News Beat

Liam Murphy, deputy director for Emergency Man-agement in Westchester County, and Bronx Com-munity College Radiology Professor Virginia Mishkin-Elam will be honored at the 25th Irish Heritage Annual Banquet and Awards Ceremony at Bronx Community College.The event will be held in Colston Hall, 2155 University Avenue at 181st Street, from noon to 2:30 p.m. on Tues., Mar. 9.

Murphy is a historian, former Irish Echo columnist and former editor of the National Hibernian (AOH) Digest; Vietnam veteran commander of the United States Naval Reserve (Retired); and former U.S. Marine Reservist. He is a member of the 69th Regi-ment Historical Roundtable, as well as an honorary member of the 69th Regiment of New York. He serves as the military and cathedral liaison for the New York St. Patrick’s Day Parade and Celebration Committee and is an active member of AOH, Division 11, in Tar-rytown, New York.

Murphy is a former executive officer of the Naval ROTC Corps Unit at the SUNY Maritime College, Fort Schuyler, Bronx, NY, and currently teaches there as an adjunct instructor in Emergency Management. His last assignment before retirement from the Naval Reserve was the Naval War College Support Unit in Newport, Rhode Island.

As a historian, Murphy was instrumental in pre-serving the legacy of Commodore John Barry as the first flag officer of the United States Navy.He initiated an effort which successfully resulted in Congress passing House Joint Resolution 38 – Commodore John Barry which became Public Law 109-142 in the 109th Congress honoring Barry’s contributions.

Also being honored is Virginia Mishkin-Elam, a Bronx native. She is the program director of the Radi-ologic Technology Program in the Nursing and Allied Health Sciences Department at Bronx Community College. Mishkin-Elam developed and implemented the Radiography Program at BCC with the help of Jack Prince, former chairperson of the Physics and Technology Department, and in collaboration with Columbia Presbyterian and Montefiore Medical Cen-ters.

After graduating from St. Luke’s Hospital Radi-ologic Technology Program, Mishkin-Elam worked as a radiologic technologist for Gracie Square Hospital. She continued her education and received her bache-lor’s degree from Manhattan College. Upon receiving her degree, she worked in Radiation Safety at Colum-bia Presbyterian Medical Center where she began her studies for the Master of Science at Columbia Univer-sity’s Teachers College.After graduation, she was recruited by the Nobel Prize recipient in Nuclear Medicine, Roslyn Yallow, to work as a medical physi-cist at the Bronx Veterans Hospital.

Mishkin-Elam is a product of the Parochial School System of the Diocese of New York.Her Irish ances-tors hail from Donegal, Ireland.Her childhood was filled with many colorful memories from her mother and grandmother. With limited education, her mother single-handedly raised two daughters who both have professional careers in health care. Her mother al-ways stressed the importance of education. She attributes her gift for “blarney” to her grandmother.

The banquet luncheon cost is $25 in advance and $30 at the door. For more information about the Irish Heritage Annual Banquet and Awards Ceremony, and to send payment, please call Robert Whelan at (718) 289-5162 or visit Gould Memorial Library, room 14, BCC, 2155 University Avenue at West 181st Street, or robert.whelan@bcc.cuny.edu . You can also contact Denis McCarthy at (718) 289-5744 or denis.mc-carthy@bcc.cuny.edu.

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Lehman College Mathematics and Computer Sci-ence Professor Jason Behrstock has been awarded a prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, joining 118 early-career scientists, mathematicians and economists from 56 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada.

Established in 1955, the Fellowship provides re-cipients with $50,000 for a two-year period to support their research at the frontiers of physics, chemistry, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics, and neuroscience. Past fellows have gone on to receive such awards as the Nobel Prize, the National Medal of Science and the Fields Medal, the top honor in mathematics.

Other Lehman math faculty have previously won the award, including Prof. John Smillie, since retired, and current Profs. Michael Handel and Nicholas Hanges, who received the fellowship prior to joining Lehman. An expert on geometric group theory and low-dimensional topology, Professor Behrstock has been honored with the Feliks Gross Endowment Award from the City University of New York and the Dorothy Pieper Merit Award from SUNY for Outstand-ing Entering Doctoral Studies. His research has been widely published in scholarly publications, including Annals of Mathematics, Geometry and Topology and Duke Mathematical Journal, and he has received a number of grants from the National Science Founda-tion. Before coming to Lehman in 2008, he taught at Columbia University and the University of Utah.

