CTL Reflections

In 2023, I had the honor and privilege to participate in the first cohort of the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) Effective Online Teaching Practices professional- development certification. This program consisted of four overarching sections that were each carefully designed to help faculty design the online- learning environment (section 1), facilitate active learning and lesson structures to enhance [...]

Hello, I am Dr. Torres-Velez from the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Unit in the Humanities Department at Hostos Community College, CUNY. As a critical medical anthropologist with a focus on environmental justice and Science and Technology Studies, I approach artificial intelligence not as a looming existential threat but as a powerful potential ally in our collective journey. To understand [...]

The 2023 Faculty Development & Engagement Survey was designed to understand the professional development needs and interests of Hostos faculty to advance teaching and learning. With 118 faculty members responding—a 29% response rate—the survey reflects a representative cross-section of our academic departments. The findings offer a broad view of faculty perspectives and needs, as well as specific recommendations for action. [...]

Teaching is a humbling but immensely rewarding experience. I can clearly remember my first day standing at the front of a classroom with what seemed to be all the eyes of the world watching me and waiting in complete silence. To say that I was nervous and wondering if I understood what I had signed up for would be an [...]

Over the past decade, I have had the distinct privilege of mentoring more than 30 community college students through 13 diverse research projects. Sponsored by the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation Program (LSAMP) and the CUNY Research Scholars Program (CRSP), these initiatives have not only fostered significant academic growth but also opened doors to numerous professional opportunities for the [...]

Manifold, a digital publishing platform that is a collaboration between the CUNY Graduate Center, University of Minnesota Press, and a web development firm called Cast Iron Coding, gives you the ability to create beautiful, multimodal teaching materials with a powerful social annotation tool. Manifold is a grant-funded, open source project that was originally created to support open access publications at [...]

The book “Centers for Teaching and Learning: The New Landscape in Higher Education,” authored by Mary C. Wright, was published in 2023. This seminal work provides a comprehensive overview of more than 1,200 Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTLs) across the United States. Wright, the associate provost for teaching and learning at Brown University, recognized a gap in the field [...]

Provost Shiang-Kwei Wang and Dean Andrea Fabrizio formed a committee tasked with preparing three optional syllabus templates offering policies on the use of artificial intelligence (AI). These templates were designed to be included in spring 2024 syllabi. The purpose of these templates is to offer possible wording for faculty who want to establish a policy for AI for their courses, [...]

Perusall launched in 2015 as a free collaborative e-book reading platform to help students complete readings and increase student engagement with readings. For instructors, completion of readings is necessary for student discussion and active learning activities for in-person but also online courses. However, research of undergraduate students has consistently shown that students often do not complete assigned readings before class [...]

As educators, one question we frequently ask ourselves is: What pedagogical strategies can we use or implement to ensure our students grasp course concepts and successfully apply them in their chosen career path - i.e., Liberal Arts, Mathematics, Business, Accounting, Science, Nursing, etc.? A fundamental approach that has been successful for me over the years as a Business and Accounting [...]

With each semester comes a new cohort of students, and thus the challenge of building a sense of community amongst them and developing activities that will keep them engaged. While there is no magic formula, I would like to share some collaborative tools I have used with my classes that have proven conducive to increased student participation and connections between [...]

Provost Wang has asked us to save September 13, from 2 to 4 pm, as Academic Affairs will host a forum in B/401 on “The Impact of Generative AI on College Academic Policies and Pedagogical Practice.” The Educational Technology Leadership Council is supporting the Provost’s forum and future conversations on AI through a year-long column in the CTL Reflections Newsletter [...]

In higher education, promoting student engagement and facilitating deep learning are paramount goals for educators. One innovative teaching strategy that has gained significant attention and success is flipped learning. This article focuses on the implementation of flipped learning as a powerful teaching tip in higher education, exploring its benefits and providing practical guidance for instructors. Flipped Learning Defined Flipped learning [...]

