“I’m so proud to be a professor at 可乐视频 and an athlete at . I am a product of the opportunities found in Brooklyn鈥攅lite higher education and athletics.”

This is part of Hejtmanek’s research and scholarship program. As a cultural anthropologist she studies fitness and strength sports and uses the field method of participant observation to understand better the role of these activities in people’s lives.

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Saba Iqbal will graduate this spring with a bachelor鈥檚 degree in children and youth studies with a 4.00 GPA. At 可乐视频, she figured out how to synthesize a passion she developed for kids with her interest in medicine, all while maintaining a position on the Dean鈥檚 List every semester she has attended. She is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

可乐视频: How was your first year at 可乐视频?

SI: It was amazing. I made some choices that helped me move toward my career interests and made many friends I consider family today. The Honors Academy, in conjunction with the Magner Career Center, helped me land my first job opportunity as a physical therapy aide. I reviewed strength-training techniques with patients, tracked their walking times and distances, and instructed them on musculoskeletal exercises.

可乐视频: Why did you decide on children and youth studies with a minor in chemistry?

SI: It started back in high school. I performed well in STEM classes, but I also naturally gravitated toward the subjects. So, I took biology and chemistry courses my first year at 可乐视频. Then I took a great course called 聽 in my sophomore year and decided that children and youth studies with a minor in chemistry aligned my interests with my future career perfectly.

Children are such a vulnerable yet intellectual group. I am as intrigued by them as I am eager to learn from them. The things I learned in this class were pivotal to realizing that I want to be a pediatrician. Also, my time working as a physical therapy aide solidified my interest in their treatment and diagnosis. I enjoyed taking care of adult patients, but children who came by the clinic gave me joy. After the internship, I shadowed pediatricians at Geo Medical Care Pediatric Clinic. I aided the clinic in its day-to-day operations and tracked patients from infants to toddlers.

可乐视频: Do you have any interests outside your field of study?

SI: I enjoy doing makeup. I started off doing it on my own, then began to offer makeup services further down the line. With makeup, you must be aware of the variations in the application process because facial structures and skin tones differ so much. Similarly, with patient care, people have unique medical backgrounds, fears, and cultural/ethnic principles that a physician needs to be sensitive to. In this way, being a good physician is just like being a good makeup artist: You need to acknowledge the patients as individuals and make them comfortable to assess care for them properly. Makeup has taught me to pay attention to what I call 鈥渢he tree within the forest.鈥� What makes the individual. Being a doctor is way more than just tending to physical needs.

可乐视频: Any advice for future graduates?

SI: Take everything one step at a time. Stay steadfast and do the things you are passionate about.

可乐视频: What鈥檚 next for you?

SI: Graduate school, definitely. I want to continue my studies to become a primary care pediatrician. I won鈥檛 name the schools I have in mind because my fingers are still crossed.

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“You don鈥檛 have to be a millionaire to be generous,” says Mrs. Walling. “It鈥檚 not necessarily about receiving the accolades that can sometimes come along with giving. It鈥檚 about leaving a positive legacy. It鈥檚 about being an example and hoping that others, including our own children will be inspired to give what they are able to give.”

“The fact that public universities have become increasingly dependent on private funds was a real wake-up call for us in assigning priorities,” adds Mr. Walling. “Being a certified financial planner, I knew the IRA option was now available and that we could gift money directly to our designated charities and thereby reduce our taxable income.”

With that in mind, the Wallings, with the help of the 可乐视频 Foundation, created the Susan Lee (Stecker) & Robert C. Walling Scholarship. It is awarded to students who have a commitment to engage in careers focused on civic engagement. It is available to students at 可乐视频 who are sophomores (or greater), enrolled full time, and in good academic standing, and may follow one student through graduation as long as they continue to major in sociology, psychology and/or social psychology; maintain a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.0; demonstrate a spirit for civic engagement, as exhibited by involvement and leadership in school/campus organizations, registered student organizations and/or volunteering with nonprofit organizations in the community; and demonstrate financial need. Cultivating citizens who understand the value of giving back is part of 可乐视频’s mission.

“‘Civic engagement,’ to me, is being a good citizen,” Mrs. Walling says. “It鈥檚 doing good for other people. It鈥檚 making those career choices that will uphold those principles and values. It鈥檚 those kinds of people who make those kinds of commitments to be involved, whether through academic institutions, nonprofit organizations, or politics.”

