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LIU Brooklyn Alum Names New Academy in Liberia After Her English Professor Here

A special day for students at the Josephine Clark Academy, a school founded in Liberia by Rose Kingston, a graduate of Connolly College who named it after her English professor at LIU Brooklyn

When LIU Brooklyn Professor Josephine Clark learned that her former student had actually founded a school in Liberia and put her name on it, she said she nearly fell out of her chair.

“It was mind-blowing!” exclaimed Clark, an adjunct English professor who’s been teaching at the Brooklyn campus for almost three decades. Rose Kingston, a dance major, had taken Clark’s non-Western Literature class in the Fall 2012 semester, and she was struggling. “I remember that Rose seemed a little bit timid when she first came to my class.”

“Professor Clark inspired me,” said Kingston (Brooklyn ’14, BFA). “She helped develop in me the love of learning.”

Born in Liberia, Kingston had left that West African country in the middle of its first civil war when she was 9 years old. Third grade was as far as she’d gotten in school. She’d seen the bodies of dead civilians, been shot at, and survived a rocket attack on the ship leaving the seaport that would take her to a refugee camp in Ghana. She came to America when she was 15.

“I was placed in the ninth grade because of my age, not my ability,” Kingston said. She managed to graduate from Sheepshead Bay High School in Brooklyn (no longer in operation) and enter LIU. There, in her dormitory, she followed up a recommendation from her freshman orientation and signed up for her first counseling session.

“I was so depressed. I think I was suffering from symptoms of PTSD,” she recalled, marveling over the impact the psychologist had on her. “I was able to pull together and understand what was happening to me and put names on my different emotions.”

But it was in English 64 where she encountered Professor Clark.

“I felt I couldn’t read,” Kingston said, and she asked her teacher to recommend a class that would help her improve. “She said, ‘You’re smart. You just need someone to fully understand where you are academically and to help guide you through this process. And if you would agree, I will tutor you.’ I thought she was joking. And she said, ‘I’ll tutor you every Saturday from 10 to 2 o’clock. If you come on campus, I’ll come on campus.’

“Her dedication and her focus were unbelievable,” Professor Clark said. “A lot of it was reading and comprehension—and confidence.” In those sessions, they bonded. Clark went to her graduation ceremony from Connolly College in 2014, but then lost touch with her student. In the meantime, Kingston had gotten her Master’s in Education from Montclair State University in New Jersey—and returned to her native country.

In 2016, Kingston founded the Josephine Clark Academy in an abandoned warehouse on a piece of land she owned in a village about seven miles from the country’s capital, Monrovia.

“The community I live in didn’t have any schools,” said Kingston. She started with 14 children, one of them her own son; today she has 43 students, ranging in age from 3 to 16. Her goal is to craft an individual education plan so each one could overcome the gap in their education because of the war. “They don’t have a learning disability,” she said. “They just have a deficiency because of the lack of resources.”

Besides running her new academy, Kingston also teaches English language arts and dance, too. She says she’s the only ballet teacher in Liberia.

Looking back, Kingston has many people to thank for helping her stay on track at LIU Brooklyn. She credited the dance department as well as her counselors at the Arthur O. Eve Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP), named after the former Deputy Speaker of the New York State Assembly.

“The HEOP program has been instrumental in the lives of so many students here who couldn’t have survived—especially that first year of college—without the counselors and the support people and the tutors that HEOP provides!” explained Professor Clark. “It  gives them the chance to find out all that they really can do.” According to HEOP director Kamel Boukerrou, 275 students are currently enrolled in the program at LIU Brooklyn.

“Thank God for HEOP because they gave people like me a second chance,” Kingston said. “I’m so grateful to everyone who helped me at LIU.”

A couple of years ago, Clark was recovering from surgery when she suffered a life-threatening blood clot. “I should have died that night,” Clark recalled. “Afterwards, I kept asking myself, ‘Why am I still here?’ I said, ‘God, what is it you want me to do? Do you have more students at LIU that you want me to go and harass?’ All of a sudden this year, I get this information; so I said, ‘Well, I guess I need to be here!’ I really thought that she was just joking when she told me that one day she was going to open a school and name it after me.”

“What better name to give this school than ‘Josephine Clark Academy’?” Kingston exclaimed. “Every time I say the name, I remember what LIU did for me through Professor Clark!”

Currently Kingston is working to establish the Josephine Clark Academy Foundation in the United States to make it easier to obtain financial support to expand her program—and shrink the long waiting list of children eager to learn at a school in Liberia named after her inspiring LIU Brooklyn English professor.

