CUNY Graduate Center

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Graduate Center of the City University of New York
The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York
Established 1961
Type Public
President William P. Kelly
Provost Chase F. Robinson
Academic staff 150 core, 1,800 consortial
Location New York City, New York, United States
Campus Urban
Website www.gc.cuny.edu

The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) is a public, nonsectarian American research college based in New York City. The Graduate Center is the doctoral-granting institution of the CUNY system. The school is situated in a nine-story landmark building at 365 Fifth Avenue at the corner of 34th Street in the Midtown neighborhood of Manhattan, across the corner from the Empire State Building. The Graduate Center has 4,600 students, 33 doctoral programs, 7 master's programs, and 30 research centers and institutes. A core faculty of approximately 150 is supplemented by over 1,800 additional faculty members drawn from throughout CUNY's eleven senior colleges and New York City's cultural and scientific institutions.

Graduate Center faulty includes recipients of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Humanities Medal, the National Medal of Science, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Fellowship, the Schock Prize, the Bancroft Prize, Grammy Awards, the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, Guggenheim Fellowships, the New York City Mayor's Award for Excellence in Science and Technology, the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers, and memberships in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

In addition to academics, the Graduate Center extends its intellectual and cultural resources to the general public, offering access to a wide range of events, including lectures, symposia, performances, and workshops.

Contents

History [edit]

For the history of The City University of New York, click here.

CUNY began offering doctoral education through its Division of Graduate Studies in 1961,[1] and awarded its first two Ph.D.s to Daniel Robinson and Barbara Stern in 1965. Robinson, currently a professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford, received his Ph.D. in psychology,[2] while Stern, late of Rutgers University, received her Ph.D. in English literature.[3]

In 1969, the Division of Graduate Studies formally became the Graduate School and University Center.[4] Mathematician Mina S. Rees served as the institution's first president from 1969 until her retirement in 1972.[5] Rees was succeeded as president of the Graduate Center by environmental psychologist Harold M. Proshansky, who served until his death in 1990.[6] Political scientist Frances Degen Horowitz was appointed president in September, 1991.[7] In 2005, Horowitz was succeeded by the school's provost, Professor of English Literature William P. Kelly.[8]

During Kelly's tenure at the Graduate Center the University has seen significant growth in revenue, funding opportunities for students, increased Distinguished Faculty and a general resurgence.[9] This is in accordance with three primary goals articulated in the Graduate Center’s strategic plan.[10] The first of these involves enhancing student support. In 2013, 83 dissertation-year fellowships were awarded at a total cost of $1.65 million. The Graduate Center is also developing new programs to advance research prior to the dissertation phase, including archival work. The fiscal stability of the university has enabled the chancellery to increase, on an incremental basis, the value of these fellowships. The packages extended for 2013-14 year increase stipends and reduce teaching requirements. In 2001, the Graduate Center provided 14 million dollars in student support; in Fall 2013 that number will be 51 million.[10]

On April 23, 2013, the CUNY Board of Trustees announced that president Kelly would serve as interim chancellor for the City University of New York beginning July 1 with the retirement of Chancellor Matthew Goldstein.[11] GC Provost Chase F. Robinson was appointed to serve as interim president of the Graduate Center.[12]

Academics [edit]

Faculty members regularly receive prestigious honors and awards. Some recent examples include the Pulitzer Prize, the National Humanities Medal, the National Medal of Science, the Schock Prize, the Bancroft Prize, Grammy Awards, the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, Guggenheim Fellowships, the New York City Mayor's Award for Excellence in Science and Technology, the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers, and memberships in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. Many departments are recognized internationally for their level of scholarship.

Courses in the social sciences, humanities, and mathematics, and courses in the sciences requiring no laboratory work convene at the Graduate Center. Due to the consortial nature of doctoral study at the Graduate Center, courses requiring laboratory work, courses for the clinical doctorates, and courses in business, criminal justice, engineering, and social welfare convene on CUNY college campuses.

The CUNY Graduate Center pioneered the CUNY Academic Commons in 2009 to much praise.[13] The CUNY Academic Commons is an online, academic social network for faculty, staff, and graduate students of the City University of New York (CUNY) system. Designed to foster conversation, collaboration, and connections among the 24 individual colleges that make up the university system, the site, founded in 2009, has quickly grown as a hub for the CUNY community, serving in the process to strengthen a growing group of digital scholars, teachers, and open-source projects at the university. The project has received awards and grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation[14] and the Sloan Consortium.[15] It continues to be in the forefront of scholarly social media.

