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LIU Post’s Summer Honors Institute Brings the Campus Alive in July

Meet this year's students of the Summer Honors Institute at LIU Post.

Over 450 high school students—including 180 kids from 28 states outside New York—have gathered at the LIU Post campus for the Summer Honors Institute. Running from July 8 to July 13, it’s a week of stimulating academic pursuits sandwiched between a wide range of activities from barbecues to bungee-jumping, public speaking exercises and special events including a fashion show at Hillwood Commons.

The week is so jam-packed it’s hard to see how the students have a moment to think—but apparently they do.

Take the Summer Honors Institute for Investigative Reporting, for example, which bills itself as a “boot camp for high school reporters.” Here, they work closely with the college editors of LIU Post’s award-winning student newspaper, The Pioneer.

One of the participants in the Public Relations, Communications and Journalism program in the College of Arts, Communication and Design is Julia Cuttone, a quadruplet—all girls—from East Meadow, N.Y.

“All my sisters came to the program at the same time,” Julia wrote in her blog, “and made the process of getting to meet people easier.”

Her sister Daniella is in the Film Studies program, Victoria is in the Model UN program, and Rosanna is in the Health Studies Nursing program. “The people here are truly some of the nicest, kindest people I have ever met,” Julia added. “I can already tell this is going to be a fast and unforgettable week.”

Originally interested in pursuing a STEM career, Allysia Edwards from Blackwood, N.J., wants to be a writer and came to the Summers Honors Institute to hone her skills. Her first morning on campus she set her alarm for 5:40 a.m. “I put it upon myself to wake up early so I could have first crack at the showers,” she admitted. That was just the beginning—there was so much to do she didn’t return to her dorm until 10:30 p.m. “I’ve really fallen in love with SHI,” she wrote on her blog. “If college is even half as fun as SHI, then I know I will love college too.”

An aspiring journalist from Spring Hill, Tennessee, McKenna Kaufman had never been to New York City before she came to the Summers Honors Institute. “I am hoping to hone my skills as a reporter and learn to portray real life events with more clarity during the LIU program,” she said.

For a field trip, Professor Carolyn Schurr Levin is taking this summer class to meet reporters and staff of The New York Times.

Renowned bookbinder Paul Belard shows Letitia Chan, a student from Pleasantville, N.Y., how the pages of a book can be gilded.

On a very warm afternoon, 10 attentive students—all about to enter their senior year in high school and all aspiring to become teachers—were practically glued to their seats upstairs in the B. Davis Schwartz Memorial  Library for a class called “Archives and Special Collections Presents Renown Rare Book Binder Paul Belard.” This presentation was hosted by Jarron Jewell, acting director and curator of the American Juvenile Collection, who’s known Belard for over a decade.

“In this department, we’re interested in the physical nature of our rare books,” she explained. “They’re available in our special environment for research purposes.”

An engineer by training and a self-taught bookbinder who studied in France where he’s from, Belard is president of the Long Island Book Collectors.

“Repairing books has always been a hobby for me,” he said, as he handed out the tools of his craft as well as sharing some rare copies of books he’s collected over the years. When he started out, he handled a big project for LIU Post Professor Bob Brier, a world renown Egyptologist, which involved soaking a big book cover in his bathtub to prepare for its restoration—much to the consternation of his wife. Later in his impressive career Belard repaired an original Joseph Conrad manuscript for the publisher Nelson Doubleday. At Post on July 9th, Belard seemed to strike a chord by showing students how real books are held together.

Later taking the students on a tour of LIU’s holdings, Jewell suggested that maybe someday one of them might become a special collections librarian or rare book binder or repairer.

As she recalled, “One of the students looked at me directly with a big smile and said, ‘Maybe one of us will!’”

LIU Brooklyn will be hosting its Summer Honors Institute from July 15 to July 20th.

LIU Post Music Professor James McRoy Takes Long Island Symphonic Winds to Perform in Australia

Dr. James McRoy leads the Long Island Wind Symphony in an outdoor performance at the National Maritime Museum in Darling Harbour as part of their Australia tour.

The Long Island Symphonic Winds’ tour of Australia is hitting all the high notes down under, says Dr. James McRoy, Professor of Music and Director of Wind Studies at LIU Post, who has taken 66 members for a 12-day goodwill performance trip.

