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The Brooklyn College FoundationAnnual Report, 2004–2005
On the cover: Architectural plan for realization ofthe campus design envisioned by Brooklyn College’sfounding architect, Randolph Evans, in 1935. Theplan proposes new entrances to Roosevelt and JamesHalls, a new West Quad to mirror the existing EastQuad, and a new building to anchor the entire campuswest of Bedford Avenue. The West Quad Project is oneof several ambitious plans the College has launched tobuild a modern, student-centered campus conducive tolearning and scholarship.
Dear Friends of Brooklyn CollegeAt Brooklyn College in the last year, we have been busy building—not only the physical campus, but also the educationalenvironment that best encourages vigorous learning and scholarship.Our priorities result largely from initiatives we launched duringthe first five years of my presidency—and particularly within the lasttwelve months. These include expanding the campus, renewing thenatural sciences, and broadening our fiscal base.The physical transformation of the campus continues apace.We have doubled the size of the Morton and Angela Topfer LibraryCafé, and it is open again 24/7. Over the summer, we renovated andmodernized eleven lecture halls in Ingersoll Hall. We move aheadwith the West Quad Project, laying out a new quadrangle and pouringthe foundation for a new building.We have begun a major rebuilding of our science facilities and our science curriculum. Theproject will proceed in two stages. First, Roosevelt Hall will be transformed into a science building;then we will renovate Ingersoll Hall. The science faculty meanwhile has been discussing anddefining the shape science teaching and research should take at the College. You can read moreabout all these projects in the pages of this Annual Report.Brooklyn College has been more enterprising than ever in broadening our fiscal base. Ourforemost endeavor is to meet the challenge set by Leonard and Claire Tow, who have given us a 10-million matching grant to build a new performing arts center. We hope you will join our effortto fund the first privately financed building on campus.This is an exciting time of creating new structures for the College and ever greater opportunitiesfor students. The alumnae and alumni named in this report have contributed to this effort andhelped make Brooklyn College the magnificent public institution that it is.I look forward to working with you in the coming year.Christoph M. KimmichPresident
Dear Alumni and FriendsI am especially pleased to address you as chairman of the BrooklynCollege Foundation at such an exciting time in the history of BrooklynCollege, a time that both honors our tradition and looks to a futurefull of promise.The College celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary this year—an occasion especially meaningful for us in a period of rebirth andexpansion. We also broke ground for two new buildings on campusand celebrated our most recent Rhodes Scholar, Eugene Shenderov.Our Rhodes Scholar and our new construction are both examples ofhow your gifts to the Foundation can make Brooklyn College evenmore effective in enabling our students to learn, gain inspiration, andembark on productive lives.I thank President Christoph M. Kimmich for his leadership inall these endeavors. He has brought the College to new levels of purposefulness, prominence,and promise. We enjoy national recognition and attract a steady stream of ever more highlyqualified students.As you may know, it was my pleasure to establish the Magner Center for Career Developmentand Internships in 2003. At the Magner Center, students seek guidance about careers, exploreinternships in their chosen field, and plan for their futures; many win stipends available there tosupport their education. Again and again students have told me that the help they receive at theMagner Center has been invaluable to them as they move from the College out into the world.I find my direct involvement with students and their career development infinitely rewarding.I urge you, too, to identify an area in the College’s endeavor that interests you, to support it,and to enjoy the rewards.However you choose to support Brooklyn College, you can make a great difference in the livesof our students. Your gift ensures that the College will continue to enrich its academic programs,provide effective student services, support students with scholarships and stipends, and attract andretain an outstanding faculty.On behalf of the Foundation, I thank you for your support, past, present, and future.Marjorie M. Magner, ’69ChairmanBrooklyn College Foundation
An Architecture ofBrooklyn College continues a longtradition of distinguished campusarchitecture that creates anenvironment conducive to learningand scholarship.
