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Month: April 2020

Hollywood Digital Climate Summit: May 16, 2020

Posted on by Chelsea Robles

 

On Saturday, May 16th, NYU will be partnering with YEA! (Young Entertainment Activists) to bring you the Hollywood Digital Climate Summit! 

Designed to educate and activate young entertainment professionals and college students about climate change, the Hollywood Digital Climate Summit will bring the brightest minds from entertainment and advocacy together. From 11:00 am- 6:30 pm PST, YEA! and NYULA will provide attendees with the tools they need to actually implement sustainable measures within their everyday lives/jobs. Plus, NYU students get tickets for free with the special promo-code YEA-NYU.

Featuring, Cynthia Littleton (Variety, Business Editor), Heidi Kindberg (HBO Green), Bruce Miller (Showrunner, The Handmaid’s Tale), Gloria Calderón Kellett (Showrunner, One Day At a Time), Melissa Sun (Sierra Club), Atossa Soltani (Founder/Director, Amazon Watch), Favianna Rodriguez (Artist/Activist), Jamie Margolin (Founder, Zero Hour), Kevin Patel (Founder, One Up Action), Jen Welter (First NFL Female Coach), Josh Fox (Filmmaker), Laura Bell Bundy (Actor/Musician/Activist), and more to be announced soon!

 The Summit will be packed with interactive, action-oriented content to keep you engaged and a part of the conversation with live industry guests. 

Get your tickets to the Summit now! Or, check out all the ways you can get involved as a volunteer and apply to volunteer today!

NYU Florence Joins Florentine Cultural Institutions in Going Virtual

Posted on , modified on by Martha J Bekink

artNYU Florence’s Villa La Pietra has remarkable collections of art, music, books, and a beautiful garden. It will now be sharing these treasures virtually, having joined the local  #museichiusimuseiaperti campaign, which involves Florentine museums and cultural institutions, with the hashtag #ActonsGoingVirtual. A new story or insights from the NYU Florence collection will appear regularly on the Villa La Pietra website and on the Instagram account. 

At this time of forced isolation, the campaign allows Villa La Pietra to be open and available virtually as a site of learning, exchange, discussion and meaning. Francesca Baldry, Acton Collection Manager at Villa La Pietra believes this “befits” the Villa, which has been welcoming visitors, both foreign and local, since the Renaissance. Villa La Pietra was bequest to NYU by the Acton family. According to Francesca, “the Actons were masters at welcoming guests from all over the world and always had great stories.” While welcoming guests to Villa La Pietra, the Actions fostered a sense of intellectual community and shared their passion for culture and ideas at the heart of their vision for NYU Florence.

room from VillaVirtually opening the doors of Villa La Pietra and sharing the collection in this way is a continuation of a tradition started by the Actons and continued by NYU Florence. The stories will feature Acton family members, events that have happened at Villa La Pietra, objects from the collection, books, photographs, or rooms in the Villa or locations in the garden. This will also be an interactive initiative, with readers and viewers having an opportunity to share their own stories. Francesca is excited about this aspect of the initiative, saying, “Culture doesn’t stop, stay with us, and tell us your novella!” She adds that “the series will also remain on our website as a memory of our resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when we have used culture and our imagination to feel vital despite forced physical isolation.”

Internships Without Borders

Posted on by Chelsea Robles
 

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Bakari Young-Smith

After a winter break which involved volunteering at an orphanage in Tanzania, and visiting the location where his mother had studied abroad some 30 years ago, Bakari Young-Smith was looking forward to heading to NYU Shanghai for his spring semester. But one week before his planned departure, the rising junior at NYU’s Rory Meyers College of Nursing, decided to make alternative plans following the COVID-19 outbreak in China, and the suspension of in-person courses at NYU Shanghai.

