Some said Mayor Bloomberg was a miracle worker when he saved himself from a requisite departure and found a way to rewrite the city's term limits laws with a simple wave of the hand. But today the mayor stepped in and took part in some real life heroics, nearly having to perform CPR on a Lehman College student who passed out behind him during a press conference. City Room says that when Emmanuel Vega fainted at a press conference on CUNY's growing enrollment, Bloomberg "searched for a pulse in his neck, helped unbutton his shirt and tried to get the student...to start talking." Once Vega regained consciousness, Bloomberg instructed the young man to stay down until police arrived. The mayor said, “He seems okay. He said he hadn’t eaten any breakfast, so he just needed some food or water or it’s hot in here." The superhero bug must be going around City Hall these days—two weeks ago Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler broke up a mugging in midtown. more ›

There's a new Bronx (Stink) Bomber! Lehman College's Teaching and Research Greenhouses have grown an amorphophallus titanium [sic] plant (more colloquially known as the corpse flower because it smells like rotting flesh) and it will bloom by Monday night. The flower usually takes 10-20 years to grow in nature, but with nutrients from greenhouse workers, the Bronx corpse flower has been growing three inches a day! more ›

The City University of New York is planning on raising math and English requirements for 2008 freshman at 11 colleges. CUNY's chancellor, Matthew Goldstein, told the NY Times, "We are very serious in taking a group of our institutions and placing them in the top segment of universities and colleges. This is the kind of profile we want for our students." more ›

Congratulations to everyone graduating this month! As NYU's commencement was today, with speaker jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, we decided to list the many NYC commencement speakers, with help from The Chronicle of Higher Education (if we've missed any or gotten it wrong, let us know in comments): more ›