“This story is exemplary of LIU at its best,” said Dr. Leah Dilworth, chair of the English Department at LIU Brooklyn, adding that Kingston’s accomplishment was another example of the good work that teachers and students are doing here every day.

In the photo above, Rose Kingston, left, poses with her teacher, Professor Josephine Clark, at a recent visit to the LIU Brooklyn campus this summer. To get more information on the academy, contact Rose Kingston at roskingston@yahoo.com 

Research Trip to Israel Is a Resounding Success for Seven LIU Post Students Studying Bats in the Desert

This August, seven LIU Post students joined Dr. Kent Hatch, an Associate Professor of Biology, to study the behavior of bats in the desert of Israel.

From July 27th until August 14th, Aaron Mayo, Daniela Mathieu, Disha Lumsir, Chanpreet Singh, Mallory Slack, Simone Smith and Indira Rojas were in the Israel conducting research as part of a Biology 290 course. The course itself was created and taught by an international team of professors from Israel, Italy, and the US and included not only the LIU students, but five students from Israel and one India. Working alongside Israeli graduate students at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the LIU students were testing two hypotheses about bat habits—and managed to disprove both of them.

The goal of the first study was to find out how loud music, often played at campgrounds, can effect bat behavior at night when they are feeding, and the second study was meant to see if temperature determines where bats choose to roost for the night.

Using specialized mist nets, the students helped catch the bats and hold them for about a week so they could analyze their behavior.

Despite the old saying, bats aren’t blind. They can see as well as humans. At night, they use sound waves and echoes—a process called echolocation—to navigate and find food in the dark. According to Dr. Hatch, the study revealed that the lower frequencies of campground music that are audible to the human ear don’t bother the animals because they rely on higher frequencies of sound to get around.

To test the second hypothesis, the students released the bats into a chamber that had one roost at a cool temperature and the other at a warmer temperature. Surprisingly, bats in groups of two or more preferred the warmer roost, while solo bats chose the cooler one. Researchers had thought the bats would do the opposite.

Dr. Hatch praised the LIU students for working hard every day starting at 8 in the morning and lasting until midnight—and impressing their academic colleagues.

“They did really well and got lots of compliments from the Israeli professors and the Italian professor there,” said Dr. Hatch.

With hard work comes great rewards: students also got the opportunity to travel while they were in Israel. One weekend, they took a trip to the Dead Sea. Later they visited the coastal city of Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba, where they hiked in the mountains, which proved to be one of the highlights of the trip. When the course was completed, they spent time in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, where they rejoined some of the Israeli students they’d befriended in the desert.

“It was hard and a lot of work,” said Aaron Mayo (Post, ’19), “but it was rewarding. Honestly, I look at research in a whole new light.”

Diana Ross, Pat Benatar and George W. Bush Highlight This Fall’s Season at Tilles Center

The incomparable Diana Ross takes the Tilles Center stage on Oct. 6.

Tilles Center for the Performing Arts at LIU Post begins its 2018-2019 season with a remarkable line-up this fall. Among the featured guests are the supremely talented Diana Ross, a pair of very funny guys, Steve Martin and Martin Short, the iconoclastic rockers Pat Benatar and Melissa Etheridge, plus NFL sports icon Terry Bradshaw and former President George W. Bush, just to name a few.

“We always present world-class orchestras, unique dance performances and national Broadway tours but now we’ve also added more classic rock and pop shows,” said Shari Linker, Tilles Center’s director of communications and engagement, who wanted to remind LIU students that “it’s not just your father’s performing arts center!”

Indeed, the Tilles Center’s diverse programming appeals to an audience of many generations. And, of course, there’s not a bad seat in the house.

As always, LIU students with the proper ID can receive discounts that range from $15 to $20 a ticket, depending on the show and available seating. Students also have the chance to work in the box office, be an usher at performances, or become an intern in the administrative office.

“We are always looking for students,” said Linker. “In fact, many of our full-time people started off as students here.” She suggested that interested students drop by the Tilles Center office located off the Goldsmith Atrium and speak to whoever’s sitting at the front desk.

The new season officially gets underway on Sept. 13th  when former quarterback and current TV sports analyst Terry Bradshaw takes the stage at 8 p.m. for an inspirational and, no doubt, hysterical evening moderated by WFAN’s Mike Francesa.

