Grant will Fund College’s Strategic Efforts to Confront Religious and Ethnic Discrimination
NEW YORK, N.Y. (February 7, 2023) – In response to a rise in hate crimes across the country, the City University of New York (CUNY) has awarded Stella and Charles Guttman Community College $24,000 in funding to implement strategic action aimed at combatting religious and ethnic discrimination and preventing bias-related incidents on campus.
With the grant funding, provided by CUNY’s Office of Transformation, Guttman will work to raise awareness, foster cross-cultural competencies, fight racism and antisemitism and provide education for the entire campus population – including staff, faculty and students – through panel discussions, cross collaborative events and field trips. Specifically, the funding will allow the College to engage in a speaking series linked to campus events, providing an arc of education, understanding, collaboration and coalition building.
“Guttman Community College is an environment where all identities are embraced and valued and where everyone has a path to success. This grant will allow us to improve our cultural awareness and celebrate the various identities of Guttman students, staff and faculty,” said Guttman President Larry Johnson.
Aligned with the college’s new strategic plan, the grant will help the College achieve equitable student and employee outcomes and advance social and racial justice inside and outside our classrooms through student-centered, employee-centered, and data and assessment strategies.
“We are grateful to CUNY for this incredibly important funding opportunity. Through this grant, Guttman has developed a plan that will help us respond to the uptick in anti-Asian hate, antisemitism and other forms of discrimination our students, staff and faculty may be facing,” said Guttman’s Executive Officer for Diversity, Equity, and Compliance Jaclyn Helms.
Guttman Community College is a Hispanic-Serving Institution and a Minority Serving Institution with a diverse student body across race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and neurodiversity. Roughly 92% of Guttman’s students are students of color, with 58% identifying as Hispanic.
CUNY’s Office of Transformation, created by the Chancellor in June 2022, serves a vital purpose for The City University of New York: addressing urgent, high-need strategic priorities, partnering with leaders across CUNY to amplify and/or initiate strategic action and accelerating innovation. The office hopes to convene and also to listen, to share best practices so others can learn from inspiring models of successful and equitable change, to solve problems and also to wrestle collectively with seemingly intractable ones. The aim is to be a hopeful beacon for CUNY and all of higher education, showing that change is necessary and transformation possible.
Stella and Charles Guttman Community College is CUNY’s first new community college in more than forty years. Reimagining what community college can be, Guttman opened its doors in Manhattan in August 2012 to create a research-based, innovative model focused on moving students efficiently toward graduation. Offering associate degree programs in a nurturing environment, the College’s three-year graduation rate consistently surpasses the national average, and most graduates transfer to senior colleges. Guttman is federally designated as a Hispanic-serving institution and minority-serving institution with more than 85% of the student population identifying as Latine or Black/African American. The College was named the best community college in America in 2020 and the top community college in New York State for 2020, 2021 and 2022 by Niche.com and other ranking agencies.
