—meaning, sometimes people get away with lackluster results because they’re likeable. But in a virtual setting, this likeability factor can disappear and outcomes, or results, become extremely important. Perhaps this is a good trend.

Over the past year, there have been a lot of headlines surrounding labor shortages and “The Great Resignation.” Can you discuss these trends from a talent management perspective?

The data is extremely new, but we’ve had talent shortages for a long time. There is no shortage of research on “talent shortages”. During the 2008 recession, unemployment was high, yet companies were still saying that they couldn’t find talent. The talent shortage is there all the time, one of the disconnects there is how fast jobs are changing and how quickly people can learn and develop.

What the pandemic did was move people indoors and remotely to work, and a lot of social and psychological aspects came in. Working remotely has caused a lot of stress and burnout—people end up working more and questioning the meaning of their work. Most homes are not designed for working from home. Most families are not used to spending so much time together. People need space, more specifically Gen Y and Gen Z.

For talent management, it means that for any organization, retention is critical and retaining talent becomes a key strategy. In my book, I argue you must customize careers for the current employees. You have to pay attention to each employee to see how the company can help them learn, develop, and grow. I challenge the traditional philosophy of “what can you do for your employer” to “what can your employer do for you?” When you have that conversation as an employer, you might ask: how can we help you move forward in your career? When you start the conversation from that angle, people get motivated, engaged, committed, and eventually stay.

Succession planning is also very important. There is this myth that people have to stay with companies for a long period of time. Turnover is part of life. People will leave. Some jobs, Wall Street jobs for example, could have short-time windows. The key for both the employer and talent, is how to maximize returns within those the short time periods.

For any organization, retention is critical and retaining talent becomes a key strategy.

What do you envision the future of work to look like in the next five years or so?

COVID accelerated the change of hybrid work. You will see more remote work, depending on the jobs. The question regarding having your top talent working remotely will be different—companies will figure out ways to retain talent that is not physically near them.

Talent analytics will play a larger role. Everything is being measured all of the time. The question is, what do we do with this data? Real-time decisions will be increasingly made on data.

Additionally, we have allowed companies to come into our homes, through technology. The work-life balance line between privacy is blurring. Companies are going to play this different role in people’s lives, organizations will have to become like a family member in some way. Connected to that is this increased focus on employee health and well-being—that will continue.

Having said that, I still believe the traditional model will hold. People will come back to work, because the social need for connection will supersede work needs. And for some work, you just have to be in close contact. Secondly, as I mentioned earlier, the home is not designed for working. Our society is no structured that way—which can lead to mental and emotional issues, which eventually will come back to the company.

The answer, like many things, lies somewhere in the middle.

When ���ҹ�����’s Admissions team received Shahab Gharib’s application, they were thoroughly impressed. Here was a student with excellent academic credentials and a wealth of extracurricular interests—someone who would certainly make a positive impact in the ���ҹ����� Community.

Yet, when it was the Pforzheimer Honors College’s turn to look over his application, they noticed something extremely odd. A clerical error? They sought to investigate.

“They called back to confirm Shahab’s date of birth,” says Bardia Gharib, the student’s father. “I said no, it’s not a typo—he’s really 12 years-old.”

This is a common through-line for Shahab, who began his undergraduate studies at ���ҹ����� at the age of—again, not a typo—12 years old.

“At first, people are kind of shocked,” he says. “But after a while, I’m like anyone else.” Shahab Gharib, despite his modest, easy-going demeanor, is certainly not like anybody else.

Born in Bruchsal, Germany, Shahab moved with his parents to Hollywood, Florida, when he was a young child. Even then, it was clear that he was unusually gifted. For one, it seemed that he was already devouring books well-beyond his reading level. His teachers and school administrators took note of Shahab’s clearly advanced intellect, and in fourth grade, he moved to a gifted school. Then, as a fourth-grader, Shahab had the opportunity to take the PSATs—a trial run for the SATs, typically taken by high school juniors a few months prior to the big test. Shahab scored a 1250, in the 99th percentile for his age group.

“That was the ‘OK’ moment,” his father says. “We knew he was gifted, but this was clearly something else.”

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Getting Ahead

Talking to Shahab, you instantly realize that he is, above all, curious. It’s likely this insatiable hunger for knowledge that made Shahab excel beyond his peers, even in middle school. While most sixth graders, for example, might be pining to play video games after a school day filled with algebra and world history, that wasn’t exactly the case for Shahab.

