Author: lloydbalch

Brooklyn, N.Y.—Over the past year, two former students of the Brooklyn College Film Department, Oren Moverman and Michael Martin, have been making a big splash in the entertainment industry.

A winner of the Silver Bear Award for the best script at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival, Moverman saw his movie The Messenger, released in the United States last November.

Starring Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson and Samantha Morton, the movie narrates the consequences of war without actually showing scenes of carnage. Instead, Foster and Harrelson play officers who, after completing their tours in Iraq, are reassigned stateside with a new mission—to inform the designated relatives of a soldier that their loved one has become a casualty of war. This complex story about grief cowritten with Alessandro Camon is Moverman’s directorial debut. The script has been nominated for an Academy Award, while Harrelson has been nominated for best supporting actor.

A former Israeli soldier who moved to the United States in 1988, Moverman has cowritten other screenplays, such as Jesus Son, and a Bob Dylan biopic, I’m Not There, both with Todd Haynes. Two other scripts are currently in production, including William Burroughs’ Queers, for actor/director Steve Buscemi.

Michael Martin, who was featured in the fall 2008 issue of Brooklyn College Magazine, is the brain behind the script for Brooklyn’s Finest, which is about to open in major movie theaters.

Directed by Anton Fuqua of Training Day fame, the movie was shot in the streets of East New York, where Martin grew up. It stars Richard Gere, Don Cheadle and Ethan Hawke, all of whom liked Martin’s compelling script so much that they were more than willing to take pay cuts in order to be part of it.

Martin was still in physical therapy, recovering from a car accident, when his script came in second in a screenwriting competition. But Brooklyn’s Finest caught the interest of a Hollywood agent, who pitched it to a producer, who optioned it. The rest is cinematic history.

Brooklyn, N.Y.—The Center for the Study of Brooklyn at Brooklyn College, the Brooklyn Linkage to Care Coalition (BLCC) and the Watchful Eye are bringing together community leaders, HIV/AIDS experts, service providers and consumers to commemorate National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day on Monday, February 8, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Student Center. Brooklyn Deputy Borough President Yvonne Graham, founder of Caribbean Women’s Health Association, Inc., will be the keynote speaker.

With 100 more HIV/AIDS-related deaths than Manhattan and the other boroughs in 2007, Brooklyn has sadly become the epicenter of the epidemic in New York and the nation for blacks, women, adolescents and children living with the virus. Brooklyn has consistently outpaced the nation with the largest number of individuals who, when diagnosed with HIV, are also diagnosed with AIDS, perhaps an indicator that they are not benefitting from access to the care and treatment that can extend their lives.

Divinah Bailey, founder and executive director of the Watchful Eye, will introduce the revitalization of the Brooklyn Red Ribbon Campaign, and BLCC representatives will present the first-ever Brooklyn HIV/AIDS Strategic Plan. The assistant commissioner of the Bureau of HIV Prevention and Control, Monica Sweeney, M.D., will provide a preview of the “Brooklyn Knows” HIV testing campaign to begin in December 2010. Breakfast and lunch will be served, and Junior’s Restaurant will provide a dessert tasting of their world-famous cheesecake.

The Center for Study of Brooklyn is the first and only Brooklyn-based institution dedicated to serving the borough by elevating critical policy and public affairs issues to the citywide discourse, conducting and providing access to Brooklyn-based data and research, and advancing community initiatives that impact change. The BLCC, formed in 2006, includes representatives from Brooklyn-based hospitals and clinics; the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene; researchers from CUNY, SUNY and the National Development and Research Institutes; direct service providers; religious institutions; policy makers and funders. The Watchful Eye Testing, Outreach and Prevention initiative is a community mobilization effort with the major goals of encouraging individuals to get tested, learn their status and become involved.

