NYUNEWS.COM | MONDAY, MARCH 6, 2017 | WASHINGTON SQUARE NEWS
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CAS Scholarship Aids Future Public Servants
By MONA CHEN Contributing Writer
NYU is offering students a public service by establishing the Marc and Ruti Bell Public Service Scholarship, which offers financial compensation to second- and third- year undergraduate students with financial need who plan to advance the public good post-graduation. According to the university, a maximum of 20 scholarship recipients will be selected annually. The number of students selected depends on how many qualify by the standards of the committee reviewing the applications. The committee, which will be comprised of representatives from all NYU undergraduate schools, will decide the specific amount awarded to each recipient – recipients can renew the award of up to $8,000 each year until graduation. CAS Assistant Dean for Students Joel Ward said the goal of the program is to offer additional financial assistance to students interested in pursuing a career in public service. It especially aims to help reduce the number of loans and overall debt for students in this career field. “So many NYU students are dedicated to applying the
knowledge and experiences they are gaining both inside and outside of the classroom to help solve the challenges society still faces,” Ward said. “We are all incredibly excited to be able to offer this additional financial assistance to our NYU undergraduates who have a passion and commitment to serving and advancing the public good.” GLS junior Juney Ha is contemplating pursuing a career in public service and said that she would definitely consider applying for the scholarship. Ha believes that it is vital to encourage dedicated public students who prioritize societal issues. “It’s encouraging to see such a large, private institution like NYU use their funds to promote a career in public service,” Ha said. “Public servants are dedicated to improving the standards of society and fixing the issues that are presented to us in a national context. Public service is a privilege and should be acknowledged as such.” Ha said that although any scholarship is a good use of money, she is enthused that this scholarship is both need-based and encourages a sometimes overlooked career path. Steinhardt junior Zaria Wat-
kins said she was very excited when she first heard about this scholarship — Watkins thinks students in large communities can often feel weighed down by a lack of money in their prospective industries, and this scholarship does a good job of resolving those concerns and empowering those students interested in taking a path less traveled. “The benefits of participating in service are innumerable and immeasurable,” Watkins said. “It is important to remember that we do not exist in a vacuum, and through service we have the power to improve ourselves, our school community and New York.” With the establishment of the Marc and Ruti Bell Public Service Scholarship, NYU students will have one more source of financial support for their service-centered endeavors and aspirations. LS freshman Amy Qi said that she is eager to apply for the scholarship next year. She also believes that student debt and financial burdens impede students’ flexibility in exploring careers and forces many to seek jobs in fields such as finance that are generally considered more lucrative. “I think careers in public ser-
VIA CAS.NYU.EDU
NYU is now offering the Marc and Ruti Bell Public Service Scholarship, which offers need-based financial aid to undergraduate sophomore and junior students who intend to advance the public good through their careers. vice are extremely important,” Qi said. “As someone who has been fortunate enough to receive an American education, and attend an acclaimed university such as NYU, I feel it absolutely necessary that I take
advantage of the resources I am given to alleviate issues in society for those who haven’t been as fortunate.” Email Mona Chen at news@nyunews.com.
Students Struggle to Transfer from Tandon
By HTOO MIN Deputy News Editor
Transferring between NYU locations may be easier for students than transferring credits. Tandon transplant Narissa Hajratalli found this out once she moved boroughs through an internal transfer to the Washington Square campus. Now a CAS sophomore, Hajratalli originally studied Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering but started studying Neural Science at CAS in spring 2017.
She took an introductory chemistry course and an organic chemistry course while still at Tandon, but neither fulfilled any CAS chemistry requirements as listed on the school’s website. “Upon switching to CAS, they wouldn’t count my general chemistry credit for anything,” Hajratalli said. “As a pre-med student I have to take two semesters of chemistry, and I thought it would at least count for one but it didn’t count for anything. It was just a waste of my time, and my organic chemistry credit didn’t transfer as well.”
STAFF PHOTO BY RYAN QUAN
Students find difficulties in transferring accross the river from Tandon to CAS and vice versa, since credits sometimes do not transfer.
Hajratalli said that she had to begin in general chemistry while at CAS and will now incur extra costs by enrolling in summer courses to graduate on time. The general chemistry course she took at Tandon only lasted one semester, and at CAS, general chemistry lasts one year. These differences made Hajratalli believe that the two schools are not equal. “I definitely think that there is a discrepancy, because I feel like the transition especially going from an engineering school to the College of Arts and Sciences should have been more seamless,” Hajratalli said. “Instead it was just a big messy process that I did not want to go through.” CAS Chemistry Chair Alexej Jerschow said that it is in students’ best interest for their credits not to transfer between schools, because it gives them an opportunity to experience all the core classes within CAS. Jerschow said that the Tandon chemistry courses do not fulfill the needs that CAS Chemistry majors have. “Generally all core chemistry classes have to be taken in CAS,” Jerschow said. “For transfer students we review syllabi and other information, and the procedure followed for this Tandon course was the same. The Tandon course is a good course, but not one that serves our majors and is missing crit-
ical elements needed for the chemistry major.” He said that whenever students transfer, they should ensure all their classes transfer too, to make sure all credit is given where credit is due. “We need to make sure courses are equivalent so that students are prepared for the next course in the sequence,” Jerschow said. “From the student’s perspective, it is best to work closely with both Tandon and CAS advisors ahead of taking a given course to make sure the course will be accepted if it’s their intention to transfer.” Professor David Pine, who works on both campuses, serves as a physics professor in CAS and also chairs the Tandon Chemistry department. Pine said that while nothing concrete has been done yet, preliminary talks about integrating the two departments are underway. “We started conversations with the chemistry department here at CAS to try and understand what’s going on in each place and to make it work for the students,” Pine said. “Certainly nobody wants to impede students from transferring one direction or the other. There will occasionally be students that want to transfer from Tandon to CAS and vice versa. And so there is still I think some more work to be done in making that work in an efficient fashion.”
Pine said each chemistry course is tailored to fit the needs of their respective schools, and these standards might not be the same in different disciplines, which has to be kept in mind when looking at the two programs. “So if it makes sense, we will try and make them as consistent with each other as possible, but there might be cases in which it makes sense to keep them different, because of the different constituencies that they are serving,” Pine said. “[CAS] chemistry may be teaching a large number of pre-med students, and at least some of their chemistry courses that they teach may be informed by what the needs of those students are, just as what we teach over at Tandon is informed by what the needs of the students at Tandon are.” Despite the different needs that certain classes may serve in different programs, Pine said that the university is trying to simplify the process as much as possible. “We are really just beginning to explore this, and we’ll try and do whatever makes most sense for our students,” Pine said. “But one of the things that will certainly come into the discussions is, where possible, to make things easier for students.” Email Htoo Min at hmin@nyunews.com.