Instead, while not in the classroom, he started taking electives for high school credit through Florida Virtual School. He also made it a point to finish every book he picked up— whether that be popular favorites like the Harry Potter series (which he finished in first grade), personal favorites such as Bryce Courtenay’s The Power of One, or dense non-fiction such as The Washing of the Spears, a comprehensive history of the Zulu nation.

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“I may have a slight reading problem,” admits Shahab.

Eventually, Shahab took so many classes through Florida Virtual School that he had, in effect, completed high school at age 12. He and his parents had a decision to make—should he actually go to high school and study subjects he had already mastered? Or was he ready to keep challenging himself intellectually and make the leap to college?

“We had said if he was going to go to college, it had to be New York,” said Bardia, referencing the endless cultural opportunities offered by the city, as well as a “real-world” crash-course the frenetic nature of Manhattan inevitably provides.

So, he applied to ���ҹ�����. And he was accepted. Through credits from the Florida Virtual School and CollegeBoard CLEP exams, he even entered with 12 college credits.

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In the Classroom

In some ways, Shahab’s time at ���ҹ����� has been like that of any other student. Like the rest of his peers, he diligently balances his time between a full course load and extracurriculars. He’s majoring in history, and has greatly enjoyed his courses in other disciplines, including economics, computer science, and creative writing.

He’s earned praise from professors with whom he’s developed strong relationships, including his English professor, Eugene Richie, PhD, who is also ���ҹ�����’s director of creative writing. Richie has been sincerely impressed with—as he describes— Shahab’s maturity and sense of connection. Given his stellar work, Richie recommended him for the Andrew W. Mellon ���ҹ����� Storytelling Fellowship for Equity and Inclusion, which Shahab was recently awarded. As part of the Fellowship, Shahab will be participating in a fully paid internship this summer with a creative organization that matches his future interests.

“I got a call from the Honors College director who said Shahab wasn’t 18 and was going to enter college early,” Richie says. “He came to class, and he was brilliant. He talked all the time, and he really engaged with the material.” After enrolling in a modern and contemporary international poetry course—in which, Richie notes, Shabab provided a unique perspective given his early upbringing in Germany—he then signed up for an Honors course focusing on poetry, memoir, and creative fiction.

After writing a few poems, the class moved onto the memoir, during which Shahab revealed his story more in depth—to the great surprise of his classmates and even his professor, who had assumed he was closer to 18. “When he did the memoir, he revealed to the other students that he could’ve gone to high school but decided that he’d rather start college because he was able to do it,” said Richie. “Then I realized, wow, he must be 13 or 14 years old—I had no idea!”

“If someone tells him ‘You can’t—you’re too young, you won’t be able to’—that’s a cue for him, and he’ll prove them wrong,” —Bardia Gharib.

…And Beyond

If your impression is that Shahab camps out in the library 24/7, you’d be wrong. While clearly prolific in his studies, he’s also made time for a number of activities outside of the classroom. Last fall, he got involved with ���ҹ�����’s student-run radio station, WPUB, and started hosting his own radio show. Titled Books, Ballads, and Blasts from the Past, the show uses reading and history as a conversation starter and introduces the world of Shahab to a wider audience. And, as WPUB asks: Everyone always wants to know what a 13-year-old has to say about history, books, and all genres of music, right?

“Alliterations are a running joke in my family,” he says, explaining the title of his radio show. “The experience so far has been really great—I usually bring a friend who has a different perspective on a lot of things, and it has been a lot of fun.”

He’s also punching above his weight—literally. The sport of boxing has long been a family endeavor. Bardia, a boxer who ran a boxing gym in Bruchsal, has been a source of inspiration and encouragement for Shahab. During their time in Florida, the Gharibs were members of a boxing gym, where Shahab met Max Schillinger, who is now himself a student at ���ҹ�����’s Lubin School of Business. The two bonded over their admiration of hip-hop artists, which Schillinger joked that Shahab was definitely too young to be listening to.

“Back when we met, he told me he was in 10th grade,” said Schillinger. “He was 11 years old. I was in disbelief.”

The two ended up keeping in touch after the Gharib family left Florida for New York City, and Schillinger was entering his senior year of high school. Schillinger, unbeknownst to Shahab at the time, was also looking to study in New York City and coincidentally was also accepted to ���ҹ����� last spring. Although the two didn’t plan to attend college together, their continued friendship has blossomed.