Also affiliated with the institution are four University Center programs: CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies through which undergraduates can earn individualized bachelor's degrees by completing courses at any of the CUNY colleges; the CUNY School of Professional Studies and the associated Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies; the recently established CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, which offers a master's degree in journalism; and Macaulay's Honor College.

Faculty [edit]

Michio Kaku
加来 道雄
Michio Kaku in 2012.jpg
Kaku in February 2012
Known for String field theory, popular science

Notable faculty members include geographer David Harvey (geographer), theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, and philosopher Saul Kripke, among others.

David Harvey (geographer) is the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography and leading social theorist of international standing. Widely influential, he was listed as the 18th most-cited intellectual of all time in the humanities and social sciences by The Times Higher Education Guide. In addition, he is the world's most cited academic geographer, and the author of many books and essays that have been prominent in the development of modern geography as a discipline. His work has contributed greatly to broad social and political debate; most recently he has been credited with restoring Marxist methods as serious methodological tools in the critique of global capitalism. His most popular course, "Reading Marx's Capital", is available free online. His website has been visited over 2 million times.

Michio Kaku (加来 道雄) is an American theoretical physicist, the Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics, a futurist, and a communicator and popularizer of science. In 1974, along with Prof. Keiji Kikkawa of Osaka University, he authored the first papers describing string theory in a field form. He has written several books about physics and related topics, including two New York Times Best Sellers: Physics of the Impossible (2008) and Physics of the Future (2011). He makes writes extensive online blogs and articles and makes frequent appearances on radio, film, and television; Kaku has hosted several TV specials for the BBC, the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, and the Science Channel.[16][17]

Saul Aaron Kripke is an American philosopher and logician. Since the 1960s Kripke has been a central figure in a number of fields related to mathematical logic, especially modal logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, metaphysics, epistemology, and set theory. A recent poll conducted among philosophers ranked Kripke among the top ten most important philosophers of the past 200 years. His most profound contribution to analytic philosophy is a semantics for modal logic, involving possible worlds as described in a system now called Kripke semantics. Another of his most important contributions is his argument that necessity is a 'metaphysical' notion, which should be separated from the epistemic notion of a priori, and that there are necessary truths which are a posteriori truths, such as "Water is H2O." He has also contributed an original reading of Wittgenstein, referred to as "Kripkenstein." His most famous work is Naming and Necessity (1980). Kripke was the recipient of the 2001 Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy, philosophy's equivalent of the Nobel Prize.[18]

Rankings [edit]

U.S. News ranks the CUNY Graduate School's departments as such:[19] Best Education Schools #84, Biological Sciences #130, Chemistry #94, Computer Science #79, Earth Sciences #89, Economics #59, English #22, Gender and Literature #14, History #28, Math #36, Physics #63, Political Science #72, Psychology #64, Sociology #28. The Philosophy Department was ranked #14 overall in the U.S. by the Philosophical Gourmet Report.[20]

Library [edit]

The CUNY Graduate Center is served by the Mina Rees Library, named after former president Mina S. Rees. Situated on three floors of the Graduate Center's midtown Manhattan facility, the library houses a print collection of approximately 275,000 volumes, and subscriptions to over 1,500 print serials. The library houses the Old York Library, a collection of books and ephemera documenting the history of New York City.[21] The Library is also connected to the CUNY+ catalog system which allows borrowers to request items from other CUNY libraries, providing access to over 7.5 million volumes. The New York Public Library Main Branch and the NYPL Science, Technology and Business library are within a five minute walk of the Graduate Center.

Student Life [edit]

Students at the CUNY Graduate Center have the option of living in Graduate housing, located in East Harlem. The eight story building includes a gym, laundry facilities, lounge and rooftop terrace with views of the Midtown skyline.[22] The Graduate housing was opened in the Fall of 2011 in conjunction with the construction of the Hunter College School of Social Work.[23]

There are over forty doctoral student organizations ranging from the Middle Eastern Studies Organization and Africana Studies Group to the Prison Studies Group and the Immigration Working Group.[24] These chartered organizations host conferences, publish online magazines, and create social events aimed at fostering a community for CUNY GC students.

Cultural Center [edit]

The CUNY Graduate Center houses three performance spaces and two art galleries.[25] The Harold M. Proshansky Auditorium, named for the institution's second president, is located on the concourse level and contains 389 seats.[26] The Baisley Powell Elebash Recital Hall, located on the first floor, seats 180.[27] The Martin E. Segal Theatre, also located on the first floor, seats 70.[28] The Amie and Tony James Fifth Avenue Art Gallery, located on the first floor with windows on Fifth Avenue, features the work of current artists,[29] as does the Foundation Gallery, also on the first floor.