George Floyd Written by Juan Soto-Franco Edited by Victoria Munoz Spanish Version: G ran Dios, ¿por qué hay tanta crueldad E nmascarada en la brutalidad policial americana O rquestada contra un hombre detenido, con esposas? R ogando por un poco de aire, el pobre hombre tose. G eorge murió preguntándose por qué rayos E ncima de su cuello negro una [...]

The City University of New York (CUNY) is launching a comprehensive academic online program that will offer 175 online options and programs, most of them, housed at senior and community colleges that are the core structure of the university. A significant number of Associate Degree Online Programs will be offered at CUNY community colleges. As part of this CUNY initiative, [...]

Community building at a commuter school is hard. This has been written about, discussed and is not news to anyone who has ever taught at CUNY. It was something that I felt equipped to do – pre-pandemic. I had attended SPA Day workshops about community building – I even presented about how to build community in the classroom. I had [...]

Being a full-time academic remains rewarding, but should include methods to balance the demands of professorial responsibility. Prior to the pandemic, the task of teaching, conference presentations, an array of faculty meetings, office hours, and grading papers was much. Fast forward due to the pandemic and Remote Instruction, the drain on the optic nerve is taxing. Everything being facilitated by [...]

Feeding your body certain foods can strengthen your immune system, decrease the severity of symptoms, and shorten the duration of an infectious disease. Okay. Let’s get the bad news out of the way- When looking for ways to prevent infectious diseases like COVID, there’s no magic pill or single food or supplement that is guaranteed to boost your immune system [...]

This article is about my own personal experience as an educator. When I finished high school, I was hired as a fifth-grade teacher in an elementary school located in one of the most neglected neighborhoods in, the capital city of Colombia. On the first day of classes I met 35 students, between 10-16 years of age who came to the [...]

Over the past half century, American higher education has expanded from an elite audience to the mass market. Audience demographics have changed dramatically, and institutions of higher education are recognizing a need for faculty who are not only successful researchers but are also effective educators. Most faculty in institutions of higher education obtain their positions having proven expertise in their [...]

I embarked on my sabbatical leave during the fall of 2016 after earning my tenure in 2014. I had the privilege to receive a 2016 – 2017 U.S. Fulbright Scholar Award to the Slovak Republic. My sabbatical leave together with my Fulbright award provided me firstly with the opportunity to enhance my research spectrum by working with Dr. Magdaléna Májeková [...]

This past January, preparing lessons and crafting syllabi for the upcoming spring semester came with a new concern: how to handle ChatGPT? OpenAI’s chatbot debuted on November 30, 2022, and it seems to be able to do it all: it can compose music, create stories, and write essays. This semester is the first time where it will be available to [...]

This spring semester began for me with the incredibly invigorating Day Zero event, organized by Cynthia Jones and Carlos Guevara. The inspiring conversations concerning syllabus design and retention with my colleagues, reminded me that we all share similar goals, that we all aspire to help our students learn and that this is why we have chosen Hostos Community College. However, [...]

Call students by their name It's a great practice to refer to people by their names when interacting with them, as it has been said that names are like music to one's ears. Although it may take some time to learn students' names, valuing their names as a means of entering their world of learning is worthwhile. To help remember [...]

The idea behind the apexart International Fellowship is to break artists out of our comfortable little bubbles of work and expose us to new ideas and cultures. Every fellowship recipient is sent somewhere they have never been before, where they are not familiar with the culture or the language. I definitely felt out of my comfort zone! Most fellowships grant [...]

Over the last three decades, I have enjoyed working intensively with students to help them achieve their academic goals here at Hostos. Upon my appointment, I knew that research would be expected of me, but I didn’t realize how challenging it would be to develop a realistic research agenda. Early in my career, I found time for research primarily during [...]

It was not until I was watching the recent ‘heist film’, Oceans Eight, where a group of 8 ladies decides the rob the Metropolitan Museum annual Ball that I realized the significance of getting mentioned in the Page 6 gossip page of the New York Post newspaper. Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, and Rihanna are all sitting around a [...]

I have joined in the Natural Sciences Department in 2007 as an Assistant Professor. Like many of us at Hostos Community College, in addition to our significant teaching loads, service and student mentorship, we are expected to carry on our research and contribute significantly to our professional field through research and publication. My educational background and professional training is in [...]

