Dr. Bukky Kolawole, who practices in Manhattan, got her doctorate in psychology from LIU Post.
Dr. Bukky Kolawole, a groundbreaking clinical psychologist who got her doctorate from LIU Post, is quoted extensively in an article about an unmarried celebrity couple, Khloe Kardashian and Tristan Thompson, apparently getting much-needed couples therapy.
Formally known as Dr. Olubukunola Kolawole, Dr. Bukky (pronounced “Boo-key”) is a bicultural, licensed clinical psychologist with an office in mid-town Manhattan. She specializes in providing couple’s therapy, pre-marital counseling and discernment counseling for couples, including those in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) community.
Thompson, who plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers NBA basketball team, reportedly cheated on Khloe Kardashian while she was pregnant, but now that they’re parents of a daughter named True, they’re trying to work it out in couples therapy in order to restore their mutual trust.
“There’s a misconception that couples therapy is reserved for marriage or when things really get bad in a relationship,” said Dr. Bukky in a recent piece published by INSIDER, a popular life-style and entertainment web site (thisinsider.com) run by Insider, Inc., based in New York.
“A lot of people think, ‘If we go into couples therapy at the beginning of our relationship, it really means that we’re not meant for each other,’ ” she continued. “The question people should always ask instead is, ‘Is this relationship worth the extra worth and the investment?’ ”
In 2008, Dr. Bukky, who founded Relationship HQ in New York City, received her doctoral degree (PsyD) in clinical psychology from LIU Post after defending her dissertation on subtypes of perpetrators of intimate partner violence. Dr. Bukky has provided care in numerous inpatient and outpatient settings for adolescents and adults, including LIU Psychological Services Center, Bellevue Hospital, NYU Child Study Center, LIJ Schneider’s Children Hospital, and Long Island Center for Cognitive Therapy.
Alpha Chi National Honors Society has highlighted the compelling work of Jung Kim, an LIU Brooklyn biology major with a minor in English who graduated in 2018.
“All around the country, Alpha Chi members are producing extraordinary scholarship across disciplines,” said the honors society in its announcement. “We’ll be spotlighting some of their most compelling research projects in the coming months.”
Kim was singled out for his project, “Opioid Epidemic: Should We Care?” It grew out of his summer internship at Foote, Cone & Belding (FCB) Health, an advertising agency specializing in healthcare.
“Our end goal was to create a paradigm shift in the way society views opioid abuse through our advertising campaign,” Kim explained.
More than 200 people filled the fishbowl at the Hillwood Commons on Thursday night to enjoy the Summer Honors Institute’s “A Passion for Fashion” 2018 program that featured students wearing 35 looks drawn from the garments and accessories of the Student Body Boutique, the student-run business at LIU Post. All told, more than 50 students were involved, from doing makeup and hair-styling to promoting the show on campus and modeling.
The theme of the fashion show was “Flowers in the Fall: A Celebration of Diversity.” As the program put it, “In a society where models are expected to have a certain look of perfection, SHI seeks to change the stigma by bringing bright flowers into a season of falling leaves, a sign of the changing seasons.”
Kelly Ahern, left, and Danielle Arnouse, the Summer Honors Institute’s “A Passion for Fashion” student directors
“We wanted to make sure that we pulled clothes in every size and make sure that we included men and women,” explained Kelly Ahern, a marketing major and fashion merchandising minor who plans to graduate next spring. She and Danielle Arnouse, a senior fashion merchandising major, worked closely with Assistant Professor Cherie Serota, Director of Fashion Merchandising at LIU Post, to oversee the class of 15 students enrolled in the summer program.
Brentwood High School senior Keanu Waters gets in the swing of things at the fashion show.
“We wanted these high school students to experience the fashion world,” Serota said. “Every element that you would need to do in a fashion show we’ve taught them how to do. This is really introducing them to fashion merchandising.”
“I learned a lot,” said Marc Vazquez, a senior from Benjamin Cardozo High School in Bayside, Queens. Not only was he in Professor Serota’s “Passion for Fashion” class, he was also a model in the show. He’d heard about LIU’s summer institute from his high school classmate and girlfriend, Melissa Palencia. She was participating in SHI’s Future Health Care Professionals program but knew he’d find the fashion institute appealing. Then he convinced her to model.
