We found 114 items that match your search.
A College in the City
This report, commissioned by Dr. William Birenbaum, then the president of the Educational Affiliate of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation and later the first president of Staten Island Community College, argues that urban institutions of [...]
Student Help Project Timeline
The Student Help Project was a collective of Queens College student activists who volunteered to tutor schoolchildren in Jamaica, Queens and Prince Edward County, Virginia in 1963. The Student Help Project Timeline exhibits archival items donated by [...]
Student Help Project Art Book
The Student Help Project Art Book was produced by Queens College graphic design students to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Student Help Project. The Art Book visualizes the legal struggle for desegregation and equal opportunity to quality [...]
School Boycott
This exhibition includes flyers promoting The School Boycott which occurred on February 3rd, 1964. It was organized by local New York City civil rights leaders, and members of the NAACP and CORE. More than 450,000 students boycotted their public [...]
Mississippi Freedom Summer
This exhibit consists of photographs and flyers highlighting the participation of Queens College student activists in the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964. In particular, many of these students were involved in the Meridian Freedom School [...]
Three Who Died for Civil Rights
This exhibit contains items including articles, flyers and logs related to the murders of civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney in Mississippi, 1964. Goodman was a student at Queens College at the time of his death. [...]
Oral History Interview with Khadija DeLoache
Khadija DeLoache entered City College in the fall of 1966 with support from the CUNY Seek program. In this oral history, DeLoache discusses growing up in Harlem, her experience as a student activist, and the development of the Black Studies [...]
Oral History Interview with Henry Arce
In this interview conducted about CUNY’s Open Admissions program, Arce describes his journey from the NYC Public School system to graduating from college. He credits his mother, who raised him alone in a Puerto Rican, immigrant community, for [...]
Newton Hall Statement
“We as white students, can either be a part of the solution or a part of the problem. At Huey P. Newton Hall of Political Action we are attempting to become a part of the solution.” In solidarity with black and Puerto Rican students, a group of [...]
Five Demands
This handout, created by a group of protesting City College students, offers insight into the motivations behind a campus-wide strike in April/May 1969. Black and Puerto Rican students, as well as white supporters, demanded the college meet these [...]
CCNY Protest Flier
This April/May 1969 flier was created to protest police presence on campus and police brutality that many student activists objected to at City College. College administrators requested the police in order to secure the conditions necessary to [...]
"A three-pronged experimental approach to the problem of undiscovered college potential among the young men and women of New York City"
This memorandum from Chancellor Bowker’s office called for three new forms of CUNY desegregation programs (pp. 1-2). This “three-pronged experiment” would be excused from CUNY’s general obligation to admit only students with the highest [...]
Minutes from 4/8/1965 CCNY Faculty Council Meeting
In these notes from a liberal arts and sciences faculty council meeting at City College, CCNY President Gallagher describes a tentative plan to admit 100 “disadvantaged” students into an experimental program in fall 1965. After discussion, the [...]
Minutes of April 1965 CCNY "Special Committee"
One week after CCNY President Buell Gallagher obtained faculty approval for its creation, he sat in on this “Special Committee” meeting chaired by Bernard Levy to begin to plan a new racial and social justice admissions and support program that [...]
1967 - 1968 Annual Report of the SEEK Program
This is a CUNY-wide report for the SEEK program during the 1967-68 academic year. Included in the document is a cover letter from SEEK director Leslie Berger to CUNY Chancellor Albert Bowker, a table of contents, a list of SEEK administrators, and [...]
A New Role for Psychology: Working with Disadvantaged Persons in a College Setting
In this 10-page "position paper," Berger describes and offers a theoretical rationale for the central role of psychological counselors within SEEK. A handwritten note adds an additional source on page 10. Short for "Search for Education, Elevation, [...]
To Help Them Achieve: The Academic Talent Search Project 1966-68, Part II
In the Fall of 1964, (armed with a Rockefeller Foundation grant) Brooklyn College’s School of General Studies launched a 42 student pilot program using Bowker’s model, which it called the “Academic Talent Search Project” or “ATSP.” The [...]
The Pre Baccalaureate Program at the College
In this December 1966 City College Alumnus article, Leslie Berger publicly describes and advocates for the City College SEEK model and challenges all traditional college admissions criteria as incompetent measures of student potential. Short [...]
Janet Mayes: An Oral History of the CCNY 1960’s SEEK Program
In this oral history interview, Janet Mayes, a City College SEEK writing teacher reflects on her experiences with the program. Mayes joined CCNY in the spring of 1967, making her one of the seven original SEEK writing lecturers. She co-taught a SEEK [...]
Statement of Professor John A. Davis
In this 1965 statement Professor John A. Davis demands that his colleagues at City College take action to increase minority representation at the school. He writes that two years had “passed since various units of City College have been [...]
Educational Opportunity Programs: Are They Academically Justifiable?
In this 22-page, July 1969 Milwaukee speech to the first annual conference on educational opportunity programs in higher education, Leslie Berger--director of CUNY's SEEK program--describes the birth and rapid growth of SEEK from 1965 to 1969; [...]
Anthony Penale as a Young Man
Anthony Penale was a City College lecturer and writing teacher in 1965 when he was appointed by English Chair Edmund Volpe as the first SEEK English coordinator/director. Penale became ill in the summer of 1967 and Volpe then appointed Mina [...]
