Community colleges were a relatively unexplored space for graduate students. Humanities Alliance Fellows, supported by Faculty mentors, entered this space to know about students’ specific needs and opportunities, to learn from the work of committed faculty and staff in generating spaces for humanistic inquiry, and to contribute from their experience, professional, and personal trajectories. In Phase 1, Fellows learned and adapted existing courses, impacting students from the classroom. In Phase 2, Fellows held academic support roles for specific projects connecting to various humanities classrooms. With training and support from core HA staff and campus partners, fellows helped plan, scope, scaffold, and support innovative opportunities for teaching and learning in the humanities.
Phase II
Click on the accordion items below to learn about some of the key projects and program structures at each of the partner campuses that the fellows engaged in during Phase II of the HA grant.
Tom Leutheusser
At BMCC, Tom 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, Tom worked with faculty members individually to consider and design podcast assignments and their potential role in expanding asset-based learning. Tom 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.
Luis Escamilla Frias
Luis worked at the Black Studies Across the Americas Program led by Professors Judith Anderson and Lissette Acosta. Luis focused on Open Educational Resources and Creative Commons resources for faculty and students, as well as organized lectures and events for the BMCC community with an emphasis on Latinx- and Latin American-related projects. Luis ran a series of workshops and events for both faculty and students, including on community college culture and philosophy and Open Educational Resources (OER) for the Garifuna, Haiti, and Puerto Rico Cohorts. Luis was instrumental in co-organizing a series of events and collaborative discussions at the intersection of politics, art, and higher-education, including: Unlearning Chile: commemorating the 50 Years Anniversary of the Coup through the Visual Arts, High-Ed Access for All Immigrants: Know the Opportunities Waiting for You, and Let’s Talk About Ungrading: Unpacking Our Experiences over a Coffee.
Janelle Poe
Black Studies Across the Americas (BSAA); Race, Equity and Inclusion; African Heritage Events; Hip Hop Commission. At BSAA, faculty and students work collaboratively with Afro-descendant activists from across the Americas to create educational materials that insert Black Studies into disciplines where it is not traditionally the focus. Janelle worked directly with individual students through BSAA and co-authored an article on “Using OER to promote cultural competency, student engagement” for Community College Daily about the BSAA program.
Inma Zanoguera Garcias
At the Borough of Manhattan Community College, Inma was instrumental in developing pedagogical proposals specific to addressing the crisis in humanities curriculum across higher education, especially at community colleges. The proposals emphasize alternatives toward engaging in academic activism for the benefit of students, many of whom are migrant women of Latino origin. Inma’s blog post on the Humanities Alliance website explored debates on AI in humanities education.
Sukie Kim
AT BMCC, Sukie attended weekly meetings of the BSAA Peru cohort with BMCC faculty, documenting project updates and supporting undergraduate students. Sukie was integral in developing content for several student workshops, including one on campus mentoring, the “Where’s the Money? A Funding Workshop”, and “Life after BSAA”. She also collaborated with peer fellows to organize and facilitate experiential learning trips to the New York Historical Society & Museum’s Kwame Brathwaite photo exhibit and Frida’s restaurant.
Sasha Isaac
Throughout the fellowship period, their work centered on building bridges between faculty development, student engagement, and community-facing programming. They began in Fall 2023 by attending CETL sessions to gain a grounded sense of the pedagogical landscape—focusing not only on what faculty are doing in their classrooms, but also on how institutional offerings might better support transformative, equity-oriented teaching. That same semester, they supported the planning and outreach for a student trip to the Museum of the Moving Image. They coordinated with student groups and helped shape communications strategies to ensure the event was accessible and resonant across our student body. In Spring 2024, They collaborated with the Black Studies Across the Americas (BSAA) program to imagine new faculty workshop offerings. Their focus was on making the program’s themes actionable in the classroom—bringing theory into practice. They also contributed to the visual and communications strategy for the Black Studies Symposium by helping develop flyers and promotional materials. By Fall 2024, they were in closer conversation with faculty, specifically Prof Linta Varghese, around shared research interests, allowing for a more grounded and generative collaboration. This foundation proved especially valuable in Spring 2025, when they supported outreach and engagement strategies for several high-impact events organised by Prof Varghese. These included a Writers Café workshop designed to support student creative expression, and a series of political education events co-organized with community workers and organisers focusing on current events. Across all of these activities, they worked to center intentionality and relationship-building—connecting academic programming with lived experience, and supporting a vision of scholarship that is both rigorous and deeply engaged.
