The Bronx Community College Foundation will hold its annual Gala Awards Dinner, Celebrating BCC: Progress and Promise, at the New York Botanical Garden, 2900 Southern Boulevard, on Thursday, April 2. Those to be honored as part of the evening program include Jay Hershenson, senior vice chancellor for university relations and secretary of the Board of Trustees of The City University of New York; BCC graduate M. Monica Sweeney, M.D., assistant commissioner for the Bureau of HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene; and Alice P. Fuller, dean of faculty and academic affairs at Bronx Community College.
“At BCC, we seek to transform lives and these three exemplary individuals have been very much a part of making that happen at Bronx Community College,” says BCC president, Dr. Carolyn G. Williams.
The complete list of awards and nominees are as follows:
The Bronx Community
College Legacy Award
Jay Hershenson is senior vice chancellor for university relations and secretary of the Board of Trustees of The City University of New York — the leading public urban university system in the nation. He oversees the development and implementation of CUNY’s external relations program, including governmental, media and community relations; marketing, communications and CUNY-TV; and the administration of the Board of Trustees’ agenda, meetings and records. He has served as vice chancellor since 1984 and has worked in senior level administrative positions for six CUNY chancellors and with over 100 CUNY trustees since 1971.
The senior vice chancellor has supported many projects of importance to Bronx Community College for over three decades. Of particular note, he developed with BCC the strategy to successfully secure $7.7 million for the North Instructional Building, followed by the campaign for this $100 million project. His enduring leadership on behalf of BCC is a work in progress.
The Robert L.
Clarke Award
For Scientific
Achievement
Dr. M. Monica Sweeney is the assistant commissioner for the Bureau of HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. For more than 17 years, she served as the medical director and vice president of medical affairs at the Bedford Stuyvesant Family Health Center, where she made tremendous strides in bringing quality care to the people in Brooklyn.
Dr. Sweeney is presently serving as an associate professor at the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education at The City University of New York Medical School.
In addition to clinical medicine, teaching and policy advocacy, Dr. Sweeney is the face of HIV/AIDS prevention in the media and has appeared on every major television channel, and many of the most popular radio stations, discussing HIV prevention.
This award is given in memory of beloved chemistry professor Robert L. Clarke who taught at BCC for 30 years. A believer in the power of education to uplift and open doors, Dr. Clarke identified with his students, many of whom were immigrants and of limited means. He was deeply committed to the main principle upon which community colleges were founded: that there ought to be a place in higher education for every high school graduate who seeks it. He made it his mission to provide his students with the highest level of teaching and expected the highest level of achievement from them in return.
The Lifetime
Leadership Award
Dr. Alice P. Fuller, professor and dean of faculty and academic affairs at Bronx Community College, has inspired and endeared herself to countless nursing students in 42 years of service to the College. Her credo – “I decided on nursing because I wanted simply to take care of people” – is as strongly vibrant today as when she took her nursing oath in 1953.
