In the community
Part of the mission of Brooklyn College is to contribute to the richness of life within the borough of Brooklyn. The college builds on its long-standing tradition of excellence and service through cultural programs, initiatives to improve the education of New York City’s children, and the work of alumni, faculty, and students who volunteer for community service organizations. In the past four years, Brooklyn College has initiated many projects to address the needs of the surrounding community.

In the "Bridges to Brooklyn" project, Brooklyn College established a new middle school. In 1994, together with the Brooklyn Museum and the Brooklyn Public Library, the college opened the doors to a school that gives students valuable experience with the borough’s cultural institutions while educating them in a small-school setting.

The college has established numerous partnerships with local schools. In the Community Tutoring Project in Mathematics and Science, Brooklyn College students work with high school students for whom English is a second language and also assist teachers at Erasmus Hall and South Shore high schools. As part of the Hughes Science Education Initiative, students at Edward R. Murrow High School benefit from the college’s scientific resources and from faculty members who work with their teachers. The School of Education works with early childhood and elementary school teachers in East Flatbush and Bedford - Stuyvesant to develop their ability to teach science and with mathematicians and scientists from the former Soviet Union to prepare them to teach mathematics and science in New York City high schools.

Midwood High School students collaborate with Brooklyn College faculty mentors to prepare projects for the Westin ghouse National Talent Search. Each year, students from this group are successful in the search; in 1995, for example, two students working in the sciences and five students doing re search in the social sciences we re semifin alists.

In 1996, the college cosponsored, with the Brooklyn Tenants’ Council and Maimonides Medical Center, a health fair, Good Homes! Good Health!

In 1995, the Brooklyn College Percussion Ensemble was invited to Korea to perform in the Ch’unch’on Music Festival. Funding was provided by The Brooklyn College Foundation, Inc.

The Brooklyn College Preparatory Center for the Performing Arts trains community residents - mostly children - in music, dance, and theater. In 1994, four dance students from the center performed at the Kennedy Center in Wash-ington, D.C.

Brooklyn College received a four-star academic rating in the 1997 Fiske Guide to Colleges. Continued recognition of the value of a Brooklyn College education and enhanced recruitment efforts have resulted in increased enrollment - up five percent from 1992 to 1995.

Professor of Psychology Nancy Romer developed Project PEACE, Promoting Education and Community Empowerment. At South Shore and Max well high schools, Brooklyn College students provide academic tutoring and teach students nonviolent approaches to resolving conflicts.

Adult and Continuing Education recently began programs to train Russian émigrés for jobs as child-care providers, to retrain former municipal workers for new careers, and to teach Russian and Spanish medical terminology to staff members at Maimonides Medical Center.

In recent years, the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College (BCBC) initiated a sweeping change in its programming and is celebrating Brooklyn’s diverse musical heritage through performances of gospel, klezmer, Caribbean, Afro-Cuban, and Puerto Rican music.

The Arts Council, representing the performing and media arts departments and BCBC, was created in 1995 to coordinate the college’s educational and community outreach programs.

The college’s Institute for Studies in American Music inaugurated a "Sounds of Music!" program that combines a series of concerts with free lectures on diverse musical forms and cultures.