Next up on Sept. 22 will be Neil Sedaka, the multi-million selling pop star known for his 1960s’ radio chartbusters like “Calendar Girl” and “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.” He penned his “Stairway to Heaven” a decade before Led Zeppelin unleashed theirs—and the title is their only similarity. He’ll be followed on Sept. 28 by the highly entertaining Jon Batiste, best known for leading his Stay Human band on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Here he’ll be diving deep into the American musical landscape, ranging from the early jazz of New Orleans, where he’s from, to the sounds of the present.

Diana Ross—Motown singer who founded the Supremes, actress (“Lady Sings the Blues”) and record producer—kicks off the Gala 2018 show at Tilles Center at 8:30 p.m. on Oct. 6. Billboard magazine named her the “Female Entertainer of the Century” in 1976. Forty years later Ross received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, handed to her by President Barack Obama at the White House.

In partnership with the Global Institute at LIU, headed by former Democratic Congressman Steve Israel, Tilles Center will present a talk by President George W. Bush at 7 p.m. on Oct. 25, less than two weeks before the November mid-term elections, so what he has to say could have national repercussions.

Also on the bill in October are Melissa Etheridge on Oct. 7, as well as Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo, who will perform an acoustic show on Oct. 12, which marks LIU Post’s Homecoming weekend. Long Island native and hit EDM artist 3LAU (aka Justin Blau) is set to play the 2242-seat Concert Hall the night before.

A much smaller venue, the recently renovated Krasnoff Theater at Tilles Center, formerly Hillwood Recital Hall, gets its grand opening on Sept. 28. So stay tuned for that event’s special line-up.

Those wild and crazy guys, Steve Martin and Martin Short, say they’ll provide “An Evening You Will Forget for the Rest of Your Life” at the Tilles Center on Nov. 18. Whether they’ll live up to their promise remains to be seen.

For a closer look at the Tilles Center calendar of events, click here.

Unique partnership with Northwell Health offers LIU Post nursing students training in the right way to lift patients–and prolong their careers

For the first time on a university campus thanks to a unique partnership with Northwell Health System, nursing students at LIU Post will get hands-on experience in using state-of-the-art equipment to move patients properly, safely and comfortably.

In a joint effort with the School of Health Professions and Nursing, The LIU Post Interprofessional Simulation Center and Northwell’s Work Force Safety Department, third-year nursing students will learn how to do it right when Northwell’s innovative Safe Patient Handling and Movement (SPHM) Mobile Training Center pulls up to the Brookville campus on Sept. 6 and Sept. 7. The van comes packed with the newest devices in patient-lift technology designed to eliminate stress on health-care staff.

“I think it’s extremely important for our future nurses to avoid injury,” said Teresa Heithaus, MSN, RN-BC, assistant professor in the School of Health Professions and Nursing at LIU Post. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, nurses and nurses aids rank among the top 10 professions in the country for suffering spinal injuries because repeatedly lifting patients manually over the course of their careers takes a heavy toll. Heithaus is the faculty leader for this course.

“We’re going to give the students Safe Patient Handling 101,” explained Paul Power, a trained paramedic and director of Work Force Safety for Northwell Health, who oversees the training van program. “Nursing and health care are very physically demanding. We want to teach them how to protect their bodies because by protecting themselves, they’ll protect their patients, too.”

Under a recently passed New York State law, every health-care provider who works in a hospital or a nursing home now has to be trained annually in safe-patient handling. For Northwell’s Power, that mandate means instructing some 25,000 staff people a year. This visit to LIU marks the first time the van has come to a campus, he said.

“We have the only mobile safe-patient training center in the world,” he said. “It’s a one-of-a-kind vehicle—essentially, it’s a simulated hospital room on wheels.”

According to LIU Post’s Heithaus, making health-care professionals aware of technical advances in patient lifting is key to promoting career longevity because “there’s no safe way to lift an adult patient manually.”

All told, 80 third-year nursing students, divided into groups of eight, will get the training, which will be held in half a dozen sessions lasting 45 minutes each over the course of two days. Moving forward, she hopes to involve the entire school in this program. Instead of a live human being, the students will be handling a mannequin. Just as important, they’ll be working with a fully functioning hospital bed equipped with the latest features.

“I want our students to know what’s out there and that this is something they should be using,” Heithaus said, adding that old habits are hard to change—as the injury statistics show. “We don’t want them to default to manually moving a patient with a group of co-workers because at the end of the day someone is going to get hurt.”

“If we can teach these nursing students the right way from Day One,” said Northwell’s Power, “I think we can create the health-care provider of the future who knows what’s best for themselves—and the patients!”