“We ran into each other in the elevator on the second day of school,” said Shahab. “I said, Max! We need to do some boxing.”

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And so they have. The pair recently started Soulfighter NYC, a ���ҹ����� boxing club that meets twice a week in either the ���ҹ����� gym or in City Hall Park. Each class spans about an hour, and is led by Bardia, who teaches students the basics of boxing, footwork, and strategy—while making sure nobody is skimping on the push-ups. At a recent session, Shahab, despite being clearly younger than the other dozen or so other ���ҹ����� students, did not seem remotely out of place. In fact, while sparring with his partner, he was both focused on his own footwork and technique and encouraging of his partner, once again suggesting a maturity beyond his years. At the end of the training session, he lay down on the floor exhausted, in a way only possible after a grueling but rewarding workout.

Schillinger, while not surprised Shahab is able to excel in this environment just like he did in Florida, is no less impressed. “What seems like an abnormality is possible, if you look at where hard work can get you,” said Schillinger.

Going Places

With Shahab, there is often a question about his future—if someone who was born in 2008(!) has been able to accomplish so much already, what will he be able to do by 2030? 2040? And although some might want to put grand aspirations on his shoulders, Shahab, with the help of Bardia, seems to be quite adept at not looking too far down the road. Because he is looking to graduate next year—early of, course— his primary concern is focusing on his plans immediately after graduation. After a few long conversations with his family, professors, and mentors, he has decided he would like to attend law school. He recently applied to ���ҹ�����’s Elisabeth Haub School of Law, where he hopes to take advantage of the 3+3 program, in which students can earn their BA and JD in only six years. Although he’s not entirely sure what he’d like to study, he notes the environmental law program, currently ranked the best in the country, holds great interest.

Shahab is also excited for another element of a typical university experience. While it’s not unusual for college students to live at home, it is a bit unusual for their parents to regularly accompany them to campus. Because of his age, Shahab who lives with Bardia and mom, Amorita, on the Upper West Side, goes back and forth to campus with Bardia. He acts as a chaperone of sorts—bringing Shahab down to One ���ҹ����� Plaza each day on the subway, providing guidance, and helping ensure Shahab grows socially and culturally as well as academically.

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At law school however, the plan is for Shahab to further his growth and live in the residence halls. Although Bardia will certainly be a little bit sad to not be in the company of Shahab each and every day, he’s also incredibly proud of what his son has been able to accomplish. He looks at Shahab living without parents as an essential aspect of growing up. And even though Shahab will only be 15 when he starts law school, it’s safe to say his life experience is a bit beyond his years.

“People ask, ‘You bring your son to school?’” jokes Bardia. “No, my son brought me here.” And his son is clearly going places. “If someone tells him ‘You can’t—you’re too young, you won’t be able to’—that’s a cue for him, and he’ll prove them wrong,” Bardia says.

Shabab smiles. “I may be a tad competitive,” he says.

Welcome To The New ���ҹ����� Magazine.

Across our campuses, we’re looking to the future—innovating new programs, forging new partnerships, preparing our students for the workplace of tomorrow. It’s time for ���ҹ����� Magazine to get a fresh new look and feel, too. .

This redesign is part of the new brand platform we launched last year, which no doubt you’ve noticed in other communications from our University. We call it “Go-Getters,” and it’s a new framework for telling the ���ҹ����� story of success. As alumni and friends, you know well that we’re a hard-working, ambitious community of doers and strivers who are determined to get ahead. This new brand platform—and its visual expression, which you’re seeing on these pages—creates a framework for us to tell our story, and it brings a powerful and dynamic look and feel to everything we do.

In this issue, you’ll read about many of those doers and strivers, from a remarkable 14-year-old student who just finished his first year as a history major in Dyson, to students working to fight food insecurity in their community, and first-gen students eager to enter the nursing profession.

You’ll also see highlights from our extraordinary Commencement 2022, when we celebrated the classes of 2022, 2021, and 2020 in the biggest and highest-profile event we’ve ever put together.

We went to one of the largest venues in the region—the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens— and we welcomed 16,000 family and friends to help celebrate 4,000 graduates from our six colleges and schools across our three campuses and three graduating campuses. It was a beautiful spring day, headlined by a visionary speech from New York City Mayor Eric Adams, heartfelt advice to our Lubin School of Business graduates from banking and philanthropy leader Baroness Ariane de Rothschild ’88 MBA ’90, and wise counsel to our Haub Law grads from US Representative Grace Meng. It was a day to be reminded why ���ҹ����� is such a special place.