ExcellenceThe College has had a banner year.We celebrated our seventy-fifth anniversary, launched a majorconstruction and renovation project that will transform thecampus, distinguished ourselves with another Rhodes Scholar,won high marks from the Princeton Review for quality andaffordability, and made plans to ensure that we will continue toperform at this high level.A huge crowd—students, faculty, staff, trustees, and guests—gathered on the Quad on May 10, 2005, for our seventy-fifthbirthday party. Actors portraying President Franklin D. Roosevelt,his wife, Eleanor, and Mayor Fiorello La Guardia arrived in aclassic car to lay the cornerstone of the campus once again. Mackthe Knife and Pirate Jenny performed numbers from a galaproduction of The Threepenny Opera. The Theater Departmentdesigned a giant birthday cake, a children’s choir sang and a schoolorchestra played, and everyone signed a huge birthday card.The celebration continues throughout the year. The “Brooklynon My Mind” reading series, hosted by Leonard Lopate of WNYCRadio, will feature such leading Brooklyn writers as JonathanLethem, Pete Hamill, Susan Choi, and Colson Whitehead. TheDepartment of Theater will present a number of notable works,such as Nobel Prize–winning poet Seamus Heaney’s adaptation ofAntigone and works by Donald Margulies (Sight Unseen), Marivaux(The Game of Love and Chance), and Arthur Miller (theMcCarthy-era parable The Crucible). The Conservatory of Musicwill offer nearly fifty concerts this year, and in December theBrooklyn College Opera Theater will mount a full-scaleproduction of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro. The Art Departmentwill finish the year with an important retrospective exhibit of theworks of the most esteemed graduates since the inception of itsM.F.A. program.
Brooklyn College is famous for its beautiful campus. The College isalso notable for its state-of-the-art technology. These contribute to alearning environment in which students can change their lives.In the most important capital expansion since the Midwoodcampus was constructed during the Great Depression, the Collegecontinues its tradition of distinguished architecture and first-ratefacilities in five major projects: the new West Quad Building; the newCenter for the Performing Arts; expansion of the Morton and AngelaTopfer Library Café; conversion of Roosevelt Hall into a center forscience and research and modernization of the Ingersoll lecture halls;and creation of a conference center in the Student Center.
Brooklyn College’s Rhodes ScholarsEugene Shenderov, ’05Born in Ukraine, Eugene was two years old when the Chernobylnuclear reactor, 140 miles from his home, melted down. Eugenedeveloped leukemia, and the Shenderovs immigrated to Brooklynto seek treatment when Eugene was six. After years of homeschooling, Eugene entered Edward R. Murrow High School, wherehe graduated near the top of his class. He entered BrooklynCollege on a Presidential Scholarship and enrolled in theB.A.–M.D. program. A chemistry major, he won a Furman TravelStipend in summer 2004, which he used to pursue cancer researchat Oxford University. In fall 2004, Eugene was named a RhodesScholar and the following spring, a National Institutes of Healthfellow. He has now returned to Oxford University to work withDr. Enzo Cerundolo, a world-renowned cancer researcher, at theWeatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine.Lisette Nieves, ’91Lisette Nieves was a 1992 Rhodes Scholar and is a graduate also ofthe Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs ofPrinceton University. She was director for special projects at theAfter-School Corporation, where she designed forums forsuperintendents and principals and pilot programs for mentoringin local high schools. She also served as director of grantsmanagement at the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone and aschief of staff for the New York City Department of Youth andCommunity Development. Currently, Lisette is a consultant tononprofit organizations in strategic planning, programdevelopment, and management, and a graduate instructor inpublic administration at Brooklyn College.
A vision realized.This past year, President Christoph M. Kimmich launched the mostambitious part of a plan to restore the campus to the original 1935 designby its founding architect, Randolph Evans. A second quadrangle will becreated west of Bedford Avenue, anchored by a strikingly beautiful WestQuad Building.As a first step to implementing this plan, Plaza Building has beendemolished. Throughout the spring and summer, workers painstakinglyseparated Plaza from adjacent James and Roosevelt Halls, and at the end ofthe summer it was reduced to rubble. For the master plan of which thisproject is a part, the Society of College and University Planners awardedBrooklyn College the Excellence in Planning and Architecture Merit Awardin Campus Heritage at its annualmeeting in July 2005.The continuing
West Quad BuildingThe stunning new West Quad Building will consolidate under oneroof currently scattered student services—registrar, bursar,academic advisement, scholarships, financial aid, and the MagnerCenter for Career Development and Internships. The West QuadBuilding will also house the Department of Physical Educationand Exercise Science and first-rate athletic facilities: a swimmingpool and high-diving board, competition and practicegymnasiums, a dance studio, racquetball courts, a fitness center,and teaching and research labs. A centrally positioned glassenclosed stairwell and elevator tower will be illuminated at nightlike a beacon across the campus.The project’s architect, Rafael Viñoly, has a history of designingcollege buildings. His renovation of John Jay College of CriminalJustice won the esteemed Bard Award and the Municipal ArtSociety Award.Center for the Performing ArtsThe Center for the Performing Arts will be an architecturallystriking building housing rehearsal and performance space, setdesign and construction workshops, a double-height theater, agrand lobby and arcade for exhibitions, and classroom, meeting,and reception space. This consortium of the performing arts willattract theorists and practicing artists, talented students, anddistinguished faculty.transformation.Leonard, ’50, and Claire, ’52, Tow have pledged an unprecedentedgift of 10 million to Brooklyn College for the new campusfacility, the first on campus to be built from private funds. Thebalance of the construction costs, approximately 15 million, willcome from the matching gifts of generous friends and alumni.The Library CaféThe Morton and Angela Topfer Library Café at Brooklyn Collegewas the only Internet café in the City University of New Yorkwhen it opened in 2000. Equipped with fifty networkedcomputer stations and open twenty-four hours, seven days a week,the café is immensely popular and serves as many as eight hundredstudents a day. Natural light enters the café through large windowsoverlooking a planted courtyard. The interior space is madeinviting by wood finishes and comfortable ergonomic seating.The Library Café has been such a resounding success that it hasjust been expanded to twice its original size and furnished withthirty additional workstations and eighteen wireless ports. Thereare new study areas as well.