Cary Fitzgerald
As an HA Fellow, Cary collaborated with English Professor Boyda Johnstone to bring a speaker from We Are Not Your Soldiers, an anti-war veterans group, to BMCC. The event was a sequel to a guest lecture Professor Johnstone hosted during a lesson on empathy in Fall 2024, which featured the same veterans group. The speaker effectively wove personal narrative with historical context to build a strong rhetorical argument against imperialism, resonating strongly with students in the introductory English course. The presentation’s impact became clear when a student who had been considering military service announced their decision not to enlist. Cary was instrumental in bringing this event to a broader student audience at BMCC, where both the NYPD and Army maintain an active recruiting presence at university career fairs.
Greg Hartmann
Greg was embedded in a Philosophy 103 course, where he led in-class listening activities centered on hearing songs, poems, and other texts aloud and engaging in small-group discussions. As a part of Guttman’s Big Read Series organized by the GCC library director, Greg led some of the discussion sessions. He also created an academic skills workshop focusing on “study hacks” and participated in a poetry panel.
Project “Deep Listening: Composers of the New York Scene” : The program was also in partnership with a nearby branch of the New York Public Library, which offered space to hold seven free afternoon sessions, open to participants at all levels of interest and expertise. Greg’s experience as an accomplished musician, performer, and scholar of music theory shaped this series. For each session participants were invited to meet composers, hear their work, and listen to other musical examples and influences. Greg envisioned the series, coordinated with the NYPL event team, invited composers, and tried to pay the composers honoraria through the Budget Office. Greg’s series focused on making classical music more accessible to a wide range of listeners by presenting contemporary composers and their works in an approachable educational context.
Rosalia Reyes Simon (LAILAC)
Rosalía participated in the Organizing Committee of the Pulitzer Center Student Reporting Fellowship. Rosalía drew on her experience as a journalist to mentor a student in developing a multimedia news piece in 2022 that shed light on a social justice issue that has been underreported in the mainstream media. The student documented how immigrant Latinx women were learning to fight for their labor rights as cleaning workers in New York. Rosalía accompanied the student to all the interviews and sessions she did in the field. She published a blog post about the project. Rosalía also helped GCC faculty organize readings with Pulitzer Center journalists who visited the campus. One of the lessons designed by Rosalía was on racial justice and human rights for the talk given by the filmmaker and photographer Eli Hiller, who shared his experience covering the mass protests triggered by the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis in 2020. Rosalía also supported Afro Latinx Heritage Month events such as a bilingual poetry reading. Separately, in a hands-on workshop, each student created a “Cartonera”-style cardboard book in which the overarching theme was the diversity of Latin American cultures. Rosalía also formed part of the Guttman Big Read Series, a project organized by the GCC library director that encouraged the building of community and critical thinking through guided literary discussions. The GCC provided free copies of the book to students, faculty, and administrators. In 2022, participants read a memoir by Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning and in 2023 participants read Faces in the Crowd by Mexican writer Valeria Luiselli.
Sokunthary Svay (English)
At Guttman, Sok has co-organized workshops and panels that facilitate writing exercises, performance, and discussion around Latinx Heritage Month, Guttman’s Big Read program, and National Poetry Month with faculty and HA fellows. Sok’s panel, Poetics, Poesis, and Professors: Artists Teaching at Public Two-Year Colleges, held in April 2023, brought together artist-teachers across CUNY to celebrate the multitudes of their work while also examining how each panelists’ art practice informs their pedagogy in public community colleges. Like Sok’s other projects, the panel featured a range of poetry and photography.
Joned Suryatmoko (Theatre and Performance)
At Guttman, Joned explored experiential learning pedagogy through the lens of theater and performance. As facilitator of a workshop series, Joned supported faculty members on incorporating experiential learning methods in their pedagogy and classrooms. Joned observed the needs of Gutmann’s students, faculties and their class dynamic, prepared the workshops, and worked closely with the HA coordinators to develop the instructional material. During their fellowship, Joned also explored integrating performance pedagogies using ethnographic methods. In 2022, Joned facilitated a creative workshop on knowledge embodiment in ethnography that incorporated poetry and visual art.
Sharanya Dutta (English)
Sharanya collaborated with several peer fellows to lead events in Guttman’s Big Read series. These events brought students, faculty, and staff together to discuss a shared text–Valeria Luiselli’s Faces in the Crowd. HA Fellows planned and led distinct events tied to the text. Sharanya also separately worked with various faculty to plan events rooted in poetry, the arts, and literature
Fellows reviewed the school website, got familiar with the departmental structure (i.e., majors, departments, units), and identified potential faculty or programs to reach out to. Fellows secured campus email accounts, met training requirements, and gained the skills and familiarity with technology tools necessary to develop online resources regarding ArtsConnect at Hostos. Fellows visited a classroom and gave feedback on student work, met with Provost Drago, and with the advisory committee and prepared a presentation on EL and LE for the CCD meeting. Fellows also began developing a wordpress website. Through further meetings, the logo of ArtsConnect was chosen from among students’ work.