LIU Hosts Conference for Hundreds of Global Nonprofit Leaders

Newsday reported on Long Island University hosting hundreds of global nongovernmental organizations to discuss how these groups can help the United Nations in its fight against poverty and tackle the world’s most pressing problems. Click here to read.

The one-day conference at LIU’s Brooklyn campus dovetailed with a two-day United Nations confab in Manhattan on “people-centered multilateralism,” which was held by the UN’s Department of Public Information, according to the event’s organizers.

“Anybody who is part of the DPI/NGO world can weigh in on things they think are important,” said Scott Carlin, professor of geography at LIU Post and a member of the UN conference’s planning committee.

Topics included climate change, disarmament, discrimination and human rights as the UN marked the 70th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

LIU Post’s College of Management Offers New Graduate Program in Data Analytics and Strategic Business Intelligence

This fall, the College of Management at LIU Post is offering an exciting new program, a Master of Science in Data Analytics and Strategic Business Intelligence, or MDA. This 30-credit, one-year program is ideal for highly motivated individuals who have a background in quantitative and IT knowledge and who want to learn about the converging areas of data science, IT, and business to further their career options.

Today’s employers are recognizing the importance of hiring individuals equipped with the requisite skillset necessary to thrive in the overlapping industries of business and technology. In fact, the leading online job and recruiting site Glassdoor noted in 50 Best Jobs in America Report 2017 that Data Scientist is ranked No.1 job in the country with more than 27,000 job openings.

In the course of their studies, students will be prepared for the job market by developing the fundamental skills to interpret and present digital data and make data-driven business decisions. A required Global Capstone Action Learning Internship allows students to apply classroom knowledge to real-life data analytics problems. Upon completing the program, students will have developed a comprehensive understanding of data collection, management, communication, and more, helping them to create innovative and competitive business models. Job prospects will span multiple industries including: IT, consulting, accounting, finance, marketing, gaming, sports, fashion and more.

Students can begin the MDA program on LIU Post’s Brookville campus this September 2018 or in Spring 2019. While the majority of the coursework is usually in the fall and spring semesters, the program is offered both full time and part time.

For more information, email us at LIUPostbiz@liu.edu

An Inspiring True Story About the Fight for Social Justice Is This Fall’s Common Read at LIU Post

When orientation begins August 30th at LIU Post for the incoming class of 2022, each first-year student will receive a free copy of Bryan Stevenson’s prize-winning book, “Just Mercy,” because this notable non-fiction work by the founder of the Montgomery, Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative is the 2018 Common Read.

The book is a key component of the one-credit Post Foundation 101 class (aka “Post 101”) that every entering student takes in the fall semester as part of the First Year Experience.

“Post 101 is basically a course designed to get students engaged with campus culture,” explained Dr. John Lutz, chairman of the English, Philosophy and Foreign Languages Departments at LIU Post, who oversees the Common Read selection and the class instruction. “We’re trying to produce a sense of belonging on campus while also teaching them what a culture of learning is all about. We want them to go from being passive learners to becoming active learners.”

For several decades Stevenson (shown here), who has argued five times before the U.S. Supreme Court, has been dedicated to defending the poor, the wrongly condemned and those trapped in the farthest confines of our criminal justice system. He has been called “America’s Nelson Mandela” and been compared to Atticus Finch, the wise lawyer, father figure and protagonist of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

A recipient of the MacArthur Foundation’s “Genius” Grant, Stevenson is also a professor of law at New York University Law School. Esquire picked “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption” as one of “The 5 Most Important Books of 2014,” when it first came out in print.

The idea of having a Common Read is to spark a wide-ranging conversation: students engage with the book themselves and discuss it with fellow classmates, their instructors and their Peer Mentors—both in class and beyond.

“If they’re all having the same common experiences reading the book and they’re also having the same common experience with the lessons in the class, it gives us the ability to focus on the areas we need to focus on in order to help them make the transition from high school,” Lutz said. “From a pedagogical standpoint, it’s very useful for us to know that they’re having the same experience in the classroom because then we can measure our success.”

For more than half a dozen years a committee of LIU administrators, faculty, staff and students has chosen a compelling book that addresses human experience, promotes knowledge of other cultures, encourages critical thinking and self-reflection, and deals with contemporary issues. From a list of about a dozen titles, they narrow it down to five finalists before making the final pick in the spring for the following fall semester.

