Vaclav Masek, a Liberal Studies sophomore who spent his freshman year at NYU London, recently organized a project to aid rural citizens in Guatemala. Here he represents NYU pride alongside a stove he helped rebuild.
Read more about Vaclav via the Liberal Studies Program here: http://core.ls.nyu.edu/object/core.news.masek
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Dispatch from London
NYU London has continued to bloom during the last six months.
We delivered another successful semester of 83 courses (J-term, freshmen, sophomore, upperclassmen, and postgraduate), hosted distinguished researchers and PhD students in multifarious fields of work, and delivered an unprecedentedly wide range of student life events to enrich the experience of our students.
During the last six months we have recruited seven new, highly-distinguished faculty and now have 92 eminent academics.
We launched two new courses: Global Fashion Industry: London debuted as the third course in a trio of courses that form Gallatin’s new fashion programme; and Global Public Health’s Health and Society, which proved to be of interest to students from across disciplines. Additionally, we welcomed Abu Dhabi faculty member Dr PJ Henry here for the term to teach the Psychology of Prejudice.
The rich Cultural Program offered by Student Life has continued to develop. This last semester we offered 35 major separate events (e.g., visits to the Houses of Parliament, and the BBC) which attracted a participation rate of 1,279 students (or an average of 36.5 students on each event).
Our public programming continued to flourish during the last six months. We expanded our series of “Talking Points” faculty lunchtime lectures. In February we welcomed Edgardo Dieleke, a writer, director and faculty member at NYU Buenos Aires to talk on the Falkland Islands/ Las Malvinas.
In March, Dr Stefano Taglia gave a talk titled “Modern Turkey, the Middle East and the Ottoman Empire” which looked at the historical sources of current debates in the Middle East and Turkey.
Our third Talking Points lecture, given by Dr. Marko Bojcun, addressed the ongoing developments in Ukraine. In the final lecture, “Is the Break-up of Britain Inevitable?”, Dr Scott Kelly examined the background to – and potential implications of – the upcoming September 2014 Scottish vote on independence.
In February we were delighted to be visited by Mounir Guen, the Founder and CEO of MVision, one of the world’s leading private equity capital raising firms. Mr Guen spoke to a group of students from the NYU Stern Business and Political Economy programme on the theme of private equity.
The Global Orientations: British Culture class concluded in April with a debate on the motion, “This House believes that the human rights agenda is promoting unfairness in the UK” with two nationally eminent speakers: Adam Wagner, a lawyer, and Dr Lee Rotherham a politician.
NYU London Student Louisa Bahet Discovers and Celebrates the Musical History of NYU London’s Academic Centre
NYU London student Louisa Bahet, a freshman in the Liberal Studies program, made an exciting discovery about the musical history of NYU London’s Academic Centre and organized a concert to celebrate this history. She describes her work and the event below.
As a freshman in the Liberal Studies Program, why did you decide to spend your first year at NYU in London?
NYU London’s central Bloomsbury locale offers Liberal Studies freshmen an incomparable chance to pursue the great works in situ. Learning opportunities span the city and expand throughout Britain, illustrating how NYU has become “in and of the world.” From class excursions to the neighboring British Museum, where Karl Marx penned Das Kapital, to field trips to the likes of Hever Castle, childhood home of Anne Boleyn, I continuously observed that the celebrated movers and shakers of history lived and breathed in these sites before us. I enjoyed reminding classmates that whenever we sat down to write, no matter the subject, we’d be writing in Bloomsbury just as Dickens and Woolf did before us. The Liberal Studies curriculum truly comes to life in Britain, and although I had not visited previously, it was clear to me as I decided to attend that NYU London’s students are poised to take full advantage of all the city symbolizes, historically and in the modern day.
What drew you to the Liberal Studies Program and to London? How have you found the experience thus far?
People often remark how unusual it is to spend freshman year abroad, however the decision to pursue the Liberal Studies Program represented a clear step forward for me. I attended Stanford University Online High School, an independent school of highly motivated international peers and faculty. In London, I experienced the renewed benefits of learning in a global community, now in a leading world capital. I wanted to disrupt my social, cultural and personal convictions at the beginning of my undergraduate career, in order to enlarge my perspective on global civilizations from the onset. This experience motivates me to pursue further international study.
What have you found most challenging and most surprising?
The more one studies the great works, the more patterns of thought come into focus across civilizations. In the modern world as in the telling of history, we attach great significance to intellectual ownership. It’s one way of recognizing creativity. Take patents for example! But a fuller global perspective on space and time reveals that ideas exist outside particular modern or historic societies or cultures. This thought challenged me at first because it seemed to question individuality. Then I considered the possibility that it is the continual rediscovery of concepts over the generations and through study that refreshes basic ideas and truths. Our renewed fascination keeps them relevant—one reason why Liberal Studies is so vital!
