Westchester Community College (WCC), renewing its commitment to educating the immigrant population, applied for and has received a $300,000 challenge grant for two-year colleges from the National Endowment for the Humanities to establish a humanities institute, the focus of which will be educating those who have immigrated to the U.S.
The grant requires the Westchester Community College Foundation to raise an additional $600,000 over four years. The money will ultimately be used to create an endowment to fund the institute beyond the initial grant period. The institute would become part of the $40 million Gateway Center, which, among other missions, is dedicated to educating immigrants.
“We came up with the idea because it was in keeping with the Gateway Center, which has been a big hit,” said Frank Madden, chairman of the English department at WCC. He and Heather Ostman, assistant chairman of the department, will be co-directors of the humanities institute. “We have a huge English-as-a-second-language (ESL) program.” Madden said this all started about 10 years ago when Joseph Hankin, president of WCC, sent him an article about humanities institutes at various colleges. “The grant became available and I came up with the idea to get it,” said Madden.
In recent decades, he said, the county has had an influx of immigrants. “In the mid- to early 70s they were coming from the Middle East, a lot of Iranians. But then there was no more of that after 1979 (the year of the Iranian revolution). Now they come from the Caribbean and Southeast Asia. If I had to identify any one place, most now are coming from Jamaica,” said Madden.
He said he would like to focus on Caribbean and Latin American literature at the institute. “Our ESL students tend to come from cultures where imaginative literature is appreciated more, the story of the culture is told through literature, metaphorical tales. They love the idea of bringing literature into class from their own country and talking about it with other students, and other students are very receptive,” said Madden.” This has been happening tacitly (at WCC, in various classes) but not in an organized way.”
The humanities institute project will get under way this fall. WCC will get $125,000 from the grant this year, $75,000 next year, $50,000 the third year and another $50,000 the fourth year. Madden says he will start a speaker series with theme-based lectures. “The religion of Pakistan, the Peruvian-American experience. We have the highest percentage of minorities of any community college in the state university system. The population is ready and waiting.”
Madden”™s other ideas for the institute call for a film series. “Films devoted to the exploration of the immigrant experience ”“ Chop Shop, Osama, Immigration Tango, Takeout. We”™re using the humanities as an entry point.”
For many, an entry point is needed as they try to progress from a survival job to a career, said Patrick Hennessey, director of college community relations at WCC, who points out the more practical side to all of this. “First-generation individuals, what happens is they come to Westchester, they get low-level jobs but don”™t get beyond that,” he said. “They get one rung up, but not two or three.”
