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LIU Brooklyn Students Volunteer to Help Belize Children with Special Needs

A team of LIU Brooklyn OT and PT students work with a toddler in Belize on their recent trip there.

Almost a dozen students from the Occupational and Physical Therapy programs at LIU Brooklyn spent their spring break in March helping children with special needs in Belize—a country in Central America with a population of over 380,000 people but without any occupational therapists and only one physical therapist, who happens to be a visiting nun.

It was the first time in Belize for these 11 students in the School of Health Professions, who were either in the Doctorate of Physical Therapy program or in the BS/Masters of Science in Occupational Therapy program, but it marked LIU Brooklyn’s fourth annual trip down there.

The trips are organized by Professor Dale Coffin, Associate Professor and Evening Weekend Program Coordinator for the Department of Occupational Therapy, who’s a native of Belize, and her colleague, Mechelle Collins-Faria, Academic Fieldwork Coordinator and Assistant Professor in the department. They worked in conjunction with the Inspiration Center of Belize, an NGO that provides physical and speech therapy, community-based rehabilitation, basic medical services and social support for the care of children with disabilities up to the age of 16.

“Because they don’t have any OTs in the country, they have a very long waiting list of over 300 children who need to be evaluated and screened,” said Prof. Coffin. “They coordinate that on their end so when we get there, we hit the ground running.”

With a professor on hand, the students split into two teams that rotated between handling patients at the center in Belize City and going to rural villages about an hour or two from the capital.

“We evaluate the kids and come up with strategies that the parents can carry over,” said Prof. Collins-Faria.

“Mechelle and I direct the students to what is the most appropriate type of treatment and what’s feasible in that country,” added Prof. Coffin. “Then we have the students explain to the parents what they need to do and things they should be working on.”

The center also has some field officers who observe what the LIU students and their professors are doing so they can help follow up with practical treatment ideas.

In one village the students encountered a three-year-old girl with cerebral palsy who needed a new splint for her hand and a new brace for her leg. The team had equipment back at the center that had been donated so they asked the parents if they could bring their daughter in.

“The parents were so excited that we could help they came in the next day,” said Prof. Coffin. The girl returned home with properly fitted orthotics. The LIU students had helped raise money for their Service Learning trip on GoFundMe.

Almost every evening back at their hotel, the professors reflected on the day’s activities with their students to recount their experiences with the patients and “see if there’s anything they had trouble with, or anything that we could clarify,” said Prof. Collins-Faria. “They also loved coming back in the evening and getting into that hotel pool!”

The Service Learning trip made some of the students reconsider their preference to focus on treating adults once they get their professional degrees.

“Now they are definitely going to consider working with children because they enjoyed it so much,” Prof. Collins-Faria said.

Next year the professors plan to return to Belize with another team of OT & PT students from LIU Brooklyn who can make such a rewarding difference in those young children’s lives.

 

Palmer School Scholars Celebrate National Library Week

At the recent BEA conference in Las Vegas are LIU Post alumni, from left, Tom Kenny, Lee Rainie, Rita Langdon and David Jank.

The Palmer School of Library and Information Science at Long Island University is one of the oldest library and i-schools in the country. In celebration of National Library Week — April 8-14, 2018 — students, professors and alumni from the Palmer School are engaged in a number of activities.

Information Studies Doctoral Professor David Jank ’10 (PhD) and Ph.D. students Rita Langdon (’91, ’95 MA, ’17 MPhil), who is LIU Post’s dean of professional education and transfer and graduate enrollment, and Tom Kenny, (’17 MPhil), who is Molloy College’s instructor and director of media facilities, were panelists at The Broadcast Education Association (BEA) annual academic conference on April 8 in Las Vegas. Jank, Langdon and Kenny, who represent the LIU i-Team of Information Scientists, presented a panel on emerging technologies in social media and the digital college generation.