I understand that you are a violinist, currently with the UCLU Music Society Symphony Orchestra. How did you find this affiliation and what did you do to prepare before your arrival in London?
Students at NYU London are eligible to join the University London Union (ULU) and University College London Union (UCLU), each home to countless clubs and societies. Through the latter affiliation I secured an audition for the UCLU Music Society Symphony Orchestra, which was happily successful. My participation in orchestra allowed me to cultivate close friendships with local British students, all the while making beautiful music. NYU London strongly supports students engaging the wider London community, and I had a bit of an advantage in that I researched musical activities in the Bloomsbury region beforehand and arrived with clear intentions in mind.
I also understand that in preparing for your time in London while conducting research on classical music you made an exciting discovery about NYU London’s Academic Centre. Can you describe what you learned and its significance?
In my research, I was fortunate to discover the Oxford and Cambridge Musical Club, a prestigious musical society that began as a gentleman’s club in 1899. Imagine my surprise upon learning that the OCMC had inaugurated its residence at 6 Bedford Square, now home to NYU London’s Academic Centre, nearly a hundred years before. Of all the buildings in London, the OCMC had made 6 Bedford its home, and so I settled to make it mine. The idea to invite the Club back for a celebratory concert occurred to me straight away.
You proposed to chair and curate a May 2014 NYUL-OCMC Golden Triangle Chamber Concert celebrating the centenary of OCMC’s 6 Bedford Square presence. Can you tell us about the event?
In 1914, the Oxford and Cambridge Musical Club took up what became a quarter century’s residence at 6 Bedford Square. From 1914 to the onset of World War II, NYU London’s Academic Centre in Bloomsbury was the lively headquarters of the OCMC. As NYUL members do today, stellar classical musicians, composers, and leading public figures signed in at the foyer entrance. The building was home to countless musical events, and featured concert, smoking and rehearsal rooms, six grand pianos and other instruments, a large music library, several bedrooms, and even offered refreshments throughout the day. Today, the OCMC continues its programmes in Bloomsbury and around London.
As the Global Network University with a strong London presence, NYU now belongs to a longer legacy of universities located in Oxford, Cambridge, and London, which together make up the Golden Triangle. On Thursday 22 May 2014, NYU London hosted the OCMC to celebrate the centenary of its arrival at 6 Bedford Square, musically uniting these three cities. I organized a NYUL-OCMC joint chamber concert, and curated an exhibition of Club archives from the Bodleian’s Special Collections at Oxford. There was even a celebratory reception with wine and cheese before the chamber performances, and student-led tour of the 6 Bedford Square premises.
In all of these preparations I received highly instrumental support from Liberal Studies Dean Fred Schwarzbach, NYU London Director Gary Slapper, Senior Programme Manager for Student Life Tony Skitt, and Liberal Studies Student Council President Norbert Sobczak. Indispensible to the musical collaboration was the gracious assistance and research permissions of Mr Michael Crowe, Chairman of the Oxford and Cambridge Musical Club, and Mr Martin Holmes, Alfred Brendel Curator of Music at the Bodleian Libraries.
Could this become an ongoing affiliate classical music collaboration?
Over Spring Break I traveled to the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University to examine the Club’s archives, and among them located the first musical programme that was presented at 6 Bedford by the OCMC. This occurred on 3 December 1914. NYU London and myself are looking forward to hosting the OCMC in a programme reenactment exactly 100 years later!
How do you see this event as reflecting on NYU’s presence in London and its global heritage?
The Oxford and Cambridge Musical Club is a living slice of history, as vital now as it once was. The Club’s return to 6 Bedford Square has hopefully reminded students that space changes over time to accommodate different people, and that our life and accomplishments are transient. As most students are only in London for a term or two, the latter point is particularly relevant. It is certainly personally motivating to me, as London’s heritage enticed me to study abroad and I now return home with greater perspective on historical life. In terms of NYU’s global heritage, as the university pursues its new world mission, it remains key to remember that something has always come before, and someday, what we do at NYU London will become part of that legacy.
NYU London Professor Publishes Physics Paper
NYU London Professor Guy Wilson, along with co-authors, recently published a paper in Euro Physics Letters, a letters journal exploring the frontiers of physics. The paper focuses on electron transport in polydiacetylene crystals and derivatives.
