As we develop inclusive classrooms, do we value the languages and English registers that students arrive with? One thing is clear: Students who do not speak the privileged varieties of English face societal discrimination. To develop an equitable classroom and workplace, educators need to question language attitudes and myths more than ever. Luckily, there is a growing body of research to guide us. This presentation will outline a shift from a deficit-based to an asset-based view of language which treats students’ linguistic backgrounds as resources and provides a theoretical grounding for a language-aware pedagogy. Summarizing what we have learned as co-leaders of Language Across the Curriculum (LAC), which inspired LaGuardia Community College to include language diversity as part of its Inclusive Pedagogies, we will outline ways to engage students’ multilingual skills in achieving academic success and to promote language justice on campus.

Our group of communication, linguistic, and adult education scholars from three CUNY campuses propose this panel to explore the question: What does a decolonized Public Speaking course look like? This panel will present the mid-point findings of a year-long project supported by a CUNY BRESI grant, including some of the problems we encountered in the field and in the traditional pedagogy used in the course. Traditional Public Speaking courses in the United States teach a narrow and ethnocentric view of what makes an effective speech. Little room is allowed for diverse cultural perspectives and little to no acknowledgement that different communities value different styles of public speech.Though our research is focused specifically on Public Speaking courses, the lessons we’ve learned are applicable to any course with a speech or presentation requirement.

The accounting profession recognizes its lack of talent from underrepresented groups as a critical issue, with the 2021 American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Trend Report showing that 77% of CPAs are White, 5% are Hispanic or Latino, and 2% are Black. As DEI efforts in accounting continue to fall behind, the profession is looking to partner with colleges like LaGuardia, a Hispanic Serving Institution with a diverse student population. The Accounting Program DEI Accelerator at LaGuardia is a BRESI grant-funded three-phase model where faculty identify accounting majors from historically excluded racial and ethnic groups and provide guidance and coaching for scholarships, internships, and professional development opportunities. The Accelerator’s sustainable framework identifies participants, catalogs opportunities on and off-campus, and offers information sessions, workshops, and supports for participants to access opportunities. The Accelerator ultimately aims to change the common narrative about who is and isn’t supposed to be an accountant.

Initially established as the Black Studies Program in 1970, the Department of Ethnic and Race Studies (DERS) at BMCC is uniquely situated at CUNY as the only department to explicitly include multiple areas in the field of Ethnic Studies. Over its 50year existence, DERS has led a number of initiatives at the college, university, and larger community level. In this double roundtable, a number of faculty from the department will continue the discussion on the importance of Ethnic Studies as essential in the college curriculum. They will reflect on the history of the department, and on their experiences teaching Ethnic Studies at BMCC. Presenters will examine strategies used both inside and outside of the traditional classroom and engage in conversation on the challenges and possibilities for the teaching Ethnic Studies at CUNY. Participants will also discuss the continued struggle to expand Ethnic Studies amid ongoing budget cuts to public institutions and conservative political backlash against “critical race theory” approaches. The main objective of these conversations is to evaluate our work so far, to engage other programs and initiatives at CUNY, and to continue to build strong curriculum and programs for our students.

Background Maternal Mortality is defined as a pregnancy related death that occurs during pregnancy, during delivery and up 42 days following a delivery. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention the United States has the highest Maternal Mortality when compared to ten other developed countries. Furthermore, Black women are almost 2-3 times more likely to die than from pregnancy related deaths than their white counterparts. The purpose of this project for nursing students to use an educational tool to teach pregnant women about warning signs that can occur during pregnancy and six weeks thereafter. Description Nursing students will learn didactic knowledge off high-risk pregnancy while empowering women to seek medical help for pregnancy related danger signs. This can lead to early recognition intervention and prevent adverse outcomes. The students will teach maternity patients material derived from the CDC’s Hear Her champaign. The goal includes students will be aware of the racial/ethnic disparities that exist in maternal care; students will be aware that there is unconscious bias in healthcare, students will understand the major causes of maternal mortality and they should be able to identify high-`risk pregnant women. Students will be providing healthcare education that include the “urgent maternal warning signs” provided by the CDC. Data to be derived from pre and post student survey.

When creating a dance performance piece based on QCC's 2022 Common Read selection, "Citizen: An American Lyric" by Claudia Rankine, I did not want the creative process to harm the students. Because the book dealt with systemic and interpersonal racism and its physiological toll on the body, I scaffolded the rehearsals to create a container of mutual trust and safety. This experiential workshop will replicate that rehearsal process. Using check-ins, reflective journal prompts, and needs assessments, we will dive into a charged topic and share our experiences and insights about racism. The tradition of white supremacy in higher education dance programs can also harm students, and most QCC dance majors aim to transfer into elite college dance programs that value Eurocentric dance forms over others. Three QCC Dance Faculty members approach dance pedagogy from an anti-racist lens to create an inclusive space for the whole student. In our workshop, we will discuss the evolution toward a culturally responsive pedagogy in three studio courses required for the dance major.

