| Home | Dr. Rahni on the web | Professional Annual Activities | Why Chemistry? | Curriculum and Lecture Documents | ECQs | KSAs | Tutorial |
| EXECUTIVE CORE QUALIFICATIONS (ECQs) | |
Consistent with the standard protocol
and as articulated by the Federal Government Office of Personnel
Management, The following five categories qualified me as a finalist
for senior executive schedule positions.
David
N. Rahni, Ph.D.
Ann# 03-02-0332 Academic Dean ES-1701
Leading
People:
Graduate Environmental Science Program Context:
Having spent an ample amount of my academic and professional
life on topics of environmental and quality-of-life significance,
I have always striven to create and support similar endeavors
in the community. It was in this spirit—following a 1993-94 sabbatical
leave, during which I served as a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar
at the Technical University of Denmark and a visiting professor
at the University of Oxford—that I envisaged the merits of an
innovative graduate program in Environmental Sciences to serve
the needs of the New England region and beyond. Challenge:
Confirmed by the market analysis survey I devised and completed,
I was entrusted by Pace University peers and administrative leadership
to tackle the curricular and human resource development of a new
Environmental Sciences program. From the beginning, I recognized
the imperative limitations of such a program, especially regarding
financial and faculty participation challenges, and competition
from similar established programs elsewhere.
Upon continuous consultations with colleagues, I soon appreciated
that in order for the new program to succeed, it needed to be
truly interdisciplinary and multi-jurisdictional, thereby benefiting
from the intellectual, instructional, and scholarly input of faculty
who extend themselves beyond and across a multitude of traditional
departments. Specifically, it needed to equip to-be program graduates
not only with scientific and technological competencies, but also
with legal, ethical, and communicative skills that would enable
them to succeed in their professional endeavors. Action:
Before developing the course synopses and syllabi, laboratory
experiments, and strategic research visions and directions, the
need to assess similar “elder” sister programs became obvious.
Hence, I asked for and received an immense amount of information
from nearly sixty institutions on their graduate environmental
programs, and supplemented it with an extensive Internet-based
survey. Deciphering
information through such efforts was especially educational in
assisting me to avoid constructing
yet another duplicate program and position our program
in a truly unique fashion. Bi-monthly meetings with a select group
of faculty who had expressed enthusiasm toward the program, and
had pertinent environmentally related track records, provided
a nourishing environment that moved the program development forward
smoothly for nearly three years, leading finally to its submission
to the New York State Department of Education for approval. I
then became actively engaged in hiring faculty, staff and students,
and in developing budget models and outcome assessment tools for
the program. The full-time faculty had dual responsibilities:
each was housed in a traditional academic department with teaching
responsibilities in both their respective department and our program.
The program was instrumental in providing a novel opportunity
for our exemplary faculty to shine, while encouraging others to
strive for excellence by joining in a win-for-all opportunity.
Moreover, talented adjunct faculty from government and private
sectors, and from environmental research and policy advocacy organizations,
were hired for specialized courses for which in-house expertise
was scarce. Subsequently, an external advisory board was set up
to oversee the program and provide feedback for continuous refinement,
while facilitating cooperative, internship and permanent employment
positions for the program graduates.
Result:
Before our program was approved, our Provost reminded me of the
rather long waiting period—as long as one year—that we could expect
before hearing from the NYS Education Department, and then only
with the likelihood of their recommending major revisions if not
flatly rejecting our proposed program. Having served as an active
faculty member in the accreditation and re-certification processes
of the Middle States’ Report, Institutional Strategic Agenda and
the American Chemical Society, I was cognizant of the backlog
associated with such external procedures. Well, we were all ecstatically
surprised to receive an affirmative approval of our program in
an unprecedented four months! Our
graduate program is heavily rooted in the natural and physical
sciences, but it also has respectable representation in environment
law, ethics, engineering, and business. It has attracted talented
prospective students of diverse ethnic and undergraduate backgrounds,
not only from the New York metropolitan area, but also from across
the country and across oceans. Having worked as an adjunct professor
at Pace University since the late ‘80s, in both their undergraduate
science department and in their internationally recognized LL.M.
and J.S.D. environmental law
programs (ranked No. 3 in the nation according to US News
& World Report), it is highly gratifying to me to have played
a leadership role in the inception and implementation of their
graduate environmental science program. Indeed, that program that
may have in part led to the recent inauguration of a university-wide
Pace Academy for the Environment, a dream-come-true center that
should truly enhance our environmentally related programs, thereby
conspicuously placing us on the academic map . It is also worth
noting my course, entitled
“LAW802: Scientific and Technological Issues in Environmental
Law, ” that is offered to postgraduate students who are mostly
practicing attorneys from the private and public sectors. Developing
a similar sci./tech.- based course for law enforcement personnel,
with emphasis on various aspects of forensics, is achievable in
a rather short period of time.