Lehman enrolls more than 12,000 students and offers over 100 undergraduate and graduate pro-grams in the arts and sciences, business, education and other professional areas.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a philanthropic, not-for-profit grantmaking institution that supports original research and broad-based education in sci-ence, technology, engineering, mathematics and economic performance.

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Two faculty members in Lehman College’s Nursing Department, Professors Catherine Alicia Georges and Keville C. Frederickson, were recently appointed as nursing fellows at the prestigious New York Academy of Medicine. Founded in 1847, the Academy works to address the health challenges facing the world’s urban populations. Its 2,000 Fellows embody the highest levels of achievement and leadership in the fields of medicine and health as well as science, social work, nursing, education, law and research.

Besides chairing the Lehman Nursing Department for the last six years, Dr. Georges is president of the National Black Nurses Foundation and chairperson of the board for the Bronx Westchester Area Health Education Council. She has served on advisory coun-cils for the U.S. Department of Health and New York State, as well as the Children’s Aid Society, and is past president of the Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools.

Professor Frederickson has taught at Lehman since 1985 and also directs the CUNY Graduate Center’s doctoral nursing program. She has earned many accolades, including the 2005 Distinguished Nurse Research Award from the Foundation of the New York State Nurses Association for her research on reducing teen violence and drug use among young Latinos and African-Americans. In 2004, she received the R. Louis McManus Medal, the top award given to alumni of Teachers College, Columbia University for her contributions to the field of nursing. In 2001, she was appointed Professor Afliliada at the Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon in Mexico for helping to create the first doctoral nursing program at the col-lege.

Lehman enrolls more than 12,000 students and offers over 100 undergraduate and graduate pro-grams in the arts and sciences, business, education and other professional areas, including a new Family Nurse Practitioner master’s program.

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Continuing and Professional Studies at Bronx Com-munity College can help you become a more effec-tive parent and decrease parenting stress through parenting skills courses.The first class – How to Communicate Better with Your Child – starts on Mon., Mar. 15, 7 to 10 pm and will be free to BCC students.

“Learn to be the parent you always wished you could be and celebrate yourself and your children more and more each day,” states Instructor John Scardina, a Harvard-trained school psychologist with decades of experience working with children and grandchildren, including his own!

BCC is located at2155 University Avenue. You must preregister at Philosophy Hall, room 14.

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Bronx Community College graduate Easter Z. Wood has been accepted to Harvard University with a full five-year prize fellowship, valued at over $200,000, in the African American Studies Department Ph.D. Pro-gram.

Wood, BCC’s valedictorian as a psychology major in 2006, studied in the CUNY BA Program for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies, which allows students to take courses at any City University of New York four-year college. She took courses at City College of New York, Hunter and Baruch colleges as she progressed towards her undergraduate degree, which she ob-tained in 2008. Currently, she appears in a CUNY BA ad posted on MTA buses. This February, she was awarded her master’s degree in history with a focus on the African Diaspora at the City College of New York where she was a NY Life graduate fellow at the Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies.

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Women Legacies will be Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa’s presentation on Sun., Mar. 21, at 11 am at the Soci-ety Meeting House, located at 4450 Fieldston Road.

Figueroa will be reading her book Daughter’s of the Stone. A lyrical, powerful debut novel about a family of Afro-Puerto Rican women, spanning five generations, detailing their physical and spiritual journey from the Old World to the New.

For further information call (718) 548-4445.

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The Derfner Judaica Museum + The Art Collection at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale will present a lecture by Tobi Kahn entitled, Sacred Spaces for the 21st Century. Free and open to the public, the program will take place at 2:30 pm on Thurs., Mar. 4, in the Bied-erman Library, located in the Weill Pavilion at 5901 Palisade Avenue. Kahn, noted painter and sculptor, will be showing images of his work recently on display at MOBIA (Museum of Biblical Art, NYC) from the exhibition, Tobi Kahn: Sacred Spaces for the 21st Century.

The artist will discuss his paintings and ceremo-nial objects related to biblical figures, Jewish ceremo-nies of prayer, celebration and remembrance, focus-ing specifically on hiddur mitzvah, a Hebrew phrase describing the practice of beautifying the observance of a biblical commandment.

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