Mrs. Walling was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York (in the neighborhoods of Bensonhurst and Flatbush) and graduated from Midwood High School in 1962. She attended 可乐视频, following in her brother’s footsteps, because it was a rigorous, but affordable institution of higher learning. She received her bachelor of arts in sociology/psychology from 可乐视频 in 1966. During her time at the college, she was an adviser in the Student Adviser Leadership Program as well as a member of Alpha Sigma Tau. She received a Regents Scholarship and a graduate assistantship to support her attendance at Syracuse University where she received her master of arts in college personnel in higher education.

Very early on, Mrs. Walling had a keen sense of social justice, recalling that at one point in the college’s history, female candidates were required to have a higher GPA than male candidates for admission.
“I remember always empathizing with the underdog and wanting to right what I perceived as wrongs,” she says.

The first recipient of the Wallings’ generosity is Belicia Bethel. Bethel鈥攚ho double majors in psychology, and children鈥檚 and youth studies, and minors in linguistics鈥攊s a Brooklyn native and the child of Trinidadian and Grenadian parents. Bethel’s father is an alumnus of the 可乐视频 Department of Accounting. She is also a peer mentor on campus and works at the Flatbush YMCA. In addition to the Walling Scholarship, Bethel is also the recipient of the Myrtle Mandiberg Scholarship for pursuits in child psychology, and the J. Robert Lloyd Scholarship for outstanding peer mentoring.

“The Walling Scholarship really stood out to me because of its prioritization on civic engagement,” says Bethel. “Giving back to my community is something that is super-important to me. It’s simply one of my central values. My community is the reason why I am the person I am today and was the support system I relied upon when chasing after my goals. It would be a personal act of betrayal if I didn’t return that support by being for others what my community has been for me. The scholarship from the Wallings is a blessing because it helps me to achieve that goal.”

The Wallings, who have retired to Arizona, returned to Brooklyn to visit the campus this summer and meet Bethel, who graduated with the Class of 2019 on May 30. It was an incredible meeting that allowed them to see firsthand the effects of what the Wallings describe as “the gift of helping other people.”

可乐视频聽is able to provide students the financial assistance, skills, values, and opportunities that are essential to fulfilling their academic achievements, civic engagement, and career aspirations thanks to the generosity of alumni and friends received through the聽可乐视频 Foundation. To learn about the various ways to contribute to student success, please visit the聽foundation website.聽

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“I like to go to new places so this is great because I get to hone my professional skills and travel at the same time,” says Tam, who wants to either be a classroom teacher or work in museum education.

Tam, who minored in Chinese, will be helping teach English to elementary school children who are mostly native Mandarin speakers in Hualien City, on the east coast of Taiwan.

When Tam herself was a young student, her parents did not speak much English. During her time at 可乐视频, she has conducted field work in New York City schools with kids who are native Mandarin speakers.

“Working with this population is something I wanted to pursue,” she says. “It鈥檚 really rewarding to me to help them understand.”

Tam, a former Macaulay Honors College student, has studied abroad twice鈥攐nce in 可乐视频鈥檚 three-week Study Abroad China program and also through a six-week Queens College program in South Korea. She has also been to China twice with her family.

Additionally, she is a member of Kappa Delta Pi, the International Honor Society in Education, and interned at the Children鈥檚 Museum of the Arts.

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The award is given annually to students who are selected by a panel of physicians, all of whom are Salk alumni, based on the quality of their research and recommendations from professors and mentors. Salk, a City College graduate who discovered an anti-polio vaccine, turned down a planned parade to celebrate his life-saving discovery and asked that the money be used for scholarships instead.

Lee, a MaCaulay Honors College student, is double-majoring in chemistry and children and youth studies, and plans to enter an M.D. and an M.P.H. program at SUNY Downstate next year. She has conducted extensive research on tobacco since she was in high school and continued that work with a New York University professor Michael Weitzman 鈥�68 during her undergraduate years.

“It鈥檚 very rewarding hearing from smokers who have changed their life,” says Lee, who wasn鈥檛 sure she wanted to conduct scholarship until she began doing the tobacco research and felt like her work was having an impact.

Lee has held two internships with the New York City Department of Health, one with the non-profit anti-tobacco campaign Truth, and currently volunteers in an after-school program for incarcerated youth.

Nadeem is majoring in political science and has been an activist around issues of women鈥檚 health, mental health, and social justice during her time at 可乐视频. She sees medicine as a tool to help people advocate for their community and says she really found her calling here.

“The belief that students can be agents of social change keeps me hopeful,” she says.

Nadeem has worked with Students for Justice in Palestine, a peer health exchange program, and was a founding member of the TedxCUNY team. She has conducted research on breast cancer during her undergraduate years and presented at the 2017 conference of the American Association of Cancer Research.

