Lander College for Men - Beis Medrash L’Talmud

Lander College for Men (LCM)/Beis Medrash L’Talmud boasts dedicated faculty, majors and courses of study designed to prepare students for a multitude of professions, exceptionally high acceptance rates to graduate and professional programs and a beautiful sevenacre campus in Queens, New York. But what sets LCM apart is the entirely balanced dual curriculum of intensive Torah study and rigorous academics.

“Lander College’s rigorous dual curriculum challenges our students to realize their fullest academic potential,” said Dr. Moshe Sokol, dean of LCM. “The religious and moral principles that frame their study of Jewish texts cultivate crucial virtues that, in turn, lead to great personal and professional success.”

Torah study at Lander College for Men is led by HaRav Yonason Sacks, a world-renowned Rosh Yeshiva who has authored over 40 original volumes on Torah and Talmud. The Beis Medrash, the Torah study hall, is full and bursts with the energy of students engaged in Talmud study. He and other noted scholars and teachers nurture advanced Torah learning. Under their direction, students achieve a high level of Judaic and Talmud scholarship. Most will pursue careers in the professions or the business world, often eventually becoming leaders in their communities. Others will become rabbis or Jewish educators, helping transform the Jewish community through their knowledge and passion.

ADVANCED ACADEMIC OPPORTUNITIES

The Academic and Jewish Studies Honors Program offers exceptional students the opportunity to cultivate their intellectual gifts through advanced analytical research in their chosen disciplines, as well as in Talmud study and the liberal arts and sciences. All students must enroll in a course that integrates ethics and Jewish law into the major curriculum. Additionally, LCM recently launched a workshop, Interpersonal Communication: Success in the Workplace, to help students build emotional intelligence, develop cultural competency and discover what it takes and how to communicate as a team member in a multicultural environment.

In conjunction with New York Medical College (NYMC), a member of the Touro University System, the three Lander Colleges created the Medical Honors Pathway, which offers the opportunity for qualified applicants to continue their studies at NYMC after completing their undergraduate education, provided they sustain the academic requirements. In addition, in collaboration with Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine and The School of Health Sciences of Touro College, the three Lander Colleges introduced the Integrated Honors Tracks for students who have decided on careers as doctors of osteopathic medicine, physician assistants and physical therapists.

BEYOND LANDER COLLEGE Over the last 11 years, 100 percent of applicants from LCM were accepted into graduate programs in dentistry and law, 95 percent into doctoral programs in psychology and 90 percent into medical school. Lander graduates also score amongst the very top universities on the New York State CPA exam and secure employment in leading global and national firms in a variety of fields. LCM leadership takes pride in the students’ satisfaction with their college experience; 70 percent of solicited alumni contribute to the University during annual fundraising drives.

Avi Horowitz

Corporate Finance Leader

At Lander College for Men, where Avi Horowitz graduated in 2003, he played tennis with his Judaic studies rabbi and had a close relationship with one of his finance professors. Both men became trusted mentors.

“In most colleges, you wouldn’t get that chance to get to know your professors and have them know you and act as guides to your future,” says Horowitz, 40 and married with three children. “I remember it was 9/11 and we were all in class and in shock, and in walks our finance professor, covered in dust. He had walked from Wall Street, where he worked, to class. That’s a role model.”

While many of his classmates went on to graduate schools, Horowitz headed straight for the business world. He discovered that start-ups are his passion, for the combination of hard work and huge possibilities.

“Start-ups are exciting, you aren’t a cog, the things you do matter,” he explains. “You’re building from the bottom up so you do everything — accounting, reporting, equity management, run payroll, HR. It’s a seat-ofthe-pants excitement.”

So far, Horowitz has been an integral part of three. The first was in the entertainment division of a telecom business, later sold to cable giant Liberty Media. Horowitz, a New Jersey native, wasn’t interested in relocating to the company’s Denver headquarters. Instead, he began working in the trust division of Morgan Stanley, where he stayed for nearly four years. Still, he pined for the energy of another start-up. One day, a friend rang him to say, “’I need someone to be a senior finance person at our start-up,’” recalls Horowitz. “He didn’t have to ask twice.”

This one was SecondMarket, a financial technology platform, later scooped up by Nasdaq. After that merger, he was recruited by a start-up called Bread, an e-commerce lending business. In December 2020, Alliance Data bought it for $450 million. Horowitz remains at Bread today as head of financial operations, while it is being integrated into the much larger Alliance Data.

As a member of the first graduating class of Lander College for Men, Horowitz thinks of the school as a start-up that became a great success. “I took a chance on them and they took a chance on me,” he says, fondly. “Because I didn’t get lost in a huge, impersonal university situation, I had the luxury of getting to know myself. I learned that if you treat people right, they succeed. And if they succeed, you succeed.”

RESEARCH COLLABORATIONS Over the last few years, social and behavioral sciences have been revolutionized by the rise of online data collection platforms. Thousands of research projects are now conducted on platforms such as Mechanical Turk and Crowdflower. Dr. Jonathan Robinson of LCM’s computer science department and Dr. Leib Litman from the LCM psychology department collaborate to examine various aspects of this new online research environment. During the pandemic, they studied factors affecting face mask-wearing and during election years, they looked at why “shy voters” don’t reveal their true intentions to pollsters. In another recent study, they looked at pay differences of men and women who used an online, anonymous marketplace. After controlling for age, flexibility, parental status and experience, the researchers still found a 10.5 percent gender pay gap. They attributed the gap to women picking lowerpaying gigs due to an ingrained expectation of lower earnings carried over from the traditional workplace setting.

LCM faculty are also studying novel molecular pathways in early-stage lung cancer and working to better understand and find a cure for genetic diseases affecting Ashkenazi Jews, such as Crohn’s. Professor Yakov Peter’s research interests include epithelial cell and stem cell function in inflammation, fibrosis and cancer. As a firm advocate of student research in education, Dr. Peter supervises the scientific growth of undergraduate students in his laboratory. Several of his students are currently working on research involving lung cancer stem cells to better detect and potentially prevent lung cancer development.