Spring 2011 Issue - Lehman College

campus walk
Lehman Students Capture Major Awards
This has been a banner year for Lehman students capturing major
awards. In the fall, three of the seven recipients winning the coveted
Women’s Forum awards were Lehman students, each bringing
home a $10,000 scholarship. They
competed against more than 100 other
college students.
Then in the spring, senior Ann Marie
Alcocer became the fourth Lehman
student to win the extremely selective
$100,000 Math for America fellowship,
designed for aspiring math teachers.
She’ll attend the graduate program in
math education at New York University—
tuition-free—and for the rest of her
fellowship, work as a middle-school math
teacher at a New York City public school.
“I was ecstatic that I won,” she says. “I’ve
been interested in the program since my
sophomore year, and I was encouraged
by the fact that other Lehman students
have won it.”
“It’s like winning an Oscar, it’s just the best feeling,” Women’s Forum
winner Regina Farrell said about her award. An art major, Farrell
left her native Dublin armed with a certificate in art and design
from Regional Technical College in Galway, and moved to New
York in 2002. She worked with a sculptor in Manhattan for several
years before opening her own ceramics studio in the Bronx, where
she practices her art as well as teaches students from nine to
ninety. A strong believer in the role art can play in the life of the
individual and in the collective life of nations, she brought
ceramic tiles made by her students to Hanoi, Vietnam.
There they are part of the four-mile-long Peace Memorial
Wall. She also illustrated a children’s book that supports
HIV-infected children in Uganda and hungry children in
Ethiopia.
“I’ve never won anything in my life,” said another Women’s
Forum winner, nursing student Rhoda Smith. “I never thought
my story mattered or even inspired anyone. Lehman has taught
me that my story does matter.” Smith already has won a battle
against homelessness and drug addiction. The victim of an abusive
husband, she began to live on the streets, too ashamed to return
home, and eventually turned to drugs, beginning a downward spiral.
Eventually, she entered Samaritan Village’s Detox program, where
she completed nineteen months of intense drug rehabilitation. At
Lehman, she has not only been successful in her academic work
but also active in community service projects. Her ultimate goal is
to become a nurse practitioner and also take part in public speaking
to encourage those who doubt themselves.
2 Lehman Today/Spring 2011
Irene Cohen, president of the Education Fund of the
Women’s Forum, Inc., introducing the three Lehman
winners: from left, Nelida Velez, Rhoda Smith, and
Regina Farrell.
The third Women’s Forum winner, developmental disabilities major
Nelida (Nellie) Velez, has been fighting for the rights of the
disabled for almost four decades. Her life as an advocate began
with the birth of her son Jason in 1975, when doctors told her he
would not live past the age of three
because of his severe developmental
disabilities. Jason lived until he was
twenty-four. And every step of the way,
Velez says she had to fight New York
City’s bureaucracy to get the Special
Services he needed—and was entitled
to receive. By the time her youngest
son was born in 1983 with a learning
disability, she had learned all the bureaucratic
ins and outs and knew how
to get the services her children needed.
Over the years, she has worked with
several organizations as an advocate
for children with disabilities, and after
graduation she plans to continue doing
just that—”helping parents help their
children have a better life.”
The Rocket ® Takes Off, Helping Lehman
Reach Sustainability Goals
The more compost you can create, the less material gets thrown
into the garbage and ultimately into landfills. Instead, the compost
is recycled as fertilizer. Thanks to a new device with a name derived
from its shape—The Rocket ® —Lehman is now composting not only
gardening waste but also food waste, repurposing about 80 tons
of gardening waste and 18 tons of food waste every year.
Manufactured by Tidy Planet Ltd. in
the United Kingdom, The Rocket ®
composts the 120 lbs. of waste
produced daily from Lehman’s oncampus
food preparation. Its cylindrical
metal chamber is equipped
with a helical blade that expedites
the decomposition process within
an odor-free closed container. Then the
output is later added to the College’s yard-waste compost to create
a very nutrient-rich mix for the campus soil, lessening the need for
artificial fertilizers and pesticides.
Before the arrival of The Rocket ® , food waste could not be included
with general gardening compost because it would attract small
animals; instead, it was hauled away by the Sanitation Department
along with other garbage. Lehman is the second institution in
New York City to adopt The Rocket ® (St. John’s University was
the first) and the third in New York State. Its purchase is part of
Lehman’s plan to reduce its carbon footprint by thirty percent
within ten years.