The HA program had two phases. In Phase I (2016-2020), CUNY Graduate Center doctoral students taught classes in the humanities and humanistic social sciences at LaGuardia Community College. They were guided by experienced LaGuardia faculty and staff, and had opportunities to translate their specialized research into innovative and relevant teaching methodologies. Through the LaGuardia Mellon Humanities Scholars program (predecessor to CPL), they also identified LaGuardia undergraduate students who were invited to participate in regular programming to help them build academic and career pathways in the humanities.
The HA Phase II (2020-2025) expanded its reach to four CUNY community colleges and broadened the scope of professional development activities for graduate fellows to include academic support roles beyond the classroom
Phase I (2016-2020)
Goals
Phase I asked key questions about graduate student training in the humanities. How do we prepare graduate students to teach in community college contexts? How do doctoral students doing cutting-edge research integrate their ideas with the student-centered, active learning strategies required at institutions like LaGuardia Community College? What are the challenges of distributing this kind of high-level training and praxis apparatus across two distinct institutions with their own cultures, goals, histories, and populations?
To explore these questions, we developed Phase I with several goals in mind. We sought opportunities for graduate students to learn about the humanities at LaGuardia; to help graduate students explore and develop specific pedagogical tools to teach the humanities in community college contexts; and to enhance LaGuardia students’ engagement with the humanities and guide their educational and career pathways in the humanities.
Structure
Graduate fellowships combined teaching assignments and professional development focused on reflection. Each fellow shadowed a faculty member at LaGuardia for one semester, then taught the same class for the following three semesters. Fellows and faculty mentors participated in professional development workshops on pedagogy, teaching, and learning at LaGuardia and the Graduate Center. In the LaGuardia Humanities Scholars program, LaGuardia students participated in enrichment activities in the humanities as part of their professional development. Each year culminated in the LaGuardia Humanities Scholars’ Showcase, an annual event in which Scholars presented their projects.
Mentoring
Among the most valuable elements of Phase I were the mentoring relationships that graduate fellows built with senior faculty members during their time at LGCC. Graduate fellows deeply valued the mentoring from LGCC faculty, which included shadowing mentors’ classes, regular check-ins, and participation in professional development workshops at LaGuardia and the Graduate Center.
These workshops also facilitated peer mentorship between fellows.
Research
The work of the Senior Research Associate has facilitated engagement with and reflection on the program’s strengths and weaknesses. Research has included interviews with the program’s graduate fellows, faculty mentors, LaGuardia Mellon Humanities Scholars, and LGCC students, as well as ethnographic observations of classes, enrichment activities, professional development sessions, meetings, and numerous public events. One key finding from this research was that both doctoral fellows and faculty mentors stressed the benefits of opportunities to explore, employ, and continuously revise student-centered critical pedagogy through collaboration with each other. Furthermore, the doctoral fellows stated that the fellowship provided a more concrete understanding of community college students and class environments. Click here for Phase I’s research reports and more information.
Phase II (2020-2025)
For its second iteration, the CUNY HA program asserted that humanities teaching and learning does not only happen in the classroom, but also in a range of other institutional spaces. These may include formal academic support services, administrative spaces, and more informal interactions and relationships. We believe that these spaces produce the conditions for the most transformative and engaged humanities instruction in higher education. The HA made these conditions more visible, in an effort both to valorize them and to open up explicit space for reflection, discussion, and productive critique around them. The many complex, layered, hierarchical dynamics at work in these diverse spaces constitute the reality of doing work in the humanities in our current era. We trained GC students to navigate and contribute to these spaces in order to bolster humanities instruction at community colleges and beyond. The HA was developed in response to our view that such training for doctoral students is increasingly needed, as community colleges house a wide range of programs, pedagogical methods, technological supports, and curricular changes to enhance access to resources, promote peer connection and support, gain skills, and strengthen learning outcomes for students of all ages and backgrounds.
Timeline & Goals
Year 1 (2020-2021) was a planning year. LaGuardia, Hostos, Guttman, and BMCC identified liaisons for the Humanities Alliance, and these liaisons met regularly with HA staff at the GC to design academic support projects that would offer meaningful professional development opportunities for the fellows while supporting the goals of each community college. Preparation for projects included defining each project’s goals, benchmarks, key personnel, evaluation plan, and strategies for project sustainability, as well as creating structures for fellow and mentor recruitment. HA staff also created plans to extend Phase I work, including programming, outreach, data collection, and writing projects. Meanwhile, CPL ran as a pilot program, focused on fostering near-peer mentoring relationships between two- and four-year college students in the program. The uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic created a number of challenges in Years 1 and 2, including major staff turnover, support burdens placed upon remaining staff, and challenging enrollment, budgetary, and organizational dynamics across the CUNY system.
In Years 2-5 (2021-2025), HA graduate fellows were placed on community college campuses. 8-12 Fellows enter as cohorts each year in Years 2-4, and remain with the HA for two years. Fellows from the new cohort join existing fellows in their work on academic support projects at one of the four partner colleges. Fellows also participated in a weekly seminar and other professional development opportunities at the GC. The CPL program continued to expand recruitment, flesh out its program structure, and build on the success of previous years.
Structure
Phase II had two components: HA fellowships and CUNY Peer Leaders (CPL). In the fellowships, fellows were assigned to one community college campus and work ten hours per week on academic support projects with faculty and staff mentors at that campus. Fellows also dedicated five hours per week to various types of professional development and other work at the GC, including attending a weekly seminar with other fellows, led by Humanities Director; attending regular check-ins with Humanities Director; and conducting research, public programming, or other professional development opportunities led by fellows’ interests.
Mentoring
Building on the research findings of Phase 1, the HA relied on several structures to facilitate mentorship relationships. Fellows were assigned to each campus under a project coordinator’s guidance and worked on several projects alongside different faculty and staff. The seminar space was designed to facilitate community-building and peer mentorship among fellows. The seminar also encouraged reflection on mentorship itself and the conditions and practices where it emerges successfully.
Research
Phase II research aimed to systematize the HA model, and to provide a critical literature review and analysis of relevant programs. Questions guiding this research were: Which other higher education institutions focus on supporting careers at community colleges? What can the HA do to make our program a model for others? What kinds of research are most useful to support HA fellows and staff? Research methods included critical literature review, program analysis, and interviewing, and participant-observation.
