KCC in the news

VLP Board President James P. Slattery (left) presents the 2011 Christopher Slattery Young Professional Award to Joanne Reece (center), as she receives a bouquet of flowers from VLP Supervising Attorney Sidney Cherubin.

Brooklyn Law School Recent Graduate Honored With Slattery Award From Volunteer Lawyers Project

By Samuel Newhouse
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS — The nation’s economic recession may not be ending, but pro bono work on behalf of needy litigants continues at the Brooklyn Volunteer Lawyers Project.

Over the past 15 months, 400 attorneys have volunteered 9,513 hours — an all-time high for the Brooklyn Bar Association’s Volunteer Lawyers Project (VLP) — while providing almost 6,000 Brooklyn individuals and families with direct legal representation, and advice and legal counsel to 8,805 others. An additional 452 attorneys have been trained at CLE courses led by the VLP this year.

These achievements were celebrated at the VLP’s annual Volunteer Recognition Event last week, held at TD Bank in Brooklyn Heights. Caterers with trays of succulent mini-steaks and shrimp cocktails traveled around recently replanted greenery throughout the event space in the basement of the bank on Montague Street. A chef served sliders grilled to order for the distinguished guests, including local attorneys and Brooklyn judges.

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Food for thought was trumped by food for action at Kingsborough Community College on Wednesday as a “plate of mac and cheese” roamed the hallways alongside “Mickey’s Mouseketeers” and the “Numerical Navigators” to raise money for cash-strapped students.

The zany crew was among more than 600 resourceful faculty, staff, students and supporters — many of them also in costume — who showed no signs of dampened spirits after rain forced them to take the benefit trek indoors.

“It was hard trying to walk inside the campus with a table!” chuckled Mille Burke, a secretary with the Marine and Academic Center’s Krafty Macs, who received rousing cheers for her comfort food cozzie — an eye-popping recreation of a plate of pasta with Burke’s head poking out of the top on a cardboard table covered by a checkered cloth and set with a posy of flowers.

“We go a little overboard!” added the fundraiser.

Harder still was making up the 2.5-mile schlepp indoors — the equivalent of traversing the exterior of the 70-acre, waterfront campus twice — but the highly-charged walkers took it in stride.

Other quirk-pots, also in a class of their own, included Continuing Education Dean Saul Katz, who led the “Seaside Pirates” decked out as a buccaneer, and legging-clad college President Regina Peruggi, who stopped sporadically to flex muscle with her “President’s Pacers.”

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And increasingly, faculty members want students to do research, build e-portfolios and take assessments in class. While they tried to use wireless laptop carts, they lost 10 to 15 minutes of instruction time just setting them up.
By virtualizing desktops, the Brooklyn college will cut back on lost instruction time and provide students with tools to build e-portfolios and take assessments.

“It’s making technology transparent and focusing more and using more of the class time in actually imparting the education rather than challenging them with setting up computers and logging in and bringing in the carts,” said Asif Hussain, CIO.

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Published: September 27, 2011 3:34 PM
By The Associated Press  

SACRAMENTO, CA — – (Marketwire) — 09/27/11 — e.Republic’s Center for Digital Education and Converge Online today announced winners in the seventh annual Digital Community Colleges Survey. The survey documents advances made by community colleges in utilizing information technology and recognizes which colleges are providing a high level of service to their faculty, students, and communities as a result.

The survey looked at technology integration into college curriculum and campus life, documenting use of online admissions processes, distance education, technology training for students and faculty, campus security alerts, use of Web 2.0 social and collaborative capabilities as well as online tutoring and advisory services. Use of mobile devices was also a key indicator of success.

“As community college enrollments continue to increase, school leaders are incorporating new technologies to enhance student services and improve course curriculum,” said Cathilea Robinett, executive vice president of the Center for Digital Education. “Expanded distance learning offerings, use of mobile devices, and greater collaboration — among other efforts — demonstrate these winners’ drive to provide students with a high-quality education at a lower cost. Congratulations!”

View the online announcement.

2011 Digital Community Colleges Survey Winners

Large Colleges Category – 10,000 Students or More 1st Kingsborough Community College 2nd Lone Star College 3rd Montgomery County Community College 3rd Northern Virginia Community College 4th Catawba Valley Community College 5th Scottsdale Community College 6th Howard Community College 7th Johnson County Community College 7th Tidewater Community College 8th Jefferson State Community College 9th Moraine Valley Community College 9th Salt Lake Community College 10th Delaware Technical and Community College 10th LaGuardia Community College

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Luft’s credits include Promises, Promises on Broadway, the film Grease 2, and national tours such as They’re Playing Our Song, White Christmas, and Guys & Dolls.