Neurodiversity is an approach to learning and disability that posits diverse neurological conditions are the results of normal variations in the human genome, and not inherently pathological.1 Neurodiversity in the class room provides an inclusive space, where students from diverse backgrounds could learn together. This requires instructors to design a dynamically integrated approach with students at the center of their [...]

Greetings from the Service Learning and Civic Engagement Committee! Our committee has been hard at work in 2018- 2019 and we want to share with the larger Hostos community what we have been working on, where we are headed in 2019-2020, and how the committee and/or coordinator can serve faculty and students. After a decade as the founding chairperson, Prof. [...]

You have your group assignment or assign­ments set up for the semester. You are all excited about using groups in your class. You know your students will resist because we all know that students hate to work in groups. How many times have you heard that statement? However, you are convinced that your assignments will garner the full support of [...]

Advice for Conducting Research as a Junior Faculty Member at Hostos Back in February, I published an article in Inside Higher Ed called “Advice for the Community College Scholar,” in which I provided five concrete steps that community college faculty might take to advance their research agendas while working with a heavy teaching load. Here, I hope to offer some [...]

It has been more than sixty years since Korea was divided into two separate countries – the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea). After the Korean War (1950-1953) these two countries developed political, social, and educational systems under conflicting ideologies. North Korea developed into a unique form of a socialist country, whereas [...]

It is an honor to have the opportunity to contribute some thoughts on the topic of General Education at Eugenio María de Hostos Community College. As I started to think about what it means to me, I began to reflect on the important work of the General Education Committee, whose work of late has been to specify the connections between [...]

Hurricane Maria, the most devastating hurricane in 85 years, struck Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017. Hurricane Maria was called the worst natural disaster on record in Puerto Rico. It caused a catastrophe that triggered a major humanitarian crisis in the Island. The death toll in Puerto Rico is believed to be far higher than the official toll of 58. [...]

If you can read the title of this essay, you know basic Emoji. For those who are beginning learners of this language, it means: “I’m running 30 minutes late. I’m so sorry.” (It should be noted that I use the word Emoji to refer to the entire language system and emojis when I talk about individual symbols.) An essential limitation [...]

One afternoon in the fall of 2018, two faculty members sat down to discuss the cornerstone research assignment for the Foundations of Education course, EDU 101, and the ways students have been navigating that assignment. One was the instructor for multiple sections of the course (Sarah), and the other the library liaison for Early Childhood Education (Linda). That afternoon, what [...]

After my Math Murder Mystery presentation at the 3rd Annual Mathematics Day, students and faculty made some comments to me. The students said that they never saw any math problems presented this way and that they had actually enjoyed doing Math and English in solving the Math Murder Mysteries. The faculty said it was an excellent idea connecting Math and [...]

Family members and/or friends of cancer patients, do everything in their power to help their loved ones who have cancer to become cancer free. I personally lost my nephew, Zion to cancer at the age of only four years. As a matter of fact, Zion’s father my brother-Dr. Kosj Yamoah, has both his MD and PhD degrees in oncology-the study [...]

Why do I teach? I frequently engage that question. I think, why am I in the classroom? And I’m not referring to the day to day or the charge as an English professor at Hostos Community College to help students write and organize essays, and guide them through learning research skills. Those and other student learning outcomes (SLOs) are clearly [...]

The 2019-2020 Hostos Reads! selection is Angie Thomas’ thought-provoking novel, The Hate U Give. The novel's themes of inequality, social justice, and self-identity are sure to start discussions in the classroom and the Hostos community. Pick up a copy or arrange for your class to read the book at the Center for Teaching and Learning (B-418). The Hate U Give, [...]

Professor Preciado has been working over the last three decades in the Education Department, and he was one of the first faculty to use Blackboard in the Classroom. In this interview, he explains how he uses Blackboard to make an online course more engaging. Why Blackboard now? Let me clarify that without a doubt better advisement, mentoring and related students’ [...]