Ingersoll Hall and Roosevelt HallAlumni visiting Ingersoll Hall often remark that “the place hasn’tchanged much.” Indeed, movie crews looking for a “circa 1930sclassroom” found a perfect set in Ingersoll’s old lecture halls, withtheir fixed wooden seats, quaint laboratory tables equipped withBunsen burners, and vintage versions of the periodic table. Thissummer, a number of these venerable lecture halls were completelyrefurbished and modernized. The old wooden lecture hall seats,dark with age from seventy years of hard use by Brooklyn Collegestudents, have been removed and replaced with far morecomfortable seats. And installed in each lecture hall is a suite ofaudiovisual equipment that allows instructors to project computerscreen images, DVDs, and other media, giving students in thesciences access to the full range of educational materials nowavailable in their subjects.While crews were restoring the geology lecture hall on the thirdfloor, faculty rediscovered a rare set of dinosaur footprints from theGlen Rose Trackway in Texas, perhaps the world’s most famousdinosaur track discovery. The rock, painted brown and attached tothe wall, was hidden behind a projection screen. The specimenwas identified when the signature of College dinosaur hunterRoland Bird was found on the wall behind the rock. The tracks,which Bird gave the College in 1942, will be restored by geologystudents in the coming year.Roosevelt Hall, long home to the Department of PhysicalEducation and Exercise Science, will be transformed into a sciencebuilding when the West Quad Building opens with new gyms, adance studio, pool, and other facilities. The renovation ofRoosevelt Hall is part of an academic initiative to renew thenatural sciences at Brooklyn College.Conference Centerin the Student CenterBrooklyn College attracts distinguished scholars, artists, and publicfigures, who lecture, attend conferences, and meet with ourstudents. The Woody Tanger Auditorium in the Brooklyn CollegeLibrary is a modern space equipped to record and broadcast theseevents. The College also needs a larger facility with thesophisticated technology that today’s presentations require.The top two floors of the Student Center will be redesigned toaccommodate a Conference Center. Video projectors, computer andaudiovisual interfaces, projector screens, and an audio system will alsoserve academic conferences and meetings and make the College anattractive setting for large gatherings of community organizations.
“A Fierce Determination,”Library Archival ExhibitBrooklyn College graduates sometimes don’t realize that duringtheir years at Brooklyn College they were making history. Since1950, the Special Collections Division of the Brooklyn CollegeLibrary has been collecting student materials, includingnewspapers, yearbooks, course bulletins, fraternity and sororitymemorabilia, and student handbills. George Edelman, ’42, forexample, has donated an extensive collection of College sportsmemorabilia: football jerseys, pennants, and programs thatdocument the glory days of the Kingsman gridders.For our seventy-fifth anniversary, College Archivist AnthonyCucchiara and his staff mounted a glorious exhibit of some of theseitems. From the silver shovel that Mayor La Guardia used to breakground on the Midwood campus to the costume worn by JimmySmits, ’80, when he played Othello in a College production, theexhibit gleaned the most representative treasures from the College’scollection; it showed relics from Country Fair and the houseplans, and mementos from such favorite teachers as “Skipper” JoDavidson and Dean Adele Bildersee. Alumni who have seen theexhibit have come away touched, amused, and full of nostalgia.If you have material from your years at Brooklyn College thatyou wish to share, please call the Archives and Special CollectionsDivision of the Brooklyn College Library at (718) 951-5346 toarrange a donation.Boylan, La Guardia, Ingersoll,Roosevelt: these are the big nameson campus today.In the current building boomat Brooklyn College, renovations,upgrades, and new structures areeverywhere in evidence. In yearsto come, these new, still unnamedbuildings will make the sameimpact on our students as thosenamed Boylan, La Guardia,Ingersoll, and Roosevelt.These improvements create anopportunity for our friends. Wecan think of no more effectiveway to leave a legacy than to havean integral part of BrooklynCollege named after you orsomeone you wish to honor andremember.Please call the BrooklynCollege Foundation for moreinformation about perpetuating aname and helping BrooklynCollege perpetuate its tradition ofacademic excellence.
