You can celebrate with exhibits throughtout the month from the American Museum of Natural History or the Smithsonian and more. Check out this link: https://womenshistorymonth.gov/
In the wake of the tragic events in Atlanta last week we dedicated our daily posts to honor the contributions of Stuy Alumnae of Asian American & Pacific Island decent. We continue this week honoring contributions of AAPI Women throughout history. #StopAsianHate!
We are all disheartned by the reports of incidents reflecting AAPI hate in our city. We stand with our new NYC DOE Chancellor, Meisha Porter in her statement this week, "there is no room for racism or discrimination of any kind at the DOE or any NYCschools:"
03/31/2021
Patsy Takemoto Mink made history with a number of “firsts.” First Japanese American to practice law in Hawaii. First woman of color—and the first Asian American woman—elected to the United States House of Representatives. In 1972, she became the first East Asian American to run for the Democratic nomination for president. She also co-authored and helped pass Title IX, a landmark piece of legislation expanding educational and athletic opportunities for women. She was part of the Women’s Educational Equity Act (WEEA) helping women and girls to succeed in the educational system. She accomplished all this having fought sexist statutes, having been refused the right to the take the bar exam at first, and struggling for employment and so much more. The Patsy Takemoto Mink Education Foundation was established in her memory in 2003 to carry on her commitments. Mink was posthumously honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014. Mink had five campaigns for re-election, and there is more about her than we could ever write! Click the links to learn more!
03/30/2021
Junko Tabei (born Junko Ishibashi) was a Japanese mountaineer and the first woman to reach the top of Mount Everest in 1975. Subsequently, she the first woman to climb the Seven Summits (the highest peaks of the seven continents) in 1992. After graduating college with a degree in English literature in Japan, she formed an all-women climbing club. She organized many ‘clean up excursions’ climbing. In addition to mountaineering, Tabei has seven written books, taken on environmental initiatives for sustainable climbing, and was director of the Himalayan Adventure Trust of Japan, an organization working at a global level to preserve mountain environments. She had a personal goal of climbing the highest mountain in every country in the world, and by the end of her lifetime she had completed at least 70 of these mountains. An astronomer named an asteroid after her and in 2019, and a mountain range on Pluto was named Tabei Montes in her honor.
03/29/2021
Maya Lin is a designer and architect who, at 21, designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Entering a competition that included more than 1,400 entries, she won the design contest despite not being a trained architect with a design that earned her only a “B” from her design class at Yale! Her design was surrounded by controversy at the time, however, as congressmen blasted it as a “political statement of shame and dishonor”. Lin also designed the Civil Rights Memorial in Alabama and the Museum of Chinese in America in New York. Lin is American-born from Chinese immigrants and grew up in Ohio. She is the niece of Lin Huiyin, who was an American-educated artist and poet, and said to have been the first female architect in modern China. She earned both her B.A and Masters from Yale in Architecture. She owns and operates Maya Lin Studio in New York City, Lin is a member of the National Women’s Hall of Fame. She received both the National Medal of Arts in 2009 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President, Barack Obama in 2016. You can catch a film about her as Lin was the subject of the Academy Award-winning documentary Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision. (photo credit: Jackie Johnston, Associated Press)
03/26/2021
Amy Tan is both a writer and trailblazer in the literary world. Her, bestselling 1989 novel The Joy Luck Club is “a portrait of Asian-American family life that was both specific to the community and universally felt”. In 1993, the book was adapted into a movie, the last U.S. film to feature an all-Asian cast before “Crazy Rich Asians” was released in 2018. As for Tan, she’s still churning out critically acclaimed novels and memoirs. Tan is also a writer of children’s books which have been adapted to an animated series on PBS. Tan openly depicted family life and mental health and as often been criticized for her depiction of Chinese culture. She has been open about her family’s struggles, her grandmother’s suicide and her own battle with depression and suicidal ideation. She has been honored with many awards including the National Book Award, the NY Times Notable Book Award and Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. (photo credit: amytan.net)
03/25/2021
Dr. Kalpana Chawla was the first Indian-American female astronaut. Born in Karnal, India, she immigrated to the U.S. for college and to pursue her girlhood dream of becoming an astronaut. She earned her B.A. in Aeronautical Engineering from Punjab Engineering College in India. Then, in two masters and a PhD at University of Texas at Arlington and University of Colorado Boulder respectively. She achieved her dream in 1997. making 252 orbits of the Earth in just over two weeks as part of the Columbia crew on flight STS-87. In the process, she became the first Indian-American woman and second Indian-American person to go into space.
