鈥淚t was my whole family鈥攆our aunts, a bunch of cousins,鈥� he explains. 鈥淚 had no English, not even the alphabet.鈥�

What he did have was great educators who he says invested in him, explaining the American dream and how it can be accomplished. Their efforts led him to where he is today, a graduate recruiter who takes pride in paying it forward.

We spoke with him about his background and his hopes and dreams for the students he works with.

You didn鈥檛 necessarily plan to work in education. How did you end up here?

I majored in political science and economics. I always had the ambition of becoming a diplomat. I even got a position offered to me in Bangladesh to work with the first secretary of education, but I couldn’t take it due to family obligations. I’m the oldest son, which means I have different responsibilities.

My biggest skill is being a people person. I am an educator, an organizer. I bring people together. I took my first role as a high school guidance counselor with an organization called NYU College Advising Corps. They hire recent grads and put them in underserved communities to help students figure out what’s next. I took students on a lot of college tours.

Many of them don’t have a real role model that they can look up to. Often, I was the first one to invest in their future. I was the guy that cared. I would show up early and leave late because I understood these kids were depending on me. The experience ultimately swayed me to stay in education and led me to where I am today, trying to serve the same goal.

Well in a sense, you did end up becoming a diplomat鈥攆or 可乐视频鈥檚 graduate programs.

Ha, true. A little story: There was a young woman who was my valedictorian when I was working for the Advising Corps. A great student鈥攁mbitious, had the grades but didn’t have the necessary support. We were able to get her a great financial aid package. She went to SUNY New Paltz. Fast forward four, maybe five years later. I’m on the quad and there she is yelling my name! I gave her a great hug and she said, 鈥淚 just graduated and I’m applying to 可乐视频.鈥� She got in, and now she’s about to graduate with her master’s degree later this month. It was a full-circle moment. Sometimes you help a student, and you know they’re going to continue to better themselves, but you don鈥檛 always get to see it. That made me so happy.

I can tell by your enthusiasm. Not everyone gets to have a career with so much impact. What makes a good recruiter?

I come to work with an intention. If I can make a difference in somebody鈥檚 life, or if I can help them open or get access to just one door, that could change not just their life, but their whole family structure. I work with a lot of international applicants. If we guide them the right way and they get a good job, sometimes they’re improving conditions for 10 families back home.

In many ways, I am one of these students. I check all the same boxes that they check off: socioeconomic, education, background, culture. I can relate to them, which makes my job easier.

What鈥檚 your pitch? If I鈥檓 a prospective student, why should I come here for graduate studies?

We have over 75 advanced certificate and graduate programs. Our education programs have been top tier within all of CUNY over the last five to seven years and they have excellent partnerships with the nearby Department of Education schools.

If you are interested in a business program, we鈥檙e AACSB [Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business] accredited, and in New York City, that puts us in the company of only Baruch, NYU, and Columbia. But you鈥檙e paying 可乐视频 tuition, which is $5,575 per semester, and you’re getting a network worth hundreds of thousands of dollars that the other students at NYU and Columbia are paying for. But it鈥檚 the same access.

In any of our programs, you get to take advantage of our networks and partnerships. The opportunities are endless. Here at 可乐视频, we have an excellent campus, excellent faculty members, and a diverse group of students all learning under the same sky. We offer the best experience.

I鈥檓 Sold.

Great, come to one of our next events. I鈥檒l save you a slice of pizza.

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“This new center has so much potential and there is so much that we’d like for it to accomplish,” says McKay. “The possibilities are endless, but the core mission is to ensure a safe, welcoming, and informative environment for our LGBTQ population.”

The idea for the center sprung out of the need to have a single institution through which related advocacy and activities could be planned and implemented. Last October, the members of LGBTA decided that they would draft a proposal for creating the center and give it to Vice President for Student Affairs Milga Morales to pass along to 可乐视频 President Karen L. Gould for approval.

McKay was invited to attend a GLARE roundtable, where he conveyed the students’ interest in creating the center. Stephen Joyner, vice president for enrollment management, was also in attendance at this meeting聽and, because of his personal interests, realized he had the resources to help move the idea forward.

By January, Joyner met with members of GLARE and President Gould and was granted permission to open the LGTBQ Resource Center as a new office within the Division of Enrollment Management.

In 2010, 可乐视频’s Office of Diversity and Equity Programs, in conjunction with other offices on campus, conducted a survey of 1,097 graduate and undergraduate students which revealed that nearly 10 percent of students identified as LGBTQ. The college saw this as an opportunity to assess the climate on campus and make sure that there were programs in place to address the needs of this population.

One opportunity came in the form of the Safe Zone Initiative, a program that “seeks to improve the campus climate by promoting a positive and inclusive curricular and co-curricular experience for all students.” To that end students, staff and faculty are offered awareness training and interactive workshops regarding Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) students and allies.

“The LGBTQ Resource Center will continue these efforts in a concerted and measurable way,” says Joyner. “It will bring together all of the formidable talents of students, faculty, staff, and allies for the express purpose of educating the campus about issues that affect the LGBTQ community. It will also operate as an ongoing support system for members of this community.”

