Mondesir, Obden

Scope and Contents Alan Townsend recalls his early time in New York as a counselor for girls’ school Callagy Hall, where he was part of union activism on staff; becoming accustomed to and understanding New York City youth as part of his job at Callagy Hall; starting as a SEEK counselor at Queens College in 1969; living on Christopher Street and the West Village in NYC pre-Stonewall, and later living in Springfield Gardens and Flushing in Queens and the Black communities there; growing up in North Carolina...

Scope and Contents Allyson Regis discusses growing up Cambria Heights, Queens and attending area schools (private and public); attending Stonybrook University for undergrad and Fordham University for her doctoral program in Counseling Psychology; her work as a SEEK counselor at Queens College; the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on herself and students she was counseling; her reactions to the murder of George Floyd and subsequent protests; and the work of the Black Latinx Faculty Staff Association (BLFSA) at...

Scope and Contents Anthony Tamburri is the Dean of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, City University of New York; Distinguished Professor of European Languages and Literatures at Queens College; and the co-founder of the Bordighera Press. As the COVID-19 pandemic grew worrisome in the United States, Tamburri recalls how the daily tasks and projects he had been working on at the Calandra Institute came to a halt when states began to enforce a stay-at-home quarantine in March 2020. Tamburri shares...

Abstract

This oral history was conducted by Obden Modesir (interviewer) and Frank Wu, incoming Queens College president (interviewee) in April 2020, conducted as a joint project between Queens College Special Collections and Archives and the Queens Memory Project. Among other subjects, in the oral history Frank Wu discusses the COVID-19 crisis, being a Chinese American citizen, and how those two facts will inform his role as the first Asian American to hold the position of QC President.

Scope and Contents Aguayo described his experience growing up in East New York. He recalled the schools he attended and limited scope of the curriculum. After graduating high school, Aguayo enrolled in Farmingdale College and later transferred to York College; he described the differences between the two schools. Aguayo decided to leave New York City to attend graduate school at Florida State University where he earned a Master in International Relations. He moved back to New York and started working in higher...

Scope and Contents Lori Wallach is the outreach coordinator for Queens Memory at Queens College. In this interview, she discusses the days in March leading up to school closures. She reminisces about March 11th, the last day CUNY was open, as the day the seriousness of the virus sunk in, thinking back on the surprise she felt. Lori talks about her life since the pandemic—working from home, the quietude of her neighborhood, experiences shopping, and the concern for her elderly mother. She also reminisces about...

Scope and Contents

In this interview, Lucchi discusses the pandemic as it happened in Italy, one of the epicenters of which occurred in a small town in southern Lombardy where he grew up and where his parents still live. He also talks of his experience as a professor at Queens College who had to quickly transition to remote teaching, and how he felt his undergraduate and graduate language classes fared in the online setting.

Abstract

This oral history was an interview of Samuel Heilman, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Queens College, by Obden Mondesir in April, 2020. In it, Professor Heilman talks about the effects of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 in his personal life and his primarily Jewish Orthodox community of New Rochelle, New York, the site of the first major American outbreak of the disease.

Scope and Contents Soribel Genao talks about her family, education, interests, and general upbringing in Manhattan, then Brooklyn, then Manhattan again; the challenges of the higher education system and maneuvering it as an undergraduate and graduate student; the importance of mentors in her career and how she started at Queens College as a teaching professor rather than a research associate, as was her initial plan; how COVID impacted her as a teacher and how she has adapted for the current moment with...

Abstract

This oral history was conducted by Obden Modesir (interviewer) and Waldo Jeff (interviewee) in July and August 2019. In this interview, Waldo Jeff talks about his time as one of the first counselors of Queens College's SEEK program, his path to New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and his involvelment in civil rights movements in both the Deep South and the North.