“Everyone is experiencing the time of their lives!” exclaims Dr. McRoy, who conducts the Wind Ensemble and Wind Symphony through the Wind Band Program at LIU Post.

The group arrived in Sydney, Australia, on July 1 and attended the Opening Concert of the Australian International Music Festival at Angel Place City Recital Hall. They participated in a conductor workshop with Colin Touchin, director of music at the University of Warwick, and in a composer workshop with Dr. Ralph Hultgren, the Festival Artistic Director. They performed in the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House and outdoors at the National Maritime Museum in Darling Harbour. Then they gave a performance at Sydney Town Hall before journeying to the Great Barrier Reef for swimming and snorkeling followed by a visit to the Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Park near Cairns. They are expected to return to New York on July 10.

The 2018 Australia performance tour was orchestrated by World Projects, a California-based organization whose motto is “Explore the world with music.”

Under Dr. McRoy’s leadership and direction the wind band ensembles at LIU Post have performed by invitation at two New York State Music Conferences and at Carnegie Hall. They have produced 25 CD/DVD recordings, sponsored 13 regional band festivals, hosted multiple performance workshops, and commissioned and premiered seven original works for wind band. They have toured and performed to standing ovations in Europe, Asia and the Caribbean.

Dr. McRoy received the 2012 David Newton Award for Excellence in Teaching from Long Island University.

Dr. Robin Sturtz, LIU Post Veterinary Technology Program Director, Tells How to Care for Aging Pets

Dr. Robin Sturtz, director of the LIU Post Veterinary Technology Program, recently recounted the tell-tale signs that an aging pet is ailing in an informative article featured prominently in all of the Anton Media Group’s 18 North Shore papers on Long Island.

“Just because our pets are older, we shouldn’t assume they’ll be infirm,” Dr. Sturtz advised her readers. “Old age is not a disease.”

Dr. Sturtz, who is also president of the Long Island Veterinary Medical Association, explained that once a dog or a cat reaches the age of 7 years (6 years in very large breeds), it should get a physical examination by a veterinarian twice a year, and get blood work done annually.

Among the signs that a pet may not be up to snuff, she listed increased sleeping, refusing walks, changes in appetite and thirst, declines in vision and hearing, and unusual new behaviors.

“Give your pet all the TLC you can,” Dr. Sturz urged, “and they’ll return the favor.”

To read the article, headlined, “Keeping Your Aging Pet Healthy,” which appeared the week of June 27-July 3, click here.

 

 

LIU Post Professor John Lutz Brings “Death of a Salesman” to Life at Lorber Hall

LIU Post English Department Chairman John Lutz makes a point while teaching his class on Arthur Miller's classic American tragedy as part of the 2018 summer session of the Hutton House Lectures.

The Hutton House Lectures: Where Town Meets Gown

(One in an occasional series)

On a bright sunny day recently 22 adults packed into the wood-paneled library at Lorber Hall heard a relatively heated discussion about Arthur Miller’s classic play, “Death of a Salesman.” Up for debate was whether Lee J. Cobb’s performance in the title role as the tragic Willy Loman superseded Dustin Hoffman’s recent portrayal, based on what they’d seen on YouTube.

The jury was still out when in walked the professor teaching the afternoon class, John Lutz, chairman of the English Department at LIU Post. They greeted him with warm applause as he took the lectern, smiled, adjusted his glasses and proceeded to thumb through his copy of the play to get this session of the Hutton House Lectures underway.

Last spring, Prof. Lutz tackled Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children,” an epic novel chronicling the birth of modern India after it shed British colonial rule. In the winter semester, he devoted two separate courses to Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” and “As You Like It.” Based on an informal poll, many of his adult students can’t get enough of his teaching. “Our only problem is that he thinks he deserves a summer vacation,” one lady volunteered. A Port Washington retired elementary school teacher with a degree from Columbia University exclaimed that if Lutz were teaching a Hutton House course on the telephone book, “I’d take it with him!”

To discuss what is arguably one of the most powerful indictments of the American Dream ever put on stage, every seat in Room 104 was full. One student had driven in from Hauppauge in Suffolk County, others from Nassau and Queens, to pay attention to what Prof. Lutz had to say.