David
N. Rahni, Ph.D.
Ann# 03-02-0332 Academic Dean ES-1701
Leading
Change:
Persian American Community Leadership Roles Context:
I immigrated to the US in the late 70’s during an era of volatile
political activity and regressive change in Iran. Such phenomenon
has led to nearby million Americans of Persian/Iranian heritage
living in the US, as quoted by many government officials, including
Dr. Madeline Albright, the former Secretary of State. This Iranian-American
population is very affluent in terms of its education, capital,
and substantive contributions toward the betterment of the broader
American society, as evidenced by the US Census and other numerous
independent analyses. Challenge:
Due to continuous conflicts in our country of origin, many Iranian-Americans
at times feel caught in a guilty contradiction of feelings regarding
incidents that they themselves do not approve of, but catch the
heat for nonetheless. This has in turn made them by and large
apolitical, and has left them sitting on the sidelines of the
American political and societal system. The need and merit for
the due promotion and recognition of Iranian-American community
contributions on the one hand, and facilitating their full participation
in the broader American way of life on the other, has long been
self-evident. In other words, there was an urgent need to bring
the Iranian-American community closer to the mainstream American
society by providing suitable educational and learning forums
where they could understand and utilize to their advantage, and
with a unified voice, the laws, government policies and opportunities
in the US. Action:
Upon consultation with numerous Persian American community leaders,
identified mostly from the academic and corporate sectors, I co-developed
a series of organizations with strong, interactive, web-based
platforms and e-communications for the integration and assimilation
of the Persian-American community into mainstream US society.
The establishment of the Persian Watch Center (PWC): The Iranian
American Anti Discrimination Council (www.AntiDiscrimination.org)
has been one of the highlights of my pro bono activities in the
past decade. When interviewed a few years ago, I outlined the
mission of the PWC organization as follows: "Persian
Watch Council strives to facilitate integration and active participation,
while promoting social justice, equity and empowerment for ALL
Americans including the nearly one million Citizens of Persian/Iranian
heritage by upholding Constitutional, Civil and Bill of Rights.
PWC further endeavors to deter and resolve discrimination by the
following means, arranged in order of preference: There
are ample number of other organizations I have served as the co-founder
and or board members as typified by the National Iranian American
Council (www.NIACOUNCIL.org)
and (www.antiDiscrimination.org
). Upon running a google.com search on “RAHNI” the majority of
the 1300 sites found have my contributions reflected therein.
Result:
The Persian Watch Center has become the educational catalyst for
the realization of the American dreams and ideals of nearly one
million Americans of Iranian heritage by promoting the following
agenda: Facilitating
the integration and assimilation of our community into the mainstream Screening
the media for accurate reporting on our community and heritage Articulating
and pluralizing the community’s aspirations as evident, for instance,
by my recent petition [regarding what?] and signed by nearly 20,000
in a short period. Educating
the constituency on the US government, and the many opportunities
available in the US
David
N. Rahni, Ph.D.
Ann# 03-02-0332 Academic Dean ES-1701
Communication/Building
Coalition:
Partners for Sustainable Development Context:
Ever since moving to Westchester County, New York, after my completion
of post/pre-doctoral work in New Orleans, I developed an affinity
for working on community -related projects on a pro bono basis.
This led to my appointment to the Village of Ossining Environmental
Advisory Board, followed by my serving on the Citizen’s Advisory
Board for our Congresswoman Nita M. Lowey. In addition, the historical
and natural beauty of the lower Hudson River basin provided an
excellent backdrop for nearly 800 Non-Governmental Organizations
that I strove to learn about.