LIU’s Carol Hernandez, Instructional Designer in the IT Department’s Teaching and Learning Center, was actively involved in revising the syllabus for the class. Hernandez worked throughout the summer curating videos, online open educational resources and in-class activities which she used to build an online course site in LIU’s Blackboard. The course site materials supplement the lessons of Post 101. For example, a student can log in and watch Stevenson giving a TED Talk about how his understanding of mercy and justice has been transformed.

“So, you’re experiencing not just the text, but you’re also interacting with the author,” explained Hernandez. “Then you come to class and we’ve created some thought-provoking, open-ended questions so students can interact with and learn from each other. The questions might be fairly challenging: ‘Have you ever experienced someone making an assumption about you? What happened and how did it go? What would you change if it happened again?’

“My goal with the course design is to provide a structure so the instructors can decide if they want to use those resources and questions,” she added. “They also have the freedom to go in a different direction. There’s a lot of flexibility.”

Having an inspiring book for the Common Read in Post 101 is all part of boosting the first-year student’s confidence and resilience.

“We really want students to feel that they’re welcomed, they’re respected and they’re included—and that their prior knowledge is valued,” Hernandez said.

“If you have a story about somebody who overcomes an obstacle,” Lutz said, “then we can draw lessons from it of perseverance and commitment.”

Honing those important skills in their first semester will help new LIU Post students succeed in the years to come.

(Bryan Stevenson photo by Nina Subin, courtesy Random House)

Internationally Acclaimed Historian Provides Unique Perspective on World Politics to Avid Audience at LIU Post’s Lorber Hall

Professor Ralph Buultjens makes a point during a recent Hutton House Lecture at Lorber Hall.

The Hutton House Lectures: Where Town Meets Gown

 (One in an occasional series)

For someone so well versed in the violence of human conflict, Professor Ralph Buultjens can sound remarkably even-tempered, almost low key, as he takes the long view during his packed Hutton House Lectures on the forces shaping our world.

Born in Sri Lanka to Dutch parents, Buultjens still speaks with a faint accent as he takes a soft-spoken approach to what he calls our history’s “explosive tendencies.” Whether he’s discussing if the 21st century will repeat the bloodbaths of the 20th or if the rapid evolution of technology will produce a modern-day Frankenstein monster that will unplug democracy, he never seems to raise his voice in anger or let his remarks drip with cynicism, let alone despair.

But no matter what the topic, this esteemed political scientist’s sharp intellect and keen understanding are always on display, and his quick wit comes with a fine-tuned edge that delights his audience as they hang on his every word. They readily appreciate his vast store of knowledge that he’s been generously imparting at LIU Post for almost 20 years. Buultjens’ morning and afternoon classes immediately sell out when registration opens for the session because attendance is limited to 100 people at Lorber Hall, while his special event talks routinely fill the 200 seats at Humanities Hall Room 119 on the main campus; he’s the only Hutton House lecturer to pack that venue.

“He’s a big draw for people who like politics,” said Dr. Kay Hutchins Sato, assistant provost and Director of Hutton House Lectures, which has been a staple at LIU Post for several decades. “Part of the reason, I believe, is that he uses his liberal arts background to put what’s happening in the world today into a historical perspective—so much so that people go away saying, ‘Aha!’”

For long-time friends Sylvia Sirlin and Sandra Glickman, both retired, driving from Melville to listen to Professor Buultjens in person is worth putting up with Long Island traffic—they’ve been coming for about six years.

“He’s just so knowledgeable, and he shares his knowledge so well,” said Glickman, who got her Master’s degree in education at LIU Post and went on to teach in Suffolk County public schools. Sirlin, who went to Columbia Business School and worked in Manhattan, said that she especially appreciates “not only what he talks about—and informs us about—but also the way he brings us into the topic. He’s just a delight.”

LIU can’t claim Professor Buultjens outright because he’s been a long-time senior faculty member of New York University. Before that, he taught at Cambridge University, where he was a professorial fellow. He’s written books on global politics and history, been a media commentator on foreign affairs, and won the Toynbee Prize for Social Sciences, named after the famous British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, whose other noteworthy recipients include George Kennan, Lord Kenneth Clark, Jean-Paul Sartre and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., to name a few. He’s personally known the Shah of Iran and the prime minister of India, Indira Gandhi, with whom he had “an intellectual and philosophical relationship,” according to India Today magazine. In person he’s far from aloof; he’s very approachable—no ivory tower for him—just don’t ask him about himself because he’d much rather discuss the issues of the day.