For this class, he wanted to explore how the playwright artfully exposes how dysfunctional the Loman family is. “We see in detail the dishonesty, the denial, the anger beneath the surface,” Lutz pointed out. “All the characters have different kinds of anger.”

Even the stage directions came under scrutiny as Lutz noted that the recurrent flute music used throughout the play serves as “a haunting reminder of the past,” since Willy’s father used to make and sell flutes himself. The professor reminded his avid audience that Miller’s original title was going to be “The Inside of His Head,” as the playwright intended to portray Willy’s psychic disintegration, citing how the set’s walls and doorways lose their permanence once Willie starts to relive the past. “The stage is designed to visibly dramatize the breakdown of his mind,” Lutz explained.

The play’s the thing, of course, but the lively discussion ranged far and wide during the two-hour class, touching on the dignity of manual labor, corporate downsizings, immigration, Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House,” Dale Carnegie’s how-to-succeed courses (“You notice how self-help books are rarely read by very successful people,” Lutz joked in an aside), commodity fetishism, serotonin levels in human leaders’ brains, genocide in the Belgian Congo under King Leopold, and the definition of a tragic hero in classic Greek drama. On that score, we learn that Willy Loman fills the bill because he gains insight from his fall from grace. “He has greater understanding of his own contradictions,” Dr. Lutz observed, “And in a Greek tragedy, that makes him a hero.”

Throughout the afternoon Professor Lutz kept his students fully engaged and involved, as they shared their thoughts on the matters at hand—and some beyond the classroom—but never strayed too far from the lines on the page. No doubt, Arthur Miller would have wanted it that way, with or without his stage directions to guide them.

Starting Sept. 10, Professor Lutz will teach a completely different topic—three challenging novels by William Faulkner (“Go Down, Moses,” “Light in August” and “As I Lay Dying”—in that order). His classes routinely fill up fast with adults wishing to continue their education for years to come. His time outside the classroom will be filling up fast, too. Among his new duties this fall, he’ll become chairman of the Philosophy and Foreign Languages Departments as well as English.

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

LIU Pharmacy’s Fernando Gonzalez Discusses Vitamin Supplements in Reader’s Digest Feature Story

LIU Pharmacy Professor Fernando Gonzalez shares his expertise.

Reader’s Digest—with a global circulation of 10.5 million—surely put its readers’ minds to rest when it asked LIU Pharmacy’s Fernando Gonzalez to shed some light on what sleep supplements he recommends.

Gonzalez, RPhI, is an assistant professor in the pharmaceutical sciences division at the Arnold & Marie Schwartz College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (LIU Pharmacy) and the director of Pharmacy Practice at LIU Pharmacy.

In a recent article headlined, “14 Vitamin Brands Doctors Trust Most,” Gonzalez told the world’s largest paid circulation magazine, “One of the supplements I recommend is melatonin, a hormone that is naturally produced by the body. It is believed to help with the circadian rhythm cycle, which is your sleep clock. Usually melatonin is stimulated by darkness. As we age, we tend to produce less melatonin.”

To avoid staying up all night worrying about what they’re consuming, he advises customers to do what he does.

“Any vitamin or supplement I buy or purchase must have the USP seal,” Gonzalez said. “I chose Nature Made Melatonin, in the 5 milligram dosage. This is made in a laboratory, not naturally, which I prefer—the natural version is obtained from the pineal gland of various animals and could have other contaminants. Check with your healthcare provider before giving to children or if pregnant or breast feeding.”

Fortunately for students at LIU Pharmacy, when it comes to educating the next generation of pharmacists, having Fernando Gonzalez in the classroom is a dream come true.

For more information about LIU Pharmacy, click here.

It’s No Joke: Stand-up Comic Pete Holmes Films His HBO Show ‘Crashing’ at LIU Post

HBO comedy star Pete Holmes takes a break from filming his series to pose with LIU Post students Mathew Betz and Sue Ye near the Great Hall.

For the third time in as many months, a popular television star has filmed their latest project on LIU Post’s scenic campus.

On Monday, June 25th, standup comedian Pete Holmes visited LIU Post to shoot a scene in the gardens for his hit HBO show Crashing, which is produced by Long Island native Judd Apatow, who grew up in Woodbury. Holmes is the creator and primary writer for the semi-autobiographical show, now shooting its third season. He’s been a Late Night TV regular appearing on Comedy Central, VH1, Conan O’Brien, and “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.”