In 2003, she was one of the seven members of the ill-fated space shuttle Columbia. It was her second voyage into space as mission specialist and primary robotic arm operator. Upon returning, Columbia broke up during re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. The entire crew of seven was killed. Chawla was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, and several streets, universities, and institutions have been named in her honor. She is regarded as a national hero in India . The Kalpana Chawla Award was instituted by the Government of Karnataka in 2004 to recognize young women scientists and NASA has dedicated a supercomputer to Chawla.
03/24/2021
Yuna Kim aka “Queen Yuna” is from South Korea and was named one of the world’s most influential people by Time Magazine in 2010. She became the first female figure skater to win the Olympics and is currently well known for her philanthropic work. She had not only won South Korea’s first Olympic figure skating gold medal but had beaten an exceptionally talented Japanese rival for it, a fact of no small consequence. Sports competitions between the two countries had always been fraught with nationalistic implications. At 29, she remains a national icon in Korea and has been referred to on magazine covers as “The Queen”. Her ice show, All That Skate, has been an annual attraction in Seoul, featuring world champions from all four of the sport’s disciplines. She is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador who makes personal donations of “about $1 million” to the UN’s agency’s global relief efforts. (photo credit: Harper’s Bazaar, photographer, Philip Hersh)
03/23/2021
Grace Lee Boggs was a Chinese American author, philosopher and social activist. She is regarded as a key figure in the Asian American Movement. She studied at Barnard and received her Ph.D. in 1940 from Bryn Mawr College but was unable to secure a job due to her gender and race. She eventually relocated to Chicago where she was able to secure a low paying position in the philosophy library. In Chicago, she came in contact with the African American community for the first time and was able to see first hand what she read about and understood as “statistics.” In 1941, she participated in the March on Washington and led her to be active in the Civil Rights Movement. She founded Detroit Summer, a multicultural intergenerational youth program. She received numerous awards in her lifetime. Her life is the subject of the documentary film American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs. In 2014, The Social Justice Hub at The New School’s newly opened University Center was named the Baldwin Rivera Boggs Center after activists Boggs, James Baldwin, and Sylvia Rivera
3/22/2021
Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu has been called the “First Lady of Physics” and the “Chinese Marie Curie" and is Monday's woman of the day! She was a physicist who made important contributions to the Manhattan Project and she performed experiments in the field of physics that disproved the Law of Conservation of Parity. While born in Shanghai and schooled in China, she earned her Ph.D. at UC Berkeley and taught physics at Princeton and Smith College in the 1940s. She was on the resarch team at Columbia University during WWII that worked on the Manhattan Project. She later helped her two colleagues, Tsung Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang,, win the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics, however she was not acknowledged or credited for her contributions because she was a woman.
Later, she became the first woman to serve as president of the American Physical Society and won awards and honors throughout her lifetime including the National Medal of Science and the Comstock Prize as well as the inaugural Wolf Prize in Physics in 1978. Wu spent most of her career at Columbia, known for her strictness and high standards.; however, she was also reported as treating her students like her children and often ate lunch with them. (photo credit: Science Today magazine)
We're spending this week celebraing the Women of Stuyvesant again!
3/19/2021
Sandy Liang, Stuy '09 is the 'Stuygirl' we celebrate today! Sandy Liang is a NY Fashion Designer who grew up in Queens, commuted to Stuy and afterwards earned her B.A. at Parsons New School for Design. Like many of our students at Stuy, she had grandparents in Chinatown and parents who ran a restaurant. Her grandmother served as inspiration and even a model for her designs! She's been named one of Forbes Top Entrepreneurs 30 Under 30 in 2018 and has been described by The New York Times as “one of the most sought-after designers in New York. Her desgins continue to be seen walking runways. Ms, Liang is among the Asian Americans changing the industry of fashion as described in a recent New York Times article.