On Sunday, February 7, the coalition will celebrate an “An Evening of Praise and Awareness” at Long Island University. Hosted by Bishop Albert Jamison, the event is a special tribute to Congressman Edolphus Towns (D, NY-10) that will feature elected officials, gospel choirs and testimony from people living with HIV/AIDS. Scheduled to appear are Senator John Sampson, Assemblyman Darryl Towns, Councilman Al Vann, recording artist Kristina Halloway, Bishop Gerald Seabrook and the Rehoboth Cathedral Church Choir, Bishop Eric Figueroa, Sr. and the New Life Tabernacle Choir, Chadrick Coleman, Jason Hendrickson, Kalvin LeVeille, Nakeesha Witherspoon, Q The Prophet and Michelle Lopez. Free on-site HIV/AIDS testing will be available. The event will take place in Luntey Commons at Flatbush Extension and DeKalb Avenue at 4 p.m. No registration is necessary.

Brooklyn, N.Y.—Brooklyn College announced today the creation of the Brooklyn College Garden that will serve as the basis for a broad spectrum of academic and sustainability initiatives for faculty and students. Members of the surrounding community will also be welcome to plant on individual plots, which will be assigned to them on a yearly base.

The garden, to be situated at the campus’s Avenue H entrance and bordering the college’s athletic field, is designed to be approximately 2,500 square feet. In the coming weeks, Provost William Tramontano will appoint a faculty coordinator who will supervise the academic initiatives and oversee the management of the garden for use by community members.

“The Brooklyn College Garden is an exciting part of our academic mission,” said Tramontano. “A working garden on college grounds will provide our faculty and students with the opportunity to explore such important issues as health, nutrition, organic farming and sustainability practices. At the same time, the garden will underscore one of our most important tasks—to create educational opportunities for the public and extend ourselves as good neighbors to the surrounding community.”

To ensure the garden is up and running in time for this year’s growing season, the college’s landscapers will lay out the garden over the next few months, defining the area with a low, decorative wrought-iron fence to protect the beds from activity on the athletic field. A hand pump to draw groundwater will also be installed, and special containers for composting will be built.

Trees and bushes from a temporary community garden that made use of the area in previous years will be carefully replanted in front of the West Quad Center to create an inviting new garden. The college envisions the new green space as a “serenity garden” with comfortable seating for visitors to linger.

Information about intended educational programs and how to participate in the garden will be distributed to the community by the faculty coordinator. The college expects the garden to be ready for planting by April 1.

Brooklyn, N.Y.—A recently released United States Treaty Report cited the Brooklyn College Children’s Studies Center as an example of the “essential role of academic and nonprofit institutions” working in the area of providing oversight of children’s services.

The report, First Periodic Report Concerning the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution, and Child Pornography and U.S. Response to Recommendations in Committee Concluding Observations of June 25, 2008, (pdf) stated that “the work of the Center, along with other non-governmental advocates, has been crucial in the adoption of new laws in the state of New York. The Safe Harbor for Sexually Exploited Youth Act, enacted Sept. 25, 2008, made New York the first state in the nation to provide specialized services and safe housing for children who have been sexually exploited.”

More than half the states in the nation have established an office of the child advocate or an ombudsman with the responsibility for looking after the welfare of children, the report says.
Brooklyn College became the first academic institution in the nation to develop an interdisciplinary liberal arts children’s studies program in 1991. Professor Gertrud Lenzer is the founding director of both the Children’s Studies Program and of the Children’s Studies Center, established in 1997 with mission mandates tied to pedagogy, research and public service to the community.   
References to the Brooklyn College Children’s Studies Center may be found in paragraphs 102 and 103, page 24 of the report (pdf).

Brooklyn, N.Y.—Vanessa Perez Rosario, an assistant professor in the Department of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies, thinks the world of famous Latina poet Julia de Burgos. Perez wrote her dissertation on de Burgos and is currently writing a book that will be a critical study of her life’s work.

So Perez was honored when she was approached by officials at the United States Postal Service to consult on the design of a stamp in de Burgos’ honor.

"De Burgos is pretty well-known in Puerto Rico but not as much in Latin America and other places, so I think a project like this was needed in order to really bring more attention to her and her life’s work," said Perez, who moved to Puerto Rico with her family when she was seven and returned to the States after high school.