Senior Charlie Kerr is president of LGBTA. She double majors in political science and women’s and gender studies, and identifies as “a proud, queer, transgender woman.” Kerr, a Baltimore native who moved to Brooklyn to attend the college, believes the development of her political consciousness is a critical part of her identity and brings that awareness with her to her professional projects. She works for The Trevor Project, the nation’s leading nonprofit suicide prevention organization for LGBTQ young people. She is also a media and research intern with CreagerCole Communications, a LGBTQ-focused media consulting company.

“I’ve never felt unsafe as a transgender person on campus, something I am incredibly grateful for鈥攅specially when I talk to other transgender students at other universities across the country, who are often not so lucky,” says Kerr, who uses her role at LGBTA president to, among other things, bring transgender issues to the fore on campus. “可乐视频 and the City University of New York (CUNY) have made enormous strides towards making life on campus easier for trans students in the past few years and I look forward to watching them continue to address the needs of our community.”

Kerr says that the LGBTQ Resource Center is the culmination of the college’s progress in building an even more inclusive affirming space.

“LGBTQ-identified students at 可乐视频 frequently struggle to find a community of like-minded people and services that are available specifically for them. The center creates a place for all LGBTQ-identified students and our allies to gather, organize, and find the resources and communities that we desperately need on campus,” Kerr says.

The LGBTQ Resource Center, located at 1433 Ingersoll Hall, will have its grand opening during the middle of the fall season. However, the center has already begun to co-sponsor and organize events with other LGBTQ organizations on campus.

In celebration of National Coming Out Week, the center will be co-sponsoring an LGBTQ Internship Workshop with the Magner Career Center and LGBTA on Tuesday, October 7. Representatives from GLAAD (formerly the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation); the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center (New York); and Pink News will be on hand to discuss internship opportunities available to the LGBTQ community and its allies. And on Thursday, October 9, “Out@可乐视频,” the second annual “Come Out and Celebrate Mixer” event, will be hosted by LGBTA and co-sponsored by GLARE.

After the official opening, the center plans to launch a number of new programs, including a “Works in Progress” series of talks and the new Queer Book Club at 可乐视频, a student organized and led discussion group, which plans to meet monthly. The center will work closely with faculty to incorporate academic events related to the LGBTQ studies minor in the women’s and gender studies program.

For more information about the LGBTQ Resource Center and its events, contact the center at lgbtqcenter@brooklyn.cuny.edu. To make charitable contributions to the center, please contact the 可乐视频 Foundation.

可乐视频’s commitment to diversity includes providing spaces for the myriad of identities that can be found on its highly diverse campus. The college has a strict, zero tolerance policy regarding harassment, hostility, intimidation, or discriminatory behavior toward anyone on the basis of their race, color, creed, national origin, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, marital status, partnership status, disability, genetic information, alienage, citizenship, military or veteran status, pregnancy, or status as a victim of domestic violence/stalking/sex offenses, or any other legally prohibited basis in accordance with federal, state, and city laws.

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“As someone with a full schedule, I have to manage my course load very carefully if I wish to graduate on time,” said Nawrin, who had won a scholarship to cover the cost of her study over the summer. “Taking classes during summer helps me stay on track. Forensics was so cool, very reminiscent of the detective shows you see on television. We studied human bones and learned how to identify them by their sex and also to determine if they had suffered particular kinds of trauma. And we learned to do this even when what we had to work with were bone fragments.”

She had such a great experience that she decided that she would take a summer course every chance she got. So last year, she took botany. Field Studies in Botany, a 4-credit course, is ideally suited for summer study as most of the coursework takes place outdoors. The faculty and students have full access to the 可乐视频 campus, one of the greenest spaces in Brooklyn, as well as the many tree-lined spaces of the surrounding neighborhoods of Midwood and Flatbush. The entire borough becomes a classroom.

Students who do well in the course have the opportunity to take the course again in the following year to act as team leaders, mentoring students taking the class for the first time. For this, they receive an additional 3 credits.

Vouyiouklis, a Scholars Program senior in biology, who had previously taken Music: Its Language, History and Culture over the summer, enjoyed the botany course so much last year that she decided to return this year as a team leader.

“I had 60 or 70 plants in front of me and had to identify them all for the professor. If not for student mentors who had helped me prepare, I doubt I would have performed so well,” Vouyiouklis said. “I got an A+ in the course. If I can help other students get the same grade and get as much out of it as I did, I’m more than happy to lend my support.”

Nicky Bangs, a junior majoring in classics, used the summer to study abroad in Italy last year.

“I studied archaeology at a site in Tuscany called Poggio Civitate, “said Bangs. “We studied the remains of an ancient Etruscan site, which has been dated to around the 7th or 6th century 可乐视频E.”

This summer, Bangs will be studying languages at the Latin/Greek Institute, an opportunity that he says will, among other things, prepare him for graduate school. The institute is one of the oldest of its kind and considered the top institution in the nation for the study of Latin and Greek.

