Email sent by Provost Christine Mangino to List of Teaching Faculty on Tuesday, May 28, 2019.
Dear Colleagues,
Please join me in congratulating our newly promoted associate and full professors:
Promotions to Full Professor
PROFESSOR GAIL AUGUST
Gail August came to Hostos as an adjunct. She became so enamored with the Hostos students and culture that she applied to the CUNY Graduate Center, beginning a Ph.D. in Linguistics. For her first 10 years on the Hostos faculty, she juggled her doctoral studies with her teaching. Perhaps as a consequence, most of her research focus has been inspired by the Hostos experience. Her Ph.D. was on Reading in a Second Language, using Hostos students as subjects. Her recent publications include “L2 Micro-skill Proficiency and ELL Reading” (2017), “Experimenting with Academic ESL: An ESL/Sociology Link” (2018), “Education, Culture, Biology, and Attitudes to the Foreign Accent” (2018), and “Looking Far and Looking Near: Student Insights on History, Language, and Power” (2018). Professor August has taught a course in Bilingualism (LIN 102) for several years, and student responses and suggestions have motived her to look at issues of language and power around the world. Her recent travels and research in linguistics have inspired her to create a new course for Hostos, Language and Power (LIN 105). Aside from ESL and linguistics, Professor August has had a life-long involvement in the dance world and dance performance. She has written informally about dance, and was included in the dance issue of Gender Forum, “Choosing Belly Dance” (2011). In 2017, she collaborated on a movie about Cuba, “Cuba People to People: Roses, Cars, & Wings,” which was an official selection in several film festivals. Professor August has been an active member of the University Faculty Senate and the Hostos Senate for many years. In her department, Language and Cognition, she serves on several working committees, and is a representative to the Curriculum and P&B Committee. She was recently involved in developing a Liberal Arts Linguistics Option. For the Spring Semester, Professor August was Acting Chair of her Department.
PROFESSOR JULIE BENCOSME
Julie Bencosme is a proud Hostos graduate! Her 35 years in dental hygiene includes experiences as a clinician, educator and public health advocate. Her services to the institution here at Hostos have been many and varied. Professor Bencosme is currently the Chair of the Campus Civility Committee, member of the Allied Health Departmental Personnel & Budget, Allied Health Initiative, College Marshall, Hostos’s Children’s Center Book Reading, PhotoVoices-Hostos en la Habana, Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE), Hostos Research Day and Empowering Student Parents Workshops. Professor Bencosme teaches didactic and clinical courses. Additionally, she is the Dental Hygiene Program’s Clinical Compliance Coordinator. She has lectured nationally and internationally in various institutions such as New York University, Creative Dental Connections and at the Greater New York Dental Meeting. Her publications can be seen in peer reviewed journals – Nursing 2018 and The Dental Assistant Journal. Currently, Prof. Bencosme’s research, with Prof. Karen Steinmayer, is focused on pain management and oral health disparities. Prof. Bencosme is also an abstract reviewer for the Society of Public Health Educators (SOPHE). She regularly participates in events to encourage oral health practices in her community and is a Board Member of the Hispanic Dental Association-New York Chapter, American Dental Education Association and the New York State Dental Hygiene Educators’ Association. She is on the annual conference planning committee for the American Association for Community Dental Programs. Prof. Bencosme is also active with Give Kids A Smile Day with the First District Dental Society. She has been a mentor for the Association of Hispanic Health Care Professional and participated in Bring a Graduate to Work Day
PROFESSOR ERNEST IALONGO
Ernest Ialongo is the author of the book Filippo Tommaso Marinetti: The Artist and his Politics with Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (2015), and co-editor of New Directions in Italian and Italian American History: Selected Essays from the Conference in Honor of Philip Cannistraro (2013). Additionally, he has co-edited three special sections of the Journal of Modern Italian Studies—entitled “Reconsidering Futurism” (September 2013), “Multi/Interdisciplinary Investigations into Italy and World War I” (March 2016), and “Italy and the Euro-Mediterranean Migrant Crisis: National Reception, Lived Experiences, E.U. Pressures” (September 2018). He has authored various articles dealing with Futurism, politics and culture, and anti-Semitism in Liberal and Fascist Italy. Most recently, he authored “Nation-Building through Antisemitism: Fascism and the Jew as the Internal Enemy” in Annali d’Italianistica (2019), and “Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Fascist Italy’s Racial Turn: Accommodating the Regime and Legitimating Persecution” in Visual History: Rivista internazionale di storia e critica dell’immagine 4 (2018). Additionally, he co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Modern Italian Studies entitled “On the 80th Anniversary of the Racial Laws. Essays Reflecting the Current Scholarship on Italian Fascist Anti-Semitism in Honour of Michele Sarfatti” (2019). He recently completed 7 years of service as Chair of the Columbia University Seminar in Modern Italian Studies. At Hostos, Ernest Ialongo serves as the Chair of the College-Wide Senate, is Chair of the Senate Budget and Finance Committee, is Co-Director of the Hostos Honors Program, and serves on the Personnel and Budget Committee of the Behavioral and Social Sciences Department. Full professional details are available at: http://hostos.digication.com/ialongo.