Teaching while Black means that it is useful for Black professors to understand how factors such as otherness and marginality that may be embraced by some students can impinge upon their pedagogical relationships with students. As such, the “double consciousness paradigm” as articulated by Du Bois (1903), can serve as professional grounding for Black professors in many domains of their academic careers. For example, it is important for Black instructors to be cognizant of what it means to teach content regarding race and oppression in the context of classrooms that are predominantly White. Correspondingly, teaching race-informed content when you are Black may induce racialized anxiety in these students, thus inhibiting them from contributing to classroom conversation. Moreover, Black professors engaged in classroom discussions where the majority of students are white could elicit stereotypical cultural and social perceptions similar to the ones held by society.

In Fall 2022, we received CUNY Black, Race and Ethnic Studies Initiative (BRESI) funding to support the establishment of an immersive, interdisciplinary, intercollegiate community college mentored undergraduate student research program. Our project, Jumpstarting the Black and Latine/x Emerging Scholar Pipeline, trained 11 Bronx Community and LaGuardia Community College Students in anti-racist research methodologies and ethics. In this session, we use critical endarkened/Black storytelling (Toliver, 2022) to share critical moments/incidents within the research mentorship experience. We center milestones that impacted our professional development (as intersectional Black community college faculty scholars), epistemologies, teaching praxis, job satisfaction, sense of belonging in academe, and healing from systemic racism in higher education (Bertrand Jones et. al, 2020; Griffin, 2013). We invite other BIPOC faculty to share their endarkened stories toward exploring the possibilities of sustainable restorative/action-oriented mentoring programs that decenter individualism, competition, and whitestream achievement oriented practices within CUNY.

Inclusive pedagogical practices are student-centered but often bounded by on-campus experiences. This presentation will focus on two programs based at College of Staten Island (CSI). The first program will spotlight CSI St. George – an extension of CSI and the establishment of a grant-funded intentional learning community focused on “Public Interest Technology”(PIT). The second program will spotlight CSI’s recent designation as an HSI. College of Staten Island/CUNY (CSI) and La Colmena, a community-based organization created a mutually reinforcing partnership. The College and Career Pipeline for Immigrant Families is a supportive pathway to CSI’s continuing education and degree-bearing programs for La Colmena’s members; improving individual and family potential for economic vitality. We will discuss the role that “place” plays in transformative practices at CUNY. We want to know how critical practice in community engagement disrupts dominant narratives that often equate “social mobility” with deficit models, and academic success with assimilation.

This panel will highlight the work of two groups utilizing data in DEI work.  The first group developed a DEI assessment and conducted a national study with the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, whose leadership helped facilitate focus groups with its member presidents and diversity officers. They learned that the instrument helped many institutions engage in important conversations about DEI, bringing to light issues of ethnic/racial, gender, religious, and LGBTQ+ inequities. The instrument helped guide areas to be addressed that were missing from their DEI plans and serve as a framework for ensuring DEI within the institutional climate. In this session, they will present our instrument, the results of the national study, and engage participants in discussions of how this system can be useful within their contexts.  The other group will present on the work being done at Queens College, who is implementing a new approach to decision-making that incorporates both data and community input to fully integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) into campus culture and operations.

The lack of retention found among underrepresented minority STEM students that reflects on limited diversity of STEM graduating classes, is a challenge across the nation. One factor that can improve these outcomes is a shift from a traditional to a more inclusive pedagogy, which promotes the persistence of college students, promoting systemic change in the teaching of STEM disciplines by closing the gap between learners, educators and the content sources used in the classroom. The syllabus is a powerful pedagogical tool that can promote equity, diversity and inclusion in the STEM classroom, but assessing how our syllabi address these issues is not traditionally done in higher education. In this workshop we will share the content and implementation of a rubric designed to assess equity, diversity and inclusion practices within the syllabus. We will also discuss with participants how its implementation might improve their teaching and the engagement of STEM students.

It is often said when America catches a cold the Black community catches the flu. The COVID-1p pandemic sent this adage into overdrive for students and Black Studies chairpersons, alike. Historical issues of Black student access and resource deprovation were both multiplied and magnified during the pandemic. The ongoing struggle of chairpersons and directors of Black Studies programs to staff courses, remedy access issues, provide progreamming and support mechanisms for students from multiple disciplines while balancing ever shrinking resources also became amplified as Covid shut the world down and Black Studies strove to maintain spaces of intellectural haven for students and faculty alike. This interactive panel will discuss the challenges that leaders of Black campus communites faced before, during, and after the pandemic; demonstrate the ways they continue to address those challenges; and posit insights on strategiies for the future of Black Studies.