We’re excited to get that word out to the world—and we hope you enjoy reading all about it in this reinvented magazine.

With ���ҹ����� pride,

Marvin Krislov
President

Rob Sands, JD ’84
Chair, Board of Trustees

#1 in the Nation

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���ҹ�����’s Elisabeth Haub School of Law is once again ranked number one in the country for Environmental Law by the latest U.S. News & World Report rankings. This is the second year in a row, and the third time in four years, that Haub Law has received the number one ranking. The program continues to recruit top faculty, establish leading-edge programs, and attract students who seek to become the environmental law leaders of the future.

2. RADical Health

���ҹ����� is leading the charge when it comes to managing mental health—and is proud to be a partner of RADical Health, an innovative skill-based resilience program from the Radical Hope Foundation that empowers students to work through challenges before reaching a crisis point.

3. Winner, Winner

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���ҹ�����’s Federal Reserve Challenge Team made history at the 18th Annual Federal Reserve College Challenge, winning the national title for the fifth time. With the victory, ���ҹ����� now has won five of the last seven titles and has the most victories of any team in the history of the competition, surpassing Harvard University’s four wins.

4. Healthcare Access for All

Physician Assistant student Elyse Hopper was selected as a Student Delegate for the American Academy of Physician Associates (AAPA) House of Delegates and represented ���ҹ����� at this year’s AAPA conference. In her role as a Delegate, Elyse worked to increase the access to healthcare to the sick and underinsured.

5. Expanding STEM Education

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���ҹ�����’s School of Education and the Elisabeth Haub School of Law have been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to expand STEM education for K–12 students in NYC. ���ҹ����� undergraduates, overseen by JD and LLM law students, will provide access to dynamic and immersive learning experiences for under-represented communities.

6. A Tribute to DJ

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In an effort led by ���ҹ����� students Irach’e “Shea” Teague ‘22 and Ja’Rette Mungin ‘21, a newly commissioned mural of Danroy “DJ” Henry, a student who was shot and killed by a Pleasantville police officer in 2010, was installed on ���ҹ�����’s Pleasantville Campus during the second annual Social Justice Week. “This is my most heartfelt piece to date,” shared artist . “I’ve done memorial murals before, but not for the subject’s direct community for unifying and healing.”

7. ESG Thinking

The Elisabeth Haub School of Law recently announced the launch of the Haub Sustainable Business Law Hub (say that 10 times fast!). The Hub will serve as an incubator, student training program, and think tank devoted to addressing global sustainability challenges through policy, research projects, relationships with the business community, and capacity building in private environmental governance.

8. Addressing the Nursing Shortage

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New York State Senator Pete Harckham visited ���ҹ�����’s College of Health Professions for a tour of its clinical simulation labs and held a roundtable discussion on addressing New York’s critical need for nurses and other primary care professionals. “It is critical that we encourage and reward people to join the nursing profession, which needs rejuvenation and reinforcements,” said Senator Harckham.

9. Empowering Queer Leaders

���ҹ�����’s LGBTQA+ Centers have received a $23,000 grant from the Leonard Litz-Foundation to help empower the next generation of queer leaders. The grant will fund ���ҹ�����’s annual Q-Camp leadership retreat and a new program, the TGNCNB (transgender, gender nonconforming, nonbinary) and QTPOC (queer and trans people of color) Leadership Series.

10. $1.2 Million Grant for SOE

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With the support of this NYS Department of Education grant, ���ҹ�����’s School of Education will recruit, support, and retain candidates from historically underrepresented communities into the teaching profession, who are highly qualified, value equity, and reflect diversity in today’s classrooms, particularly in high-need schools where there are local teacher shortages.

“Hip hop, in a lot of ways, is a manifestation of pain,” says Justin Winley, a 2021 graduate who majored in Film and Screen Studies. “It’s a manifestation of the struggle, whether that be the day-to-day economic struggle of living in an impoverished community or the struggle against ‘The Man.’”

Winley, working together with Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Melvin Williams, PhD, and independent researcher Justin Causey, used that insight as the basis for an innovative academic research project exploring the role of hip hop music in conveying grief, generational pain, and other emotions that might otherwise go unexpressed among Black men. Their researched was published this past winter in the peer-reviewed Journal of Hip Hop Studies.