After consulting with his advisor at NYU’s Office of Global Programs, Young-Smith decided to enroll instead at NYU Tel Aviv, and then returned home to Virginia, unpacked the bags that he had prepared for China, repacked them for Israel, and then departed for NYU Tel Aviv — all within a few days’ time.  

Marrying his academic background in nursing with his interest in gaining  “a new experience in an entirely new setting,” IIana Goldberg, internship coordinator and instructor at NYU Tel Aviv, arranged for Young-Smith to intern with NALA, a non-profit that works to combat tropical neglected tropical diseases in Ethiopia, and focuses on improving hygiene and sanitation practices. Yet after spending roughly half of the semester conducting research on health practices among communities in Ethiopia’s Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region — the global spread of COVID-19  upended internships and course work, at least temporarily, and sent Young-Smith and his cohort back home.

Despite the upheaval, many NYU Tel Aviv students chose to continue their internships remotely. “I think that what helped make the students resilient in the face of the disruptions” explained Goldberg, “was the fact that we had sufficient time at NYU Tel Aviv to build a sense of community, throughout the student body, with the efforts of the whole staff, student life director, and resident life assistants […] the whole fabric of support helped everyone remain calm and rational and able to see the larger picture.” 

While the internship students had the option to complete a written career exploration project in lieu of continuing their internship projects remotely, Goldberg explained that many students “were very resolute about sticking to their internships. For example, one of our students has had a life-long interest in fashion and retail and was initially crestfallen when told the academic center was closing, but his employers were open to having him continue his responsibilities while working remotely. Another student, studying documentary production at Gallatin actually increased his attendance at the internship to more weekly hours, and the company sent him a hard-disk with materials and set him up to work remotely with the film editor.” 

Following his move back to the US, Young-Smith chose to forge ahead with his internship with NALA  because he felt there was more he could do. His work shifted to initiatives to spread critical public health messages about mitigating the spread of COVID-19 to remote communities in Ethiopia. Taking an innovation-oriented approach, he worked on low-tech ways —  beyond the traditional routes of radio, television and internet —  to engage isolated communities in disease-preventing behaviours.  

Together with his local counterparts, he has helped to launch effective public health campaigns, including printing public health messages on toilet paper, and coordinating  neighbor-to-neighbor outreach. For Young-Smith, examining how communities in Africa are responding to COVID-19 has “broadened my global perspective.” 

“Having a chance to develop this kind of transglobal solidarity,” said Goldberg, “by working from afar for local causes will be a valuable experience not only professionally but as a global-civic achievement.” 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

NYU’s Shanghai Community Sends Supplies to Help NYC’s Fight Against COVID-19

Posted on , modified on by Martha J Bekink

masks being shippedAs New York City’s hospitals fill with coronavirus patients and medical staff struggle with shortages of personal protective equipment, NYU’s Shanghai community has pulled together to support New Yorker’s  in their fight against the pandemic, sending some 17,000 masks to NYU New York.

Last week, a group of NYU New York parents who are based in Shanghai purchased some 10,000 N95 masks to help protect medical workers on the frontlines of the fight against COVID-19 at NYU Langone Medical Center. NYU Shanghai, with the help of a school donor who paid shipping costs, arranged for those masks to be delivered to New York City. NYU Shanghai also shipped separately some 4,000 N95 masks from its own stockpile to colleagues in New York.     

“Even if we are thousands of miles away, we still feel anxious and want to do something to help,” said one of the parent donors, who wished to remain anonymous. “As members of the NYU family, we hope that New York University will be alright, New York will be alright, and America will be alright.”

Vice Chancellor Lehman said he was moved by the parents’ generosity. “The bonds of affection between China and the US can produce tremendous benefits for the world,” he said. “We are proud of and grateful to these devoted members of the NYU community for stepping forward to help NYU Langone’s healthcare workers in this hour of need.” 

masks arriving in NYC

10,000 N95 masks donated by Shanghai-based parents of NYU New York students arrives at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City on April 7.

