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Bengali is spoken by more than a quarter billion people mainly in Bangladesh and the West Bengal region of India. At The City College of New York, not only is it the fourth most popular native language among students – behind English, Spanish and Chinese – but; undergraduates can now take a year of Bengali to fulfill their language requirement. “We have a large Bengali-speaking population whose needs were not being met,” said Dr. Carlos Riobó, chair of the City College Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. “Offering courses in Bengali speaks to how City College is responding to the

The first four City College of New York President's Community Scholars will graduate May 30 as members of CCNY's Class of 2014. City College President Lisa S. Coico established the scholarship program, which provides full tuition for high-achieving students from upper Manhattan, in 2010. The four graduating students are: Laura Arias, a psychology major in the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership; Daoud Nsangou, a computer science major in the Grove School of Engineering; Mohammed Sabha, mathematics major; Jatnna Taveras, also a psychology major in the Colin Powell School. Ms

$50,000 Kaylie Prize to GesTone for muscle tone assessment technology GesTone, a technology using biosensors and smart detecting software to quantify and assess muscle tone, won the $50,000 Kaylie Prize for Hardware. It was the largest award of $115,000 in prize money distributed to 11 teams competing in three City College of New York entrepreneurship competitions this month that were run by the Zahn Innovation Center. Muscle tone data is necessary for treating and measuring progress of patients undergoing physical therapy after a stroke. GesTone’s biofeedback data will enable therapists to

Actress Lillias White, ’78, retail executive Millard Drexler and transportation official Henry Perahia, ’71BME, ’73MME, to receive honorary degrees The City College of New York's 168th Commencement Exercises take place 9 a.m., Friday, May 30, on the City College campus at135th Street at Convent Avenue, Manhattan. The College will confer honorary degrees at commencement on: Actress Lillias White, a 1978 City College graduate and award-winning performer, who will receive the honorary degree doctor of fine arts; Retail executive Millard Drexler, chairman and CEO of J.Crew Group, Inc., who

Four-day festival, June 2 – 5, led by CCNY’s Division of Interdisciplinary Studies, shares culture, language and stories of the Americas through film Rodrigo H. Vila’s documentary “Mercedes Sosa: The Voice of Latin America” (“Mercedes Sosa: La voz de Latinoamérica”), will be the opening film for the inaugural The Americas Film Festival of New York (TAFFNY). The event, a cultural project of The City College of New York’s Division of Interdisciplinary Studies at the Center for Worker Education (CWE), runs June 2 – 5. TAFFNY will present feature-length films, documentaries and shorts and

50-year member of engineering faculty leads honorees at 2014 faculty recognition ceremony Dr. Latif M. Jiji , Herbert Kayser Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the Grove School of Engineering , received The City College of New York's President's Award for Excellence Tuesday, May 13, for his half century of work at CCNY. Professor Jiji was among the honorees at CCNY's 2014 faculty recognition ceremony in The Great Hall, Shepard Hall on the college campus. "City College is a great institution because at its core is a strong, dedicated, and hardworking faculty," said President Lisa S. Coico

City College President Lisa S. Coico presented S.T.A.R. awards (Service, Teamwork, Action and Results) to six administrators, one posthumously, May 7 at the annual President's Staff Appreciation and Service Awards ceremony. Pyser S. Edelsack, director of field education in the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education , who died May 5, was the posthumous honoree. "Pyser served the Sophie Davis School for more than 35 years and his commitment to its students was bar none," said President Coico. "His passing is tragic and a great loss." The other 2014 S.T.A.R. recipients and their hometowns

The Kaylie Prize for Hardware presents the next generation of technology start-ups. Five City College start-ups are competing for a $50,000 grand prize and a $5,000 audience prize, with the winners to be chosen Friday, May 16. The competition final event runs 4:30 – 8 p.m. in the Faculty Dining Room on the 3rd floor of the North Academic Center at The City College of New York campus. Now in its fourth year, the Kaylie Prize has implemented for the first time a hardware theme for competing start-ups as well as its first audience prize, with event attendees voting for their favorite start-up

Seven students from The City College of New York's Grove School of Engineering have won 2014 NIST-SURF fellowships for summer research with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Md. NIST, a non-regulatory agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, describes itself as one of the world's leading research institutions. "The NIST research fields matches the engineering majors at CCNY very well, and the seven represent the largest number of City College participants in the NIST-SURF (Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow) program since 2010," said Dr. Yuying Q

Three City College of New York theatre majors will spend this summer in an intensive eight-week program at the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art (LAMDA), supported by the City College Fund and the Division of Humanities and the Arts. “This is a huge deal,” said Professor Rob Barron, chair of the CCNY Department of Theatre and Speech. “LAMDA is an extraordinary training program. It’s an opportunity that 95 percent of our students couldn’t afford to do on their own.” Students chosen for the program are: Alessandro Barbarotto, ’14, of Lindenhurst, N.Y., a native of Italy who transferred to