Professor Eugenia Oi Yan Yau, Assistant Professor of Music, who directs the college’s choirs, including the Select Chorus, which she founded in 2005, is intensely interested in the success of Ms. Jandi Yoon, a 21 year old Business Administration major who left Korea three years ago for the United States.
BMCC Science major Latifa Hadir has been in the U.S. for three years since leaving Morocco and started taking organic chemistry courses with Associate Professor B. Dewprashad, Professor of Science. She sees her work with her professor as much more than traditional teaching and learning.
The professors and their students have developed what can be characterized as more than a mentor-mentee relationship, one of intellectual focus that has led to mutual colleagiality.
Unquestionably, what Yoon and Hadir are experiencing is exactly what the BMCC Campaign for Student Success emphasizes, positive student experiences from the time that students enter the college until they successfully finish their studies. The Campaign is designed to give students the messages and tools that will help them succeed. At the same time, the Campaign is making the students themselves into exemplars and messengers of success, reinforcing what they are hearing and experiencing in their encounters with faculty and staff. When students are informed, supported, empowered, and instructed, the students themselves become a powerful force to promote and ensure their ultimate success at BMCC and beyond.
Professor Yau and Ms. Jandi Yoon, as well as Professor Dewprashad and Ms. Latifa Hadir, are colleagues. Yau and Yoon’s lives are intertwined or encompassed by their shared the love of music, just as Dewparshad and Hadir’s are by working with each other in pharmacological research or experiments. Both sets of faculty and students work together with a profound depth of camaraderie.
For Yoon, this camaraderie began in her chorus class with Professor Yau, who recognized Yoon’s talent and recruited Yoon into the the BMCC Select Chorus, which went on to win first prize in the CUNY Choral Festival. Hadir, who, as a member of the C-STEP program (Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program), was propelled by Dewprashad into research, tutoring students in laboratory classes, and into joining the York City Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation in Science, better known as the AMPS program.
Yoon had entered BMCC for its ESL classes and planned to move to another college once she had good enough proficiency in English. Joining the chorus was just something Yoon thought she’d enjoy for a while. Hadir registered at BMCC because after some time looking for work with a chemistry background, she felt unfulfilled and was looking to go back and get her degree.
Professor Yau was more than pleased to learn that Yoon was a highly talented pianist. Yau calls Yoon “a special person,” unique in adapting musical material and adept at stepping in at the right moment to make the chorus sound even better than it is. Yau said, “I realized she can lead others and I challenged her to take a leadership role and she has succeeded.” Dewprsahad calls Hadir “an original,” who has been researching medicinal plants that seem to have a true pharmacological benefit.
Yoon now feels so at home at BMCC that she spends 5-6 days a week at school and is now the one and only music tutor for the entire college. Even while spending three hours practicing piano, she is either in the music practice room working with students or available at least 12 hours a week to assist any and all music students. On Sunday, she now serves as the pianist for the Children’s Music Program at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. Since the spring of 2006, Hadir has not only served as an organic chemistry tutor but has gone to Anaheim, California on a travel grant for a Biology Conference for Minority Students and was invited to the Brookhaven National Laboratories to prepare for a possible internship there in the summer of 2007.
Yoon is candid about her piano playing. “I wasn’t a piano player in Korea. I played but it didn’t mean much. But at BMCC I was astonished I could do it and love it. Now I look forward to playing piano at our Honors Convocation and at Freshman Assembly.” She believes that it’s her ability to manage her time and the constant support she received from Professor Yao that has provided her with the opportunity to keep her GPA at 3.8. Now, she looks forward to getting her degree from BMCC. Yoon thanks Yau for one important attribute she now seems to have, and that is her willingness to be outspoken about her ideas and thoughts. That, she believes, will serve her well as she progresses through life.
Hadir, who has a 3.9 GPA, may be a bit more directed than Yoon about her career and credits Professor Dewprashad for “opening her eyes” to the world of science and chemistry. Dewprashad says he saw Hadir’s “natural curiosity,” but wanted her to understand the many opportunities that chemistry can open up, from being a college teacher to being as researcher and more. Hadir is happy because Professor Dewprashad has made chemistry more than a college discipline for her, but rather an exciting and vibrant lifetime curiosity.
View all the events of the college wide Celebration of Student Success.