This presentation will reflect on the recent incorporation of the term Latinx to illustrate the diversity of Latin American identities in the United States. Latinx has become an all-gender-inclusive label that embraces a rainbow of sexual/gender identities and, by the same token, calls attention to the injustices suffered by discriminated minorities, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people. The author will discuss the pros and cons of the term Latinx as replacement for others that represent Latinos/as in the U.S. Some detractors argue that the label Latinx, rather than being all inclusive, is gender erasing as it ignores the struggles of cis and transgender Latinas who have fought hard to be acknowledged within U.S. identity hierarchies. The presentation will end by offering concrete recommendations on how to use the term Latinx in research to properly reflect diverse Latino/a identities in the U.S. and overseas

Once hired, the identity of international faculty gets recategorized within the conventional dimensions of the CUNY Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies. Consequentially, their immigration status and their migration narratives are rendered completely irrelevant and insignificant. In this panel discussion, three faculty members from Hunter, Laguardia and City Tech will share their reflections on how they have asserted this aspect of their identity within their departments, colleges, and CUNY. Their reflections will focus on 6 broad themes as follows: 1) visa and immigration issues, 2) Cultural and pedagogical differences and barriers, 3) Professional isolation and lack of support, 4) Limited career advancement opportunities, 5) Workload and expectations and 6) Family and personal challenges. This solution-focused panel discussion aims to increase awareness and understanding of the challenges faced by international faculty; develop and improve support and resources for international faculty and initiate efforts for a more inclusive and supportive campus climate.

In this panel, presenters will address translanguaging pedagogy in different settings in higher education. Translanguaging pedagogy includes the consideration of translingual and literary texts, writing, discussions, and multimodal student artifacts. The panel will begin with an overview of translanguaging theory, followed by panelists presenting on their specific area within their CUNY teaching. Participants will leave with a solid understanding of translanguaging pedagogy; practical tools, texts, and assignments; and vision for curriculum design in their respective programs

Many college students of color do not feel a sense of belonging at their institution. Inclusive initiatives in higher education are often just words with no real actions developed to address the systems that perpetuate inequities or usher in change. Inclusive teaching practices frequently do not address underlying justice issues by proceeding from an equality perspective, that all students are equal regardless of their backgrounds or identities, as opposed to equity. Diversity efforts often give the semblance of inclusion without giving voice to those whose voices have been marginalized. The work of anti-racist pedagogy is action oriented. Effective training in the implementation of anti-racist pedagogical practices provides faculty and staff with the tools to help recognize and dismantle racism in all its forms. In this workshop participants will explore best practices and strategies for creating anti-racist pedagogy professional development workshops for faculty and staff to promote student belonging and equity.

The experiences of CUNY educators at Lehman College and Brooklyn College will be showcased, specifically in implementing culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogies. This will demonstrate their commitment to creating a teaching environment and curriculum that are antiracist, culturally responsive, and culturally sustaining. The development and implementation of a teacher preparation curriculum in which the identities of students of color are valued and affirmed and which prepare all teacher candidates to ensure the academic success of P-12 students of color and how this would increase access to educational opportunities for students of color will reinforce pedagogical concepts. Such new models for teacher preparation programs may benefit the entire CUNY community. Lehman College faculty will offer an interactive session framed by their own classroom stories that reflect on the hits and miss, such as when a teacher has to juggle multiple angles of diversity, including graduate-undergraduate mixing, differences in academic levels, racial/cultural diversity, and socio-economic disparities. Brooklyn College faculty will feature their process of analysis and assessment that redesigned the undergraduate program in Childhood Education.

This panel will explore the work of two CUNY scholars who are working to promote greater representation in their respective fields of design.  One of the speakers will take the audience through The Design Influencer Poster Project, a three-step process that aims to bridge the gap between context and creation so that students learn about those who created what influences them now—and remarkably, how many of those are overlooked or underrepresented in the cannon of graphic design. The goal of the project explores the traditional principles of design—composition, text, hierarchy, and the grid; however, it is the students’ research of unknown creators that drives the excitement of discovery. After researching the work of a designer overlooked by the canon, they present their findings to the class. The project culminates with designing a tribute poster to their subject. The second speaker is exploring the racial disparities in the architectural profession. Narrowing this disparity begins with providing affordable quality education. As an inner-city, minority-serving institution, City Tech is uniquely positioned to address this need and to contribute to increasing the diversity of the professional community. The presentations will each showcase different aspects of the Department of Architectural Technology at the New York College of Technology (City Tech) that together support pathways into the profession for students who may be disadvantaged by prior educational models.