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The New Group and LIU Brooklyn Announce New Partnership

Jesse Eisenberg and Kunal Nayyar in The New Group production of "The Spoils." (Photo credit Monique Carboni)

Beginning in Fall 2018, the new B.F.A. Program in Acting for Theatre, Film, and Television will offer Master Classes and Internship Opportunities at LIU Brooklyn.

Two powerful New York institutions, Long Island University (LIU) Brooklyn and the renowned theater company The New Group, have announced a new partnership to help train the next generation of great actors. Launching this fall semester, the new B.F.A program in Acting for Theatre, Film and Television will be founded on the studio model, in which students will study stage acting, voice and movement under the supervision and guidance of faculty in collaboration with the award-winning The New Group.

“This is an elite partnership which will allow LIU students to train alongside some of the biggest names in theater,” Long Island University President Kimberly Cline said. “The opportunities this partnership will create for our students exemplify what it means to study acting at a great New York institution. The New Group is responsible for so many important, iconic works, and we are excited to embark on this partnership.”

“The New Group has long been connecting with and giving back to our community through our education programs, but we have been wanting a more intensive relationship with a university, where we can connect students to our work and our family of artists in an ongoing way,” said Founding Artistic Director Scott Elliott. “This new collaboration with LIU is perfectly tailored. They have the vision and the resources to truly make something great out of this new acting program. I look forward to creating a studio program that embodies our ensemble acting model in all its facets.”

In addition to taking classes, students will attend The New Group’s performances as part of their studies and participate in talkbacks and master classes with renowned guest artists. Students will also be offered internship opportunities with the company.

Located in the heart of the Brooklyn arts community, LIU Brooklyn features world-class venues, including The Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts, which showcases students in major performances during the academic year, and the historic LIU Brooklyn Paramount Theatre, currently under renovation which will reopen in Fall 2019 as part of an entrepreneurial and experiential learning partnership with Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment.

For more information on the B.F.A. program in Acting for Theatre, Film and Television, please visit www.liu.edu/acting

About The New Group
The New Group is an award-winning, artist-driven company with a commitment to developing and producing powerful, contemporary theater. While constantly evolving, the company strives to maintain an ensemble approach to all its work and an articulated style of emotional immediacy in its productions. In this way, The New Group seeks a theater that is adventurous, stimulating and, most importantly, “now,” a true forum for the present culture.

The New Group’s current education programs provide opportunities for artistically inclined middle school, high school, college and adult students to experiment and take risks with forms of theatrical expression in an environment of trust and collaboration. Under the tutelage of New Group artists, students in the company’s programs are exposed to our process by creating original works as an ensemble. Working together in diverse teams, participating students channel creative impulses, develop craft and build confidence in their artistic talent and individual worth.

Notable productions include Good for Otto, by David Rabe, directed by Scott Elliott; Jerry Springer – The Opera, music by Richard Thomas and book & additional lyrics by Stewart Lee and Richard Thomas, choreography by Chris Bailey, and directed by John Rando; last season’s hit revival of Sweet Charity, choreographed by Joshua Bergasse, directed by Leigh Silverman with Sutton Foster; Wallace Shawn’s Evening at the Talk House, directed by Scott Elliott; David Rabe’s Sticks and Bones, with Holly Hunter and Bill Pullman; Joel Drake Johnson’s Rasheeda Speaking, with Tonya Pinkins and Dianne Wiest, helmed by Cynthia Nixon; Jesse Eisenberg’s The Spoils, with Jesse Eisenberg and Kunal Nayyar; Ecstasy, This is Our Youth, Aunt Dan and Lemon, Hurlyburly, Abigail’s Party, Rafta, Rafta…, The Starry Messenger, A Lie of the Mind, Blood From a Stone, Marie and Bruce, The Jacksonian, Intimacy, and many more. Since its founding in 1995, the company has received more than 100 awards and nominations for excellence, including the 2004 Tony® Award for Best Musical (Avenue Q). In 2011, The Kid received five Drama Desk nominations and the Outer Critics Award for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Musical. That year, The New Group and Scott Elliott were honored with a Drama Desk Special Award “for presenting contemporary new voices, and for uncompromisingly raw and powerful productions.” Visit TheNewGroup.org for more information.

About Long Island University
LIU continues to redefine higher education, providing high quality academic instruction by world-class faculty. Recognized by Forbes for its emphasis on experiential learning and by the Brookings Institution for its “value added” to student outcomes, LIU is an elite teaching and research university with a network of 200,000 alumni that includes industry leaders and entrepreneurs across the globe. LIU’s renowned faculty, the LIU Promise student mentoring program, and its ongoing innovation in engaged learning further distinguish LIU as a leader among the nation’s most respected universities. Visit liu.edu for more information.