The stamp, which will be dedicated and go on sale in September, is the 26th in the Postal Service’s literary arts series. A revolutionary writer, thinker and activist, de Burgos wrote more than 200 poems that probe issues of love, feminism and political and personal freedom.

Perez hopes to finish her book on de Burgos in 2011.

Brooklyn, N.Y.—Brooklyn College and members of its faculty have received in excess of $3 million in the latest spate of grant funds that have been awarded for the furtherance of the college’s diversity program as well as for a variety of research projects.

Most recently, Associate Professor of Biology Juergen Polle received a subgrant award of about $931,000 as a partner in the National Alliance for Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts, which in January received a $44 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. Polle is a recognized leader in the investigation of the potential of algal biomass as a future source of fuel.

Meanwhile, Brooklyn College received a $248,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support its efforts to increase the number of minority students who are pursuing Ph.D. degrees nationwide. The first half installment was scheduled for January; the second for next year. The funding is expected to cover activities for the next four years.

Among other research grants received by Brooklyn College faculty that have not been previously announced are:

• A $941,014 award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to Assistant Professor of Physics Gregory Boutis for the project “Probing Dynamics of Water in Elastin by Q-Space Imaging and Multiple Quantum NMR.”
• A $471,000 award from the NIH to Assistant Professor of Chemistry Maria Contel for the project “Organogold Phosphorus-containing Compounds as Antitumor Agents.”
• A $435,195 award from the NIH to Associate Professor of Chemistry Brian Gibney for the project “Thermodynamics of Coupled Binding of Zn(II) and DNA to a Zinc Finger Tumor Suppressor.”
• A $296,881 award from the U.S. Department of Energy to Professor of Geology Constantin Crânganu to fund the project “Carbon Dioxide Sealing Capacity: Textural or Compositional Controls.”
• A $39,580 award from the NIH to Professor of Biology Dan Eshel to fund the project “Signaling Pathways and Microtubule Function.”
• A $32,500 award from City University of New York to Assistant Professor Sandra Kingan and co-principle investigators Assistant Professor Anthony Clement and Professor Jun Hu, all of the Mathematics Department, for the project “The Gap Project: Closing Gaps in Gateway Mathematics Courses.”

Brooklyn, N.Y.—As relief efforts for victims of the January 12 earthquake that devastated Haiti continue around the world, New York Assemblywoman Rhoda Jacobs and New York City Councilman Dr. Mathieu Eugene, in partnership with the Children Foundation for Help in Haiti, Inc., have organized a Gathering in Solidarity in support of the Haitian community.

“The past two weeks have been an especially difficult time for our Haitian neighbors and friends who have lost loved ones in their homeland,” stated Jacobs and Eugene in a joint release this week. ”While extraordinary efforts are under way to raise funds and supplies to provide immediate help to the region, our community continues to mourn the loss of life and the devastation to the country.”

Hosted by the Brooklyn College Office of Diversity and Equity Programs and the Golden Key International Honour Society, Gathering in Solidarity will take place on Thursday, February 4, from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Walt Whitman Theater. Felix Augustin, the Consul General of Haiti, will address the attendees and give an update on the relief efforts. Tickets for the event will be distributed on first-come, first-served basis at the Campus Road entrance to the college beginning at 5 p.m. on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, several Brooklyn College organizations, including Hillel, the Haitian American Student Association and other student clubs, are still organizing drives for items needed during this crisis. The clubs will continue their fundraising efforts tomorrow, Tuesday, February 2, during common hours.

The Personal Counseling Program has been offering counseling to students, staff and faculty who may have been affected by the devastation wreaked by the earthquake and aftershocks that have rendered Port-au-Prince’s buildings useless and unsafe. More than 50 students attended the counseling workshop offered last Wednesday by the program in partnership with the Haitian Bilingual/ESL Technical Assistance Center in the Student Center. HABETAC is a bilingual education technical assistance center funded by the New York State Education Department.