The City University of New York announced that 12 professors across the university system will be ranked as distinguished professors for the 2022-2023 academic year. The CUNY faculty ranking is the highest classification that the public university can give to full-time faculty members.
The distinguished faculty class of 2022-2023 represent six of the 25 campuses at CUNY including Hunter College, Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, City College School of Public Health, Queens College, Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center.
CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez praised the professors for their recent accolades in a released statement.
“The 12 faculty members who have recently been elevated to CUNY’s distinguished professoriate join a group of extraordinary scholars and teachers who have built international reputations for their scholarship, creativity and vision,” Rodríguez said. “We congratulate these individuals on this latest recognition of their accomplished status as leading lights within their fields.”
According to CUNY, some of this academic year’s distinguished professors have produced work that aids in advancing CUNY’s commitment to strong public-impact research, a key factor in the recently released “CUNY Lifting New York,” strategic plan.
Among the 2022-2023 recipients include Masha Gessen from the Graduate School of Journalism, a Russian-American journalist who is making history as the graduate school’s first distinguished professor. Gessen is a staff writer for The New Yorker and has been recognized for their commentary on international affairs, human rights and LGBTQ+ issues.
Interdisciplinary artist Patricia Cronin is one of the three newly appointed distinguished professors from Brooklyn College. Cronin is most notable for addressing gender and sexuality studies, and political theory in her artwork.
Another notable figure includes Terry Huang, Ph.D who is the current chair of health policy and management at CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy.
Huang’s nationally known work includes finding solutions to chronic disease prevention and the improvement of community health. Dr. Huang is also the founder of “Firefly Innovations” at CUNY, a 2020 entrepreneurship platform geared towards investing in health equity startups.
Past recipients of the ranking included Professor Emerita Tania León, who taught at Brooklyn College for 35 years and won a 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Music. León also made history as the first CUNY-affiliated professor to be honored at the Kennedy Center in December 2022.
Distinguished professorship goes as far back as the 1960s when two professors from the Universities of Princeton and Pennsylvania were recruited to help CUNY launch a new doctoral program in economics.
In February 1969, Emanuel Saxe was the first recipient of Baruch College’s Distinguished Professorship in accountancy award. In June 2017, the guidelines for the criteria for becoming a distinguished professor were codified by the CUNY Board of Trustees.
With the incoming 12 new recipients of the ranking, CUNY has a total of 146 distinguished professors spanning across the undergraduate and graduate levels. CUNY graduate center has the highest number of recipients at 53 while both the New York City College of Technology and CUNY School of Law are tied at one professor each.