Listen While You Read:
Hit play to listen to our Spotify playlist of songs examined by Williams and Winley.

As part of the research team, Winley and Williams conducted an investigation, framed by critical race theory and gender role conflicts, of twenty-six rap tribute songs written by twenty-eight Black male artists in the aftermath of the killing of rapper, entrepreneur, and activist Nipsey Hussle.

“We used this hip hop cultural moment— the death of Nipsey Hussle—to raise larger conversation about this epidemic of gun violence and its devastation of not only the Black community, but Black men specifically,” says Williams, whose areas of research focus on Black representation in pop culture, queer studies, and media.

Hussle, the stage name of Ermias Asghedom, was a Grammy-nominated West Coast rapper who was fatally shot outside his Marathon Clothing store in Los Angeles in 2018. A community leader who was an advocate for STEM education and worked to curb gun violence, he was 33 years old when he died. Following his death, more than 50 murals dedicated to his memory appeared in LA, book clubs popped up that focused on works he had referenced in interviews and in his lyrics, and dozens of tribute songs were produced by other rappers.

“We used this hip hop cultural moment— the death of Nipsey Hussle—to raise larger conversation about this epidemic of gun violence and its devastation of not only the Black community, but Black men specifically,” says Williams.

The concept of tribute songs is nothing new to the hip hop community—in fact, in 1997, following the murder of Christopher “The Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace, artists Sean “Diddy” Combs and Wallace’s widow, Faith Evans, released “I’ll Be Missing You.” A few others to mull over include Jay-Z’s “The City is Mine,” Bone Thugs-N-Harmony’s “Tha Crossroads,” and 2Pac’s “Life Goes On.”

“We really wanted to examine how Black male rappers were using these rap tribute songs to commemorate the grief of being a homicide survivor,” says Williams. “In so doing, we start a larger conversation about how the Black community grieves, how Black men grieve, and how they communicate these narratives which are so vital to the grieving process.”

In Williams and Winley’s research partnership, the pair began analyzing nearly 30 tribute songs, each one memorializing the life and legacy of Nipsey Hussle.

They identified common themes in the tribute songs about survivorship, about anger, and about the desire to seek vengeance. They saw that Black male rap artists use the rhetorical power of rap tribute songs to engage with their complex bereavement processes, advance vital counternarratives, and offer rich criticisms of gun violence, internalized racism, poverty, and systemic oppression. They also found that artists use these songs to explore Black men’s mental health experiences in the face of repeated exposure to violence, death, and homicide.

“When we see examples of gun violence, particularly in the Black community, it’s always a very charged conversation,” says Winley. “What’s great about being able to do this research is that it takes those emotions into account, but it doesn’t let them rule the discourse.”

_{Photo by Chelsea Guglielmino/Getty Images}

For 15 years, members of the Shades Women of Color Collective on ���ҹ�����’s NYC Campus have been meeting, talking, and uplifting one another.

“Shades is a mentoring program but in a nontraditional sense,” says Denise Santiago, PhD, director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs and coordinator for the collective. “It’s a support space for Black and Latina women, and all women are welcome.”

The weekly discussion groups tackle everything from social media, mental health, wellness, leadership, politics, and more. But it’s not just talk. The women of Shades attend outings together, organize special events, and share professional opportunities.

"If you keep showing up, we keep showing up.”

Nina Riley ’22 came to Shades as a student and grew into a role as a facilitator. She finds that having a space to share experiences can lead to real change. “People value transformative storytelling,” she says. “Students come in and share their hair stories, or stories related to other topics, and we learn from each other.”

At the heart of Shades is a sense of community. “We welcome all women and femmes into Shades,” Riley says. “If you want to be a part of the conversation, you are welcome. And we really do create a family. If you keep showing up, we keep showing up.”

From CT scans to at-home COVID tests, technology is revolutionizing healthcare. By working across disciplines, faculty at ���ҹ����� are turning groundbreaking ideas into reality.

Juan Shan, PhD, an associate professor of computer science in the Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems, is focused on applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyzing medical imaging—things like breast ultrasounds and knee MRIs. The basic idea is to take advantage of those advanced models in machine learning and apply those to the medical domain to help solve medical problems.

“In computer science, we know more about machine learning and computer vision techniques than about medical problems,” Shan says. “But we want to apply these techniques to help doctors solve the medical domain problems.”

