LL Spring05.indd - Lehman College

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Lehman's Golden Key
Wins Chapter Award
Ayanna Timothy, Haydee Acevedo
accept the Chapter Award from
Professor Di Yerbury, vice chancellor
of Macquarie University in Australia.
The Lehman chapter of Golden Key
International Honor Society has
won the prestigious Key Chapter
Award, awarded to only one chapter
each year.
The award honors chapters that
excel in communication, publicity,
meeting management, chapter
activities and leadership, as well
as in participation in regional and
international programs.
Golden Key cited the Lehman
chapter's “outstanding teamwork,
dedication and collaboration with
other student organizations on their
campus.” Golden Key has nearly 350
chapters on four continents.
Lehman College of The City University of New
York is located at 250 Bedford Park Boulevard
West, Bronx, NY 10468. Anne Johnson, Vice
President for Institutional Advancement; Barbara
Smith, Director of Alumni Relations.
Lehman Lightning is produced in the Office of
Media Relations and Publications.
Editor: Marge Rice. Staff: Keisha-Gaye Anderson,
Barbara Cardillo, Lisandra Merentis, Yeara Milton,
Florian Penev and Phyllis Yip
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Alumnus Mitch Weiss '81
Credits Lehman Faculty for Giving Him a Strong Start
Mitch Weiss was never that
excited about school. He
preferred hanging out with friends
and checking out the hottest grafitti
in the New York City subways.
But when he enrolled in Lehman
College, the Pulitzer Prize-winning
journalist found the faculty support
and academic foundation that he
needed to speed him on his way to a
successful journalistic career.
“I wasn’t a great student in high
school,” says Weiss, a writer for
the Toledo Blade. “I was more into
hanging out than I was into going to school.”
Weiss won a Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for his
four-part series, “Buried Secrets, Brutal Truths,”
which exposed a U.S. government cover-up
of Vietnam war crimes committed by the U.S.
military group Tiger Force.
He always knew that he wanted to be a
writer, but it wasn’t until he entered Lehman
that he began to seriously nurture that dream.
“Lehman gave me a great foundation,” he says.
“The thing that really benefited me was the fact
that the teachers were accessible and the classes
were small. It was a world-class faculty.”
After graduating from Lehman
in 1981, he went on to earn his
master’s in journalism from
Northwestern.
Like many Lehman students,
Weiss worked while going to
school to help pay his tuition.
He grew up in the Bronx in a
working-class family that believed
education was very important. He
says that the one-on-one attention
he received from his Lehman
Mitch Weiss '81 professors really helped him to stay
on track with his educational goals.
“If I didn’t have teachers who were interested
in me, maybe I would have fallen through the
cracks,” says Weiss, whose brother and sister
also graduated from Lehman. He tries to give
that same kind of personalized attention to the
students he teaches at the University of Toledo.
“It seemed that the teachers at Lehman
were more interested in connecting with the
students. That was really helpful.”
Weiss is taking time off to work on a book
based on his Pulitzer Prize-winning article. The
book, Tiger Force (Little, Brown and Company),
is scheduled for release later this year. ◆
The City and the Humanities Program at Lehman will sponsor a lecture by Mitch Weiss
and his co-author, Michael Sala, on Thursday, December 1, 2005 at 12:30 pm. All alumni
and friends of the College are invited. Details will be posted on the Lehman website
(www.lehman.edu) and published in the next issue of Lehman Lightning.
Legos ® Aren't Just for Kids Anymore
Lehman students are building programming
skills by building robots.
These robots are only about as smart as
a microwave oven, but Lehman Scholars
and Honors College students are able to
make them do some interesting things.
The students are looking at the effects
of computers on society, especially
how robotics impacts our interaction
with the world. Besides traditional
coursework, the students design, build
and program Lego® Mindstorm Robots
to perform various tasks and also create
a technical guide to their use.
Equipped with only an H8 Hitachi processor,
the same type used in microwave ovens,
the students program the robots to follow a
flashlight, navigate an obstacle course, play
catch with another robot, throw balls into
baskets and send messages to other robots.
“Compared to a regular laptop, the robots
aren’t very smart,” says Professor Katherine
St. John, who teaches the course. “It’s amazing
Professor Katherine St. John (right) watches as Judy
Figueroa runs her robot through its paces.
how much you can do with so little processing
power and speed.” The course also teaches students
about geometry, gearing and locomotion.
“The most practical thing the students learn
is how to program a computer,” says Professor
St. John. “These skills will transfer to programming
in C, C++, and Java—all commonly used
today.” ◆