Faculty Day 2009 Highlights Scholarly Achievements, Salutes President Kimmich
6/15/2009
Added to the traditional lineup of academic and cultural events this year was a special farewell to Brooklyn College’s retiring President Christoph M. Kimmich and his wife Flora delivered by members of the administration, faculty and staff.
Among the symposia that filled much of the day was “Thinking the Thought and Talking the Talk in Eight Different Languages.” In this session, Klara Marton, of Communication Arts and Sciences, compared how sentence length and word morphology in English and Hungarian affect how well children learn their native languages. Laraine McDonough, of Psychology, ably discussed how linguistic perceptions of spatial concepts influence the vocabularies and grammars of different languages. Isabelle Barriere, Speech Communication Arts and Sciences, revealed how different languages express “Who Is Doing What to Whom.”
“War in Film,” another symposium, was moderated by Philip Napoli, of History. It featured a presentation by Diane Marks, of English, who drew an entertaining and enlightening word picture of how the 2004 film King Arthur, relating the adventures of a group of Sarmatian horsemen in the Roman army occupying Britain, could be seen as an analogy for America’s war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq. Irina Patkanian, of TV and Radio, showed Armed Defense, a short film she produced and directed. And Jordan Stokes, of Music, presented “Musical Registers of Vérité v. Epic in Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, Scored by John Williams.”
Among faculty members who were honored at this year’s event were Cyndi Stein-Rubin, of Speech Communication Arts and Sciences, who received the Award for Excellence in Teaching, presented by Liv Yarrow, of Classics; Patricia Cronin, of Art, who received the Award for Excellence in Creative Achievement, presented by Sally Bermanzohn, of Political Science; Glen Haas, of Psychology, who received the Eric M. Steinberg Award for College Citizenship, presented by Tim Gura, of Speech Communication Arts and Sciences; and Rose Burnett Bonczek, of Theater, who received the Claire Tow Distinguished Teacher Award, presented by Martha Nadell, of English.
“This is my first year here,” said Rosamond King, of English. “It was a good opportunity for me to meet other faculty, particularly in other departments. I was unaware of the College’s place-based learning initiative and so I found out about that and about ways it could be useful in my classes. Overall, it’s been useful, interesting and fun.”
“This is a great idea to get to know about many disciplines and discuss several in a non-formatted way,” said Paula Whitlock, of Computer and Information Sciences. “And we can talk about research we are doing in our disciplines. I always find something of interest to me,” added the professor who has been teaching programming, simulation and parallel computing here since 1990.
Anjana Saxen, of Biology, who exhibited a poster titled “Nucleolin Inhibits ARF Tumor Suppressor Protein,” said: “I started last fall and I like this event because I can get interdisciplinary perspectives about my work.
She added: “It also broadens the perspective of what you do and helps you in articulating the work you do in your laboratory and how to try to make this same knowledge available to the students.”
The tribute to Kimmich was launched in the late afternoon by Michael Hewitt, assistant vice president of human resource services.
“We first have a retiree to move along,” Hewitt announced to a standing-room-only audience crowded into the Brooklyn College Library’s Woody Tanger Auditorium. He turned to President Christoph M. Kimmich, who was sitting next to his wife Flora and other invited guests in the first row of seats, and asked his name, offhandedly commenting in an aside to the whole audience that “one cannot be expected to remember every employee.”
George Rodman, of TV and Radio, delivered a deadpan tribute to the outgoing president, which resulted in bursts of laughter. After the laughter subsided, Joe Fodor, of the Brooklyn College Foundation, rose to count off a list of items that had been packed in a “500 year time capsule” commemorating President Kimmich’s near-decade-long presidency. Fodor also narrated a slideshow listing a succession of colorful and somewhat off-color “achievements” during Kimmich’s “reign.” Tim Gura, of Speech Communication Arts and Sciences, cast poetic praise in the direction of the departing Kimmichs.
At last it was Kimmich’s turn to speak. He extended his heartfelt thanks to all in the auditorium for the “many, many good memories” he and Flora would take with them when they departed. Downplaying his own achievements, he said that what was important at Brooklyn College was “what happens every day in the laboratories and the classrooms here.”
He said: “These ten years have been rewarding.”
This year’s Faculty Day events were planned and organized by a committee cochaired by Myra Kogen and Jerrold S. Mirotznik and also made up of Kathleen Axen, Scott Dexter, Graciela Elizalde-Utnick, Nicholas Irons, Susan Longtin, Irina Patkanian, Mariana Regalado, Elaine Weisenberg, and Judith Wild.
Said Mirotznik: “Faculty Day is the one day of the academic year that we take a break from business as usual so that we can recognize and celebrate the many accomplishments of the Brooklyn College Faculty.”