The BEA conference’s keynote speaker was Lee Rainie (H’09), director of internet and technology research at Pew Research Institute in Washington, D.C., and a graduate of LIU Post’s M.A. in Political Science program (’77). He earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard, is the former managing editor of U.S. News and World Report, and author of several books, including “Networked: The new social operating system.”

Spearheading this year’s National Library Week, themed “Libraries Lead,” is Loida Garcia-Febo, a Ph.D. student in Information Studies at the LIU Palmer School and current president of the American Library Association.

Meanwhile nationally renowned archivist and LIU Professor Dr. Greg Hunter is managing a $1.5 million grant from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation to launch the Digitizing Long Island History project. Dr. Hunter and his students are digitizing historical documents from more than 100 historical societies in Nassau and Suffolk counties. A new Gardiner Institute symposia will be presented in late June on the LIU Post campus in Brookville, N.Y.

Dr. Tom Walker, director of the Palmer School, just returned from iConference in Sheffield (UK), the annual conference about the information world and higher education sponsored by the iSchool consortium. The iSchools promote information-related research and advances in higher-education, including curriculum development, external funding opportunities, and collaborations.

To learn more about the Palmer School’s M.S. in Library and Information Science and Ph.D. in Information Studies, attend an open house at LIU’s Manhattan location at NYU Bobst Library on April 17, 2018 or May 8, 2018 at 6 p.m. To reserve a spot at the open house, email Kathy.Riley@liu.edu or call 516-299-4010.

 

LIU Post to Host the Long Island Guitar Festival Beginning April 10th

Berta Rojas, above, has been called "an ambassador of the classical guitar." She's just one of the stellar musicians who will be showing their fine finger work at the Long Island Guitar Festival.

Starting Tuesday, April 10th , and running through Sunday, April 15th,  LIU Post will play host to the 26th Annual Long Island Guitar Festival, a premier event in the classical guitar world that draws exceptionally talented musicians from around the globe to teach and perform here.

Sponsored by the Department of Music of the School of Performing Arts and directed by Professor Harris Becker, the six-day festival will also feature a National High School Classical Guitar Competition, the Long Island Guitar Festival Guitar Orchestra and High School Guitar Ensemble Showcase concerts.

The performances will mostly take place at Hillwood Recital Hall, the Great Hall, and Hillwood Cinema, but the venues do vary depending on the day.

This is a unique opportunity for students, faculty and staff as well as the general public to hear world-class artists in person. Among the featured musicians will be Berta Rojas, Rene Izquierdo, Cavatina Duo, The Newman & Oltman Guitar Duo, Alexandra Yannis Guitar Duo, Simon Powis, James Erickson, Michael Roberts, Laura Lessard, The Artesian Guitar Quartet and Harris Becker.

The Long Island Guitar Festival offers several ticket options: 
All-Events Pass, $150 (available for purchase only through the Department of Music);
 individual concert tickets, $25 per person ($20 for students and seniors); High School Ensemble concerts tickets, $15 ($10 for students and seniors); Emerging Artist concert, $15 ($10 for students and seniors);
 and tickets to audit master classes, $10. Select concert tickets may be purchased in person at the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts box office, by calling 516-299-3100, or online through the Tilles Center web site. Tickets to all events will be available at the door.

For more information about the festival, go to www.liu.edu/gfest and to find out what music will be heard, where and when, go to http://postmusic.liu.edu/gfest/LIGF2018ProgramBookRed.pdf

Festival sponsors include the D’Addario Foundation for the Performing Arts, the Augustine Foundation, Savarez, Murphy’s Music, LIU’s John P. McGrath Fund, and dedicated individuals. The festival represents LIU’s ongoing commitment to reach out to the arts community and continue an established tradition of excellence in guitar performance and pedagogy.