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Brooklyn, September 21 – Dr. Regina Peruggi, President of Kingsborough Community College (KCC), today announced that the college will host a roundtable on Brooklyn and Development, Thursday, October 13 from 5:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.  The roundtable will be held at the Marine Activities Center (MAC) Rotunda.  It is free and open to the public. 

The roundtable will focus on the most significant changes taking place in the Borough, from construction projects to population shifts, from economy to culture.  It will examine what drives these changes, who is affected by them, what role do individuals or communities have in shaping decisions that involve them directly and indirectly.

The roundtable panelists will include Tom Angotti, professor, Hunter College Department of Urban Affairs and Planning; Elizabeth Call, special collections librarian, Brooklyn Historical Society; Ted Hamm, editor, The Brooklyn Rail; John Manbeck, former Brooklyn Borough historian, professor emeritus, Kingsborough Community College; Paul Moses, professor of journalism, Brooklyn College, former city editor, Newsday; Kevin Powell, author and activist and Sharon Zukin, professor of sociology, Brooklyn College. Professors Libby Garland and Eben Wood are the roundtable coordinators.  Prospective attendees may RSVP to them at libby.garland@kingsborough.edu and eben.wood@kingsborough.edu.

The roundtable is a follow-up to the 2009 conference Dreamland Pavilion: Brooklyn and Development, at which academics, journalists, urban planners, activists, artists, students and others attended to explore the past, present and future meanings of development in Brooklyn.  In the two years since that conference, Brooklyn has continued to change; these changes raise a number of questions that this roundtable sets out to explore.

Registered attendees will be the guests of Kingsborough for a reception and early dinner catered by the college’s program in Culinary Arts under the expert direction of Chef Thomas Smyth, followed by the panel and a question-and-answer discussion with audience members. A related exhibition, “Borough/Borrow: Four Brooklyn Artists,” will run for the month of March, 2012 in Kingsborough’s Art Gallery.  As part of an ongoing series, the October roundtable and March exhibition will continue to link the college’s academic mission to its engagement with a larger community through the topic of development.

About Kingsborough Community College

KCC, among the top ten percent of community colleges in the country, is located on a 70-acre campus in Manhattan Beach, on the southern tip of Brooklyn.  It was founded in 1963 and serves approximately 30,000 students per year.  It offers a wide range of credit and non-credit courses in liberal arts and career education, as well as numerous specialized programs.  The campus overlooks three bodies of water:  Sheepshead Bay, Jamaica Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. 

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Contact:  Ruby Ryles

                       Kingsborough Community College

                        718-368-5543

Community Colleges: Kingsborough Scores
By President Regina Peruggi, Kingsborough Comm. College

Amid the excitement of a new school year, there are almost 100,000 students who will be attending our city’s community colleges. For many, community colleges are almost invisible. Despite the fact that they have been serving this city since the early 1960s, the six community colleges of The City University of New York (CUNY) remain little known and underappreciated. Were we living in any rural, suburban, or small-city environment in America, the local community college would be the focus of much attention and support. But, because we live where so much attention is directed to many large well-endowed, well-known universities and to the considerable difficulties of the public school systems, our community colleges and the important work that they do often go unnoticed.

Just consider this. Did you know that nearly 48 percent of all students in higher education today attend community colleges? Did you know that almost 80 percent of all uniformed police and firefighters received their degrees at a community college? If you’ve been ill or in a hospital recently, it is likely that the X-ray technician, the nurse who cared for you, the surgical technician in the operating room, and the respiratory or physical therapy assistant who provided your rehab are graduates of community colleges. Have you eaten in a restaurant lately, traveled or frequented a hotel? If so, the airline reservation clerk, the hotel manager, the chef or the restaurant owner were probably trained at a community college. Need a Web site, a brochure, some help learning how to use your computer? You can bet that the majority of those you contacted were educated at our community colleges.

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Posted: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 9:30 am | Updated: 9:15 pm, Mon Aug 29, 2011.

BY DENISE ROMANO AND HEATHER J. CHIN Home Reporter News

Now everyone is closer to getting a college-level education.

The Melissa Riggio Higher Education Program at Kingsborough Community College (KCC) prepares adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities for careers by offering them higher-education courses and social support in a challenging, yet nurturing environment.

“All of our students go to regular level college courses, with supports,” said Matthew Weiler, program director of the Association for the Help of Retarded Children (AHRC), adding that Medicare funds the program, so the only requisite to take the course is that you have to be eligible. “Nothing is specialized for them in terms of courses. They are not matriculated students, so they don’t get any credits, but they do get a certificate from the college and AHRC.”

The program started in August 2008 and currently serves 27 students: 15 are enrolled at KCC and 12 at the College of Staten Island. Three or four students from each school will graduate each year and each student is assigned a trained mentor from the matriculated student body that will help them adjust and process their academic and social experiences – doing everything from taking notes together in class to simply being a peer and friend.

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