To honor the achievements and contributions of our Humanities Alliance Fellows, this year we are featuring each fellow on our website, introducing them to our CUNY community and the public, and showcasing their accomplishments as fellows. 

Ariel Leutheusser (they/them) was a 2021-2023 fellow based at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, while pursuing their Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center.

At the Borough of Manhattan Community College, Ariel has designed and led a series of workshops in collaboration with both the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship (CETLS) and their peer HA fellows. The workshops have encouraged and facilitated intentional discussions between faculty as well as programs geared toward undergraduate students to target some of the campus’s pressing needs, including topics such as mentor-mentee relationships, expanding asset-based learning in the classroom with audio assignment design and implementation, and insight for students considering graduate school. Complementing the audio assignment curriculum workshop Ariel worked with faculty members individually to consider and design podcast assignments and their potential role in expanding asset-based learning. Ariel also worked to create and implement experiential learning opportunities for the Open Educational Resource (OER) faculty-student research project Black Studies Across the Americas, involving trips to the Museum of Food and Drink (MoFAD), the New York Historical Society, and The Tenement Museum. 

Reflecting on the fellowship, Ariel says, “My basis in teaching methods from the humanities undergirds my understanding of course and workshop design, and I believe that this underlying philosophy of mine, towards the human and cultural element of the classroom and relationships, defined my collaborations.”

We celebrate their brilliance and creativity, their tenacity and compassion, and the many ways they have been there for their colleagues during a pandemic and its aftermath. They showed both a willingness to learn and understand the systems and cultures that define these academic spaces and a generosity to contribute their own experiences and interests. 

Thank you, Ariel!