Most biweekly fellows’ meetings were also attended by the Dean of Academic Affairs and Institutional Effectiveness who provided additional guidance and support. In the spirit of promoting experiential learning (EL) and learning communities (LC) at Hostos CC, fellows needed to first get a better sense of the institutional culture, the bureaucratic procedures, and the organizational structure of the college. To achieve this, it was understood that fellows should attend meetings whenever possible that are related to various college committees and programs engaged in EL and/or LCs in some regard. After acclimating to meetings and making connections with faculty and staff, fellows could follow up with individual faculty, staff, or program leaders to get a more detailed understanding of the work that is already being generated at Hostos. Fellows met with chairs and members of various committees at Hostos, including: Hispanic Serving Institutions Committee; Affirmative Action, DEI Committee; Continuing ed and workforce development; and Middle States Council on Higher Education. After learning about different possible projects at Hostos, the individual projects were chosen and added to the regular weekly workload [approximately 8-10 hours per week].
Jenna Queenan (Urban Ed)
Projects: Jenna supported faculty with service learning and worked closely with the Center for Teaching and Learning Advisory Council at Hostos. With other members of the CTL council, Jenna planned and facilitated sessions at Day 0 and Spa Day, two annual Hostos professional development events for staff and faculty. She also developed programming materials for a new junior faculty orientation, including developing questions to ask, reviewing those with the CTL directors, scheduling interviews, interviewing and facilitating discussions with tenured faculty about supports and challenges with the tenure process. CTL directors helped with outreach and identifying people to interview.
Diana Higuera Cortés (LAILAC)
At Hostos, Diana worked with the CLIP (CUNY Language Immersive Program) and Continuing Education offices to build new bridges with the newly arrived migrant population in New York City. As many asylum seekers struggle to learn English and to find new forms of employment, the Continuing Ed Programs offerings result in a crucial opportunity for adaptation and dignified occupations. Diana concluded the project by elaborating a handout for the migrants and coordinating an outreach event explaining the program benefits/procedures at Hostos with Hostos members, student organizations at the GC, and community leaders. She coordinated with both CLIP and Continuing Ed offices to schedule the event, designed the event flyer and a Commons site to centralize information, and conducted outreach via social media and reached out to former ESOL students to advertise the event. She connected with community organizations such as Mixteca, Violence Intervention Program, and Worker’s Justice Project. 80 people attended. For the booklet, Diana drew from research and personal experience to offer resources on navigating academic institutions. She reached out to CUNY Admissions to learn about the process and used Canva to put everything together. She reached out to the library to learn about Creative Commons licenses.
Mehrnaz Moghaddam (Anthropology)
Mehrnaz’s interest was to learn about initiatives at Hostos for immigrant students and the role of English as a second language. She attended relevant class meetings and noticed most of the students in this class were bilingual, and English was not their first language. Her class observations helped her to write a proposal for the CIES 2023 conference along (CIES. Washington DC. 2022) with others in the Humanities Alliance. And, further helped her to write two blog posts: one on Specialized Language and Jargonism in Higher Ed, and another on Experiential Learning.
Angela Dunne (Urban Education)
As a Humanities Alliance Fellow, Angela has been integral in enhancing the use of Learning Communities (LCs) and Experiential Learning (EL) programs at Hostos Community College that promote interdisciplinary knowledge and meaningful collaborations between students, faculty, and the local community. Building on Hostos’ mission, Angela’s research on existing programs (at CUNY and elsewhere) has opened the door to wider discussions on the benefits and opportunities in LCs and EL. This dedicated study of LCs and EL has been foundational for identifying Hostos-specific opportunities as well as laying the groundwork for a sustained and enthusiastic future of cross-curriculum engagement between students, staff, and faculty both in and beyond the classroom.
Reflecting on the fellowship, Angela says, “One of the most rewarding experiences of the fellowship was traveling to D.C. with my co-fellows and presenting at the CIES conference. It was a well-received presentation to people from all over the world. It was really nice to go through the whole process from conference proposal to presentation.”
