News

In a recording studio in the Computer Music Center, four teenaged girls listen to a playback of their spoken word track. Their instructor, Sondra Woodruff, a senior at the School of General Studies and an established singer, composer and recording artist, asks “How do you want your voice to sound?”

Lyrics float out of the speakers: “Dear mommy, dear daddy, tía, tío, abuela, abuelo, you carry the mistakes of our colonizers on your back and make them your own; that changes now, our voices will be heard, stigmas will be broken, truth will be spoken.”

CU Grow: Vendor Development Program, a Facilities and Operations initiative designed to help minority-, women- and locally owned (MWL) vendors of the University grow their businesses, graduated its second cohort at an event this evening at Faculty House.

Each year at the President’s Holiday Party, attendees are required to bring along a unwrapped toy for children aged 12 and younger. The next day - Columbia Community Service with the support of numerous volunteers sorts the toys - that eventually are distributed to twelve CCS Grantees that are local area youth serving organizations.  The toy drive encourages the Columbia Community to give back and helps local area parents give toys to their children. Featured in this video is the one of those organizations, Uptown Inner City League and its President and Founder (and long-time West Harlem resident) Kelvin McCallister.

The Obama Foundation Scholars Program at Columbia University is a new program from the Obama Foundation, the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, and Columbia. The program brings together rising leaders from around the world who have demonstrated a commitment to finding solutions to challenges in their communities, countries, and regions. Over the course of an academic year, the Obama Foundation Scholars will have the opportunity to deepen their knowledge and skills and to build new capacities and networks that will accelerate their impact in their home countries.

One of the Columbia programs available to members of the community as part of the benefits associated with the Manhattanville campus is free course auditing through the Columbia University School of Professional Studies. Providing access to lecture courses in a broad range of academic disciplines, auditing is an opportunity to be present in a classroom setting and engage intellectually with readings without being required to complete assignments, take examinations, or receive a grade.

The Office of Government and Community Affairs (GCA) is working in partnership with the Tamer Center for Social Enterprise ReEntry Acceleration Program (REAP) Business Association to provide support for formerly incarcerated people. One part of the program’s marketing strategy is the Counts of Monte Cristo Project, which aims to identify and explore the lives of the 30 percent of formerly incarcerated people who do not reoffend or become reincarcerated.

The Freedom and Citizenship college seminar and academic enrichment program is a hidden gem here at Columbia University. The program has raised the bar in developing our next generation of high school students to become “informed, responsible citizens.” Founded in 2009, in partnership with Columbia’s Roger Lehecka Double Discovery Center and the Center for American Studies, Freedom and Citizenship successfully created a program accessible to high school students in low-income communities, introducing them to college level work in the humanities. Students are paired with undergraduate mentors to guide them through the college application process; they are also given the opportunity to get a real feel for campus living through attending a free four-week residential summer intensive seminar course in political philosophy at Columbia.

Ten New York City math, science, robotics, and art and technology teachers spent the summer learning how to master the most advanced techniques in wireless technology with help from researchers at Columbia University, Columbia’s Data Science Institute, and NYU. The middle and high school teachers teamed up with researchers on both campuses to design web-based lab experiments that illustrate the theory and practice of wireless networking. The teachers, four of whom are from Harlem schools, will begin using the lab experiments in their classrooms this fall, giving students hands-on experience with the next wave of mobile technology.

One afternoon last spring, America SCORES, a nonprofit dedicated to providing underresourced communities with opportunities to excel in soccer, literacy, and service learning, convened more than 750 of their poet-athletes from participating New York City public schools at their annual Jamboree at Columbia’s Baker Athletic Field. The Jamboree was a day filled with fun, soccer, and literacy building. In previous years, America SCORES Executive Director Shannon Schneeman had struggled to find a suitable location for this culminating event, particularly one within their budget.

Dear Neighbors,

Warm greetings from your newest neighbor. I’m not the most obvious person to step into this role: I’m a former foreign correspondent who was raised in the South, worked in government at the federal level, and has never lived in New York City.

Needless to say, I have much to learn about Morningside Heights, Harlem, and the Manhattanville campus and from the countless individuals who contribute to “the ongoing creation of a great university,” as President Lee Bollinger said at the Forum opening in September.

Columbia University and other local volunteers served a pre-Thanksgiving feast to over 115 senior citizens.

Ever since Mercedes Santana was a child, she enjoyed working with her hands.  So it comes as no surprise that her natural proclivities and talents have served her well in progressing professionally at Columbia University Facilities and Operations – aided by the Facilities and Operations apprenticeship program.

Santana joined Facilities and Operations as a heavy cleaner in 2006, six years after she relocated to the United States from the Dominican Republic where she worked in accounting.  While successful as a heavy cleaner, she knew she wanted to pursue other opportunities available.  The right one came along when she learned of the Facilities and Operations apprenticeship program through a colleague.  

Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today—the latest exhibition at Columbia’s Wallach Art Gallery on its Manhattanville Campus—re-examines the history of modern art. Specifically, it proposes that the changing representation of the black female figure has been central to the development of modernism.

Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger today joined Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano, founder and principal of Renzo Piano Building Workshop, to inaugurate The Forum: a new 56,000-square-foot, three-story facility that completes the first ensemble of new buildings on Columbia’s Manhattanville campus in West Harlem. The Forum adds long-needed space at Columbia for academic conferences, meetings and public discussion to the new campus’s already completed buildings dedicated to arts presentation and neuroscience research. The facility will serve the entire University community, while providing a welcoming, transparent gateway to the 17-acre campus for students, faculty, guest scholars and members of the general public.

The following is a message sent from Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger to the Columbia community. Dear fellow members of the Columbia community: I am very pleased to announce my appointment of Shailagh Murray as Executive Vice President for Public Affairs, as of September 4, 2018.  Shailagh will oversee both the Office of Communications and Public Affairs and the Office of Government and Community Affairs.