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Dear Colin Powell School Community,
For most of us, the personal and professional challenges of this pandemic continue to mount. The difficulties can seem insurmountable at times. Yet, I am struck by how effectively we have come together during this difficult moment. Everywhere I look, members of the Colin Powell School community are going to extraordinary lengths to support one another.
Many are taking more time to mentor, advise and support our students. So many have responded to our call for emergency student relief that we have raised more than $500,000 to date. Our students are finding ways to help one another as they figure out the complexities of online instruction.
Alongside the out-of-the-ordinary aspects of this crisis, the important and “regular” work of the Colin Powell School continues. Faculty are publishing, staff are advising and leading programs, and students are forging ahead with their plans beyond graduation. On all these fronts, we share a range of updates below.
In particular, I am pleased to welcome Shahara Ahmad-Llewelyn as the newest member of the Colin Powell School Board of Visitors and Bobby Derival as the new Executive Director of the Colin Powell School’s MPA program. Read about both of them in this At-A-Glance.
We are well along in planning for a virtual ceremony celebrating the Colin Powell School Class of 2020, and we have something very special in mind. I look forward to sharing details in the weeks ahead. In the meantime, please take care and be well.
Andrew Rich
Dean | Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership
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Shahara Ahmad-Llewellyn joins Colin Powell School’s Board of Visitors
The Colin Powell School is pleased to announce the appointment of entrepreneur and civic leader Shahara Ahmad-Llewellyn to its Board of Visitors. She joins 28 other distinguished Board Members.
Shahara Ahmad-Llewellyn is a founding member and currently serves as a Vice Chairman of Jazz at Lincoln Center as well as a founding member and current Co-Vice Chairman of The New 42nd Street/New Victory Theater for Children. A serial entrepreneur, Ahmad-Llewellyn is a former owner and Vice Chairman of the Philadelphia Coca-Cola Bottling Co along with five other companies between 1972 and 2012.
“I have known Shahara Ahmad-Llewellyn for more than 40 years, and she is a wonderful addition to our board,” said General Colin L. Powell, a 1958 CCNY alumnus and Chair of the Colin Powell School Board of the Visitors. “Shahara is a successful entrepreneur and a leader with some of New York City’s most distinguished civic institutions. I admire her commitment to growing the ranks of women and those from diverse backgrounds in leadership posts across the professions.”
The Colin Powell School’s Board of Visitors helps to support the School’s strategic direction and philanthropic initiatives.
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Spotlight on the Census
The Colin Powell School is doing its part to ensure all New Yorkers are counted in the 2020 U.S. Census through a mobilization effort that began last fall and has now gone digital in the midst of the ongoing coronavirus crisis.
Dozens of Colin Powell School students are part of ‘Census Corps,’ a CUNY Program that pays students to educate, engage and mobilize neighbors, friends, family and other students to fill out the census form. Students are focused on census participation in city neighborhoods deemed “hard to count,” including neighborhoods that are home to many of the students. When they started their outreach in January, students gave presentations, staffed information tables, distributed flyers, translated materials, organized events and attended community meetings. With the spread of COVID-19, the corps is creatively navigating social distance challenges, producing and distributing videos and a host of other tools via social media to reach friends, family and fellow students, as well as telephone and text messaging campaigns to educate New Yorkers about the census.
In partnership with the CUNY Census Project, the University’s Office of Communications and Marketing launched the #CUNYcounts Campaign. The campaign includes a new webpage, email blasts, t-shirts, stickers and social media posts and a “#CUNYcounts Census Challenge” to be launched on Instagram by Chancellor Matos Rodríguez. Following a public service announcement by NYC Census 2020 that featured Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda and CUNY Census Corps students in February, the campaign will also feature student testimonials on various social media channels.
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Investment Standards to Fulfill the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals
What is the role of global capital markets in helping to fulfill the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals? Last month, Colin Powell School Senior Fellow Paul Kim hosted a webinar panel discussion to explore the role of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investment standards in delivering solutions for global problems. The panelists — Teresa Ho Kim, Managing Director and Portfolio Manager at Jennison Associates; Brendan Sheehan, VP & Senior Analyst: ESG at Moody's Investors Service; and Henry Shilling, Director of Research at Sustainable Research and Analysis LLC — discussed how global investors are incorporating ESG standards into their decision-making processes and shifting away from a model focused solely on profit maximization. They considered how people working to promote sustainability could increase their effectiveness and influence by understanding how asset managers, companies, and regulators are thinking about global capital allocation.
