Vincent Boudreau
Dear Campus Community,
As many of you may now have heard, we lost a true CCNY institution last week. Brett Silverstein passed away in his home after decades of service to the college, to his department and colleagues, to countless students and to the discipline. His passing leaves a tremendous hole in the college, and we mourn his passing.
Brett served for years as the chair of the psychology department and moved from that position to assume the deanship of the division of social science in the early 2000鈥檚. He was ambitious for the departments under his care but tremendously concerned about the education and welfare of his students. As his department expanded both numerically and into the providing more and more graduate level programs, Brett consistently advocated for the maintenance of undergraduate education as a cornerstone of the departmental mission, and he focused his own work in that direction as well鈥攕pending years using the opportunity of teaching large intro courses to reach as many young CCNY students as possible.
He also clearly, in his words and actions, understood that he had a mentoring responsibility to junior faculty. On his watch, the department recruited a strong cadre of young professors, distinguished both in their research and their care for students. In the days since Brett鈥檚 passing, many of these鈥攁nd many of his former students, have written with stories of how the benefitted from Brett鈥檚 attention, experience, and wisdom. He was generous with all of these gifts.
You will find the announcement and details for the memorial in the attached flier.
Date: This Sunday, September 14th, at 2 pm
Place: Riverside Memorial Chapel, 180 West 76th Street
Brett鈥檚 daughter, Alissa Silverstein, has set up a GoFundMe page () to collect funds at the memorial to supplement the sizable donations her family would like to make to Brett鈥檚 memory. A QR code to the GoFundMe page appears in the attachment.
Sincerely,
Vince Boudreau
President