Promotions to Associate Professor
PROFESSOR HEIDI BOILLINGER
Heidi Bollinger, Assistant Professor of English, is an active scholar as well as a dedicated educator. She has maintained a robust scholarly agenda in the fields of autobiography, contemporary American literature, and African American literature. Her research has been published in the peer-reviewed journals Pedagogy, Autobiography Studies, Genre, Journal of Narrative Theory, and Studies in the Novel. She has presented her research at numerous national and regional conferences, most recently giving the plenary address at the University of West Georgia’s undergraduate research conference. Dr. Bollinger also serves as a peer reviewer for five journals in the field of literary studies. At Hostos, she has been proud to contribute to curriculum development in English including the creation of an elective on graphic novels. She currently serves as the Deputy Chair of English.
PROFESSOR VYACHESLAV DUSHENKOV
Vyacheslav Dushenkov, Assistant Professor of Natural Sciences, exceptional teaching of Principles of Biology and Anatomy and Physiology is reflected in outstanding feedback both by observers and students. He extensively employed various educational technologies, namely Panopto lecture capture and iPad applications, to bolster active learning. Since joining Hostos in 2012, Dr. Dushenkov’s research in botanical therapeutics, biodiversity protection, and pedagogy has been supported by seven grants from CUNY and NIH, totaling over $1,000,000. He published nine peer-reviewed articles and presented at numerous national and international conferences. Dr. Dushenkov is very active in the departmental committees and events. He serves as a Chair of the Senate Grants Committee and he is a member of the Senate Budget and Finance Committee. Professor Dushenkov is a reviewer on the panel for PSC-CUNY Research Awards. Outside CUNY, he is involved in the Summer Science Academy events at the Princeton High School, serves as a judge at the New York City Science and Engineering Fair, and reviews materials for The Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students and scientific journals.
PROFESSOR PETAL LEU-WAI-SEE
Petal Leu Wai See, Assistant Professor of Dental Hygiene in the Allied Health Sciences department made many accomplishments during her tenure track journey. Some of her highlights include publishing numerous articles in peer reviewed journals such as the American Journal of Dentistry and the Journal of Professional Excellence Dimensions of Dental Hygiene. Further, she served as a member of the peer review panel for the Journal of Professional Excellence Dimensions of Dental Hygiene. She has implemented clinical research on rapid HIV testing in the dental setting – the first of its kind in a dental hygiene clinical facility. Also she served as a board member of the Dental Hygienists’ Association of the City of New York and Secretary/Treasurer of the New York State Dental Hygiene Educators’ Association. Further, she has presented at local and national conferences. Her college and department highlights include serving as a member of the College Senate and numerous college committees.
PROFESSOR ANNE LOVERING ROUNDS
Anne Lovering Rounds, Assistant Professor of English, wrote an award-winning debut collection of poetry, Variations in an Emergency, published in 2016 by Ravenna Press. Her literary criticism on American poetry, including articles on Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, and Frank O’Hara, appeared in the peer-reviewed journals Soundings, The Journal of Beat Studies, and Text Matters, among others. The range of her writing also extended to a humor piece published in McSweeney’s in August 2018. Teaching highlights included participation in the Columbia Core at Hostos, which gave rise to her most recent talk, “Hamlet, Mental Health and Learning,” presented at the Grand Valley State University Shakespeare conference in Fall 2018. Other talks expressed the work of her intertwined literary and musical imagination: “Writing from the Keyboard” (given at Imperial College, London); ““Brian Ferneyhough’s Pastoral” (at the University of Poitiers, France); and “Longing for Encore: Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale” (at Cornell University). In service to the college and beyond, she developed and launched a departmental online resource, the Teaching and Learning Commons; and curated a CUNY-wide poetry reading featuring the work of two Hostos faculty poets. An active pianist who has studied with critically acclaimed contemporary performers, she performed classical repertoire in a range of venues, from rural New Hampshire to Washington Heights.
PROFESSOR MARY MANNING
Mary Manning, Assistant Professor of Dental Hygiene in the Allied Health Sciences department, has the primary goal of preparing the students to meet the standards of clinical care set by our accreditation and the dental hygiene profession. She has spearheaded many initiatives to attain and maintain this goal, including the implementation of an objective electronic grading software for clinical courses, improving student assessment and faculty calibration, and providing bi-annual faculty in-services. Additional achievements include receiving a grant for The Hostos South Bronx Dental Hygiene Health Initiative to establish a day of community service for students, faculty, alumni, and various dental and dental hygiene associations. She has published several articles in peer-reviewed journals regarding dental hygiene care with special-needs populations, as well as presented at many conferences and continuing education courses. While continuing to be an active member of many committees within Hostos, she also presently sits as the treasurer and editor of the Long Island Dental Hygiene Association and a member of the technology committee of the NY State Dental Hygiene Association.