“Honestly, this was about me stepping out of my comfort zone,” Palencia explained. “When he told me there was going to be a fashion show, I was like, ‘Oh, I never would do that!’” After he told her he had an outfit for her, she started to soften up. “Then he texted me again: ‘You’re opening up the show!’ So, I said, ‘I guess I’m doing this!’”
“She invited me to the program and I invited her to fashion!” Vazquez said with a smile.
Summer Honors Institute students at the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp listen to Rosemary Roser (Post '81, BS in Accounting), left, share her career experience in the NFL as Tom Buonaiuto, president and chief operating officer of Empire National Bank, looks on.
As part of LIU Post’s Summer Honors Institute, 120 high school students came to the special Entrepreneurship Bootcamp event at the College of Management where they got to meet eight top CEOs and senior executives from the New York area.
For students who aspire to manage their own businesses and for creators who hope to bring their innovative ideas to life, this week-long program offered them an ideal opportunity to work with successful entrepreneurs and business executives and to hone the skills they’ll need for their future success. At the two-hour event, they got to ask questions about career opportunities, proper interviewing techniques and preparing their resumes.
On hand to share their experiences were David Antin, CEO of the Ned Davis Research Group; William Brennan, managing partner, audit transformation, for PwC LLP, one of the big four accounting firms; Tom Buonaiuto, president and COO of Empire National Bank; Michael Groverman, retired CEO from Bill Blass, the luxury clothing line; James Maher, retired managing partner, PwC LLP; Joseph Roberto, president, New York banking operations and senior executive vice president, BankUnited, N.A.; Rosemary Roser, retired vice president and controller of the National Football League and founder of CFO Interactive; and Nick Signorile, former chief financial officer and chief operating officer, Solus Alternative Asset Management.
“This event gave students an unforgettable experience to see what our campus life is like and to have access to major players in the business world,” said Dr. Rob Valli, Dean of the LIU Post College of Management.
Throughout the week, participants were mentored by successful start-up founders, established executives, leading AACSB-accredited faculty, and college students in the early stages of starting their own firms. The students also spent a day in New York City visiting start-ups, technology firms and major corporations. The learning and networking opportunities they gained from their week at LIU Post will benefit them throughout their academic and business careers.
On the 59th anniversary of the publication of “Advise & Consent,” Allen Drury’s Pulitzer-winning political novel about a progressive secretary of state nominee with communist ties, former Congressman Steve Israel, chairman of the LIU Global Institute, has taken the opportunity to ask a host of America’s leaders to name their favorite political books for a July 11th article in the Washington Post, which once credited Drury for giving “birth to the modern Washington novel.”
“I encountered a literary divide that didn’t necessarily reflect party lines,” Israel wrote. “They just couldn’t get on, well, the same page. Still, the responses show a diversity of literary taste.”
President Bill Clinton picked “All the King’s Men” by Robert Penn Warren, a novel about the rise and fall of Louisiana Gov. Willie Stark and his aide Jack Burden, drawing parallels to Huey Long, aka “The Kingfish.” As Clinton said, “Although I have decidedly more faith in the nobility of public service and the power of politics to improve people’s lives than the picture Warren presents, I still think it is the finest American political novel. Its lessons are as relevant today as they were when it was published more than 70 years ago.”
Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, a thorn in President Clinton’s side when he occupied the White House, picked Allen Drury’s “Advise & Consent” because, Gingrich explained, it “captures the pattern of legislative fights with a president so brilliantly.”
Former Republican governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, picked Richard Condon’s “The Manchurian Candidate.” “It is a good read,” Bush said, “and shows that the Russians have always tried to get involved in our elections.”
Both Rep. Peter King, the senior head of Long Island’s congressional delegation, and David Axelrod, the former chief strategist for President Barack Obama, chose Edwin O’Connor’s “The Last Hurrah,” which depicts the final campaign of a wily incumbent mayor named Frank Skeffington, whose character is based on Boston Mayor James Michael Curley. King, a Republican from Nassau County, picked this 1956 novel because “it depicts the humanity, reality and toughness of old-style ethnic, machine politics which, with all its faults, understood people and what they wanted.”
To read the choices of the other luminaries who weighed in, click here.
Steve Israel, who represented Long Island’s third congressional district from 2001-2017, is the author of two novels: “Big Guns,” which just came out, and “The Global War on Morris.”
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.
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, 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 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 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.