Ms. Liang honored Stuy just last year before the pandemic with debuting her 'Ready To Wear Fall 2020 Collection' in none-other than our Stuy Lobby! For the frist time ever, Stuyvesant was transformed to the likes of 'The Tents" at NYC Fashion Week for one night only for this return to the places it all began for Ms. Liang in the 90s, Stuyvesant, to debut her collection; "inspired by Chinese grrandmothers". She gave back to our current Stuy students and inspired a group of them interested in fashion and journalism that night who were able to attend the NYC Fashion Show and meet her and report on the event in The Specator as well.
03/18/2021
Chunghymn Natalie Lui Duncan, Stuy ’93, is the Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Office of Management for the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service and our celebrated Stuy woman of the day! She's being featured on the Stuyvesant High School Alumni Association's Special Industry Panel for Women's History Month on March 30 along with three other amazing Stuyvesant Alumnae discussing Careers in Public Service.
Duncan "served across 4 Cabinet-level Federal agencies, in multiple industry sectors, and on boards of directors of non-profit organizations over the span of two decades. She possesses strategic and business operations experience across a broad range of professional disciplines. Currently, she serves as the Deputy Assistant Administrator, Office of Management for the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service. Her portfolio has encompassed a full spectrum of human capital management and administrative management functions.
Ms. Duncan was awarded two degrees by Stanford University—including a Master of Arts Degree in Sociology – Organizational Studies, and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in History. She is a graduate of Stuyvesant High School, Class of 1993. She is a SHRM Senior Certified Professional (SHRM-SCP) in Human Resource Management."
3/17/2021
Lucy Liu, Stuy '86 Lucy Liu is a television and film and Broadway actress, and artist. Liu grew up in Queens and after graduating from Stuyvesant, she attended NYU and U Michigan and earned her B.A. in Asian Languages and Cultures. She's the recipient of Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Critic's Choice Award and a Seoul International Drama Award. She has also been nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and has received nominations for three People's Choice Awards and two Saturn Awards.
Liu is more than an award-winning talented star, she is also a phianthropist! Liu was the spokeswoman for the Lee National Denim Day fundraiser, which raises money for breast cancer research and education. She is also an ambassador for U.S. Fund for UNICEF. Liu is also an advocate and supporter of marriage equality for same-sex marriage, was a spokeswoman for the Human Rights Campaign in 2011, and partnered with Heinz to combat global health threats among infants and children in the developing countries.
While she is best known for her acting in shows like Law and Order, SVU and Elementary, Liu currently has her Art on Exhibition currently in New York City at the 2020 Together in Distance: COVID-19 Relief Benefit Auction. Check it out! Learn more about her at http://lucyliu.net/ (photo credit: Time Magazine)
03/16/2021
Today's Stuy Alumna really ROCKS! It's Kate Schellenbach, class of 1983, musician and television producer and drummer of Luscious Jackson -- founding member of the Beastie Boys-- you probably have that red Stuy PhysEd Iconic T-shirt--we know you do 😉.
Schellenbach attended Stuy and played with the Beastie Boys until 1984 and was an Emmy Award-winning segment producer on The Ellen DeGeneres Show appearing on screen on a show in 2007, playing the bongos with Ellen herself! She has also worked as a producer several other television shows including The Late Late Show with James Corden, where she is currently. Watch/listen to her in this recent interview! (photo credit: notsomoderndummer.com)
https://www.notsomoderndrummer.com/not-so-modern-drummer/2020/2/24/unsung-heroes-kate-schellenbach
03/15/2021
Hanna Rosin, Stuy '87 grew up in Queens and is now the Senior Editor of The Atlantic and a founder and co-editor of Slate's DoubleX. In her time at Stuyvesant, Rosin won conpetitions on Speech & Debate with David Coleman as her partner... ring a bell? You may recognize that name. He's also Stuy alumnus, same class as Rosin and currently President of the College Board. Rosin went on from Stuy to Stanford University and aside from being an accomplished journalist, has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, served as editorial director for audio for New York Magazine , and was the co-host of the NPR podcast Invisibilia with Alix Spiegel.
