Using an interactive tool with data derived from ratemyprofessors.com, the reviews describing male and female professors showed gender bias depending on the word searched. Benjamin Schmidt, assistant professor of history at Northeastern University, aggregated 14 million reviews from ratemyprofessors.com and created a search engine to see how words compared between professors depending on field and gender, concluding that certain positive words were descriptive of males more than females. One of the most surprising results was the “spectrum from smart to brilliant to genius, where each one of those is more strongly gendered male than the previous one was,” Schmidt told the New York Times. Schmidt provided a list of words overrepresented in gender bias on his…
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Queens College community retraces the footsteps of Dr. King
Queens College went down to Atlanta, Georgia to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr’s “Legacy of Courage” in 14 different events, from marching with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to helping feed the needy. Eighteen students and staff traveled south, from January 18th to the 22nd, as an immersive, outside the classroom learning experience. The group also met with a few iconic figures from the Civil Rights movement. The first person the group met was Peter Geffen, the founder of Abraham Heschel Day School and veteran member of the Summer Community Organization and Political Education, a project that led white college students between 1961 and 1966 to help black communities in…
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U.S. re-establishes diplomatic ties with Cuba after 53 years
President Barack Obama struck a deal with Cuban Prime Minister Raul Castro to restore diplomacy once again between the United States and Cuba on Dec. 17 after 53 years of hostility. After a year of secret talks in Canada and the Vatican, ending with an hour-long talk between Obama and Castro, the leaders agreed on a prisoner swap. The Cuban government released two people, a subcontractor who was imprisoned for five years and an unnamed intelligence asset believed to be Rolando Trujillo, a spy working for the Central Intelligence Agency, who was imprisoned for 20 years. In return, the U.S. released the final three members of a spy ring known as the Cuban Five who were…
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QC has a Knight in wet armor—Jordan Melidor
The Queens College Knights men’s and women’s swimming teams are off to a good season with three wins and two losses. They have surpassed last season’s total of only two wins, with many more appearances to go. A strong swimmer has joined the ranks, breaking records and leaving competition in his mist— 19-year-old Jordan Melidor. Queens College’s swim team most recent competition was at the United States Merchant Marine Academy Memorial Invitational, marking the start of the USMMA swimming season. Adelphi, Southern Connecticut State, Bridgeport University and SUNY Maritime attended the invitational, according to the USMMA Athletics website. Melidor ranked third in the 200-yard freestyle, third in the 500-yard freestyle…
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Queens College joins CUNY 2020 program’s investment plans
An economy bouncing back is ripe for investments; the CUNY 2020 program incentivizes the colleges to create economically stimulating ideas and compete with other CUNY schools. CUNY 2020 is a “Challenge Grant Program” that pushes CUNY schools to come up with long term economic development plans that create jobs, help communities and ensure quality investments. “One of the goals of CUNY 2020 is to support long term economic development, so the three projects will contribute to job growth in the NYC area, including jobs for QC students and alumni,” said Acting Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Elizabeth Hendrey. The grant provided $55 million in capital funding for eight…