New TrusteesMarjorie Magner, ’69, ChairmanMarjorie Magner is one of the financial services industry’s mostaccomplished women. While serving as chairman and CEO ofCitigroup’s Global Consumer Group, Magner was frequentlyrecognized as one of Wall Street’s most successful leaders. Herhonors included Fortune’s Most Powerful Women in AmericanBusiness, The Wall Street Journal ’s list of 50 Women to Watchand U.S. Banker magazine’s Most Powerful Women in Banking.After graduating from Brooklyn College with a degree inpsychology, Magner attended the Krannert School of Managementat Purdue University, where she earned an MSIA. Early in hercareer, she worked for Chemical Bank and after 1987 forCitigroup and its predecessor companies in positions of increasingresponsibility. Magner is an active supporter of her alma mater.Her philanthropy established the Magner Center for CareerDevelopment and Internships as well as CareerMakers, whichplaces students in one-semester internships at Citibank. TheAlumni Association named Magner “Alumna of the Year” at itsrecent Seventy-fifth Anniversary Gala.Barry Feirstein, ’74Barry Feirstein received a bachelor’s degree in economics, with aminor in political science. He earned an M.B.A. from HarvardBusiness School in 1978 and began his career as a technologyanalyst for what is now the Equitable Capital Corporation, wherehe rose to become a managing director. In 1993, he foundedFeirstein Capital Management, LLC, of which he is president.He has also established Feirstein Partners and Feirstein OffshoreFund, Inc., investment firms that specialize in U.S. securities.Oheneba Boachie-Adjei, ’76Oheneba Boachie-Adjei is associate clinical professor oforthopaedic surgery at Weill Medical College of Cornell Universityand associate attending orthopaedic surgeon at the Hospital forSpecial Surgery and New York-Presbyterian Hospital, where he ischief of the scoliosis service. Boachie-Adjei graduated fromBrooklyn College with a bachelor’s degree summa cum laude inchemistry and earned his medical degree from the ColumbiaUniversity College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1980. He isfounder and chairman of the Foundation of Orthopaedics andComplex Spine, which treats bone disorders in the people ofGhana and Barbados. New York magazine named him one ofNew York’s top doctors in June 2005.
Individual Donors 500,000 and overMorton L. Topfer, ’59 250,000–499,999Donald Kramer, ’58 100,000–249,999Himan Brown, ’34Edith Everett, ’49Roy L. Furman, ’60Murray Koppelman, ’57Samuel I. LeveyMarjorie Magner, ’69Rosemarie MiccolisAlexander M. Tanger, ’01Howard P. TangerLeonard, ’50, and Claire, ’52, TowMarcus WeinsteinBernard H. Garil, ’62Ilene Gold, ’62Bernard HamermeshHerbert Kurz, ’41Irwin Schneiderman, ’43Anonymous (one donor) 10,000–24,999Tamara CaseyNehru E. CherukupalliJ. Morton Davis, ’57Barbara Leslie Gerber, ’62Arlene Jagoda, ’64, andRobert M., ’59, GoldbergAlan C. GreenbergJules Haimovitz, ’71Marshall G. Kaplan, ’49Arthur M., ’77, and Marianna KellerChristoph M. and Flora Graham, ’88,KimmichBenzion Lebowicz, ’00Steven R. Belasco, ’67Edwin H. Cohen, ’62George, ’42, and Beatrice, ’43,EdelmanGloria Britton EvansRichard, ’68, and Rosanne, ’69,GaccioneSally HenryMyron, ’52, and Thelma, ’54, KandelSaul B. Ka
Brooklyn College has been more enterprising than ever in broadening our fiscal base. Our . bursar, academic advisement, scholarships, financial aid, and the Magner Center for Career Development and Internships. The West Quad Building will also house the Department of Physical Education