A commitment to the concept of sustainable development,
was endorsed by hundreds of Pace faculty, students and staff across
the institution. Challenge:
While participating in meetings held by a few of these organizations,
including Westchester Chemical Society (1000-plus members), for
which I was elected Chair in 1991, I became cognizant of the minimum
amount of intercommunication,
and at times competition and duplication, among some of
these organizations. Action:
An on-going dialogue with the founders of Westchester Land Trust,
a 501 (c ) (3) institution that has purchased vast amount of lands
for the protection of NY City watershed, led to the development
of Partners for Sustainable Development (PSD), for which I was
again elected first Chair, in charge of coordinating its by-laws
and setting its agenda. It was a loose coalition of dozens of
environmental groups with representatives from local government,
UNEP, EPA, schools’ superintendent, principals, teachers and students.
Its goal was to define a set of key indicators to assess the quality
of life in our communities from the perspectives of sustainability,
through regular meetings, workshops, surveys,
and filed projects. Topics such as local transportation,
land use, watershed protection, pest management and pesticide
use, Hudson River PCB mitigation, and energy usage and alternative
technologies were among the topics tackled. This later led to
my selection to serve on another countywide
federation of over fifty organizations, Federated Conservationists
of Westchester ( ).
FCWC provides advice and analysis to the County Executive and
the Board of Legislators and local governments on topics similar
topics to those cited above. Fund raising is an integral component
of our endeavors. I took a course of study entitled, “Mediation,
Conflict Prevention and Conflict Resolution”[at Pace?], which
further enhanced my communicative and negotiating skills for building
coalitions around common missions. Result:
PSD and later FCWC are credited as having brought the community
as a whole much closer to articulating their quality-of-life aspirations;
the community is a much safer and better place in which to reside
and work, thanks in part to these two organizations.
As the community in the lower Hudson Valley embarks on
the possible decommissioning of its now-over- thirty-years-old
nuclear reactors, mitigating the PCBs in the Hudson River (through
dredging technology and as mandated by the Federal Government
and EPA oversight) and building a much more efficient public transportation
system (including a new bridge across the Hudson River), it is
gratifying to observe the increasing role of organizations in
which I play a leadership role.
Another natural component of such activities has led to
my serving on a NY State Bar Association ad hoc committee
which, after working for over two years, held a conference on
economic development, and energy and environmental quality. In
the conference, we made forty recommendations to the government
and private sector for energy efficiency, alternative technologies,
and carbon dioxide and pollution trading. Another aspect of the
endeavor dealt with my invitation by the then-Chemical Manufacturing
Association to audit the environmental and safety protocols of
a an international specialty chemical corporation with an annual
gross revenue of over $6 billion dollars. Finally,
allow me to share with you an excerpt of a piece I published in
the January 19, 2001 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education: “Recognizing
the Earth's finite natural resources and its limited carrying
capacity, we should appreciate that we are merely the guardians
of such resources having borrowed them from our future generations,
and not the sole proprietors having inherited them from our past
ancestors. Therefore, we should perpetually refine and optimize
practices, lifestyles, science and technologies and Yes, novel
green chemistries that are environmentally benign by design--
that meet the needs of the present generation without compromising
the abilities of the future generations to meet theirs. We humans
are not the apex of the pyramid of life, but rather an integrated
and interactive player of a horizontal web of life. This requires
a multijurisdictional paradigm shift with a cross disciplinary
approach that almost touches all the "E" curricula:
Earth, Environment, Ecology, Education, Energy, Economics, E-Commerce,
E-Communication, Ethics, Equity, aEsthetics, and Empowerment....This
is the epitome of sustainable development and inter generational
equity as a guiding principle in my life."
David
N. Rahni, Ph.D.
Ann# 03-02-0332 Academic Dean ES-1701
Business
Acumen:
American Chemical
Society Context:
Volunteerism and the nature of financial contributions have changed
considerably during the past decade. While individual donations
to specific causes exhibit modest growth, corporate contributions
have dwindled. Increasingly, corporations assess direct short-term
benefit as the sole criterion for donating to a particular project
in the community. Furthermore, corporations and professional organizations
provide less merit to community service as provided by their employees.