Tuesday’s delivery was the latest in a series of protective equipment donations that has streamed across the Pacific from Shanghai. As the “hot zones” of the coronavirus pandemic have shifted away from China to New York and elsewhere, NYU Shanghai has drawn from its own resources to help fellow NYU Global Network members in Washington Square.

 Over the past several weeks, in addition to the N95 masks, NYU Shanghai staff in Student Health, Finance, Public Safety, and the office of the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor have sent a combined total of 3,000 medical and disposable masks to colleagues at NYU New York. 

NYU Shanghai is paying forward the generosity that flowed to the campus during the height of the COVID-19 epidemic in China. The university received 850 disposable masks from NYU New York in early February, in addition to several hundred pairs of gloves, 20 protective suits, and thermometers. Corporate donors and NYU Shanghai faculty members also donated another 21,000 masks and other monitoring and protective equipment to the campus throughout February and March.  The community also came together quickly in the Light a Lantern project in February to raise more than U$50,000 to assist the people of Wuhan in their fight against the virus. 

 

This post comes to us from NYU Shanghai. You can find the original here.

Science Boot Camp: NYU Paris Students Hit the Ground Running

Posted on , modified on by Chelsea Robles

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Photo Source: https://acosse.github.io/NYUParisBootcamp/

In order to ensure that all NYU Paris (NYUP) students were beginning their math and computer studies with a similar foundation in the disciplines, NYUP Site Director Alfred Galichon, and professor of Economics and Mathematics at NYU in New York, oversaw the creation of a pre-semester “Science Bootcamp.”

“We really felt there was a need to level the playing field, and to make sure everybody – whether from the Abu Dhabi, New York, or Shanghai campuses – hits the ground running,” said Galichon.

Designed and taught by NYUP lecturers, Joachim Lebovits (Math) and Augustin Cosse (Computer Science), NYUP held its inaugural Science Bootcamp at the start of the Spring semester, outside of regular class hours. Enabling students to quickly find their footing, said Lebovits, “we wanted to make sure that everyone, whatever their background, is given the opportunity to acquire the necessary tools to get a good start in the actual course, instead of losing time catching up on some basic notions.” And after finding their footing, students were “able to more fully enjoy their semester from the get-go,” he said.

The development of the non-credit program was also underpinned by the premise that math and computer science are intrinsically linked, said Lebovits. “There can be no programming without algorithms, and a relatively complex calculation might benefit from some degree of coding. Unfortunately, a blackboard and a piece of chalk are not always enough anymore,” he said.

 “At the very least,” said Lebovits, “it serves as a refresher for the students already familiar with them. For some, it may be also a good way to test their interest in the field.” For instance, a Math major can become better acquainted with coding and may go on to delve more deeply into programming languages. “In any case, it will give them the means to look forward to their courses with confidence, in a maybe more relaxed atmosphere than when the semester has actually started. Indeed, students are encouraged to carry out group projects, which gives them the opportunity to meet their fellow students more easily than in a regular class.” Lebovits says he believes the camp also benefits the lecturers and teaching staff: “Since the math and computer science courses are taught jointly by two or three professors, it helps the students view us as a team, rather than a set of individuals.”

In addition to bolstering students’ academic grounding, the program also demonstrates the importance of transferable skills. For example,“the ‘Python programming’ session also gives students the opportunity to test their knowledge on some interview questions from the tech industry.” The idea was to develop a curriculum that would prepare students for future challenges, explained Cosse, “be it with their classes or future job interviews.”

Students may arrive in Paris with different academic backgrounds and come to the classroom with different tools at their disposal, and may also have unique histories with math or computer science, and students’ academic and career plans vary widely. (Lebovits notes that “last semester one of my students in Linear Algebra wanted to become an architect, while another intended to do research in Mathematics.) But regardless of their future plans, “both will benefit from this ability to use programming tools,” he said.  What the students all share, both Cosse and Lebovits remarked, is a strong motivation to deepen their skill set – and this brought them to bootcamp outside of regular class hours and on weekends. 