References [edit]

  1. ^ About the Graduate Center
  2. ^ "Prof Dan Robinson". University of Oxford > Faculty of Philosophy > Members > Senior Research Fellows > Robinson Dan. Retrieved 17 May 2013. 
  3. ^ Holbrook, M. B. (1 March 2009). "In memoriam -- Barbara B. Stern (Co-Editor of Marketing Theory, 2000--2008)". Marketing Theory. pp. 5–7. doi:10.1177/1470593108104217. 
  4. ^ "Memorial Articles - Mina Spiegel Rees (1902-1997)". Notices of the American Mathematical Society. American Mathematical Society. August 1998. pp. 866–873. Retrieved 17 May 2013. 
  5. ^ Riddle, Larry. "Mina Rees (August 2, 1902 - October 25, 1997)". Biographies of Women Mathematicians. Retrieved 17 May 2013. 
  6. ^ Narvaez, Alfonso A. (14 December 1990). "Harold M. Proshansky Dies at 70; Head of CUNY's Graduate School". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 May 2013. 
  7. ^ "Pres. Frances Degen Horowitz". CUNY TV » City University Television. Retrieved 17 May 2013. 
  8. ^ "President William P. Kelly". Trustees>>Borough Hearings>>Manhattan. Retrieved 17 May 2013. 
  9. ^ "Update from President Kelly". Program in Philosophy Graduate Center, CUNY Commons. Retrieved 17 May 2013. 
  10. ^ a b "Strategic Plan: 2012–2016". CUNY Graduate Center Strategic Plan for 2012–2016. November 2011. Retrieved 17 May 2013. 
  11. ^ "Graduate Center President William P. Kelly Appointed as CUNY Interim Chancellor Beginning July 1". The City University of New York. 23 April 2013. Retrieved 17 May 2013. 
  12. ^ "Provost Robinson to Lead GC as Interim President". The Graduate Center City University of New York. 1 May 2013. Retrieved 17 May 2013. 
  13. ^ "Commons Buzz". Academic Commons News. Retrieved 17 May 2013. 
  14. ^ Gold, Matthew K. (22 November 2011). "The CUNY Academic Commons Announces The Commons in a Box Project". Academic Commons News. Retrieved 17 May 2013. 
  15. ^ Janet C. Moore; Eileen Pacheco (9 July 2012). "Sloan-C Honors Effective Practices in Online and Blended Education". Retrieved 17 May 2013. 
  16. ^ Kaku, Michio; Michio Kaku and K. Kikkawa (15). "Field theory of relativistic strings. I. Trees". Physical Review D 10 (4): 1110–1133. Bibcode:1974PhRvD..10.1110K. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.10.1110. 
  17. ^ Kaku, Michio; Michio Kaku and K. Kikkawa (1974). "Field theory of relativistic strings. II. Loops and Pomerons". Phys. Rev. D. 1110 10 (6): 1823–1843. Bibcode:1974PhRvD..10.1823K. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.10.1823. 
  18. ^ Leiter, Brian (11 March 2009). "So who *is* the most important philosopher of the past 200 years?". Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog. Retrieved 17 May 2013. 
  19. ^ "CUNY--Graduate Center". U.S. News Best Grad School Rankings. US News. Retrieved 17 May 2013. 
  20. ^ "Breakdown of Programs by Specialties". The Philosophical Gourmet Report. Retrieved 17 May 2013. 
  21. ^ Fairbanks, Amanda M. (20 November 2008). "Durst’s Old York Library Lives On at CUNY". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 May 2013. 
  22. ^ "Housing FAQs". Prospective & Current Students > Student Life > Housing. CUNY Graduate Center. Retrieved 17 May 2013. 
  23. ^ "Housing". Prospective & Current Students > Student Life > Housing. CUNY Graduate Center. Retrieved 17 May 2013. 
  24. ^ "List of Chartered Organizations". The CUNY Doctoral Students' Council. Retrieved 17 May 2013. 
  25. ^ "Event Planning". About the GC > Resources & Services > Facilities Services & Campus Planning. CUNY Graduate Center. Retrieved 17 May 2013. 
  26. ^ "Proshansky Auditorium". About the GC > Building Venues & Particulars. Retrieved 17 May 2013. 
  27. ^ "Elebash Recital Hall". About the GC > Building Venues & Particulars. Retrieved 17 May 2013. 
  28. ^ "Segal Theatre". About the GC > Building Venues & Particulars. Retrieved 17 May 2013. 
  29. ^ "James Gallery". About the GC > Building Venues & Particulars. Retrieved 17 May 2013. 

External links [edit]
Two-year
Four-year
Graduate

Coordinates: 40°44′54″N 73°59′00″W / 40.74833°N 73.98333°W / 40.74833; -73.98333

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