[I’m not sure what you mean by this last sentence.] Challenge:
Recognizing the strenuous nature of obtaining material and human
resources for successfully executing professional objectives in
a non-for-profit setting, I have become rather savvy regarding
how to do more with less, while relying on innovative ways of
securing funds. Action and
Result: Back in 1997, I was commissioned to serve as the
General Chair of the Middle Atlantic Regional Meeting of the American
Society. By building an organizing and hosting committee comprised
of 15 talented professional colleagues from academia, industry
and government, we were able to hold the four-day conference at
Pace University. During the conference, nearly 300 presentations,
workshops, short courses and other professional events served
the interests of nearly 800 people. I personally took on the challenge
of not only overseeing the integrity and quality of the program,
but also completing its fund-raising efforts, which far exceeded
our expectations [is this what you mean?]. In fact, we were able
to supplement the reserve for the subsequent conferences and help
set up a student scholarship.
This successful event led to my election as Chair of the
American Chemical Society’s (ACS) New York Section , with a membership
of nearly 5,000 and a monthly magazine with a circulation of 13,000.
In such a capacity, I was again challenged by the needs of our
members and our educational outreach to tens of thousands of students.
I organized and steered our activities through nearly 30 committees
comprised of 200 energized peers for over 400 annual events, and
it was my innovative fundraising and other pertinent activities
that made the year one of the most financially successful in the
100-year history of the society [is this what you mean?]. (As
an interesting aside, the ACS NY section awards the oldest chemistry
honor in the nation, the Nichols Medal, and one third of the nearly
100 award recipients are also Nobel Laureates during their lifetimes).
My fundraising leadership in 1999 for this specific event not
only covered most of the costs of the conference and black-tie
banquet for nearly 500 people, but also yielded a surplus. This
was only made possible through recognizing talented peers to work
with, while providing spotlight opportunities for all to shine.
David N. Rahni,
Ph.D. Ann#
03-02-0332 Academic Dean ES-1701
Results Driven:
Inter-collaborative Research Context:
While attending to my doctoral work at the University of New Orleans
(LSU), I began to appreciate the student-teaching component of
my responsibilities. In retrospect, I realize that that must have
added to my growing conviction to select a professorship in a
predominantly teaching institution in 1986. A professor in the
academe is regarded as a supervisor, managing his students, classes,
research team and inter-collaborative scholarly endeavor, instrumentation
and grants acquisition, maintenance, etc. Challenge:
After several years of teaching when I was bestowed to a tenured
full professorship in an unprecedented period of less than seven
years, I recognized the need to remain abreast of the latest developments
in chemistry, science, society and policy to bring in first hand
relevant real life examples to my teaching. This in turn needed
a meaningful level of scholarly endeavors as evidenced by a reputable
level of peer-reviewed publications and presentations. Action:
I was able to overcome the material, instrumentation and intellectual
limitations of my home institution, along with a heavy teaching
load, by establishing inter-collaborations with colleagues from
other institutions worldwide (Universities of Oxford, Rome, Florence,
New Orleans, Rio De Janeiro, SUNY at Stony Brook and Technical
U. Denmark) and corporations (IBM, Universal Sensors, Ciba). That
activity was made evident by my scholarly output. Result: Such inter-collaborations have brought me and our student body [are you talking about the Univ of NO or Pace here?] tangible benefits far beyond our rather prolific level of broad research productivity, spanning analytical chemistry, enzymology, manufacturing quality assurance and control, nano-engineering, forensics, clinical and environmental method development, and organic synthesis. In fact, the breadth of knowledge that I have acquired over the past nearly two decades has now extended itself to the exciting field of neuro-psycho-electro-analytical pharmacology. I have been exploring this novel field since my current sabbatical leave at CUNY Medical School in Harlem, New York, where, in collaboration with NYU School of Medicine colleagues, we are developing and testing in vivo microelectrodes for real-time monitoring of key neurotransmitters in the brain in cocaine and narcotic addictions and for neuro-degenerative diseases. Such activities have given me the opportunity to bring real-life, cutting-edge, relevant examples to a classroom setting, so as to shed light on the rather intricate scientific theories I present to my students. Besides, one might observe the enormous amount of capital and intellectual resources that would have otherwise been needed to accomplish the level of scholarly productivity achieved herein, had it not been for leading such inter-collaborations [I’m not sure what you mean here]. Pragmatism therefore, a philosophical paradigm to identifying realities and then pushing the boundaries to the limit to bring about results that benefits all parties engaged, has become a guiding principle in my professional and private life. Click here to see Knowledge, Skills, Abilities (OPM) |
EXECUTIVE CORE QUALIFICATIONS (ECQs)