Over 350 Students Attend School of Health Professions’ 2nd Annual Interprofessional Event

Hundreds of LIU Post students from different health professions and majors assembled with 50 faculty members and graduate students in the gym at the Pratt Center on April 3 to resolve a case study that raised a complicated ethical dilemma as the School of Health Professions & Nursing held its second annual Interprofessional Education Learning Collaborative event.

Coming from a very wide range of programs including medical imaging, nursing, social work, health care public administration, biology, psychology, chemistry, nutrition, health information management, biomedical science, health sciences, and speech language pathology, the students broke into teams of 12 members, with every group having a faculty facilitator to stimulate the conversation. Each team was handed the same case study whose details they’d never seen before.

As Stacy Jaffee-Gropack, Ph.D., PT, dean of School of Health Professions & Nursing, explained, the goal was to deliberately expose the students to diverse viewpoints as they wrestled with the ethical implications of a life-and-death situation on a hospital floor.

“They’re going to have to all work together to come up with a resolution,” said Dean Jaffee-Gropack. “Part of the exercise is for them to understand what each of the different disciplines do, because when they work in a health-care setting they’re going to be working in a team with people who are not always in the same discipline and they need to start learning that now.”

Preparing the students before they began their collaborative effort was Linda Vila, J.D., CHC, assistant professor, Department of Health Care & Public Administration.

“We’re going to take a look at the big four ethical principles that as a health-care practitioner for 25 years, I have used probably every day of my professional life,” said Professor Vila.

As she outlined them, they include autonomy (“the patient’s right to refuse treatment”), beneficence (“doing the right thing”), non-malevolence (“do no harm”) and justice (“fair, equitable and appropriate treatment of others and allocation of resources and goods; unbiased decision-making”).

Once every team had reached a consensus on the best way to handle the case study, Vila called on individual students around the gym to share their views with the assembled throng.

Afterwards, as they were leaving, several students expressed their appreciation for what they’d gained by participating in the event.

“It’s great to be able to learn from different majors,” said Stacy Evans, a first-year nursing student from Long Island.

Rhodene Whyte, a senior majoring in health care administration who was originally from Jamaica, especially enjoyed the case study discussion. “Everyone has their own opinion,” she said, “but we all have to make the best decision for the patient.”

Dean Jaffee-Gropack said they plan to hold another event like this next year.

International Editor of NY Times to Give Free Lunch Talk to Students on April 12

New York Times international editor Michael Slackman. (Photographs by TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES) Assignment ID: 30127460A

Students are invited on Thursday, April 12, from 12:30-2 p.m., to the Great Hall in Winnick House to hear directly from one of the world’s most important journalists, Michael Slackman, international editor of The New York Times.

The event, which is co-sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts and the College of Arts Communications & Design, is free and lunch will be served.  This is a great opportunity for students to meet a top journalist who has spent extensive time overseas and can speak about the global issues and challenges today as well as the opportunities in journalism to do reporting around the world.

Slackman was named the international editor of The New York Times in September 2016. Before that, he had been the managing editor of the international news department since November 2014. He is in charge of the international news report over multiple time zones and oversees Times’ bureaus around the globe.

Previously, Slackman was deputy foreign editor since May 2011, helping oversee all global coverage, with an emphasis on coordinating the Middle East report. Before returning to New York, in May 2011, Slackman was a foreign correspondent for The Times for six years.

Before joining The Times, he was the Cairo bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times and the Moscow bureau chief for Newsday. When he was a reporter for Newsday, he was part of the team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1997 for their news coverage of the crash of TWA Flight 800 off the south shore of Long Island.

LIU Brooklyn to Host the 2018 eBay StartUp Cup for New York City Business Entrepreneurs

LIU Brooklyn is helping to launch the  eBay StartUp Cup Challenge – a business competition powered by GriffinWorx, which supports budding entrepreneurs, and sponsored by the eBay Foundation, a philanthropic organization.

The eBay StartUp Cup is a five-month program of mentoring, coaching and competitions that culminates with a cash-prize ceremony for the top three teams. The kickoff event, known as the Extreme Build-A-Business Weekend, will be held in LIU Brooklyn’s WRAC on April 28 and 29th.