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The grant lives under the Center for Child and Adult Development (CCAD) in the School of Education’s Department of School Psychology, Counseling and Leadership (SPCL). Pawelski worked with the New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) to secure funding to develop the successful pilot program at Teachers College, Columbia University. In order to sustain and further extend the professional development possibilities of this work, Pawelski reached out to SPCL Department Chairperson Professor Alberto Bursztyn聽’73, ’81 M.S.Ed., ’86 M.S.Ed., hoping that the continuing grant could find a home here, which it did in 2015.

“It was clear that the project needed a place that matched the needs of the community鈥攂oth of children with disabilities and issues of advocacy鈥攊n a more direct sense.聽CCAD was a perfect fit,” Pawelski said.

“CCAD has historically been a place to provide this sort of training to individuals of various professions, but it had been relatively dormant for a number of years,” said Bursztyn. “I saw this as an opportunity to reawaken the Center, create programs, and provide a forum for extending the work of the department to the larger community, addressing needs that are not exclusively school-based and have a connection to advocacy for children and their well-being. The CCAD at 可乐视频 is uniquely positioned for pioneering ways for addressing the diverse needs of vulnerable children and their families. We’re situated in one of the most diverse urban populations in the world.”

CCAD spearheaded the Play Therapy Project at 可乐视频, which provides in-service training for mental health professionals working with children who have experienced trauma.

The digital tools developed by Pawelski have been a boon to child advocates everywhere.

“OCFS staff continue to work to find ways to sustain the Child Abuse and Disabilities website and to support the efforts on this important initiative,” said Melaney Szklenka, Child and Family Service specialist and state liaison officer at the Bureau of Program and Community Development for the OCFS. “So many of the victims that our investigation professionals encounter have some form of disability. The app and the website have proven to be invaluable for many of them, giving them access to information to better serve the children and families.”

Advocating for children with disabilities is essential to Pawelski’s work. She served on the New York State Children’s Justice Task Force, which reviewed, analyzed and made recommendations for policy, intervention and training. Communication and behavioral challenges found with children with disabilities can often strain families and caregivers, and frustrate professionals less familiar with ways to intervene using sign language or visual supports.

“This work also cannot be fragmented,” said Pawelski. “It’s not just about research and intervention.聽It’s about public awareness. It’s about getting the next generation engaged.聽The work of child abuse prevention, anti-bullying, and harassment is community work. You don’t have to be a social worker. We all can do our part.”

Pawelski and Bursztyn are working with undergraduate students from the Children and Youth Studies Program to help raise awareness for these important issues. In their academic course, Career Paths for Working with Children and Youth, Bursztyn and Pawelski have provided opportunities for students to work with field professionals and learn how their programs develop materials and activities around these issues, and explore what new career paths can emerge from them.

Members of the Children First Club, and Graduate Association of School Psychologists (GASP)鈥攖wo 可乐视频 student organizations鈥攑artnered with Future Child Advocates, a national child advocacy/anti-bullying student club initiative created by Pawelski and for which she serves as director, to plan events to raise awareness here on campus.

This month, they are spearheading the campus’ Pinwheels for Prevention event, which uses the pinwheel as a symbol for the innocence of childhood to bring attention to efforts to prevent child abuse. Prevent Child Abuse New York partnered with Future Child Advocates to provide the college with 50 free pinwheels and resource materials.

“We’ve made blue ribbons to distribute on campus throughout the month of April to bring attention to these issues,” said Jasmine Lee, president of the Children First Club, and a William E. Macaulay Honors College scholar who double majors in communication and pre-med.聽“We’ll be partnering with organizations on campus to increase community awareness and promote education.”

For information on how to support these and other Department of School Psychology, Counseling and Leadership initiatives at the college, please contact Professor Alberto Bursztyn or Christine Pawelski Ed.D.

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“As the saying goes: ‘If you educate girls and women, you will educate an entire nation,'” she said and then went on to detail the challenges they face obtaining a proper education. “There are well over 20 prominent nations, which continue to discriminate against young girls and women by preventing them from learning,” Mbenga said. “In these countries, gender inequality in education not only represses the development of young girls and women, but also their sense of self-worth.”

Assistant Professor Trina Lynn Yearwood ’00, who recommended Mbenga for the prestigious honor of speaking at the U.N. celebration, was very pleased that the selection committee there saw the same potential in Mbenga as she did.