She's a National Magazine Award Winner and a published author of The End of Men: And the Rise of Women, a book that gave rise to an article in The Atlantic that led to a national conversation and several television appearances for her. You can listen to Hanna Rosin on NPR here: https://www.npr.org/people/467417802/hanna-rosin (photo credit: slate.com)
This week let's take a look back at iconic women.
3/12/2021
Women in Science is the theme today as we celebrate Virginia Apgar, physician who invented the Apgar score, a standardized assessment system for evaluating the health of newborns. Virignia was a obstetrical anesthesiologist and medical researcher. The Apgar score evaluates the newborn immediately after birth to assess if medical intervention is needed. She was the the first female board-certified anesthesiologist. She was also the first professor of anesthesiology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons (1949–59), and the first female physician to attain the rank of full professor there. Additionally, she was director of the department of anesthesiology at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. Want to know about other amazing women in Science? This article shares 50 women and their contributions throughout history!
3/11/2021
Today we celebrate trailblaizing women featuring Jeanette Rankin, first woman elected to the United States Congress. She served two consecutive terms during World Wars I and II. and known for fighting for voting rights, healthcare and better working conditions for women as well as voting to keep America out of war. As the first-ever woman to serve in Congress she faced impossible scrutiny with grade and professionalism and after leaving Congress, continued her activism in America and Europe for the rights of women and against war including organizing the Jeannette Rankin Brigade during the Vietnam War. She's best known for being the only member of Congress to vote against striking Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor. A statue of Rankin by Terry Mimnaugh, inscribed "I Cannot Vote For War", was placed in the United States Capitol's Statuary Hall in 1985. She is also an inductee of the National Women's Hall of Fame
3/10/2021
Today we celebrate Women in STEM by sharing this article on 13 Women in STEM Who Changed the World. One inspiring woman names is Radia Perlman, referred to as the "mother of the Internet". She is an internet pioneer who began as one of only about 50 women in her class of 1000 attending MIT in the 1960s. Becoming a computer scientest, her innovations and innovations made the internet possible. She owns about 100 patents and hs been awared a Lifetime Achievement award from Usenix and the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM). Perlman is a New Jersey native and a Fellow at Sun Microsystems and has taught courses at the University of Washington, Harvard University and MIT, and has been the keynote speaker at events all over the world.
3/9/2021
The weather warmed up a bit so we hope you get a chance ot get outdoors. On.a brief lunchtime walk I was fortunate to catch a glimpse of the new display surrounding Fearless Girl, the statue that now 'defines Wall Street'. State Street Global Advisors just installed a broken glass ceiling surrounding her to celebrate the 4th anniversary of Fearless Girl and International Women's Day. She's an amazing work of art and expression of the progress women make every single day. the official statement of the State Street Global Advisors on the installation is: "Today, in celebration of International Women’s Day, we have installed a broken glass ceiling surrounding Fearless Girl as a symbol of the new ground women are breaking every day." (photos taken on my walk on 3/8)
Let's look at a ground-breadking artist for our featured Woman in History today, Frida Khalo, who was a Mexican painter. She was known for her self-portraits and surreal paintings. Khalo was sick from an early age and spent much of her life ill and sometimes bedridden. She didn't acheive real fame until the 70s during the feminist movement - want to know more? Check out this quick video from PBS on "Fierce Women of Art"
3/8/2021
If you're looking for truly 'iconic' women to celebrate during Women's History Month, kick off International Women's Day, March 8 with a look at PBS's page at this link. This site is highlighting some of the most powerful women throughout history who effected change and organized powerful movements. Whether it's politics, science or civics -- you will find the most amazing women! Check it out!
We'll highlight just one today -- Maggie Lena Walker: Civil Rights Activist and Entrepreneur, who was the first African American female bank president in America! Click the link and watch a video about her.
This week we salute the WOMEN OF STUY!
