CUNY Names CCNY's Ramona Hernández, Richard Steinberg, and Andrea Weiss Distinguished Professors

Three renowned City College of New York faculty members, sociologist Ramona Hernández, physics/science educator Richard Steinberg and documentary filmmaker Andrea Weiss, are among 12 outstanding City University of New York (CUNY) scholars elevated to the rank of Distinguished Professor. 

The title of Distinguished Professor is the highest academic honor that CUNY can offer its faculty. It’s conferred by the CUNY Board of Trustees in recognition of exceptional scholarly achievement. Distinguished Professorships are reserved for faculty with records of exceptional performance by national and international standards of excellence in their profession.

Following are brief bios of CCNY’s latest CUNY Distinguished Professors:

Ramona Hernández:
Director of the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute at CCNY, Hernández studies Latin American and Caribbean labor mobility and the socioeconomic conditions of U.S. Dominicans. Her scholarship emphasizes institutional data and quantitative analysis, as exemplified in The Mobility of Workers Under Advanced Capitalism: Dominican Migration to the United States, named an “Outstanding Academic Title” by Choice. She has authored numerous authoritative books, book chapters, and peer-reviewed journal articles, and established Classic Knowledge in Dominican Studies, the first English-language book series in Dominican Studies, published by Routledge. Under her leadership, CUNY DSI has become the leading academic center for Dominican Studies, recognized for its pioneering research, publications, and preservation of Dominican history and culture. She founded the first Dominican Archives in the U.S. and the nation’s only known interdisciplinary summer internship in Dominican Studies, training undergraduate and graduate researchers from the U.S. and abroad for over 15 years. She has secured over $25 million in external funding for research at CUNY DSI. Hernández is executive director of the Inter-University Program for Latino Research and serves on the CUNY Graduate Center’s Doctoral Faculty. She received the Order of Merit of Duarte, Sánchez and Mella, as Commander, the Dominican Republic’s highest national order of merit.

Richard Steinberg:
A faculty member in The City College School of Education and Department of Physics for 27 years, Steinberg has secured over $9 million in external funding, produced more than 100 publications and invited presentations, and received numerous honors, including election as both a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and the National Academy of Education. His scholarship bridges physics and education in ways that few others have accomplished, advancing both the discipline and its pedagogy. Steinberg has been recognized with multiple awards, including national recognition from APS and the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) as one of only 11 exemplary physics teacher educators across the country. He has mentored more than 1,000 students in physics and education, many of whom have gone on to careers in academia, teaching, and leadership. In the words of reviewers, “his career exemplifies the integration of deep disciplinary expertise in physics with innovative, impactful work in science education,” and he has “established CCNY as a leading model for teacher preparation and professional development.” Reviewers also describe him as an “international leader in physics education.” Read more.

Andrea Weiss:
An internationally acclaimed documentary filmmaker and nonfiction author, Weiss most recently co-produced and directed (with Greta Schiller) and also edited the feature documentary “The Five Demands.” The film tells the little-known story of a 1969 student strike by Black and Puerto Rican students at CCNY that changed the face of higher education. It won the Henry Hampton Award for Excellence in Documentary Filmmaking, as well as the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film. The film had an arthouse cinema release and was broadcast nationally over PBS in Fall 2024. Weiss is also the writer/director/editor of “Bones of Contention,” a feature documentary delving into the historical memory movement in Spain and the unknown story of LGBT repression under the Franco dictatorship. It won several jury and audience awards, including in Russia and Spain. Her books include Paris Was a Woman, which was winner of a Lambda Literary Award; Vampires and Violets, and In the Shadow of the Magic Mountain: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story, which won a Publishing Triangle Award for Best Nonfiction. Her books have been translated into French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Swedish, Slovenian and Croatian. Read more.