The eBay New York City StartUp Cup is accepting business model applications through April 13. It is open to anyone with an idea and up to one year in operation.

A hundred businesses will be invited to the Extreme Build-A-Business Weekend event. Over 50 entrepreneurs, consultants, executives and thought leaders will be coaching and mentoring participating businesses as they identify the Top 25 most promising teams to advance into the five-month acceleration program.

“We are dedicated to empowering anyone, from any background or education level, to design, test and build a business,” said Amy Millington, president of eBay Foundation. “The passion and dedication from business builders experienced during last year’s eBay New York City StartUp Cup has inspired us to take our effort to the next level in 2018.”

“Supporting GriffinWorx and the eBay StartUp Cup is one example of the ways in which LIU Brooklyn invests in the prosperity of our community and neighbors,” said Dawn McGee Strickland, director, Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, School of Business, Public Administration and Information Sciences at LIU Brooklyn. “We value entrepreneurship – whether practiced as an approach to navigating increasingly uncertain times or as a source of income – and welcome opportunities to help others acquire its mindsets and skillsets.”

Businesses competing in the eBay New York City StartUp Cup will gain access to business leaders, angel and seed investors during tailored coaching sessions, networking events and the final award celebration where winners will receive $10,000 for first place, $5,000 for second place and $2,500 for third place.

Last year, Darrien Charlton Watson, founder of Whim NYC, was the first place winner of the eBay StartUp Cup and brought home $10,000.

Besides New York City, the 2018 eBay StartUp Cup Challenge is also taking place in Washington, D.C., Berlin, Israel, and India. GriffinWorx has empowered hundreds of business acceleration programs in over 60 countries, focusing primarily on underserved areas and populations.

Prospective participants can find more information and submit an application to participate at http://nyc.startupcup.com/. The application deadline is April 13.

Budding entrepreneurs can also contact Dawn McGee Strickland at LIU Brooklyn if they want more information, Dawn.Strickland@liu.edu

 

LIU Global Students Win Awards and Recognition in Rome

LIU Global students Samantha Becker and Tirza Crisp proudly show the honors they won at the Rome International Careers Festival in March.

LIU Global students spending the spring semester in Italy came away with two noteworthy achievements at the recent Rome International Careers Festival, a four-day program that draws participants from hundreds of universities around the world.

Sponsored by Giovani Nel Mondo, a non-profit organization based in Italy, the festival features the Rome Model United Nations, which recreates a diplomatic issue in international relations; the Rome Business Game, which involves case-study competitions; and the Rome Press Game, which draws on journalism and media skills to cover the conference as well as the Model UN’s simulated sessions. The event took place at the University of International Studies of Rome-UNINT.

LIU Global sophomore Samantha Becker’s group won “best team” in the Rome Business Game for how they tackled the business case. Becker worked with students from seven other countries to get the job done.

“This experience really opened my eyes to the business realm and see how businesses handle themselves when faced with conflicts that need to be resolved,” she said.

The group that included LIU Global sophomore Tirzah Crisp won the “best team” award in the 2018 Rome Press Game, which involves journalism, international communication, interpretation and translation. This role-playing project gives participants the chance to interview Model UN ambassadors, international experts and special guests—who actually are students themselves.

In the rules of the game, Crisp’s team stood out above the rest.

All in all it was a good showing for LIU Global’s students.

An Insider’s Look on Fashion Merchandising Students Abroad

LIU Post professor Cherie Serota and her students went behind the scenes at the famous Lelievre Showroom, known for its elaborate fabrics.

Getting to spend a week in Paris with Cherie Serota, director of fashion merchandising at LIU Post’s College of Management, was clearly an eye-opening experience for almost a dozen students who joined her for their study abroad trip in March.