Allen B. Ballard: An Oral History of the CCNY 1960s SEEK Program
In September of 1965, City College launched SEEK, a desegregation and supportive teaching program that quickly became the direct model for new Equal Opportunity Programs at dozens of New York colleges. Here SEEK founder Allen Ballard remembers the [...]
Francee Covington: An Oral History of the CCNY 1960s SEEK Program and The Paper
In 1966, Francee Covington entered City College as one the first class of SEEK students. Here, Francee remembers growing up in Brooklyn, her years as a City College student and her student journalism work on The Paper. Short for "Search for [...]
Marvina White: An Oral History of the CCNY 1960s SEEK Program
In this interview, Marvina White recounts growing up on Dyckman Street in Upper Manhattan and entering City College as part of the first class of SEEK students in 1966. White also analyzes how SEEK-- especially SEEK teachers and counsellors Barbara [...]
Eugenia Wiltshire: An Oral History of the CCNY 1960s SEEK Program
In this oral history interview, Eugenia Wiltshire (nee Dorothy Robinson) recalls her time attending City College in 1966-70 as one of CUNY's first SEEK students. Short for "Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge," SEEK was established in [...]
"Pre-Baccalaureate Program Student Statistics -- Fall Term 1965"
This early summary of the first semester of SEEK (then known as the Pre-Baccalaureate Program) details the courses, schedules and teachers for the 113 SEEK students in Fall 1965 at CCNY. These first SEEK students took a mix of mainstream and special [...]
"Will Everyman Destroy the University?"
In this article, CUNY’s new Vice Chancellor Timothy Healy writes of SEEK as both a practical and theoretical model for open admissions. He cites the success of the program--intended to improve higher education access for the underserved--as proof [...]
"The Faculty Council Interim Report of the Committee on Enrollment Policy"
This April 1964 report shows the deep conflicts within the CCNY faculty with regards to expanding access to new students. Complaining about limited facilities and student unreadiness, the faculty committee resisted both loosening admissions [...]
Medgar Evers College - The Pursuit of a Community's Dream
In this short book, Medgar Evers College: The Pursuit of a Community's Dream, CUNY retired professors Florence Tager and Zala Highsmith-Taylor tell the story of the founding of the college. As an institution born largely out of 1960s [...]
"...The importance of going on and getting education for police" - An Oral History Interview with Mayor John Lindsay
Mayor Lindsay is interviewed in his Manhattan office on October 26, 1988 by Professor Jerry Markowitz for Educating for Justice, a history of John Jay College. Lindsay discusses the importance of accessible higher education, and educating police [...]
Oral History Interview with Bill Friedheim and Jim Perlstein of Borough of Manhattan Community College
This oral history interview with retired Borough of Manhattan Community College professors Bill Friedheim and Jim Perlstein was conducted at the CUNY Graduate Center on June 1, 2015. Friedheim and Perlstein were intimately involved in many of the [...]
CUNY SEEK and Open Admissions Oral Histories
This is a website of oral histories by CUNY students and teachers telling stories about the founding and early years of SEEK at City College. It also contains stories about teaching writing in the first decade of Open Admissions across CUNY.
Minutes of Proceedings: Establishing Community College Number Seven
In these minutes of proceedings from a January 22, 1968 meeting of the Board of Higher Education, the Board resolves to create the "Committee to Seek Presidents for Community Colleges Seven and Eight." The committee is first tasked with filling the [...]
Press Release – A New Experimental College
In this press release, The City University of New York's Office of University Relations announces the creation of a new, experimental, two-year college to be "established on a community-oriented basis in central Brooklyn." The press release [...]
Statement by Chancellor Albert H. Bowker Announcing the Establishment of a New Community College
In this statement by CUNY Chancellor Albert H. Bowker on February 1, 1968 in Brooklyn Borough Hall, Bowker announces the establishment of a new, experimental community college in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. His announcement presents CUNY's hopes [...]
Telegram from Walter Pinkston to Chancellor Bowker: Lack of Community Involvement
In this telegram sent to Chancellor Albert Bowker on February 6, 1968, Walter Pinkston, executive director of Bedford Stuyvesant Youth in Action, decries the recent announcement of Community College No. 7 because the message was delivered without [...]
Letter from CUNY Chancellor Albert Bowker: Stating Commitment to Community Involvement
This is the first of three letters sent on February 12, 1968 from Chancellor Albert Bowker in regards to his absence from a community meeting in Bedford Stuyvesant on February 10. In this letter to Walter Pinkston, executive director of Bedford [...]
Letter from CUNY Chancellor Albert Bowker to Hon. Shirley Chisholm
This is the second letter sent on February 12, 1968 from CUNY Chancellor Albert Bowker. This letter, addressed to Assemblywoman Shirley Chisholm, informs her that though he regrets not having attended the February 10th meeting at Decatur JHS, he [...]
Letter from CUNY Chancellor Albert Bowker to Hon. Thomas R. Jones
This is the third letter sent on February 12, 1968 from Chancellor Albert Bowker in regards to his absence at the February 10 meeting of community leaders and members at Decatur JHS. Addressed to Hon. Thomas R. Jones, chairman of the [...]