President Thomas A. Isekenegbe announced that eight BCC professors are recipients of grants from CUNY’s Black, Race and Ethnic Studies Initiative (BRESI). In total, BCC received $99,762.00 in grant money. BCC congratulated all the PIs and Julia Oliva, Grants and Partnership Director, for their hard work on these grant proposals.

More than 500 proposals were submitted, and the BCC awardees were among the 126 selections chosen. Qualities such as innovation, focus and impact on the development of ethnic studies and sustainability were considered. A broad cross-section of the CUNY community was selected.

CUNY Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez initiated the Black, Race and Ethnic Studies Initiative Counsel, now a formal body within CUNY. Supported by a generous $10 million gift from the Mellon Foundation, $3 million of this historic gift will go toward further development of CUNY programs in Black, race and ethnic studies. The commitment and underlying support for this important work will deepen the College’s pledge to inclusion and the scholarship of the CUNY community.

The focus of the grants, the lead PI and the amounts awarded are:

Jumpstarting the Black and Latinx Studies Emerging Scholars Pipeline at Community Colleges a

Collaborative Cross Campus Mentored Student Research Program
Guishard, Monique – $20,000

Jerome Avenue Revitalization Collaborative (JARC) Internship
Fuentes, Alén – $26,636.00

BCC African Services Project
Eugene, Adams – $3,000.00

Black Freedom and Schooling in Nineteenth-Century Cuba
Otheguy, Raquel – $4,250.00

Black Lives Matter in Higher Education: Empowering Student-Scholar Voices
Tobar, Cynthia – $12,000.00

Faculty Research grants at Community Colleges – Red Rock
Katz, Jonathan – $11,957.00

First Spanish: The Latinx People/Population of Logan Square
Acosta, Grisel Y. – $10,000.00

Teacher-Led Instruction: Creating Asian American & Pacific Islander Curriculum
Choi, Minkyung – $11,919.00

Please join President Isekenegbe in congratulating the recipients of these prestigious grants.