In Crashing, Holmes plays himself, depicting a fictionalized version of his own personal struggles in the past of trying to make it as a comic after an early divorce. Other well-known standup comedians make recurring appearances, including Sarah Silverman and Artie Lange.

“My parents still have no idea how this is a comedy!” Holmes told Yahoo last year. His show just finished its second season in March.

Current LIU Post students, Matthew Betz of California and Sue Ye of Shanghai, China, both Accounting majors, got the chance to meet and talk to Holmes during a break on the set. No word yet on the specifics behind the scene, but Barnes and Ye should expect some familiar sights if they tune in for Season 3.

Earlier this month, the Emmy-nominated Netflix comedy Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, starring Ellie Kemper, filmed at the Humanities Hall on the LIU Post campus. In May Will and Grace star Sean Hayes shot scenes for his new movie at the Winnick House and in the rose arbor nearby. Other television shows that have filmed at LIU Post include Royal Pains, Madame Secretary and Blacklist.

LIU Students are often able to meet actors and the production team on set and even gain experience by volunteering or participating in some capacity. In this instance, one might call it a crash course.

LIU Palmer School Hosts Gardiner Foundation Symposium to Honor History Project’s First Year

Standing at the great lawn of the Bayard Cutting Arboretum with the Manor House behind them are Dr. Gregory Hunter of LIU's Palmer School of lIbrary and Information Science, center, with Kathryn Curran of the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation at his right, among the guests and students involved in the project.

By using state-of-the-art digitizing equipment, more than 20,000 images from Long Island’s historical societies are now preserved forever.

LIU’s Palmer School of Library and Information Science couldn’t have asked for a more perfect summer afternoon to kick off the inaugural Gardiner Foundation Symposium held at the historic Bayard Cutting Arboretum estate, with a gentle breeze blowing off the Connetquot River on Long Island’s South Shore.

The event, held on June 26 at the 600-plus-acre New York State Park in Suffolk County, celebrated the first year of the Digitizing Local History Project, an ambitious archival program funded with a $1.5 million grant from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation and administered by the Palmer School at LIU Post. Gathered at the Upper Carriage House on the arboretum’s spacious grounds in Great River were foundation board members; students, faculty, and staff; as well as representatives from many of Long Island’s historical societies and public libraries.

“From Huntington to the Hamptons, from Fire Island to Gardiners Island, the history of Long Island is rich and varied,” said Dr. Kimberly R. Cline, President of Long Island University, as she welcomed the invited guests. “Through the Digitizing Local History Project we are now bringing that history to life.”

Dr. Cline singled out the vision of Kathryn M. Curran, the Gardiner Foundation’s executive director, for helping to make sure that “so many treasures that might have been lost will be preserved for future generations.” And she also praised the project’s director, Dr. Gregory S. Hunter, a nationally renowned archivist, who has helped the Palmer School become “a national leader in library and information science.” Dr. Hunter was part of the team that built the Electronic Records Archives for the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC.

“We’re lucky to have him,” said Dr. Cline.

“Mother Nature has been very kind to us today,” observed Dr. Hunter, smiling broadly. He serves as the director at the Palmer School of Library and Information Science’s Ph.D. in Information Studies and the Certificate of Advanced Study in Archives and Records Management. The digitization project’s goals, he explained, are to safeguard Long Island’s historical materials, increase access to the materials, and give Palmer School students the necessary technical skills for their professional careers.

Thanks to the grant, Dr. Hunter was able to set up a graduate student class of Gardiner Foundation fellows.  Master’s and Ph.D. students receive six credits of tuition remission for each semester they participate in the project. Dr. Hunter was also able to purchase the DT Atom, a state-of-the-art digitization system that can be adapted to handle a wide range of materials. “I’ve yet to see a better scanner on Long Island,” he said.

When the program started in the fall semester of 2017, there were six master’s students, two doctoral students and two faculty members, including himself and Information Studies Professor Dr. David Jank. Students worked on-campus and in the field. Since its inception, the program has now captured more than 20,000 images and accumulated 4 terabytes of data from the collections of about a dozen historical societies. And they’ve only just begun.

Dr. Hunter outlined the scope of the project, currently funded through 2022.