 

 

Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment CEO Brett Yormark to Serve as LIU Post’s 60th Annual Commencement Speaker; Rao Anumolu, President and CEO of ASR International Corp. to Receive Honorary Doctorate

L to R-- Brett Yormark, Lt. General Robert Caslen, and Rao Anumolu, will participate in LIU's commencement exercises on May 11.

Lt. General Robert Caslan, Superintendent of U.S. Military Academy at West Point to Keynote Ceremony for Doctoral, Master’s, and Dual Degree Candidates

One of today’s top impresarios in the world of sports and entertainment, Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment CEO Brett Yormark will be the featured keynote speaker at LIU Post’s commencement ceremony on May 11, 2018. Ceremonies for bachelor’s degree candidates will begin at 10 a.m. The doctoral, master’s, and dual degree candidates will receive their degrees at 2 p.m. in a separate ceremony with keynote speaker Lt. General Robert L. Caslen, Jr., Superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

As CEO of Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment, Brett Yormark oversees the business enterprise that manages Barclays Center, Brooklyn Nets, New York Islanders business operations, NYCB LIVE, home of the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, LIU Brooklyn Paramount Theatre, Webster Hall, and the Nets’ G-League team, the Long Island Nets.

“As one of our region’s most dynamic business leaders, Brett Yormark is well positioned to honor the hard work of our graduates and inspire them to achieve their goals,” LIU President, Dr. Kimberly R. Cline said. “As a leading innovator and entrepreneur who gives back to the community, he embodies the values we work to teach at LIU.”

In addition to sports programming, Yormark has been instrumental in bringing some of the most popular names in music to Barclays Center and the Coliseum, including Jay-Z, Barbra Streisand, Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Paul McCartney, Metallica, and more. His venues have also hosted top shows in family entertainment, such as Disney on Ice, Marvel Universe Live, Cirque Du Soleil, and the Harlem Globetrotters.

Yormark has been honored with the Leadership Award by the Nassau County Firefighters Museum. He was named three times to the “Forty Under 40” list by Sports Business Journal, selected twice to the “40 Under 40” list by Crain’s New York Business, and has been profiled in Newsweek, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, Gotham, Hamptons, Success, The New York Times and USA Today. Yormark will also receive an honorary Doctor of Business degree.

LIU will also present an honorary degree to Rao Anumolu, President and CEO of ASR International Corporation, which he founded on Long Island in 1986.

Anumolu founded ASR with a handful of employees. Today, he has grown the business into a world-renowned high-tech company that provides engineering, information technology, training, and support services to global Fortune 100 companies and government agencies. It has a presence in all 50 states and 40 countries.

He has been cited by Congress for the contributions he and his firm have made towards homeland security in the United States, and received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, recognized as one of the nation’s highest awards for individuals whose accomplishments inspired service to our nation and whose past recipients include six presidents of the United States and winners of the Nobel Prize. Anumolu has also been recognized by the American Society of Quality, the American Management Association, the President’s Council on Small Business, the Indo-American Friendship Council, the Indian Association of Long Island, the Nassau and Suffolk County Legislatures, the Telugu Association of North America, the American Telugu Association, and the World Business Forum.

Anumolu, who is member of the LIU Board of Trustees, will be awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters.

“Rao Anumolu is the embodiment of the American dream and giving back,” President Cline said. “He is a great success story and has built a world-class company that has a tremendous global reach and reputation.  We are honored to have someone with his entrepreneurial spirit on our Board of Trustees.”

Lt. General Caslen became the 59th Superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on July 17, 2013. He previously served as the Chief of the Office of Security Cooperation in Iraq. Lieutenant General Caslen’s prior deployments and assignments include serving as the commander of the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, which oversees the Command and General Staff College and 17 other schools, centers, and training programs located throughout the United States; commanding general of the 25th Infantry Division (Light); and commanding general of the Multi-National Division-North during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

His awards and decorations include the Legion of Merit with four Oak Leaf Clusters, the Bronze Star Medal with two Oak Leaf Clusters, the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Distinguished Service Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Defense Superior Service Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, and the Meritorious Service Medal with five Oak Leaf Clusters. General Caslen also received a Master’s Degree from LIU.  He will be awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters at the ceremony.

“General Caslen has dedicated his life to honorable service to our nation,” President Cline said.  “As a distinguished alumnus of LIU, we are honored that he is returning to share his perspective with our doctoral, master’s and dual degree candidates.”