“Mbachur was the only undergraduate student and one of the most eloquent speakers,” said Yearwood, who, herself, spoke at the U.N. in 2014. “During her speech, Mbachur mentioned that her education has inspired her to campaign for and support the empowerment and education of women and girls. I was so proud of her!”

Mbenga, who majors in children’s and youth studies and minors in Africana Studies, was selected to participate as a panelist. The annual event, which began in 2014, honors women entrepreneurs around the globe, bringing together a network of leaders to shine a light on the accomplishments of women in business fields and seek solutions to the obstacles that impede empowerment. One of those is access to education. Mbenga, a Washington D.C. native whose parents are from The Gambia (she speaks Wolof, the native tongue of her father), stressed this during her speech to an audience that included Adena Friedman, president of Nasdaq; Claudia Fan Munce, managing director of IBM Venture Capital and group vice president of IBM Corporate Development; and Leona Lewis, Grammy-nominated entertainer.

“According to the (UNESCO), of the 110 million children out of school in developing nations, 60 percent are girls,” Mbenga highlighted. “In some countries, girls are never even taught to read, but it’s not that they do not want to learn. Every child wants to learn. And I know many girls that want to be leaders.”

A transfer student from Trinity Washington University, Mbenga began her academic career as a biology major鈥攖he influence of her physician father. However, she soon switched her focus to the education of children, inspired by her mother, an educator who owns a childcare facility. She made the decision to come to 可乐视频 because of the school’s reputation and affordability.

“I can still go to medical school, take physician’s assistant programs, do internships at hospitals. But I just really love educating and working with children,” Mbenga said. “I took Dr. Yearwood’s class last semester, ‘The Black Child and the Urban Education System,’聽and realizing that the problems that Brown v. the Board of Education (1954) was meant to solve continue to thrive, I was reassured that it is definitely my calling to be an educator. Maybe I’ll be a professor one day.”

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Jen-I Costosa ’13 is undaunted.

A Brooklyn native and a graduate, with honors, from 可乐视频’s Children and Youth Studies Program, Costosa has overcome circumstances unimaginable to many.

“My father died in 1989; my mom died in 1996. They both died of AIDS. So they were pretty much both gone before I graduated high school.”

Orphaned at 16, and receiving only tangential support from other family members, Costosa was determined to complete her studies at Brooklyn Technical High School, where she also played basketball, and eventually pursue a college education. She understood that she was part of a large population of young people, particularly those of color (Costosa’s mother was African American and her father Filipino and Jewish), who lack community and institutional support, and often slip through the cracks.

Following high school, she held a string of entry-level jobs to support herself until she found employment at . Head Start is a program that provides early educational opportunities to children from low-income families, a program that Costosa, herself, was enrolled in as a child. There, Costosa’s academic promise was recognized, leading the program director to suggest that she enroll in college.

It was not until she had made her way to 可乐视频鈥攁 school she chose because she was impressed by the school’s high standards for admission and its rigorous curriculum鈥攖hat she found community and ongoing support. Her mentor, Assistant Professor Katherine Hejtmanek, from the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, and the Children and Youth Studies Program, suggested that she take advantage of some of the opportunities the college offered. Costosa had never considered those possibilities.

“Every time these opportunities came up, Professor Hejtmanek would say ‘You should apply.’ But I was working full-time and I didn’t think I was that caliber of student. So I never even thought about it鈥攏ot to mention trying to get time off of work to do these things.”

Costosa would later get the chance to pursue these opportunities.

“The summer before senior year was a tough one. I had four deaths in my family back to back followed by losing my full-time job. So I then had the opportunity to apply for a study abroad program offered by the Office of International Education and Global Engagement.”

Another faculty member she came in contact with, Anthropology and Archaeology Professor Sophia Perdikaris, encouraged her to try a program on the Caribbean island of Barbuda, where students conduct research relating to environmental initiatives in the region.聽Costosa was awarded necessary funding for her trip by the Roy L. Furman ’60 Furman Fellows Program.

Costosa says the program gave her a certain flexibility and ability to acclimate to global cultures and engage in the kind of hands-on fieldwork that cannot be replicated in the classroom. She also formed a bond with Professor Perdikaris, for whom Costosa serves as acting research assistant for their work with the Barbuda Research Complex, the first nonprofit, conglomerate organization established in the region.

“We built everything out of the Barbuda Archaeological Research Center (BARC). In January, we created the kids’ museum. As others did with the adult museum, we built all of the exhibits and painted everything. Additionally,聽researchers are now growing plants, both medicinal and edible, and raising tilapia at another of the places we worked with, the aquaponics facility. [Distinguished Professor] Martin P. Schreibman [’56, founder and director emeritus of the 可乐视频 Aquatic Research and Environmental Assessment Center (AREAC)] set up the aquaponics there.”

