Student Testimonials
Student Testimonials
Student Testimonials
The program asked some of its students to speak about their experiences in the program. Their testimonials are shared below.
Anthony Wheeler
Alumnus
Anthony is an educator who received his Bachelor’s degree from SUNY New Paltz. He joined the program in the Fall of 2018 with an interest in creating engaged digital pedagogies. Through coursework, close mentoring, and his involvement with the GC digital community he learned to refine his projects and make them into presentable artifacts of DH scholarship. The interdisciplinary skills he picked up as an M.A. student, along with the digital portfolio he developed during his studies, contributed to his Fall 2020 admission in the Ph.D. program in Urban Education at the Graduate Center. Anthony has also joined the CUNY Academic Commons Team and continues to enact social justice through pedagogy as an adjunct instructor at several CUNY colleges.
Documenting Immigrant Families’ Separation and Reunion: Sandra Castro, Class of 2021, on her Dissertation and Her New Assistant Dean Role
Sandra Castro (Photo courtesy of Castro)
By Bonnie Eissner
The recent surge in the number of unaccompanied children and teenagers making the treacherous crossing from Mexico into the United States, many of them seeking parents who are already in the U.S., is drawing renewed attention to the southern border and national immigration policy. President Biden set a goal to reunite the separated families, but
Sandra Castro (Ph.D. ’21, Social Welfare) believes more needs to be done to support them.
“I just think it s important that we shift the focus from the border to what happens after because I think that s when the hard work begins, and not only for families, but also for schools, for local communities.” Castro said.
For Siqi Tu, the Center Is Always Changing: A Class of 2021 Graduate on Relocating from China to New York To Germany, and Her Next Move
Siqi Tu (Photo courtesy of Tu)
Siqi Tu (Ph.D. ’21, Sociology) was born and raised in China, moved to New York for graduate school, and is now a postdoctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, where she’s continuing her research on the shifting ethno-racial identity of Chinese “parachute students”: teenagers who leave their parental homes to attend U.S. high schools.
Tu’s research which also examines the effects of the increasing geopolitical tension between China and the United States, and the surge of populist anti-immigrant and anti-globalization sentiments is particularly timely. She recently spoke to The Graduate Center about her work and her next planned move: a return to Shanghai.
The Graduate Center, The City University of New York
Established in 1961, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) is devoted primarily to doctoral studies and awards most of CUNY s doctoral degrees. An internationally recognized center for advanced studies and a national model for public doctoral education, the Graduate Center offers more than thirty doctoral programs in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and the natural sciences, as well as a number of master s programs. Many of its faculty members are among the world s leading scholars in their respective fields. The school currently enrolls over 4700 students from throughout the United States, as well as from about eighty foreign countries, and its alumni hold major positions in industry and government, as well as in academia. The Graduate Center is also home to more than thirty interdisciplinary research centers and institutes focused on areas of compelling social, civic, cultural, and scientific concerns
Drag and Flamboyant Performance Art Are Like ‘Bread and Butter’ to Aerialist and Art History Scholar Jack Crawford
Ph.D. candidate Jack Crawford performing as an aerialist. (Photo credit: Adad Hannah)
Prior to COVID, when she wasn’t combing archives and watching avant-garde films for her doctoral dissertation on drag and other forms of flamboyant performance art, Ph.D. candidate
Jack Crawford (Art History) was often either taking in those art forms at venues throughout New York or engaging in performance herself as an aerialist and an aerial teacher.
“Burlesque performance and drag performance are my bread and butter, what I see as the most exciting kind of performance practices right now,” Crawford said. The shutdown of New York’s theaters during the pandemic has made the last year difficult for her. “Going to see performance as well as performing is a big part of my New York life. I ve missed that terribly,” she said.