Macaulay Honors College Wins 3 Black, Race and Ethnic Studies Initiative (BRESI) Grants

Funding will support research, a groundbreaking interactive tool, and special initiatives by and for students of color.

Macaulay Honors College congratulates two faculty members and student development professionals who have received awards from CUNY’s Black, Race and Ethnic Studies Initiative (BRESI). The grants, funded with an investment from the Mellon Foundation, will allow the college to expand its efforts to advance social and racial justice, and contribute to a CUNY-wide community effort. 

The three winning initiatives were among more than 500 CUNY submissions to the BRESI Council, and were selected for funding for their innovative nature and their potential to impact the development of ethnic studies. The three projects are described in brief below.

Jean Park, PhD “From Crisis to Coalition: L.A. Youth on the 1992 L.A. Uprising”

Riot? Uprising? Rebellion? Macaulay Postdoctoral Fellow Jean Park’s research project will focus on reflections of students who experienced the Los Angeles Uprising of 1992. She seeks to share an understanding of how individual perspectives paint a more nuanced picture—in contrast to mainstream depictions—of the conflict and violence, and how American students made sense of their world in crisis.  

Logan McBride,”Place, Space, and Race in the Making of Mass Incarceration: The Racial Geography of New York State Prisons, 1960s-1990s”

Professor Logan McBride’s grant will allow her to create an interactive exhibition of her research that helps students, activists, and others to better understand the ways in which the spatial organization of prisons in that period worked to solidify Black criminality in the American imagination. Dr. McBride hopes to kickstart a public conversation around justice through empathetic portrayal of those involved. 

Macaulay Office of Student Development and the Macaulay Diversity Initiative

Macaulay’s student development team will use the grant to increase outreach and access to students of Black and Latinx origins at Macaulay, while exploring and celebrating these cultures at the college. The grant will also lend support to an important student campus group, the Macaulay Diversity Initiative, who have traditionally been a catalyst of timely and relevant issues that Black and Latinx undergraduates face. 

The awards cover the term of September 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023.

About BRESI: In March 2022, the CUNY Chancellor established a Black, Race and Ethnic Studies Initiative Council as a formal University-wide body. The Council’s first focus has been forging a University-wide community that will, for the first time, bring together the many faculty and students, centers and institutes engaged in the study of race and ethnicity throughout our system. A key aspect of this community-building – and an essential driver of the initiative itself – is the awarding of competitive grants totaling a currently estimated $1.9 million to CUNY faculty, students, staff and entities to seed promising work advancing BRESI’s mission.