While the bootcamp was designed at the outset to be classroom-based, Lebovits pointed out that it would translate easily into a distance learning environment. “The light and interactive format would be very well suited to a remote version and thus to our current situation. Considering the unprecedented changes that have taken place due to COVID-19, I think that we are increasingly going to need to create new ways of teaching to be able to adapt to student’s needs, whatever their background and regardless of their location.”

More information about the course can be found on Cosse’s website here.

NYU Buenos Aires Global Equity Fellow Continues Organising Events

Posted on , modified on by Martha J Bekink
Sydney LinEven though NYU Buenos Aires had to suspend their in-person activities due to the impact of COVID-19 in Argentina, the site’s Global Equity Fellow, Sydney Lin, is continuing to focus on building community with her fellow NYU Buenos Aires students scattered around the globe. Although this was not what she had envisioned for her GEF experience, Sydney’s personal goal has now become “keeping our community connected and supported” despite not being together and she decided that “continuing events was a way to do that.”
 
Sydney, a second-year Steinhardt student pursuing a double major in Early Childhood Education and Spanish, with a minor in Dance, is in the final stages of organizing an April 13 event that is featuring an Afro-Descendent activist and cultural studies expert. Sydney will present and lead Q & A with Anny Ocoró Loango on the topic of Afro-Descendants in Argentina: Myths, Realities, and Challenges in the Field of Education.
 
Sydney is also busy coordinating with the NYU Buenos Aires Student Life team to showcase a visually vibrant project of large portraits of Argentine historical figures who in truth were Afro-Descendents, despite the fact that some historiographies showed them as caucasian or Euro-Descendant. Plans for an in-person exhibition of eight portraits at the Academic Center have been postponed to a future semester, though Sydney and the NYU Buenos Aires staff are moving the exhibition online for now. The online exhibition will open on April 30.
 
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A page from the exhibition pamphlet.

The images the team has selected showcase the visual impact of restoring the actual visual identity to national historical figures who were misrepresented as more European but now restored to their authentic image by the sponsoring Institute’s historical research. The digital images that will be shared for this event are photos of the portraits themselves. These images reveal that these Afro-Argentine historical figures were “invisibilized” and are now being re-vizibilized, and correctly fully celebrated as part of the larger movement to combat discrimination against persons of color in Argentina.

Originally from Durham, North Carolina, Sydney says she enjoyed expanding her horizons at NYU’s New York campus, and was very excited to study in Buenos Aires for Spring 2020 to further her Spanish fluency and to investigate questions surrounding inclusion, diversity, belonging, and equity.  Sydney, along with everyone at NYU Buenos Aires, had to depart because of COVID-19. “A month and a half in, we had just gotten into the swing of things with classes and with living in a new country. As GEF, I had various events planned or in the works that I had to quickly leave, not knowing if we’d be able to do them virtually or not.” Sydney feels that moving forward with the events has become a meaningful way for students to stay connected. Even though she knows it is likely that fewer students will attend virtual events, Sydney believes that “it is important to continue providing safe spaces and opportunities for students to talk about IDBE (inclusivity, diversity, belonging, and equity) issues/concerns. Additionally, learning about these issues in the context of Buenos Aires helps us learn more about the beautiful city we had to leave so abruptly.” 

NYU Los Angeles Goes Virtual

Posted on , modified on by Chelsea Robles
 

The following post is a guest submission from Gracie Corapi, assistant to NYU Los Angeles Program Director Nina Sadowsky.

By Gracie Corapi

I started as the assistant to Nina Sadowsky, program director of NYU Los Angeles (NYULA), in September 2019, still early in the program’s inaugural semester. We gave our first 33 students a study away program to celebrate: distinct LA experiences, unique panels and programming, an academic center with sunset views and Brita-filtered water. By the time Spring 2020 began and a new cohort of 36 joined us, we’d turned it up to 100: a one-on-one mentorship program! Double the special events, double the networking! Brita pitchers in each student apartment! Alumni mixers! And… a worldwide pandemic that sent them all home? 