“I’m not building a collection for me or for Long Island University,” he told the audience, adding that the local groups retain control of their archival material. “Let the historical societies do what they want with the images. At no cost, they can get their materials preserved in a cloud-based archival system called Preservica.”

One of those who spoke at the symposium was Kelsey Renz, a member of the initial group of students dubbed “the Pioneers” to honor the Post mascot as well as their trail-blazing efforts. She is about to finish her Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science this summer and receive her Certificate in Archives and Records Management. With fellow Palmer graduate student, Drew Fullshire, who received his master’s in January, they went to the Southold Historical Society and Sagtikos Manor in Bay Shore, working carefully with very fragile materials. At Sagtikos Manor, they scanned a ceremonial ribbon distributed at President Abraham Lincoln’s funeral procession.

Through this process, Renz said she got an experience she never would have had just in the classroom. But that’s not the only benefit. “Long after I’m done working on this project,” she added, “I’ll know that many people will have access to these resources—and the originals will be in good shape without any further damage. Of course, this would not have been possible without the Gardiner Foundation and we’re so grateful for their support.”

Among the participants in the digitization project who spoke at the symposium was Evelyn Vollgraff, president of the Lake Ronkonkoma Historical Society, one of the smallest societies on Long Island. “Our main goal was to bring the history of Lake Ronkonkoma to our community,” she said. “Without this program it would have been impossible for us.”

“What we’re doing is timeless!” enthused Dr. Hunter. “Thomas Jefferson saw the need for it, Lin-Manuel Miranda saw the need for it. Really what we’re trying to do is use this project to tell the stories of Long Island.”

Newsday highlighted the local interest in the ongoing project with its coverage.

For more information about the Digitizing Local History Project, contact Dr. Gregory S. Hunter at LIU Palmer School by clicking here.

Long Island University Announces Dr. Richard Nader to Serve as Chief Research and International Officer

Dr. Richard Nader

Internationally Experienced Research Development Leader to Guide LIU’s Research and Global Expansion Plans

Long Island University has announced another important step forward in its continuing advancement as a nationally recognized teaching and research university by selecting Dr. Richard Nader as Chief Research and International Officer.

Dr. Nader will lead LIU Research and create a new Research Development office, where he will work alongside leadership and faculty to grow overall research and develop integrated global research and education partnerships.

Dr. Nader’s role will include strategic planning and working with faculty to build and enhance research and connect faculty to funding opportunities both nationally and internationally. His deep experience in university research development, program leadership at the National Science Foundation (NSF), and his international cultural competence with regard to country-specific needs are a vital background for his unique dual role as Chief Research and International Officer. Dr. Nader will be highly engaged with University leadership and faculty in enhancing LIU research emphasis areas and international engagement priorities.

“Long Island University’s bold vision is to be a globally engaged, internationally recognized teaching and research institution,” LIU President Kimberly Cline said.  “Rick Nader possesses the research, international and academic credentials, as well as the hands-on experience of building a globally agile research infrastructure, to further accelerate our momentum.”

“Rick Nader has a proven track record of building research programs with global relevance,” said LIU Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Dr. Randy Burd. “At LIU, we are working to build an integrated and internationally relevant research enterprise driven by local discovery, national influence, global reach and collective impact.  Rick Nader will complement the outstanding faculty and resources we already have in place and further elevate our academic and research initiatives.”

“LIU has unique assets that position it to serve as a global research and education leader,” Dr. Nader said. “Leading universities, like LIU, demonstrate excellence in research and have a mission to prepare the next generation for success, which includes global understanding, cultural competence and leadership in an increasingly diverse world.  I am excited to contribute to the University’s forward momentum in academics and research. I look forward to working alongside faculty and staff to engage our students in research and global experiences that address society’s challenges.”

Dr. Nader has nearly 30 years of experience in research and international affairs. Most recently he served at Mississippi State University, where he led efforts in international development, education and research, including work with the University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. He also served at the University of North Texas (UNT), where he began its research development office and worked closely with faculty and senior administrators to secure major international and domestic research awards. Prior to his work at UNT, Nader was at the NSF’s Office of International Science and Engineering and at Texas A&M University.