Shan and her students are using machine learning and computer vision techniques to help doctors solve problems detecting the precise details of a tumor more accurately and efficiently or providing a second opinion on the severity of knee osteoarthritis.

“My students here at ���ҹ����� get involved in my research projects,” she says. “Research informs my teaching, and I can always bring new ideas back to my classroom and discuss them with my students.”

Shan and her doctoral students design Computer Aided Diagnosis Systems (CADs), systems that are programmed to do particular tasks—pinpoint location, measure joints, estimate size. Her primary focus is developing robust and efficient CAD algorithms to help doctors analyze medical images, discover distinguishing features, and classify data utilizing machine learning methods.

In one recent research endeavor, for example, Shan created a system where a computer was able to estimate the severity of osteoarthritis in a hand after learning how to read and interpret thousands of X-rays—a technique that Shan says helps save on labor and time for medical professionals that would otherwise be manually diagnosing the severity of the osteoarthritis.

“Research informs my teaching, and I can always bring new ideas back to my classroom and discuss them with my students.” —Juan Shan, PhD

At the College of Health Professions, Assistant Professor John Damiao, PhD, has spent the past several years figuring out how to leverage gains in scanning technologies to build customized wheelchairs tailored toward the needs of an individual user. His work makes the wheelchairs more comfortable, and potentially helps reduce the risk of future injury.

“Traditionally, the wheelchair user is seated in a molding bag that makes an imprint of their shape,” says Damiao. “The molding bag is hardened, and that bag shape is scanned, sent off to a company and they make a cushion from that imprint.”

But his work is driving a paradigm shift in how wheelchair seats are constructed.

“The problem with the traditional method is that the person is sitting in a loaded fashion, and their body contours are being distorted from sitting in a loaded fashion,” he says. “The innovation in my research is scanning the person directly, or in an unloaded position, which should make for a more accurate custom contoured seat.”

Custom contoured seating refers to wheelchair seating systems to fit people with severe deformities—whether its postural or a skeletal deformity, and they can’t sit in a typical linear wheelchair seating system because it would cause discomfort, or eventually cause pressure ulcers because of the mismatching of their shape to what is a typical wheelchair seat shape, explains Damiao.

Pressure injuries kill 60,000 people are a year and are, as Damiao describes, a “$10 billion per year problem.” Damiao’s inventive use of custom-contoured seating utilizes ever-improving technology to potentially save lives.

As a 21st century occupational therapist, Damiao understands that, while academic research is vital and will continue to be vital, it is just as important to be able to leverage technological advances to implement changes rapidly. He hopes that increased interdisciplinary collaboration—for instance, better collaboration between those developing healthcare technologies and researchers—can help take the theoretical into the practical much faster, and thus positively impact lives.

As per the work of Shan and Damiao, it seems that when it comes to the intersection of health and tech, ���ҹ����� is certainly building an effective algorithm.

���ҹ����� has been preparing students for the demands of an evolving job market for more than 115 years. Now we’re creating new academic programs that will help our students succeed in the careers of the next 115.

It’s part of the commitment to academic innovation in our new strategic plan, called ���ҹ����� Forward, that ensures we meet the needs of today’s students and employers.

In 2021, the Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems launched a master’s program in Human Centered Design. It’s a discipline that blends art, design, psychology, and technology to focus on how people interact with machines. For some considering grad school, this degree can mean a significant value-add to a career in tech not only now, but especially during the transition into Web 3—the umbrella term used to describe emerging technologies such as the metaverse, blockchain, and NFTs.

Together with the College of Health Professions (CHP), Seidenberg is also offering a new master’s degree in Health Informatics. It’s an interdisciplinary program designed to launch careers at the intersection of health and technology—ranging from telehealth, to artificial intelligence, to software development, and much more.

“Healthcare technology is bringing us into an exciting world of truly personalized medicine and healthcare,” says Jonathan Hill, DPS, dean of Seidenberg. “Right now, faculty from CHP and Seidenberg are working with students on innovative, interdisciplinary research projects that seamlessly blend healthcare and technology in ways that improve the healthcare experience not just for patients, but for medical professionals as well.”

Finally, the School of Education has a new master’s program in Early Childhood Development and Learning. This new degree program draws upon all the latest advancements in the field to best prepare educators to succeed in the ever-changing education landscape— ensuring that while the educational tools and strategies may be different, the quality will continue to be of the highest caliber.

Go Further with a graduate degree from ���ҹ�����.