Special Programs and Opportunities

The New York City Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (NYC-LSAMP)

Funded by the National Science Foundation, NYC-LSAMP is active at 11 of the CUNY campuses, including Brooklyn College. At each campus, NYC-LSAMP activities are organized by faculty coordinators. Faculty coordinators conduct the Intro to STEM Research seminars, make fellowship selections, organize mentor-matching, provide support to Fellows, assist with recruitment efforts, and much more. In addition to a credit-bearing seminar for first-semester students, NYC-LSAMP is open to second-year students who have completed the freshman research seminar and are interested in pursuing STEM majors and want to incorporate undergraduate research experience in their studies, including the opportunity to become NYC-LSAMP Fellows. Fellows receive guaranteed placement with a research mentor, a research stipend, and guidance and additional training from our faculty coordinators, and get to shape the STEM and undergraduate research communities in their home campus and throughout CUNY.

For more information, visit the NYC-LSAMP website or contact the program activity coordinator, 141 Ingersoll Hall Extension, 718.951.4346. Deadline for summer and fall application is May 1; deadline for spring application is December 1.

Latin/Greek Institute

Established in 1973, the Latin/Greek Institute is a collaboration between Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. An intensive summer program, the LGI offers total-immersion instruction in Latin or Greek with four programs: Basic Latin, Basic Greek, and Upper-Level programs in Latin and Greek. In the Basic Programs, students cover four to six semesters’ worth of college-level material in 10½ weeks. No previous knowledge of Latin or Greek is required, and students earn 12 undergraduate credits. In the Upper Level programs, experienced readers earn eight undergraduate credits over seven weeks.

In the Basic Latin program, students spend the first five weeks working through the entire basic Latin textbook, while completing short readings, extensive drills, and prose composition assignments. These readings quickly progress from textbook sentences to literary texts. In the second half of the course, students read longer texts (Vergil, Sallust, Cicero) in the morning and selections from major poets and prose authors in the afternoon.

In the Basic Greek program, students spend the first six weeks working through the entire basic Greek textbook. During this time, students master the forms and syntax of the language while reading relatively simple selections of un-adapted prose and poetry. In the final four weeks of the course, students read longer texts in the morning (Plato, Euripides) and, in the afternoon, survey major authors and genres from the Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods.

The Upper-Level programs in Latin and Greek are for students who have completed the Basic programs, or the college-level equivalent (at least two years, or four semesters, of Latin or Greek). It allows them to read a substantial amount of literature at a high level of grammatical precision (approximately 200 lines a night). The program is seven weeks long: During the first week, students intensively review basic morphology and syntax and establish a common terminology; for the remaining six weeks, the major focus is on translating and analyzing a large body of material.

Information and application deadlines are available on the institute’s website. Further information may also be obtained in the Department of Classics, 2408 Boylan Hall, 718.951.5191, at the Latin/Greek Institute office, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY (telephone: 212.817.2081), or by emailing the Latin/Greek Institute.