LIU is advancing as a major research institution with enhanced initiatives in a number of fields, including LIU Pharmacy (The Arnold and Marie Schwartz College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences) and the University’s pending proposal to open the New York metropolitan area’s first College of Veterinary Medicine.  LIU Pharmacy is experiencing a dramatic increase in research funding under the leadership of Dean John Pezzuto, a Volwiler Award winner. Its new faculty include Dr. Jeffrey Idle, one of the world leaders in the fields of metabolomics and pharmacogenetics.  LIU’s pending College of Veterinary Medicine recently received a major boost when New York Governor Andrew Cuomo awarded the project $12 million in State transformative funding, citing its research focus.

University-wide, LIU is achieving results from its program of strategic investments. LIU was recognized as one of the top 20 selective private colleges in the nation on the “Overall Mobility Index,” assembled by researchers from Harvard, Stanford and Brown as part of the Equality of Opportunity Project. These accolades follow comparable laurels from such prestigious publications and research organizations as US News and World Report, Forbes, The Princeton Review’s “Best Northeastern Universities” list, and the Brookings Institution. LIU surpassed the goal of its strategic plan by doubling its endowment over the past five years, beating its target date by more than two years.

Dr. Nader will lead the LIU Research Administration and Research Development Office’s expansion to support faculty-driven research and intellectual engagement globally, as well as to guide LIU Global. He will lead the development of new resources to foster success, such as faculty proposal writing workshops, grant and research management training, and programming designed for LIU to operate effectively in research anywhere in the world. Dr. Nader will oversee federal research opportunities to spearhead development of LIU signature research areas, and build bridges between funding agencies and LIU.

# # #

 

LIU Brooklyn Professor Aaron Lieberman Is Named “Educator of the Year”

A beaming Dr. Aaron Lieberman poses proudly with his wife, Elaine Dolgin-Lieberman, at the recent awards ceremony held at the Harvard Club.

Dr. Aaron Lieberman, an associate professor in the Department of Counseling and School Psychology at LIU Brooklyn, has just been named “Educator of the Year” by Education Update, an award-winning newspaper based in New York with a circulation of 100,000 readers including teachers, principals, and superintendents in public and private schools among other “decision-makers in education.”

Learning about the honor caught Dr. Lieberman by surprise, he admitted.

Over the spring semester Dr. Lieberman had collaborated on a book called “Tools to Help Your Children Learn Math” with Dr. Alfred Posamentier, LIU Post Professor Gavrielle Levine and Danielle Sauro.  At the end of this project,  Dr. Posamentier, who serves as the executive director for International and Funded Programs at Long Island University, informed Dr. Lieberman that he was going to submit his name for the award.

“I thought it was a kind and thoughtful act and I subsequently submitted the required information to the newspaper, but I didn’t think anything more of it until I received an email informing me that I’d been honored with the award!” Lieberman said.

The event took place on June 22 at the Harvard Club. “I do photographer as a hobby and I’d shot a wedding at that venue years ago,” he recalled. “What a beautiful place!”

All modesty aside, Lieberman has been rightly recognized previously for his professorial prowess when he had been selected to receive Long Island University’s “Newton Award of Teaching Excellence.”

With a clinical background, Dr. Lieberman practiced his profession in a private clinical practice and working at the Committee for Special Education in the New York City public school system, among other professional activities.

Dr. Lieberman started at LIU Brooklyn as an adjunct in 1982 and began teaching full time in 1997. Over the years, Dr. Lieberman has served as the coordinator of LIU’s graduate programs for his department at the Brooklyn Campus, Westchester Campus, and Rockland Campus.

This past April he was presented a Service Award from LIU to commemorate his years spent in the classroom.

“Teaching is my passion,” he said. “You see the light going on in someone’s eyes when they get it—that ‘ahah!’ moment—it’s a beautiful thing and what I strive for.”

Lieberman’s scholarship has focused on Interprofessional Education and Interprofessional Practice (IPP/IPE), which emphasizes integration of the knowledge and the skill set of related professions toward holistic service provision and training.  He has also worked closely with speech language pathologists. His manuscript on emotional and behavioral issues in communication disorders was recently published in the American Journal of Speech Language Pathology.

