News & Events
With Help From City Tech Students,
CUNY Chancellor Calls for Funding ‘Compact’
In The City University of New York’s (CUNY) 2006-2007 Budget Request, Chancellor Matthew Goldstein called on the state and city to change the approach to funding higher education in New York. He wanted officials to know how the University is saving millions of dollars in productivity initiatives, and raising hundreds of millions in donations from alumni and others.
Hoping to keep tuition at reasonable levels, he also called on the state and city to fully fund “mandatory” costs, such as energy and labor contracts, and pay for a modest portion of the programs in the Master Plan.
To help convey such a message -- the Chancellor calls it the “Compact” -- some institutions would have turned to an outside cutting-edge design house. But CUNY found all the talent it needed at one of its senior colleges – New York City College of Technology (CUNY).
Three City Tech students -- Yue Chen, Tzvetan Kostov and Urara Minakuchi -- designed the covers of the 86-page report and everything in between.
“We. . . brainstormed and came up with the idea of a new perspective on the city, on CUNY, which we tried to capture in the cover photo,” recalled Chen, who, like the other students, was a communication design major in City Tech’s Department of Advertising Design and Graphic Arts (ADGA).
Their cover photo, shot from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, shows a dynamic, vibrant skyline, a city on the move.
Marrying design to words required the students to think quickly on their feet, finding solutions to design problems. They had to communicate their concepts to their CUNY “clients” and meet real deadlines. Along the way, the students consulted with University budget officials and graphic arts professors.
The Chancellor’s “Compact,” to which the former students were lending graphic enhancement, is being recognized nationally as a practical way of resolving the funding crisis confronting public higher education in the U.S.
“This assignment fit in with the department’s philosophy of taking on real projects to serve the College and the greater community,” said ADGA department chair Joel Mason. All three students have recently graduated with bachelor of technology degrees, and Mason said he was confident they will have bright futures in their field.
Referring to the great service rendered by Yue and his fellow students -- and to the singular opportunity given to them -- Chancellor Goldstein asked elected officials to “join our effort to ensure that generations to come will find the same opportunities that these talented students, and their predecessors, have found at the University.”
3/29/06