PROFESSOR CLARA NIETO-WIRE
Clara Nieto-Wire, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, has published in premier technical venues of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), including first author publications in AIAA Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, and the AIAA Guidance, Navigation and Control Conference. Dr. Nieto-Wire participated as a NASA faculty intern at the Marshal Space Flight Center; has 5 non-peer reviewed manuscripts; 8 demonstration projects of design, implementation and applied scholarship in STEM, including frameworks for informal education, formal education, industry-academia (NASA-Hostos) collaborations, and the design and implementation of the Annual Mathematics Day @ Hostos Community College; 20 presentations in engineering, mathematics, STEM education, and systems engineering with applications to assessment; 6 funding awards; and among others, pedagogical achievement as given by the highest passing rate of CEAFE for MAT 20 at Hostos in Spring 2016. Dr. Nieto-Wire has served as external reviewer for research projects in STEM, conference proposal reviewer, member of several departmental and college committees, and is the Mathematics Representative at the General Education Committee, a member of the Academic Standards Committee, and a Senator at Large since Fall 2013.
PROFESSOR IAN CHARLES SCOTT
One of Ian Scott’s greatest achievements is the high success rate of the Hostos art students. One student is receiving his master’s degree from the Royal College of Art while another has received her master’s last year and is now a well-known professional artist. In contrast another student went straight into practical painting and is depicting well known “Rap” artists as famous monsters and getting thousands for each painting. Other students under my guidance produced an astounding exhibition called “Surviving Domestic Violence” that has travelled all over the United States appearing on television to inspire and change attitudes. A complete wall of the “A-Building” depicts student and my own interpretations of Eugenio Maria de Hostos for the College’s 50th anniversary. Even the Security Office has a mural created by myself with a student. On my professional work, a book of my portraits, The Shape of the Being was published by Victory Hall Press. The entire year of 2018 had an exhibition of my work in Dundee Museum of Art. In New York my work has been in several art fairs such as the Park Avenue Armory represented by the Marion Harris Gallery. Later this year as for the last 15 years I have been invited to exhibit my work with the watercolors of His Royal Highness Prince Charles an event which was covered by the famous “Page 6” gossip column of the New York Post in August of 2018.
PROFESSOR KATE WOLFE
Kate Wolfe, Assistant Professor of Psychology in the Behavioral and Social Sciences department, has collaborated with faculty and staff in several departments across campus. She has served as a Faculty Liaison to the Department of Educational Technology for four years. Professor Wolfe has co-authored several peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Numeracy, the Hispanic Educational Technology Services online journal, the International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, and The Community College Enterprise: A Journal of Research and Practice. She has co-presented at numerous international, national, and local conferences. Also, she has served on the Hostos Community College Faculty Senate, General Education Committee, the Women and Gender Studies Committee, and the Liberal Arts Committee. Dr. Wolfe was the first Coordinator of The Hostos Online Learning Assessment (HOLA) Task Force and she is currently Chair of the Educational Technology & Leadership Council (ETLC). She is currently Assessment Fellow for the Behavioral and Social Sciences Department and the Natural Sciences Department. Furthermore, Professor Wolfe is a member of the CUNY Academic Technology Committee (CAT) and is a member of numerous professional organizations including the American Psychological Association.
PROFESSOR DAMARIS-LOIS YAMOAH LANG
Damaris-Lois Y Lang’s, Assistant Professor of Natural Sciences, effective teaching is reflected in her curricular development efforts and role as course manager for five biology courses. She is actively involved in school-college partnership initiatives and renders instructional hours to high school science teachers. Dr. Lang conducts workshops to faculty on the use of Panopto-an educational technology tool to boost student learning. Since 2012, Dr. Lang has published 3 peer-reviewed, 2 non-peer-reviewed articles and additionally has 2 pending publications. Dr. Lang serves as a manuscript reviewer for the American Biology Teacher Journal and the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students. She served as a pre-revision reviewer of chapters of biology textbook for Pearson Publishers and as a subject matter expert in developing and reviewing online platform content for Lrnr Online, Partners-In-Publishing and Intellus Open Course Content for Macmillan Learning. Dr. Lang also served as a reviewer of the prestigious Feliks Gross Award. She served on the General Education Committee, as chairperson of the CUNY Academy Awards Committee, and at Hostos she chairs the Scholarships and Awards Committee. She is a grant recipient of the CUNY Collaborative Open Educational Resources in STEM (COERS) Program as Principal Investigator.
