York College honors Mayor Dinkins and benefits youth

The York College Male Initiative Program (YCMI), the Jamaica campus’s offshoot of the CUNY Black Male Initiative (BMI) Program, held its second annual Men of Achievement Recognition Program on Thursday, February 7.
Both programs were implemented three years ago to address the issues of retention and enrollment decreases among certain populations, especially among African-American males, explained YCMI director, Jonathan Quash.
Thursday’s event, hosted by NY1’s Dominic Carter, honored former NYC Mayor David Dinkins, the city’s first black mayor, as well as prominent pastors, poets, York College administrators and other leaders in the black community.
“The goal is to highlight the achievements of these individuals so that they may serve as an example to our students,” explained Quash, whose program concentrates on high schools with a high percentage of African-American males who either drop out or do not go on to higher education.
Quash said another purpose of the event was to raise scholarship funds for program participants, a new component of YCMI. While YCMI will begin granting scholarships to students in the fall of 2008, the program currently has eight recipients of the Deutsche Bank Teachers as Leaders scholarship, an evincing success for Quash and his team, who, this year, added teacher development to their areas of focus.
Additionally, YCMI has established a “lending library” that supplies textbooks to students who demonstrate a need for financial assistance. The program also has a book club, and tutoring and mentoring services, and has recently formed a mentoring group with the First Presbyterian Church of Jamaica and the Queens Academy High School. YCMI also employs students in an effort to assist them with the financial burdens of college, Quash explained.
“The retention rates of program participants are higher than that of the college, albeit we are only in our third year,” said Quash.
“My goal is to be able to provide as much assistance as possible to any student that may face challenges either financially, academically, or socially. If, in doing so, we can address specific needs that prevent or interrupt dropout rates, especially [among] students of under-represented populations, then our program is a success,” he said.