3/5/2021
Grace Meng, Stuy '93 serves as Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives, representing New York's 6th congressional district in the New York City borough of Queens, which includes many of the towns Stuy's students travel to our school from! Previously, She's also serves in the New York State Assembly, representing the 22nd assembly district in Flushing, Queens. She is the first Asian American to be elected to Congress from New York. She grew up in one of the Queens towns she serves and commuted to Stuy from there. She then went to U Mich and completed her Law degree at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva. She followed in her father's footsteps as a politician.So proud and grateful for Stuy alumna Congresswoman Grace Meng and all she has given back to the community and Stuyvesant!
3/4/2021
We left off with Stuy '84 Laurie Gwen Shapiro, author, documentary filmaker, and journalist. Laurie grew up and still resides in New York City. After she graduated Stuy, she moved on to Syracuse earning her B.S. in English and Communications in TV Films. Among her award-winning accomplishments is being nominated for an emmy for HBO’s Finishing Heaven and nost recently, she won the 2021 Best NYC Essay or Article from GANYC Apple Awards for her artile in The New Yorker, “The Improbable Journey of Dorothy Parker’s Ashes”. Laurie is an avid writer and storyteller in all her encounters throughout New York City. Her next nonfiction book is on Amelia Earhart titled Amelia and George, for Viking Books. You can learn moreon her site. Laurie provided the inspriation to our Stuy Fem Club girls for our 2019 First Women of Stuy event when I shared her New Yorker article with them entitled How a Thirteen-Year-Old Girl Smashed the Gender Divide in American High Schools. (photo credit: lauriegwenshapiro,com)
3/3/2021
Where would women of Stuyvesant be without Dr. Alice deRivera Haines? Ironically, however, although Dr. Haines never attended Stuyvesnat herself, she made it possible for all other women to do so! Young Alice, the decendent of a suffragist (her great-grandmother, Eugenie de Rivera), filed suit against the Board of Education along with another young woman and the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee to gain entrance into the then all-boys Stuy. She broke the gender barrier that allowed the first 14 girls to enter the doors of Stuyvesant and change it forever!
Alice's family moved before she ever attended Stuyvesant, and she went on to attend U Mass and became a phsyician practicing medicine at refugee camps in Kenya, with displaced earthquake victims in Haiti, and in rural Maine, She lives in Maine and has a free clinic in Lewiston and is a recipient of an honorary Stuyvesant diploma awarded in 2013.
In both 2017 and 2019, it was one of the highest honors to welcome Dr. Haines back to Stuyvesant along with the "Original Girls of Stuyvesant" for events to honor the Frist Girls of Stuy. the 50th Anniversary of the breaking the gender barrier at Stuy. An Event hosted in collaboration with the Alumni Association and StuyFem Club. Stuy was honored to host these brave history-making women who 'broke the glass ceiling' long before the phrase was trendy. Learn more about Alice deRivera Haines in this New Yorker article written by another amazing female Stuy alumna, author, documentary filmaker, and journalist, Laurie Gwen Shapiro, '84.
3/2/2021
Saidiya Hartman, PhD, Stuy ’79 is a scholar of African American Literature and cultural history and Dr. a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She grew up in Brooklyn, and after Stuy, she earned a B.A. from Wesleyan University and Ph.D. from Yale Universit. She's also the author of "the influential Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-making in Nineteenth Century America (Oxford University Press, 1997), Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), and Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval (W. W. Norton, 2019).[10] Hartman's "essays have been widely published and anthologized." Recently, she received a five-year $625,000 “Genius Grant” from the MacArthur Foundation. According to the MacArthur citation, through her research and writing, Dr. Hartman bears “witness to lives, traumas and fleeting moments of beauty that historical archives have omitted.”
3/1/2021
Elizabeth Lee Wilmer, Stuy '87 is a mathematician known for her work on Markov chain mixing times. She is a professor, and former department head, of mathematics at Oberlin College.
At Stuy, she was captain of the Math Team and won 2nd place in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search (now Regeneron) in 1987. The 1st place winner that year was also female, marking the first year that the top two prizes both went to women, She went on to Harvard where she again led the Math Team winning inaugral competitions in Mathematics. She also completed her PhD at Harvard. Wilmer is the author of the textbook Markov Chains and Mixing Times. (photo credit: Oberlin.edu)
