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Delegation from Shimoda to Honor Townsend Harris July 14 Hon. Naoki Ishii, Mayor of Shimoda, Japan, will lead a 14-member delegation on a pilgrimage to The City College of New York (CCNY) July 14 to honor CCNY’s founder Townsend Harris, who opened the first U.S. consulate in Japan. The party will be the 24th delegation from Shimoda to visit CCNY to pay homage to Mr. Harris, who founded the College as The Free Academy in 1847. The visit coincides with the 150th anniversary of the visit of the first Japanese Ambassador to New York prior to opening the first Japanese embassy in Washington. Mr

Check-Cashing Businesses and Other Alternatives to Banks Still Widely Used in NYC Dominican Community New York City’s 600,000-plus Dominicans are more likely than Latinos nationwide to have accounts at a bank or credit union. However, they continue to rely heavily on alternative financial institutions such as check-cashing businesses, and use costly financial instruments such as money orders and tax refund anticipation loans because the mainstream financial institutions are not meeting their needs. Those were among the key findings of a study by the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute (CUNY-DSI)

Insooni Overcame Discrimination to Become R&B Star Kim In-soon, the acclaimed Korean R&B vocalist, came to The City College of New York (CCNY) Thursday, June 3, to visit with students and to present a $10,000 gift to the Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies. The gift will support the Center’s mission of developing new generations of leaders from populations previously underrepresented in public service and policy circles. Popularly known by her stage name, Insooni, Ms. Kim’s donation coincides with the development of the Center’s new Korean Insights and Issues program, set to launch in 2011

Dr. John J. Lee, Distinguished Professor of Biology at The City College of New York (CCNY), received the 2010 Faculty Service Award from the CCNY Alumni Association at the Association’s 158th Annual Meeting June 10, in The Great Hall. In addition, the Association presented its second Administrative Service Award to Robin Villa, ’75MA, Director of the Honors College. An internationally recognized researcher in marine microbial ecology, Professor Lee was honored for his 40 years of service to CCNY and CUNY. He has been an outstanding teacher and mentor to undergraduate and graduate students

18-Month Study Funded by Grants from the New Jersey Department of Transportation and the University Transportation Research Center With a coastline stretching from New York Harbor to Cape May, New Jersey stands to benefit from a new study designed to pinpoint the top 20 sites for hydrokinetic energy, a renewable resource produced by the movement of tides, waves and currents in oceans and other bodies of water. A City College of New York (CCNY) engineering professor is partnering with Natural Currents Energy Services, LLC (NCES), a leader in tidal power technology, to locate these sites. Dr

Borough President Stringer, C. Virginia Fields & CCNY Pres. Paaswell to Attend Opening WHCR 90.3 FM, The City College of New York’s community radio station, unveils its new studios at CCNY 10 a.m., Wednesday, June 16 after a $1.7m facelift designed to boost service to listeners in upper Manhattan. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and his predecessor C. Virginia Fields, whose offices helped fund work on the state-of-the-art facility, will be the guests of honor at the opening in CCNY’s North Academic Center (NAC) building, Room 1/513. Dr. Robert E. Paaswell, Interim President, City

St. Nicholas Park on the slopes of The City College of New York (CCNY) in uptown Manhattan will morph into an open air art space this summer, thanks to a collaboration between CCNY, the West Harlem Art Fund, Inc., and other community partners. On public view in the 22.74 acre park from June 16 through the end of July will be the exhibit “In Dialogue,” an arrangement of contemporary art installations by artists, including students from CCNY’s MFA Studio Art Program. It will be unveiled at 2 p.m. in the Meadows, near the 135th Street plaza. The artists participating in the exhibition include

CCNY President to lead dialogue on future of mass transit in US Dr. Robert E. Paaswell, Interim President of The City College of New York (CCNY) and an internationally recognized transportation expert, will join award-winning executive producer Kathleen Hughes and Aaron Woolf, director of PBS’s “Blueprint America: Beyond the Motor City,” for a panel discussion at the New York screening of the eye-opening documentary, Monday, June 14 at CCNY. Hosted by CCNY’s Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies, both the film and subsequent discussion will be held in Shepard Hall, room 95, from 6 p.m. to 9 p

David Willinger’s “Lunatics, Lovers and Actors” Shot on Campus with Many Students in Cast Dr. David Willinger, stage director, playwright and Professor in the Department of Theatre and Speech at The City College of New York (CCNY), is making his cinematic directorial debut. His first film, “Lunatics, Lovers and Actors,” will make its world premiere Tuesday, June 22, at the New Hope Film Festival in New Hope, PA. The film was shot on location at CCNY and in adjoining St. Nicholas Park. Many CCNY students have roles in the production. The film is a socio-political satire about an imaginative

First Student to Receive Full Scholarship to Famed Summer Program in France Helen Levin, a graduating fifth-year architecture student in the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at The City College of New York (CCNY), has been awarded the AIA Fontainebleau Prize. The prize provides a full scholarship to the summer program for architects at the Fontainebleau Schools held in Chateau Fontainebleau, south of Paris. A second graduating fifth-year architecture student at CCNY, Shengyi Pu, won a partial scholarship to attend Fontainebleau. The awards are given by the Center for