![]() ![]() First of all, it is quite a model for other Hunter alums, and for many in the city, of what you could do to support a public college. This gift is very important to us in so many ways. It was a wonderful memory of what Hunter did for him. So, he took two semesters of economics courses, graduated and went on to incredible success in business. You went through them very quickly.” I was always interested in economics and business, he said. What do you want to learn? You finished all your requirements. The Hunter dean at the time took him back, and said, “You are an extraordinary student and perhaps you made a wrong career choice. So, you can imagine the disappointed people at Penn, who had given him the last scholarship and the last seat and his rather upset parents who spent their last money on these rather expensive dental instruments. He went to his very poor parents and said, “I need money to buy dental instruments to practice on and I need to engrave them with my initials.” Well, within two weeks of his time at the University of Pennsylvania, he decided that this really wasn’t for him. He was accepted into the University of Pennsylvania’s Dental School, and he got the last seat there. He was a chemistry major, physics minor and he got through Hunter in three years because he was so smart. He was a kid from the Bronx and his father was a plumber. When I met him, I asked what his Hunter story was and what Hunter meant to him. He went on to become a very successful businessman. She was the president of the student government and he was the vice president, and he likes to remind us of that. They both remember when Hunter College was twenty-four dollars a semester I think that is where they got the twenty-five million dollar idea from. They did meet at our Bronx campus, in French class-which I guess is very romantic. JR: I will start with this wonderful couple, the Coopermans. Tell us a little bit about the new library here-which is fabulous. Indeed, the Cooperman family recently donated one of the largest gifts in the history of CUNY, a gift of twenty five million dollars to Hunter. PR: Well, I am sure that those individuals will never forget the time that they’ve spent here at Hunter just as the Coopermans never forgot their time here. That showed us that the care of the future really is ours. We raised about a hundred thousand dollars to support our own students and some emergency grants to our faculty and staff who had real financial need. In addition, we hosted faculty and staff members who also lost their homes or had great damage. Then, we had six hundred students who were in our Brookdale dorms, and we were able to find emergency housing for probably about a hundred of them over the following few months. Hurricane victims took over every inch of Hunter College’s main campus, either from the Brookdale Campus or from the homeless in the city. Within hours, we were making plans to relocate our one hundred and sixty classes a week. Our physical therapy programs and the entire nursing and medical lab programs had to be moved. We lost all of the facilities on the campus. ![]() So overnight, we realized that this storm was more severe than we expected. A big challenge for us was that our renowned nursing school, which is on Twenty Sixth Street and First Avenue, was totally flooded by Sandy. We even set-up an animal shelter, although I don’t think any animals came. We had many visitors from the city who wanted to work with the people and to help support them. So, we had about two hundred people in our gymnasium. We had committed to the city that we would house a shelter for those displayed from the storm. Jennifer Raab (JR): Hurricane Sandy was quite a challenge for us at Hunter College. Pola Rosen (PR): You opened the doors of Hunter College to the victims and the homeless from Hurricane Sandy. Their discussion can be found exclusively in Education Update.ĭr. Pola Rosen, Publisher of Education Update sat down with President Raab recently to discuss the many happenings at Hunter College. She has accomplished an incredible number of things, all of which personify the motto of the college, “mihi cura futuri,” the care of the future is mine. President Jennifer Raab has been a powerful force at the helm of Hunter College. ![]()
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