In his lecture called “Politics & the Future: The World of Tomorrow,” he recounted how three times in the 20th century global leaders laid out ambitious plans for peace and prosperity, only to see them fail catastrophically. So, Professor Buultjens addressed his class, should we continue to strive for something better or surrender to the inevitable? The answer, he concluded, is that just as our forebears struggled to survive, we must continue their fight for what’s right, because without those who went before us, where we would be now? And just as importantly, he asked rhetorically, what kind of world will we leave for those who come after us?

“The most important features in world politics are the contests for world leadership—and this has gone on for a long time,” he said at his lecture about China, which, he noted, “should be the central concern of American foreign policy.” As Buultjens bluntly put it: “They have trillions—we are broke—and we borrow from them.” His listeners murmured in agreement.

China is not only the number one trading and manufacturing country on Earth, the professor noted, it also boasts the largest number of middle class people in the world. Now the Chinese leaders are trying to regain their domination of the past when their country was the most advanced civilization on the planet but through trade, not war. “So far,” he said, “its formula for success has worked.”

Looking at the adults seated before him in Lorber Hall on a hot summer day, he said, “Nobody’s bubble lasts forever.” But, he added, “some last longer than others.” As for the United States, Buultjens observed, “Our greatest opponent today is ourselves.”

For more information about all the Hutton House Lectures at Lorber Hall, call 516-299-2580 or click here. 

LIU Pharma Professor John Lonie Is Keynote Speaker at International Social Pharmacy Workshop in Belgium

John M. Lonie, associate professor of social and administrative sciences at LIU’s College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences

John M. Lonie, R.Ph, Ed.D, an associate professor of social and administrative sciences at Long Island University’s Arnold & Marie Schwartz College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, discussed the changing role of pharmacists in improving patient health as the keynote speaker at the recent International Social Pharmacy Workshop (ISPW) held on July 23-26 in Leuven, Belgium.

The ISPW is a biennial conference for scientists from all over the world that focuses on the psychosocial aspects of medication use and the resulting policy implications on health systems around the globe. The theme of the ISPW 2018 conference was the changing landscape of social pharmacy: balancing safety, technology, efficiency and outcomes.

In his keynote address, Professor Lonie talked about how pharmacists can help patients learn to alter their unhealthy lifestyles and habits. By employing the principles of health coaching, he said that pharmacists can increase their patients’ adherence to taking their medication, which is reportedly a serious issue in the U.S. For various chronic medications, the non-adherence rates in America can average 40-60 percent.

At the College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, Lonie’s research interests are focused on teaching and learning strategies in pharmacy education as well as on helping patients’ change unhealthy behavior.

 

 

LIU President Cline: “I would not be the person I am today if it were not for my library”

Long Island University President Kimberly Cline submitted the following letter to Forbes, articulating her strong support for libraries.

To the Editor:

As President of Long Island University, I am writing in regard to an article recently published on Forbes.com by an LIU Professor who was writing in his personal capacity, arguing that Amazon should replace local libraries.

I could not disagree more.  I am very proud of our University’s strong support of libraries and the important services they provide. In fact, this is a very personal issue to me.

As a young girl growing up in North Carolina, my local library was a home away from home.  I went to the library at least once a week, and the books I read set me on a lifelong journey of education and discovery that continues to this day. I can say without hesitation that I would not be the person I am today if it were not for my library and the librarians who nurtured my imagination.  While times change, today’s libraries and librarians are performing an equally vital service for the next generation of young minds.  Anyone who spends time in a library understands that they provide so much more than books, and that librarians are providing a vital and irreplaceable public service.  I couldn’t be more proud that we are educating many of those librarians at LIU.

The Palmer School of Library and Information Science at LIU is our region’s only member of the elite community of iSchools, an international consortium of prominent information schools with robust research traditions and well-established Ph.D. programs.  The Palmer School is a recognized leader in information and library science and is one of just 62 schools accredited by the American Library Association.  It also offers the only Ph.D. program in Information Studies in the New York metropolitan area.  Throughout our region and the nation, many of our distinguished alumni take great pride in the services they offer to their communities.  In fact, I was recently proud to join many of our Palmer students who are working in partnership with the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation on an important program that is helping to preserve Long Island’s history, including items that date back to before the formation of our republic.

While everyone is entitled to express his or her individual opinion, Long Island University’s vibrant involvement in the library sciences speaks far louder than words about the value we place on libraries.

Sincerely,

 

Dr. Kimberly Cline
President, Long Island University

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