Charles Liu Jumps Right In as New Director of Verrazano School at CSI

The Verrazano School at the College of Staten Island has announced that Charles Liu, Assistant Professor of Astrophysics in the Department of Engineering Science and Physics at CSI and Associate with the Hayden Planetarium and Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History, is its new director.

Commenting on his new position, Liu says, “I’m excited. I think The Verrazano School has a great future. I think that we’re trying to achieve something very special here and bring a top-quality four-year educational experience to college students on Staten Island.”

The Verrazano School is a selective, four-year program that offers dynamic individuals a unique undergraduate education integrating a curricular and extracurricular learning community structure with the academic excellence of CSI. The Verrazano School offers students the opportunity to be part of an active, academically motivated learning community in which students and professors share experiences and knowledge within a culture of mutual respect and exploration guided by innovation, experimentation, service, and experiential learning.

As part of The City University of New York, The Verrazano School at CSI continues the tradition of academic excellence and personal development by offering individual attention to students as they select from the wide range of majors offered at CSI as well as opportunities for career exploration, internships, community service, and study abroad.

“My basic philosophy about higher education is that all knowledge is meaningful and all learning experiences are valuable,” Liu continues. “What I want to convey is that getting a four-year degree isn’t just about getting a GPA every semester and a diploma at the end. It’s about being in an environment where people want to learn and have opportunities to learn everything that they’re interested in, so that at the end of a four-year degree experience…[students have a] whole new understanding of how knowledge exists in the world, what kinds of knowledge there are—scientific and nonscientific—and how it all fits together. I would like every graduating Verrazano School student to be able to go do whatever they want to do better than they did when they came in…so that when they come out they have the education, not just to go get a job, but to go live a life.”