Category: Faculty Profiles

From City to the World’s Sustainability Spotlight

by Katherine Gloede Silverman

At CCNY, research and scholarship advance every day on issues of crucial importance to people throughout New York City and across the world. In this series hosted by City College President Vincent Boudreau, meet faculty, hear firsthand about their research and, in conversation with outside experts, discover how that research is forging new solutions to real-world issues like poverty, homelessness, mental health challenges, affordable housing and disparities in health care. -Description via From City to the World’s Website. Recent episodes have featured just some of the exciting sustainability work and research happening on our CCNY campus. See details and embedded podcast …

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My Leave-Taking From Professor Hillary Brown

by Katherine Gloede Silverman

When a CCNY faculty member initially approached me about joining the faculty at the Spitzer School of Architecture back in 2008, I did indeed hesitate. Instead, I started as a visiting professor. Unsurprisingly, I immediately fell in love with CCNY, its mission, and its extraordinary student body! Luckily for me then, given my sustainability background, I became Professor in 2010 to help ramp up the Sustainability in the Urban Environment program. Since then, I’ve served continuously on its Executive Committee before becoming Program Director in 2016. I always felt it a true serendipity and privilege to be part of this …

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Watery Edges with Catherine Seavitt Nordenson, Pt II

by Jay Wu

The following is part 2 of Jay Wu’s interview with Catherine Seavitt Nordenson. Check out part 1 here! This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Q. I saw that you’re involved with Jamaica Bay resilience research. I would love to hear a bit about that work and how it relates to these questions you’ve posed. A. I had been working on issues of sea-level rise and resilience to storm surges since 2007. My husband, Guy Nordenson (an engineer), Adam Yarinsky (an architect), and I received a Latrobe Prize from the Fellows of the American Institute of Architects, a two-year research grant. We …

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Watery Edges with Catherine Seavitt Nordenson, Pt I

by Jay Wu

The following is a transcript of Jay Wu’s interview with Catherine Seavitt Nordenson, Director of CCNY’s Graduate Landscape Architecture Program. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Q. How did you become interested in sustainability? A. I have a long history of traveling through various aspects of architecture and landscape architecture. I earned my undergraduate architecture degree at Cooper Union in New York and went on to Princeton for my graduate degree. I worked in Europe for a while — first in Paris, then the American Academy in Rome. It was there that I really started to see …

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Denise Hoffman Brandt: “Landscape Issues are the Confluence of Society, Culture and Environment”: Part II

by Jay Wu

The following is part 2 of Jay Wu’s interview with Denise Hoffman Brandt. Check out part 1 here! This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Q. Let’s talk about your book, City Sink: Carbon Cycle Infrastructure for our Built Environment. I was looking at the Google Books description and it said, “City Sink is a design research proposal for a meta-park of dispersed landscape infrastructure to boost carbon stocks and biomass, and through the formation of long-term sequestration, reservoirs for soil organic carbon in New York City and Long Island.” Let’s break that down a little. A. The whole project …

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Denise Hoffman Brandt: “Landscape Issues are the Confluence of Society, Culture and Environment”: Part I

by Jay Wu

The following is a transcript of Jay Wu’s interview with Denise Hoffman Brandt, Professor at CCNY’s Anne Spitzer School of Architecture and Director of Graduate Landscape Architecture from 2010 to 2020. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Q. Many of my classmates don’t come from either environmental or urban studies backgrounds, yet we’re all here studying Urban Sustainability. Given that context, I thought it was really interesting that you first earned degrees in art history and painting before studying landscape architecture. Why did you become a landscape architect after studying art, and how does that background inform …

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Research Guide on Sustainability Topics: A Post from Professor Nilda Sanchez-Rodriguez

by Katherine Gloede Silverman

Sustainability in the Urban Environment program at the City College of New York is fortunate to have the support of two knowledgeable liaisons to a trove of sustainability-related information:   Professor Nilda Sanchez-Rodriguez, Chief Librarian of Architecture division [[email protected]; Drop-In Zoom; (212) 650-8767] Professor Philip Barnett, Reference Librarian, Science & Engineering Library [email protected] As the librarian liaison for Sustainability in the Urban Environment, I am pleased to provide library services and support for an extremely diverse population of students, faculty, and alumni. Providing equitable access to digital resources is increasingly critical to as CCNY Libraries continue to serve their communities amid …

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Faculty Profile: Professor Jim Biles

by Katherine Gloede Silverman

James Biles is a newly affiliated faculty member in the MS Program in Urban Sustainability. An Associate Professor in the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership since 2009, Jim is also affiliated with CCNY’s International Studies Program and the PhD Program in Earth and Environmental Sciences at the CUNY Graduate Center.  As an economic geographer, Jim’s research and praxis are situated at the confluence of social and economic processes, development policy, and local livelihoods, primarily in Mexico and Latin America. In light of the deep-seated changes in the role of government and the prevailing ideology of development, his …

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A Message from Program Director, Professor Hillary Brown

by Katherine Gloede Silverman

Dear CCNY Sustainability Alumni and Friends, As we mark the tenth year of the interdisciplinary Sustainability in the Urban Environment master’s program, we hope this newsletter will sustain your ongoing engagement with CCNY and our Sustainability Program. Our plan is to hold a celebratory reunion event at the end of spring semester 2020 commemorating our first decade and we anticipate a great alumni turnout. Additionally, we are excited to announce that this year, CCNY’s president, Vincent Boudreau, has launched a college-wide initiative focused on sustainability and climate justice. Our reunion will be calendared along with multiple other sustainability- and climate-themed …

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Associate Professor June Williamson, RA LEED AP, Department of Architecture Chair

by Katherine Gloede Silverman

1999: That year marked the first time I taught a class on building construction materials and methods to architecture students. I added a lecture on new ideas about green design, striving to explain the concept of sustainability with use of the nifty 3 “e’s” Venn diagram.The field of sustainability studies has come a long way since then,maturing into a pressing set of professional opportunities and challenges facing today’s students. 2004: Five years later, I arrived at City College as a “mature” graduate student, already a licensed Architect with twelve years of combined professional andteaching experience, and a toddler at home. …

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