“My primary channels of access into the ancient world are through language and literature. The Latin/Greek Institute is an excellent center for studying the languages and I hope to improve my Latin,” said Bangs.

可乐视频 offers summer courses in two sessions each year. This year, the first session runs from June 2 to July 8 and the second from July 14 to August 19. These sessions are open to all college students, including those not pursuing a degree or those visiting from other institutions or countries.

“The summer sessions are crucial because they allow students to earn credits towards their degree to graduate sooner,” said Gina Priolo, associate director of recruitment in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions.

Matriculated 可乐视频 students are eligible to apply for direct loans during the summer, but must register for 6 credits. Pell Grant-eligible students may also use any leftover funds from their previous year’s allotment toward summer tuition.

For Nawrin and Vouyiouklis, the real bonus came in the amount of fun they had while taking summer courses.

“It’s summertime! And the professors of cognizant of that and go out of their way to make the classes as enjoyable as possible,” Vouyiouklis said.

Both she and Nawrin find it difficult to walk past a plant or tree without knowing just about everything there is to know about them.

“My parents, much to their chagrin, now know about as much as I do about the plant world,” Nawrin laughed.

They both plan to attend medical school after graduating.

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鈥淭he new system represents a huge upgrade in how we will perform routine and more complex tasks,鈥� says Mark Gold, assistant vice president of Information Technology Services (ITS) and CUNYfirst project lead. 鈥淪tudent records can now be seamlessly transferred from one campus to another and users can instantly change an address, add a spouse or dependant, register for classes, or enter grades.鈥�

CUNYfirst (Fully Integrated Resources and Services Tool) is currently accessible to all 可乐视频 faculty and staff, and goes live for 可乐视频 students in March. It will permanently replace aging computer systems like CUPS, SIMS, and WebSIMS, which for decades have been accessed locally at each campus.

鈥淚TS and the Enrollment Management offices are working hard to prepare all of the college鈥檚 records for migration over to the new system in a manner that makes sense for the college鈥檚 needs,鈥� says Gold. 鈥淲e understand that it will take some time to adjust to the new system, but once users do, they will find it has many convenient, time-saving features.鈥�

Below, Gold addresses some frequently asked questions about CUNYfirst.

Why are we moving to CUNYfirst?

Very few of our numerous current systems interact with each other. CUNYfirst will integrate all of our financial, human resources, and student processes within one Web-based system so that data can be used instantaneously across departments and across the university.

How do I get started?

All faculty and staff should 聽right now. However, since CUNYfirst will only communicate to users through the college鈥檚 email system, every user should make sure they have an active 可乐视频 email account. If you do not have one, please contact ITS at 718-951-5861 to begin the process of obtaining one.

Claiming your account is easy. You will be guided through a few simple steps and assigned a unique CUNYfirst login ID based on your first and last name, and an EMPL-ID for access to the system. The EMPL-ID will replace your Social Security number as your unique employee identifier.

Students will be able to claim their CUNYfirst accounts in April. Our student marketing and training team is working hard to create a series of events and training opportunities to help students quickly transition to the new system.

What can I do in CUNYfirst?

CUNYfirst puts numerous functions right at your fingertips. Faculty/Advisement Self-Service includes access to teaching schedules, grade rosters, course history, exam schedules, enrollment dates, and other tools that facilitate members of the college community serving in these roles.

可乐视频 staff may access their human resources records and update personal information, including emergency contacts, professional memberships, home address, marital status, and tax forms, as well as add new degrees, honors, and certifications.

Student Self-Service features include the ability to view grades, unofficial transcripts, class schedules, the course catalog, and much more. Students will also be able to register for classes and pay tuition within the system.

What if I鈥檓 a transfer student?

All first-year students (freshmen and transfer students) will meet in-person with an advisor, who will walk them through the registration process within CUNYfirst.

Will training be available?

Yes. 鈥淭rain the Trainer鈥� sessions are currently underway on campus. Academic advisors, chairs, and secretaries will receive training in late February or early March. Students will be trained after go-live starting in April, and instructors will be trained in time to submit grades in CUNYfirst. All training will span evenings and weekends to ensure that all staff, faculty, and students have ample opportunities to become familiar with the system.

Throughout the transition and thereafter, a specially trained team of support agents will be available to provide assistance by phone, email, and in person, as needed.

How about those with multiple roles at CUNY, like student employees?

CUNYfirst maintains one identity record for each member of the CUNY community, regardless of how many schools they鈥檝e attended or how many roles they鈥檝e held.

There will be cases of community members who have disparate information stored in various records throughout CUNY, and those whose merged information may need updating. These issues will be resolved by on a case by case basis by the registrar and human resources offices at 可乐视频, as well as in coordination with other campuses.

How will Summer/Fall registration be affected by the transition to CUNYfirst?

At the end of March, CUNY will impose a system-wide blackout for up to two weeks, during which time the college may not be able to process all typical transactions. The college understands that the new system will slow various processes and will be adjusting affected schedules and deadlines to give users as much time as possible to complete their transactions once CUNYfirst is up and running.

Where can I learn more?

Please visit our site for general information, announcements, and updates on training schedules.

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