Provost: Christine Mangino I am not sure words can do justice to describe Spring 2020, a semester that began as many others but quickly became unrecognizable. During the first week of March, I took two days off work to spend an extended weekend in Iceland, knowing there were some concerns about COVID, but for the most part, everything was business [...]

For decades, several initiatives have been taken by the United States to increase minority students’ interest and persistence toward engineering, to meet the fast growing needs of its STEM workforce. However, recent studies have shown a decrease in STEM graduates among minorities from higher education institutions, which is strongly related to the lack of minority youths’ interest in math and [...]

General education needs a new name. The bland, catch-all-sounding phrase belies its importance, its vitality, and the vexing, urgent struggles to make sense of the world that are its reason for being. Our general education competencies at Hostos reflect the skills and knowledge that transcend disciplines and that we believe all students should develop during their time with us. The [...]

Like most faculty and teachers across the world, we spent much of the summer attending online faculty development courses which gave us a hurried introduction to the world of online teaching and learning. Just as we finished that, the fall semester was upon us again and it was time to put our new skills to the test. The COVID19 pandemic [...]

The ability to use time effectively is a problem most of us face. Our students have a lot on their plate; many of them are parents and often have to maintain a job while attending college. As part of our orientation into the program, we advise students not to have a job because the Radiography program is so demanding. However, [...]

Are you teaching information literacy? Quite likely. Do you ask students to work independently and look up information on a topic? Do you ask them to discuss contrasting viewpoints? Do you assign readings from trusted sources of information and discuss why these sources are trustworthy? And there are so many other examples… Some Hostos faculty may be aware that information [...]

The past year has witnessed the expansion of online learning across all levels of education in all corners of the world due to the Covid-19 Pandemic. Teachers all over the education spectrum have been working diligently in transitioning their face to face lessons to an online format. However, designing online courses takes significant time and effort. No matter how long [...]

Hostos Community College’s support to a very diverse population of students in regards of background, age, and experience definitely resides at the core of the institution mission. This diversity is present also in academic preparedness of our students. Students often come poorly prepared for the science courses, for example. Throughout the time that I have been teaching science courses, I [...]

Game designers spend a lot of time thinking about points and rewards. We know that they are powerful motivators, but we also know they have their share of issues. Extrinsic motivators keep players doing what we want them to do but don’t necessarily result in better player experiences or are hallmarks of good game design. Massively popular so-called social games [...]

I think there is one thing we can all agree on and that is that this has been an incredibly complex year for teaching. We have all had to adjust our pedagogies to make the semester as positive and educational as possible. It has been a time where being present for the students is extremely important. As soon as we [...]

“Making the classroom a democratic setting where everyone feels a responsibility to contribute is a central goal of transformative pedagogy” (39). Bell Hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (1994) As someone who had never taught online before March 2020, I spent a great deal of time considering how to transfer successful elements of my in-person courses [...]

Whether we teach online or in-person there is a need to bridge the gap between student’s lived experiences, their cultural backgrounds and academics. With recent the transition to primarily online teaching and learning, because of Covid-19, this need has become more important. Undoubtedly, the online transition has been a learning experience for both students and instructors alike. Pushing us, among [...]

Having taught asynchronously during the entire 2020-2021 academic year, I was excited to begin teaching synchronous sections of ENG10: Accelerated Writing Skills in Fall 2021. Because these sections were linked with asynchronous sections of ENG110: Expository Writing, I wondered how my students would respond to taking these courses together in two different online formats. Additionally, given the now-ubiquitous phenomenon of [...]

“Learning is active mental work, not passive reception of teaching” By Anita Woolfolk What is Constructivism? It is a theory that learners generate new knowledge from existing knowledge (Caputi, L. 2020). As people navigate the world around them, they “construct” knowledge from their own experiences and add new information into their pre-existing knowledge. So, students have an opportunity to use [...]

When I began teaching Latin American and Latinx Studies at Hostos in Spring 2020, I considered myself a seasoned teacher. After having taught at both public and private universities for several years, I thought I knew how to share my enthusiasm and passion for my area of expertise. However, during my first months at Hostos and then during the COVID [...]