Sister Remigia Kushner and Sister Mary Ann Jacobs Honored with Catholic Teaching Awards

Adrianne Hutto Production Editor

Sister Remigia Kushner and Sister Mary Ann Jacobs were awarded for their work as Catholic educators. Kushner, the education department chairperson, graduate director and professor, was given the 2022 Lighting the Fire for Catholic Education Award from the Catholic School Administrators Association of New York State.

Kushner has been teaching at Manhattan College since 1990 and explains that she had not always intended to be an educator but that teaching found her.

“When I went to high school, the building that is the Motherhouse for the group of Sisters I belong to would take the high school kids downstairs to the gym, and they would bring the sisters down who were just signed up to belong to the community,” Kushner said. “I never met such a happy group of people and I thought to myself, I have to get me some of that. And sure enough I did, and I haven’t been sorry a day, really and truly.”

Kushner explains that her work as graduate director has allowed her to work with amazing students studying to be school-building leaders. This has given her the opportunity to watch as students flourish in higher education. Those, to her, are the moments that make being an educator so important.

“When COVID hit, everybody was worried about the students and the teachers,” Kushner said. “But these two folks in the Advanced Leadership Studies program, Amber and Reina, put something together to help parents. Nobody else was working with the parents and they put together an absolutely wonderful program. They’ve been using it all over New York State. It’s just a mar-

The sociology department will soon expand to offer a new bachelor’s degree in criminology, beginning next fall. The new 33-credit major offered within the School of Liberal Arts will expand on the criminology concentration currently offered as one of several tracks within the sociology major.

The creation of the new major was spearheaded by Assistant Professor Madeleine Novich, Ph.D, who serves as the director of criminology and criminal justice programs.

“I came to Manhattan College in 2008.” Novich said. “And my team and I developed a number of criminal justice classes, specifically Modern American Gangs, Mass Incarceration and Collateral Consequences and Ethics of the Criminal Justice system to name a few.”

The current sociology department will become newly dubbed as the “Sociology and Criminology” department upon receiving board approval for the new major. The idea for a second major within the department stemmed an increased interest in classes surrounding the criminal justice system by MC students.

“Anytime I started teaching new classes they would fill up to capacity,” Novich said. “And so we as a department recognized that this was a topic that the students really wanted, and they wanted to major in it. Sociology is a fantastic major, but really the students indicated that there should be a criminology major as well. And this also makes us more competitive, like most schools that have criminology majors.”

The department currently offers three tracks of study within the sociology major as well as a 15-credit minor. The concentrations offered within the major include geography, social services and criminology. When the new major becomes official, the department will no longer offer the concentration in criminology.

“We’re going to be phasing out the concentration, so you can either major in sociology or criminology,” Novich said. “I think a lot of people will end up double majoring because the tracks between criminology and sociology are very similar. But by doing a strict Criminology major, it allows for students to be required to take criminological theory, which they wouldn’t have to take before, and do criminal justice related research. And so this is what differentiates in a couple of ways, there’s much more theoretical training in criminology than is required with sociology.”

Classes offered as part of the criminology major will also be cross-listed with other classes surrounding social and criminal justice which are currently taught by MC. The sociology department hopes to eventually expand their staff in order to teach additional courses that are specific to the study and research of criminology and the criminal justice system.

An article written by David Koeppel on the schools website stated that “The curriculum

Volume CVII, Issue 1

JANUARY 24, 2023

Jocelyn Visnov Editor-in-Chief

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