His roots run deep at LIU. His father, Dr. Morris B. Lieberman, had graduated from the Clinical Psychology Program at LIU, had taught at the Brooklyn College of Pharmacy when it was a part of LIU, and had taught for many years in the psychology program and counseling psychology programs at the Brooklyn campus. His mother, Bilha Lieberman, was a graduate of the Guidance and Counseling program (as it was then called) at LIU Brooklyn. His brother, Shiloh Lieberman, who graduated from LIU Brooklyn with a B.S. as a pre-med student, was an active member of the Honor’s Program on campus and an editor of the school paper, “Seawanhaka.”

“I have a lot of connections with LIU,” Dr. Lieberman said. And many LIU students are no doubt grateful for all the ones he’s made with them in the classroom.

LIU Brooklyn to Host First Annual Conference on Linguistics, Language and Culture

LIU Brooklyn students Jasmine Philema, left, and Blandine Joseph, center, pose with their professor, Dr. Isabelle Barriere, at a recent awards gala. They accompanied her to Haiti where they spent two weeks working on behalf of the non-profit group, Making the Impossible Possible.

Participants from across the country as well as overseas will be coming to the LIU Brooklyn campus this Friday for the first annual conference on the topic, “Intersection of Linguistics, Language, and Culture (ILLC),” which is being organized by Dr. Isabelle Barriere, associate professor in the Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders at LIU Brooklyn.

The all-day event is under the auspices of the National Science Foundation-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates Site Program (NSF-REU). Dr. Barriere collaborates on the program with Dr. Jonathan Nissenbaum of CUNY’s Brooklyn College.

Dr. Barriere says the program serves two purposes. “The first is to involve undergraduates in research projects that will contribute significant findings to the field of speech-language and communication sciences,” she explained. “The second is to simultaneously encourage and prepare minority students to undertake graduate work on diverse languages and cultures.”

“The program benefits from the tremendous ethnic, linguistic, and cultural diversity of Brooklyn and Queens,” Professor Barrière added, “and from the state-of-the-art research facilities, such as the LIU Downtown Brooklyn Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic, the Brooklyn College Linguistics Laboratory, the CUNY Graduate Center’s Developmental Neurolinguistics Laboratory, the Endangered Language Alliance, the Haskins Laboratories, and Yeled V’Yalda Research Institute.”

One of the highlights of the day is the New York City premiere of the documentary film, “Talking Black in America,” featuring a Q&A after the 1 p.m. screening with producer Dr. Renée Blake, a professor at New York University, in a discussion chaired by Dr. Margareth Lafontant of CUNY’s Medgar Evers College. The 1-hour-and-20-minute film was partly funded by the National Science Foundation.

More than a dozen students will be presenting projects they have conducted under the guidance of mentors including many from LIU Brooklyn, such as Elyanna Moskowitz’s “Variations of Yiddish Among Hasidic Preschoolers: Production and Preference,” Harmony Graziano’s “How to talk place in Hawaiian Creole English,” Daniella Shimoonov’s “Bilingualism vs. Trilingualism in Preschoolers Acquiring Russian, Hebrew and English,” Zian Jaffery’s “The Effects of Maternal Depressive Symptoms on Child Language Performance at 4 Years of Age,” Moné Skratt Henry’s “Phrase Boundary Blinks in American Sign Language,” Daniella Bonhomme’s “Code-switching in Different Generations of Haitian Creole Speakers in New York,” Saundra Scott’s “Impact of Dialectal Variation on Preschoolers’ Acquisition of Questions,” Zaib Javaid’s “Aphasia Group Member Self-Confidence Ratings and the Effect of Error Types and Totals.”

For more details about the program, click here.

Dr. Barriere credited the grant from the National Science Foundation for “giving undergraduate students in New York the opportunity to research on linguistic and cultural minorities so that they are better represented in research, both in terms of the students who do the research as well as the participants.”

Recently, Dr. Barriere and Dr. Nelson Moses, who founded the CSD department at LIU, were honored for their work with the non-profit organization, Making the Impossible Possible, with which they took students to Haiti for two weeks last summer. “Dr. Moses helped prepare the trip,” she said, “and with two clinical directors, I took 14 students who conducted evaluations and interventions there. It was very successful.” Accompanying Dr. Barriere at the awards gala, which was held on May 27 at BRIC House in Brooklyn, were two students who accompanied her to Haiti, Jasmine Philema and Blandine Joseph.

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