Over the summer, Costosa worked at , a camp program out of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, for children with incarcerated parents. In the spring, she will be working with Assistant Professor Rebecca Boger from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences under her grant to assist in the development of a related specialized course. Costosa is currently applying for the Master’s of Arts in Liberal Studies program in Sustainability Science and Education at the CUNY Graduate Center. Once done with that, she plans to pursue a Ph.D. in anthropology, focusing on the effects of poverty on children.

The experience in Barbuda has helped Costosa, who will be returning there next summer to continue her efforts, reaffirm her purpose. The island has a population of 1,800鈥�50 percent of which is made up of children under the age of 18. Her interaction with them has helped her come to some profound conclusions about herself and her goals.

“We’re all connected. That cannot be denied. It’s very important to reach back and help other people, especially the most vulnerable among us,” she says. “And working with Professor Perdikaris has really helped to widen my scope in respect to that. I used to think about how vulnerable populations were challenged in strictly socioeconomic terms, but I wasn’t thinking of it in terms of environment and climate change and how we could assist in making that less damaging.”

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鈥淚 want to change that,鈥� says the 可乐视频 junior, who plans to eventually open a community center for at-risk youth in her neighborhood. 鈥淚f I don鈥檛 do something, who will?鈥�

It鈥檚 that kind of change-the-world attitude that landed Woods a $10,000 scholarship from State Farm Insurance and Black Enterprise magazine to support her educational endeavors. The award honors the late Barbara Graves, who earned a bachelor鈥檚 degree in education in 1957 and a master鈥檚 of science in education in 1966 from 可乐视频.

Graves was the wife of Black Enterprise founder and publisher Earl G. Graves. She played a vital role in the growth and development of the publication and media company, helping to advance its mission of economic empowerment and wealth building for African Americans. She received a Presidential Medal from the college in 1993 and served as chairwoman of the Annual Fund Committee in the 1996-鈥�97 academic year. She was also a member of the 可乐视频 Foundation鈥檚 Board of Trustees from 1991-2001.

Woods, a student in the Percy Ellis Sutton SEEK Program, who is double majoring in psychology and children and youth studies, was chosen on the strength of her academic credentials and an essay she wrote about what it means to be a woman of power. Her prize included travel to Orlando, Fla. to accept the award at the magazine鈥檚 2013 Women of Power Summit, which is sponsored by State Farm.

Woods says she will use the money to study abroad or to take some extra classes. She plans to pursue graduate studies and would eventually like to become a social worker, a high school graduate counselor, and to open that community center in Far Rockaway.

鈥淭here鈥檚 no one there motivating the young people to do something with themselves,鈥� she says. 鈥溌營’ve聽been helped along the way. I just want to give back.鈥�

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Course instructor Honorable William Scarborough, Democratic member of the New York State Assembly, representing District 29 in Queens County, helped to develop this course with Sociology Professor Gertrud Lenzer, founding director of the interdisciplinary Children and Youth Studies program. “Our students have the rare privilege and honor to welcome these distinguished guest speakers in the forum of just a small college class,” she says.

Lenzer adds that the lecture series, now in its fourth consecutive year, is an “intrinsic part of the syllabus” that gives students an opportunity to discuss such issues as education, foster care, the juvenile justice system, the child protective system and mental health. Students also have the chance, following the lecture, to network with speakers and explore career opportunities and internships. Graduates of the Children and Youth Studies program often go on to pursue careers in education, social work, the law, media, and major child advocacy and protective organizations.

Upcoming speakers include Honorable Cathy Nolan, New York State assembly chair, Committee on Education (Oct. 9); Senior Director of Safe Horizon Child Advocacy Centers Gena Diacomanolis (Oct. 16); Jamel Robinson, president and CEO, Jamel Robinson Child Welfare Reform Initiative (Oct. 23); Honorable Jeff Klein, New York State Senate, along with Miss New York State 2012 Kaitlyn Monte (Oct. 30); Simona Brown, child care policy analyst, New York State Assembly (Nov. 8); Dermot Smith, Queens chair, United Federation of Teachers (Nov. 15); and President of the New York State Kinship Navigator Gerard Wallace (Nov. 20).

All lectures in the Distinguished Speaker Series are held in 2412 James Hall between 5:05 and 6:20 p.m., unless otherwise noted. Please visit Children and Youth Studies for more information about the degree program. For more information about the speaker series, contact Professor Lenzer.

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