 

 

LIU Brooklyn’s Honors College Physics Major Wins National Prize

LIU Brooklyn Associate Physics Professor Michael Kavic, left, and Assistant Physics Professor Matthew Lippert, right, stand with senior Michael Ramsey, who just won a top prize at a national honors society conference in Portland, Oregon.

Just reintroduced in the fall semester after a decades-long absence, LIU Brooklyn’s new physics major has begun with a big bang.

Michael Ramsey, an Honors College senior triple-majoring in physics, biology and psychology, has just won the Jim Kirby Prize in Physics, Geology and Astronomy at the national honor society Alpha Chi’s 2018 convention held April 5-7 in Portland, Oregon. This marks the first time an LIU student has won this prestigious academic award.

Facing a packed conference room on a Saturday afternoon, Ramsey delivered a 12-minute presentation entitled “Energy Extraction From Black Holes by Cosmic Strings,” which drew on research overseen by LIU Brooklyn Associate Physics Professor Michael Kavic and Assistant Physics Professor Matthew Lippert. Then the student had to explain himself.

“Little did I know that there were Ph.D. physicists sitting in the audience and they just grilled me with some very hard questions,” said Ramsey, who credited his professors for preparing him well by having him speak on this complex subject to students with no background in theoretical astrophysics. But this crowd unexpectedly had some experts facing him. Still, he remained confident, thanks to his firm grounding in the subject matter.

“I was able to stay poised,” Ramsey said.

Afterwards, one of those in attendance came up to Ramsey and congratulated him. “He told me that my mentors must have done a fantastic job teaching me,” Ramsey said. “He gave me a lot of praise. I had no idea that he was the person judging me!”

Ramsey didn’t learn that he’d won the Kirby prize until it was handed out at the convention’s closing ceremony Saturday evening. The prize is named after a long-time sponsor of the Alpha Chi chapter at Tarleton State University in Texas and a former member of the organization’s national council.

“This is the first year we’ve had our physics major and the fact that we won a nationally acclaimed award for that is a very big deal,” said Ramsey. “I think it reinforces what Professors Kavic and Lippert do—and it was great for them to know that.”

Kavic gave Ramsey kudos.

“It is a daunting thing for a student at that level to understand the complexities of a black hole,” Dr. Kavic said. “It is equally daunting for them to understand the complexities of a pulsar and the complexities of a cosmic string.”

Kavic credited his colleague Prof. Lippert for mentoring Ramsey. “Those two really worked shoulder to shoulder,” he said.

“All of us in the physics department are extremely proud of Michael’s achievement,” said Dr. Lippert. “He has been a student in now three of my classes. He stands out for his obvious interest and passion for the subject and his strong work ethic.”

Until Ramsey came to LIU Brooklyn, the southern California native hadn’t taken a physics class since high school, and he didn’t look forward to fulfilling the requirement that he take it for his biology major.

“I just did so poorly in it,” said Ramsey. “I hated math and I hated physics. I did everything I could to put it off for as long as I could.” But after his first week in his introductory physics class with Dr. Lippert, he was hooked.

Ramsey was recruited to play soccer for the LIU Brooklyn Blackbirds, where he became the goal-keeper on a varsity team that not only won the Division 1 championship two years ago but also went undefeated for the third time in the history of the conference. Ramsey said studying spin and rotation in his physics class actually made keeping a soccer ball out of the goal “a little bit easier!” Unfortunately, Ramsey suffered a season-ending injury his senior year when he tore his left shoulder trying to block a shot.

He was planning to become a doctor but now he is “rethinking things.”

“If I could be an astrophysicist and a neurosurgeon at the same time,” Ramsey said, “that’d be the best life I could possibly imagine for myself!”

Accompanying Ramsey at the convention were Dr. James Clarke, director of the Honors College at LIU Brooklyn, and Melissa Antinori, associate director of Honors College.

“He got some really tough questions from the judges and the other people in the audience who are engineers and physicists,” said Dr. Clarke. “They were testing the depth of his knowledge—and he came off like a graduate student or higher. He had a pretty tough group to compete with, and I just think he knocked one out of the ballpark.”

Dr. Clarke, who received a 2018 Distinguished Service Award for his regional work on behalf of Alpha Chi, was very pleased with how well LIU did in Oregon. “Having students who reach the bar of presenting research nationally is one of the indicators of a thriving program,” Dr. Clarke said.

“We did not have an active physics major for a long time,” observed Dr. Kavic. “We brought it back to life, and we’ve been incredibly lucky about the number and quality of students we’ve been able to attract.”

There are now 30 physics majors at LIU Brooklyn—and many more outstanding students like Michael Ramsey still to come.

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.

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