“You got to see a totally different side of fashion that we aren’t really exposed to in the classroom,” said Rebecca Joy, a senior fashion merchandising major from Long Island.

In the world capital of high fashion, they met a host of industry insiders, ranging from a haute couture designer to a renowned museum curator, a fashion historian and a well-connected Parisian stylist. The creativity and energy of the talented students they met at the International Fashion Academy of Paris truly inspired them.They had guided tours of the Louvre with a focus on how the paintings reflected the trends of what the women were wearing, learned how the fashion industry took shape in the Palais Royal, and walked through Le Marais, an historic neighborhood once home to unknown designers whose work is now synonymous with luxury brands.

At the Yves St. Laurent Museum, they saw the former townhouse where the famous designer lived and worked but now preserved as if he’d just put down his colored pencils and left the studio for a runway show.

They had a private meeting with Laura Gauthier, the creative director of the couture line, Fete Imperiale. She took time off from preparing for her upcoming fashion show to be held at the Ritz Hotel the following week so she could share her vision with the visiting LIU students.

When this group visited the Lilievre Showroom, founded in 1914 by Henri Lelievre and famous for its luxurious woven fabrics that have entranced haute couture designers ever since, they met Laurence Francois, showroom manager, and Marie-Catherine De Masin, director of international sales, who recalled how the designer John Paul Gaultier had come there with his entire entourage to work with her and her staff to create new designs. The students also got an inside look at how jacquards and damasks are intricately woven on the factory’s special looms.

“The fabrics were so beautiful, so amazing!” said Ruoyun Wu, a sophomore business management major from China.

For many of the students on the trip the highlight for them was the chance to visit the townhouse of the famed couturier, Azzedine Alaia, who died last November at the age of 77, and view a small retrospective exhibition of his oeuvre. Alaia’s dresses have been worn by both former First Lady Michelle Obama and France’s former first lady Carla Bruni.

Kwanecia Burke, a sophomore fashion merchandising major from Long Island, said she wasn’t very familiar with Alaia’s work so getting to see his pieces first hand was inspirational. “They were cut differently and put together really elegantly,” Burke explained. “I really liked that.”

Cherie Serota credited the Parisian fashion stylist Cecile Hasroyan, for taking them inside. “This is something that we would not have seen if we’d just been touring on our own,” said Serota.

Later, at the Musee Des Arts Decoratifs, Pamela Golbin, director of fashion and chief curator of fashion and textiles, spent almost two hours with the students discussing her long and interesting career as well as the intimate conversations she crafted with famous couturiers, such as Poiret, Chanel, Jeanne Lanvin, Madeleine ­Vionnet, Elsa Schiaparelli, Christian Dior, Madame Grès, Pierre Balmain, Yves Saint Laurent and McQueen that she shared in her new book, “Couture Confessions,” published by Rizzoli.

“Normally you would not you have such an incredible opportunity to interface with a chief curator like Pamela Golbin,” explained Serota.

Ashley Rodriguez, a sophomore accounting major and a Dean’s Scholar from Long Island, was especially impressed because Golbin, who was inspiring in so many ways, was an American who’d come to Paris on an internship two decades ago.

“What was really interesting about her was that not only was she talking about what she does,” recalled Rodriguez, “she was also talking about how she got there and how the job kind of found her.”

Of course, considering where these students were coming from—and that few had ever been to Europe before—they couldn’t help but compare how Parisians’ every-day work clothes differ from Americans’ average attire.

“In the U.S., I feel like we’re a lot more laid back in what we wear,” observed Alison Hughes, a senior fashion merchandising major from Long Island. “In Paris when people go out, they’re dressed to the nines—they’re not walking around in sweat pants and sweat shirts!”

But now that they’ve seen Paris and experienced it from an insider’s point of view, they’re eager to return.

“I have found my soul-city, for sure,” observed Julia Porter, a freshman from Virginia majoring in fashion merchandising and marketing. In fact, she and Ashley are thinking about their next trip. “We already agreed that within the next 20 years we are going to go back,” said Rodriguez.