Future Teachers On Site in Schools in London and Accra
This spring semester, 2014, NYU Steinhardt added a new, experiential learning opportunity for undergraduate students in the Teaching and Learning department. Based on a successful offering in London that Steinhardt introduced last year, the school worked with the NYU Global Academic Center in Accra, Ghana, to offer a required course, Human Development, to students who will be future teachers. The course includes a required observation component, and in Accra, as in London, students fulfill this requirement at local schools. Depending on the student’s future area of teaching–early childhood, childhood or adolescence–they observe children in early elementary grades, upper elementary, or middle school. The learning experience is transformative, according to Robbie Powers, academic advisor in Teaching and Learning. “Through direct experience in schools in Ghana and the UK, our students gain a global perspective towards education that can be applied to their roles as students, educators, and leaders.”
Dispatch from London
In 1777, the English writer and lexicographer Samuel Johnson said “when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.” Certainly, NYU London has been socially rich over the last few months. We have added to our curriculum new courses on epidemiology, Irish history, childhood and adolescent development, fashion texts, fashion history, and the fashion industry. We now have 85 different courses including the sciences, and a great range in arts, social science, humanities and business.
To our splendid array of 90 internationally distinguished faculty, who also teach at London University or other universities and are eminent in their fields of business, journalism, and the arts, we recently said hello to several new colleagues.
- Dr. Jan Knoerich holds a PhD in Economics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He teaches at King’s College London and NYU London, having taught Chinese economy and research methods at the University of Oxford’s School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies.
- Dr. Costanza Russo is Lecturer in International Banking Law and in Business Ethics at Queen Mary, University of London. She is also the Academic Director for the LLM in International Banking and Finance in Paris, France. She has held teaching and research positions at the Universities of Bologna and Trento, Italy; and Zurich, Switzerland.
- Dr P.J. Henry is an associate professor of psychology at New York University’s campus in Abu Dhabi. He received his Ph.D. in 2001 from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and has since held research and teaching positions at the American University of Beirut, Yale, UCSB, and DePaul University. His main research area is on the social psychology of prejudice.
On the facilities front, we have just comprehensively adapted our premises to ensure that we can accommodate students who use wheelchairs.
Last semester we had 1,312 participations on our cultural programme events – a 52 per cent increase in the take-up of our activities and events. Our extensive cultural program last semester included visits to the London Philharmonic Orchestra in concert, Stonehenge, Word Cup Soccer, and a tour of the Harry Potter studios.
Our most recent public symposium was on Race in Modern Britain and featured nationally eminent speakers. Over 300 students participated. We also innovated a series of lunchtime talks by our own renowned faculty – the first two of which were on media portrayals of the leader of the Labour Party, and the organisational operation of the National Health Service.
NYU London supported two book launches for faculty members this semester. NYU London’s Writing Tutor, Emma Sweeney, launched her poetry collection, The Memoir Garden, and Julia Pascal launched her book Political Plays.
NYU London Professor Helps Identify Molecule that May Help Treat Resistent Cancers
The effective treatment of cancer requires the ability to destroy cancerous cells. Nearly one third of all cancers today involve mutations of the Kras gene, which has proven resistant to existing cancer treatments. The current prognosis for patients with mutant-Kras cancers is poor because there is no effective treatment. However, recent analysis by Valerie Wells, of NYU London, and Livio Mallucci, of King’s College London, may present a new method to combat these untreatable cancers.
In a feature article in Drug Discovery Today, Mallucci and Wells discuss the current therapeutic strategies and their limitations and highlight a new way forward using the recombinant form of a physiological protein molecule, beta-GBP, which has proven to be effective against human Kras-driven tumors in animal models.
There are several significant aspects to their discovery. First, the beta-GBP molecule they have identified kills Kras mutant, and other cancer cells, by activating alternative routes to destroy cancer while leaving normal cells unharmed. Second, the beta-GBP molecule is naturally occurring in the body as a physiological molecule and therefore would avoid the complexity of current combinatorial therapies and the issues of drug resistance, toxicity and all side effects experienced with chemotherapy. Finally, translation of beta-GBP to the clinic, facilitated by its physiological nature, could open a new therapeutic opportunity representing a significant step forward in the treatment of cancers resistant to all current treatments.
The new research shows that mutant Kras, widely recognised as “undruggable,” yields to a treatment which, by impairing physiological processes rather than impairing targets, forces tumor cells to die while leaving normal cells unharmed.
“Few areas of scientific research can be as consequential and benevolent as those that help understand cancer and improve its treatment,” said NYU London Site Director Gary Slapper. “NYU London is exceptionally proud of the superb, path-cutting work of our faculty member Valerie Wells, and to be supporting her research. Innovative research, like Valerie’s with Livio Mallucci, is a key feature of university activity and a generator of world class teaching.”
- Read more: The end of KRAS, and other, cancers? A new way forward (subscription required)