News
Howard Grossman’s first job wasn’t exactly easy. “It was soul-destroying,” he says of his residency at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, where in the 1980s he saw some of the earliest AIDS patients. Grossman graduated from GS’s Postbaccalaureate Premedical Program in 1977, attended medical school at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, and was immediately thrust into the national epidemic.
Columbia University entered the modern world in 1830 with the institution of the Literary and Scientific Course, a track of instruction that eschewed Latin and Greek for the sciences and modern languages. The series of courses was open to all Columbia College students (roughly 120 in total)—but also to young men working in “mercantile and industrial establishments,” the University’s first part-time students.
Columbia’s response to World War I—and, three decades later, World War II—helped lay the foundation for the modern University. The first Core Curriculum course, Contemporary Civilization, began in the fall of 1918 as “War Aims,” a current-events class for SATC members. The aftermath of World War II brought not only Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower to Morningside Heights, but also the GI Bill®, a financial blessing for the University, which was still reeling from the Depression.
Columbia University School of General Studies (GS) is pleased to announce a 17% increase in its financial aid program. Beginning in the 2008-2009 academic year, this enhancement in aid will be focused on continuing students who have the highest demonstrated economic need and substantial loan debt. Amounting to slightly more than one million dollars in additional scholarship assistance, the increase will affect approximately 50% of GS undergraduate degree students who currently receive institutional financial aid.
Long Island City resident, Postbac Premed student, and classical violinist Benjamin Robison was granted a $72,000 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Knowledge Networking Award for developing Fractor: Act on Facts, a web application that matches news stories with opportunities for social activism and community service.
Over the past ten years, the School of General Studies Student Council has evolved from a small student governing group into an active organization of passionate students focused on community building and campus-wide integration. Achieving greater campus-wide integration has been challenging, but because of previous visionary GSSC leaders, today’s students have a greater sense of community and more opportunities than ever before.
Social gatherings are more than often fraught with cheerful greetings and ice-breaking questions such as: "What do you do?" or "Where do you work?" Gillian Hollenberg '94, known to her GS brethren as Gillian Wachsman, sampled many professions before choosing one tried and true: homemaker, or, to be politically correct, domestic engineer.
Peter Awn, Dean of the School of General Studies (GS), awarded the School's Medal of Distinction to Roger Pilon '71GS, a Constitutional scholar who is the vice president for legal affairs at the Cato Institute.
John Murphy '72, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Just Medicine, an Internet application provider that assists in medical diagnoses, received the School of General Studies's prestigious Medal of Distinction at the GS annual alumni dinner in Low Library on April 11.
On April 8, 1997, more than three hundred supporters of GS gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the School's creation at the Annual Dinner in the Low Library rotunda. The evening, which celebrated the five decades of GS, honored five distinguished alumni—Baruj Benacerraf '42, Mary McFadden '59, R.W Apple, Jr. '61, Jacques Pépin '70, and Boris Kobrinskiy '96—who in a special ceremony that concluded the festivities conveyed to the audience what GS meant to them.