No doubt they will.

LIU Brooklyn to Hold Day of Events on April 19 to Commemorate Earth Day

Events Include Empty Bowls Project to Benefit Hurricane Victims in Puerto Rico

LIU Brooklyn will commemorate Earth Day on Thursday, April 19, 2018 with a daylong series of events to raise both awareness and funds for critical issues.

The featured speakers at a public forum from 11 a.m. to 12 noon include Elizabeth Yeampierre, internationally recognized Puerto Rican attorney, co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance, and Executive Director of UPROSE, Brooklyn’s oldest Latino community-based organization, and LIU Brooklyn alumnus David Galarza, a Communications Specialist at Civil Service Employees Association Local 1000 in New York, involved in union-led relief efforts for hurricane victims in Puerto Rico.

The daylong event is organized by the Campus Community Urban Sustainability Program (CUSP), a campus project funded by a Humanities Connections Grant sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Together with the LIU Brooklyn Humanities Division and Art Department, CUSP will host an Empty Bowls Project from 12-2 p.m. to benefit hurricane victims in Puerto Rico. Members of the Art Department and volunteers will create and decorate ceramic bowls that will be sold at the event. Those who purchase bowls will be served a free meal and take the bowls with them when the event concludes. Food and utensil donations have been made by Aramark Food Services and area restaurants and eateries. Other activities throughout the day include:

  • Two film screenings of An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power (dirs. Jon Shenk and Bonni Cohen) at 9:00 a.m. and 3 p.m. in room 122 of the Library Learning Center
  • A postcard writing campaign to elected officials on issues related to environmental and urban sustainability
  • A storytelling project gathering stories about environmental and urban sustainability from campus and surrounding community members
  • Tabling by CUSP partners and community organizations and nonprofits, including Grow NYC, the Old Stone House, Brooklyn SolarWorks, City Growers, 350.Brooklyn, UPROSE, and the Kingsborough Community College Urban Farm
  • Relay for Life to benefit the American Cancer Foundation from 4:30 p.m. to 4:00 a.m.

All events are free and open to the public. Proceeds from ceramic sale will benefit Puerto Rican hurricane victims.

LIU Students Experience an “Alternative Spring Break” in Puerto Rico that Gives Back!

For some LIU students, a Spring Break trip to a tropical climate acted as more than a vacation and a break from schoolwork. Instead it was a time to continue learning and to give back.

As part of the LIU Cares initiative of service learning, the University hosted an ‘Alternative Spring Break’ trip to Puerto Rico. Eight students from both the Brooklyn and Post campuses served 160 hours and 35 people in a variety of settings. Students helped clean homes, build beds, complete yardwork and visited an orphanage to spend time with the children. When the students were not busy volunteering, they had the opportunity to learn more about the history and culture of Puerto Rico.

Students Alyssa Abernathy, Valerie Aviles, Emily-Anna Barba, Elizabeth Hillman, Olivia Kavanaugh, Jeremy Kramer, Jane Ann Leandre, and Crystal Ponce participated with their advisors Claribel Azcona and Julia Pagano in this meaningful life experience. Some of the activities they participated in included: making their own cheese at Vaca Negra, hiking through Cueva Ventana, kayaking through the Bioluminescent Bay, taking a walking Tour of Old San Juan, a Salsa Workshop, a visit to an orphanage, a visit to a nursing home, cleaning homes and yardwork.

LIU Brooklyn SGA President, Emily-Anna Barba described the trip’s impact on her. “One thing that really made an impact on me personally was the happiness and kindness present all over San Juan,” Barba said. “I truly felt I had family there. Walking around as a group of students we all began to grow closer as well. I came on this trip independently to change lives, but I left with family. This LIU Cares, Post and Brooklyn collaboration trip was unbelievable. I have to urge the campus to do more of these. What an experience, and what a world.”

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