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Free Spirit Versus Zarathustra: Postdoctoral Fellow’s New Book Examines Nietzsche’s Political Thought
Jeremy Fortier, who joined the Colin Powell School’s Political Science Department this past fall as a Postdoctoral Fellow as part of its Alexander Hamilton Initiative, has published broadly on topics spanning early modern, late modern, and contemporary political thought. To mark the February release of his book The Challenge of Nietzsche: How to Approach His Thought (University of Chicago Press), the Colin Powell School held a book launch event early last month. Roundtable participants included Michael Gillespie (Duke University), Rebecca Bamford (Quinnipiac University), Graham Parkes (University of Vienna), and Rebecca Ploof (CCNY). Fortier’s book identifies two character types that represent contrasting approaches to an individual’s relationship to the community. Find out more about the book here.
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Daniel DiSalvo Looks at the Past and Future of Public Employee Unions
Professor and Chair of Political Science Daniel DiSalvo recently published an article in National Affairs that reviews how public sector unions have been weakened over the past ten years by laws and legal challenges at the state and federal level, culminating in the Supreme Court’s decision in June 2018 in the case of Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31. Dr. DiSalvo notes that the “last decade has been a critical juncture for public-sector unions, one that will likely have lasting political and economic effects.”
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The Colin Powell School Welcomes New MPA Program Executive Director
This week, Bobby Derival joins the Colin Powell School as Executive Director of our Master’s in Public Administration Program. He is a trained public health practitioner, with more than eight years of experience in dynamic, multi-disciplinary environments. Bobby received a BA in Sociology at Fordham University before earning a Master of Arts in Public Health and a Master of Arts in International Peace and Conflict Resolution at Arcadia University. He has held positions in both the public and private sectors, most recently serving as Chief Operating Officer for a state licensed home care services provider. Prior to his work in the healthcare industry, Bobby designed and implemented global projects operating at the intersection of health and the built environment for an internationally focused NGO based in New York City. As Executive Director of the MPA program at the Colin Powell School, Bobby is honored to carry the torch of civic engagement and global leadership, translating his diverse experiences into mission focused results that elevate the program, enrich the student experience, and meaningfully engage our communities.
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Colin Powell School Professors Examine Potential COVID-19 Lessons
Anne and Bernard Spitzer Chair in Political Science Rajan Menon and Colin Powell School Visiting Professor Stan Altman both recently published articles examining the systemic ‘fault lines’ revealed by the COVID-19 epidemic. In The Nation, Menon outlines how the pandemic is a 'stress test' for our fragile political and economic systems. In Gotham Gazette, Altman writes that 'completing the Information Highway and making it accessible to all is critical to the national interest and addressing the social injustice caused by the digital divide.’
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Dominican Studies Institute Launches History of Dominican Music in the US Website
The CUNY Dominican Studies Institute officially launched the first open-source digital platform that narrates the historical trajectory and contributions of Dominican music in the United States. This new resource makes clear for the first time how integral Dominican musicians and Dominican musical traditions are to the culture and artistry of the United States—and have been for many decades. The new platform is a feat of creativity that opens remarkable possibilities for research and understanding around the cultural, artistic, and historical features of Dominican music in the United States. Visit the new site.
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Research Examines Underrepresentation of Minorities in Cancer Trials
Dr. Maria Christina Binz-Scharf, Associate Professor of Management at CCNY, recently published research looking at why minority patients participate in fewer cancer clinical trials and consequently have higher cancer mortality rates. The research, published in the Journal of Cancer Education, resulted from a grant funded by the National Institutes of Health. Through interviews with Primary Care Physicians (PCPs) in underserved communities, Dr. Binz-Scharf and her colleagues found that the main reasons for the disparities are PCPs’ lack of specific training and gaps in communication networks with oncologists. Binz-Scharf and her colleagues surveyed PCPs to test the hypotheses based on a qualitative study. Finally, they designed and implemented a training program for PCPs, with the goal of increasing participation of minority patients in Cancer Clinical Trials.
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Professor of Anthropology Co-Edits Volume on the Archaeology of Barbados
Professor of Anthropology Dr. Matthew Reilly recently contributed to a book that brought together Barbadian and international specialists dedicated to promoting and protecting the heritage of this small corner of the Caribbean. The book features twenty chapters of case studies written for both archaeological practitioners and a public audience. Dr. Reilly is one of five co-editors on the project and coordinated the sections dealing with Barbados's plantation and colonial history. In addition to co-authoring the book's introduction and epilogue, he wrote a chapter in collaboration with a Barbadian community member, Ainsley Norris, exploring oral histories and local meanings of heritage on the plantation landscape. In addition to being for sale through online retailers, the entire book is available to read online for free through Sidestone Press
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Graduate Programs in Psychology and Public Affairs Ranked by US News & World Report for 2021
The Colin Powell School’s programs in clinical psychology (#101) and public affairs (#141) were recently included in U.S. News & World Report’s 2021 rankings for best graduate schools. Find the clinical psychology ranking here and the public affairs ranking here.
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