Francisco Medina (Urban Ed)
Francisco collaborated with faculty to update the Liberal Arts Core ePortfolio and make it more relevant to community college students. This included adding videos, quotes, questions, and creating a new assignment inviting students to share videos and/or images of where they see/hear the liberal arts in their communities and neighborhoods. Francisco also contributed to a faculty seminar focused on the creation of a new course at the college and led efforts to reorganize the My Liberal Arts Journey section of the ePortfolio by course. Moreover, Francisco presented the changes to faculty and administrators, including facilitating a faculty training workshop. In his second year, Francisco developed this project further by creating surveys for faculty and students as well as holding focus groups with students and presenting the findings to faculty and administrators. Francisco also worked on submitting an IRB proposal to officially administer surveys and conduct focus groups, and will potentially use the findings for an academic article and conference presentations in the future.
Oriana Mejías Martínez (LAILAC)
At LaGuardia Community College, Oriana has strengthened the pivotal Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) program by contributing to its multilingual curriculum and experience for students and faculty. She participated in three online synchronous sessions where she facilitated language translation for student communication when needed and for faculty in terms of instruction if needed. She also observed COIL sessions. She researched and identified the best candidates, and then emailed at least 3 people for each of the projects to look for partners. She presented one of her COIL projects at the June 2022 COIL showcase. For one of the courses she was involved with in Spring 2022, a final product was an international recipe book created by food anthropology students and their instructors at LaGuardia Community College and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. The following year, she supported the technological spaces two professors were sharing for their pedagogical COIL project and she was able to brainstorm a critical approach regarding racial inequalities surrounding Simón Bolívar’s life. In collaboration with a colleague, she created an assessment rubric for the COIL projects that would follow Global and Experiential Learning (GEL) guidelines given by the community college. After her fellowship and thanks to the work of the COIL program coordinators, the institution finally created the GEL office at LaGuardia.
Marianne Madoré (Sociology)
At LaGuardia Community College, Marianne first spent time reading what students had to say about their Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) experiences. From there, she designed new tools to assess students’ learning outcomes and worked with faculty to introduce COIL-specific learning objectives. She is currently developing an interview-based research project to understand how the Global Learning Competency is taught at LaGuardia and has presented preliminary findings at the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) meeting in February 2023. In April 2023, Marianne collaborated with her peer fellows, Oriana Mejías Martínez and Sharanya Dutta, as well as the Reclaim the Commons Coalition to organize a teach-in with CUNY activists and archivists on historical examples of student organizing at our shared university, titled CUNY Struggles Across Generations.
Elliot Jun (English)
Eliot worked with Dr. Michele Piso-Manoukian, Associate Director in the Center for Teaching and Learning at Laguardia Community College. Elliot assisted in planning and co-facilitating The Carnegie Seminar on Teaching and Learning, the 2023–2024 topic of which is decolonization and the humanities. Educated at the University of Toronto as an undergraduate and currently engaged in critical race and anticolonial studies at the Graduate Center, Elliot brings to the seminar personal and cross-disciplinary knowledge about decolonization, indigeneity, and place-based inquiry.
Michelle Rendón Ochoa (Urban Education)
From 2023 to 2025, I served as a Humanities Alliance Fellow at the Global and Experiential Learning (GEL) Office at LaGuardia Community College. In this role, I supported faculty, staff, and students in deepening their engagement with experiential learning, particularly through the lens of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and equity-centered pedagogy. My contributions included co-developing a holistic experiential learning rubric in collaboration with Urban Studies faculty, curating resources on facilitating difficult conversations in the classroom, and building connections with community organizations and NGOs. I also co-designed and facilitated two experiential learning-based workshops—From Page to Pocket: Crafting Your Poetic Zine (Fall 2024) and Archives of Us: Community Archives, Memory & Place (Spring 2025)—in collaboration with Natalia Villarreal, my fellow Humanities Alliance colleague throughout this journey at LaGuardia. These workshops allowed us to integrate our shared commitments to community archiving, multilingual storytelling, and participatory research into a collaborative, student-centered learning environment. As a fellow, I not only contributed to pedagogical programming and administrative efforts, but also deepened my own praxis as a scholar-educator committed to centering marginalized voices in the classroom and beyond.
Phase I
All the courses below were taught at LaGuardia Community College during the first phase of the CUNY Humanities Alliance. The graduate fellows, most of whom were experienced teachers already, worked with LaGuardia faculty and their peers to develop their syllabi for the following Humanities courses.
HUA101 Introduction to Art
HUC101 Fundamentals of Speech Communication
HUC106 Public Speaking
ENG101 Composition I: An Introduction to Composition and Research
ENG102 Composition II: Writing Through Literature
ENG103 Writing the Research Paper
SSH102: Themes in American History Since 1865
SSH151: Women and Gender in US History
ELL101 Introduction to Language
ELS200 Latin American Literature I
ELA201 Latin American Literature II
HUP102 Critical Thinking
SSN280: Black Urban Psychology
SSS100 Introduction to Sociology
For more detailed information, see here.