As a student, I experienced a few unexpected bumps in my university years. In undergrad, classes were cancelled by a polar vortex. In grad school, I was on campus during an active shooter scare––thankfully, a false alarm. But this is a much bigger bump, and it’s my first time with an admin-level view of how a school can adapt when the world makes an unprecedented turn. This is what went into transitioning NYULA into a successful (and fun!) remote learning program. 

We began with the lecturers — all of whom are accomplished and flexible, but that didn’t make them automatic Zoom experts. Our first project: creating resources. We had help from the knowledge base and from materials shared by NYU Shanghai (who were the first in the NYU community to face the Coronavirus), but we discovered that what our entirely part-time lecturers really needed was distilled guidance, not wallops of information on top of the changes in their own careers and lives. We created a step-by-step Zoom guide in PDF form for the visual learners, and we set up a system of 1:1 staff-led tutorials with the active learners. Then we created a schedule of staff support: every single class has a staff member on call, joining the Zoom meeting for at least the first ten minutes, making sure all tech runs smoothly. And hey, it’s not a bad deal for me, a forever-learner; I’ve ended up staying the full length of several classes, enjoying the content and conversation, forgetting I’m not a student myself. 

Our challenge for [the students] was instead experience-based: how do we provide an education equal to what we were providing before? Gracie Corapi

Adapting classes to a remote model has been more challenging for some than others. Our biggest challenge came when we’d all settled into our new home “offices,” when we’d all learned the difference between day and night PJs, when the hard work of transition seemed to be leveling out. We have a professor with… a VHS addiction. The treatment: after a hilarious but ineffective attempt to hold an iPad up to an old, VHS-equipped TV, the ingenious professor scoured YouTube for comparable clips and even learned how to digitize their tapes. It’s not quarantine if you’re not learning new skills, right? 

It’s no surprise that our amazing students are already tech-savvy. Our challenge for them was instead experience-based: how do we provide an education equal to what we were providing before? As a millennial, I say this completely genuinely: the great thing about Gen Z, which describes our cohort, is that they have big ideas and they’re not afraid to share them. In classes, professors are asking and listening to students about how best to change assignments to fit the new landscape. Group projects are morphing. Final paper topics are changing in real time as the industry adapts around us. 

One of the great facets of the LA program is the internship component. All students are required to have one, and we worried that this would be a grand hurdle. But so far, everyone has adapted. While many students have been able to maintain their internship work remotely, those that haven’t are working with our program director on customized projects that keep them connected to the type of work that drew them to LA in the first place.  

On the administrative side, we’re collaborating with our student workers on multiple fronts: what do you and your peers need from us? What do you want from us? What does support look like now, and what does the LA experience look like when you’re not even in LA? We created “Virtual LA” for the cohort, a constantly-growing source of online museum tours, livecam music, plus photos and stories of the city’s history and LA-set movie recommendations from faculty and staff. There’s more where that came from: we’re working on industry and craft book recommendations, an NYULA cookbook, and we’re in early discussions about a Zoom talent show. 

A couple of our ongoing projects are adapting too: our big event, the Hollywood Sustainability Summit, is going digital on May 16th. Our mentorship program continues by phone and Facetime. But now we have student-led movie nights and support groups, too. Our small staff is doing 1:1 student check-ins, and we’re dedicated to creating even more community as we go along. 

So far, so good. Nothing is easy in this kind of transition, and no one is really loving it. But NYULA, true to our city, has a sunny outlook. We’re finding unexpected opportunities in the remote world. That said, I am looking forward to returning to our NYULA home on Fairfax. I don’t have sunset views and a Brita filter at home, and I can’t take one more second of Tiger King.