Teacher educators are driven to develop and support the next generation of future teachers through exposure to subject matter knowledge, pedagogical theories and practices, and supervision of meaningful clinical experiences. CUNY students come from many backgrounds and present a varied degree of proficiency and expertise in their disciplines. Their engagement is the CUNY classroom is essential for their success. This is an especial challenge in the STEM fields where research has demonstrated that the US may be falling behind in the development of skills needed to be competitive in a global economy. Indeed, the pandemic has exacerbated a series of stressors, not the least of which is STEM anxiety in this new digital environment. Two Medgar Evers faculty will provide an analysis of students who are biology majors, childhood ed majors, and early childhood majors, all of whom are required to demonstrate their understanding and knowledge of STEM concepts. Examples will demonstrate how teacher candidates’ understanding the concept of Computational Thinking ideas and practices will improve without and with use of computing devices. Effective strategies will also promote social justice and equity for pre-service teachers (PSTs) in a post-pandemic world through creativity, collaboration, and communication.

Join BRESI leaders and student participants in a lively discussion about the impact of the Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies Initiative at CUNY. We’ll reflect on the initiative’s ambitious goals, hear about emerging accomplishments, and discuss how this CUNY-wide collaboration to drive change and build community in this important space across the University is progressing. We look forward to audience participation in an engaging conversation about hopes and plans for the future of BRES at CUNY.

The Black, Race and Ethnic Studies Initiative (BRESI), generously funded by the Mellon Foundation, seeks to reimagine and further develop University programs in Black, Race and Ethnic Studies CUNY-wide. In Fall 2022, a total of 126 competitive grants totaling $1.8 million were awarded to CUNY faculty, staff and entities including centers and institutes to seed promising work advancing BRESI’s mission. An additional $250,000 was awarded to the CUNY Graduate Center to develop a Ph.D. Program in Black, Race and Ethnic Studies. This new multidisciplinary program intends to expand existing BRES academic programs at CUNY and build on their contributions to this interdisciplinary academic field. The newly established BRESI Collaboration Hub will support the development of the Ph.D. program.

For a number of years, faculty and staff in the Department of Social Work at Lehman College attempted individually and collectively to make our curriculum and culture more inclusive, responsive to and representative of our study body, and anti-racist. However, it took a groundswell from students to effectuate systemic change. In this panel, we describe a movement led by students that resulted in a committee composed of students, faculty, and alumni designed to holistically change the department to one that is explicitly anti-racist in all areas. Initiated by Master of Social Work (MSW) students, the committee called SW Heals (Social Workers Honoring Education with Anti-Racist Learning Standards) began in 2020. Some major contributions from the committee include a complete evaluation and overhaul of our curriculum, a revision of our mission statement, and implementation of an alumni-led anti-racist training program.

Traditionally, the fundamentals of management teaching have been aligned with the belief that conventional management theories were separate and apart from the institution of chattel slavery and the management of race (Aufhauser, 1973; Blackmon, 2008; Cooke, 2003; Roediger & Esch, 2012). As a contribution to the academy, this workshop will present a qualitative study that examined the exclusion of chattel slavery in the teaching of the history of American business (Baptist, 2014; Katznelson, 2005). Faculty are encouraged to enhance their research knowledge to include the true origins of business and management concepts, providing a throughline to current management practices that include harassment, coercion, and even brutality as part of a routine management dictum. Future faculty will gain the requisite tools to acknowledge that the origin of management tenets is historically connected to the practice of chattel slavery (Aufhauser, 1973; Cooke, 2003).

In this panel, Drs. RaShelle Peck and Jayashree Kamblé discuss ways to center Black and POC experiences in the classroom through the lens of wonder and positive emotions.

For Dr. Peck, one of our answers to Black precarity should be a commitment to abolitionist teaching that both upends power structures that disenfranchise students and grounds the classroom in the radical search for beauty, as such approaches create spaces of nurture that attend to Black suffering. When we intentionally build abolitionist classrooms that include notions of wonder, students can experience joy, freedom, and curiosity. Her presentation will cover how she incorporates wonder in the classroom through pedagogy, taking up Sylvia Wynter’s inquiry, but what does wonder do, to consider how classrooms can be abolitionist spaces. In assignments, she builds concepts of wonder into how students examine Black politics, Africana histories, and decolonizing philosophies. For example, she asks students to complete a project that centers imagination, creativity, and academic rigor, which accomplishes three things: pushes students to examine course readings thoroughly and comprehensively; has them produce reflections on readings that incorporate artistic elements; and has them envision themselves in conversation with the authors that students read and as a part of the historical events that are covered. Ultimately, she intends for such assignments to tap into the imaginative impulses that should be central to learning.

For Dr. Kamblé, while almost 90% of the students at LaGuardia Community College identify as BIPOC, they do not see their communities’ optimistic stories and histories in the curriculum. But teaching romance novels like Office Hours (2020) in the college’s English First Year Seminar has revealed that students perk up when they read about people falling in love—people they identify with and whose authors resemble them. With the support of a CUNY Black, Race, and Indigenous Studies Initiatives (BRESI) grant, she aims to infuse literature and writing courses with her research on the forgotten work(s) of BIPOC writers and editors in mass-market romance publishing. The classes can be further enlivened when she introduces LaGuardia students to obscured BIPOC contributions to popular American literary culture. She plans to design lessons and assignments that model how to counter such erasure. Sandra Kitt’s Color of Love (1995), for instance, pairs a Black heroine with a white NYPD officer; by reading it closely, students can examine themes of inter-racial love, policing, feminism, and New York in the 1980s, and also research Kitt’s road to publishing success. The goal is to keep LaGuardia’s English major and its Liberal Arts as well as Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies offerings in step with our present moment, and prepare students for higher-level thinking on race and romance, whether in a Bachelor’s degree program after transfer or outside the academic classroom.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) guidelines, created by CAST, propose ways to address diversity and disabilities in higher education classrooms by intentionally adjusting the curriculum to suit the students’ learning needs. UDL checkpoints encourage creating intentional designs that instill confidence, provide assignment transparency, and create a sense of belonging.

Often when designing inclusive pedagogies, we keep a diverse group of students or perspectives in mind. What if we involved them in the design process of program development? This workshop uses the development of a Bachelors of Arts in Youth Studies as a case study in participatory program design. Participants will learn about how a BA in Youth Studies was developed with input from current Youth Studies Masters students, faculty, alumni, as well as CBO and city agency partners. This workshop will elucidate how a co-design processes may help move us away from illusions of inclusion or performative diversity. The facilitator will share the BA creation story and invite participants to engage in dialogue around a series of questions for collective consideration.

This presentation will outline evidenced-based instructional and pedagogical strategies for DEI-centered healthcare education that facilitates students to critically reason out sensitive clinical situations involving social justice and holistic approaches to care. The model of this presentation is through the use of carefully constructed case-based approaches in supporting students' critical self-analysis and reflection as they develop into healthcare practitioners.

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.

Equity and Inclusion are values that LaGuardia Community College and the City University of New York promote through mission statements and strategic planning. We present how to use performance metrics of math course sequences at LaGuardia Community College to quantify equity gaps in student success. We highlight how quantifying equity gaps in STEM can help practitioners better understand why pedagogy must be centered on race. Notably, we show how practicing traditional ways of teaching mathematics impacts Hispanic/Latinx and Black students. This research will also enable the development of actions at the classroom level to reduce equity gaps in mathematics achievement and continuously assess their impact in the short term to foster equitable classroom experiences for minoritized student populations

This presentation will illustrate the implementation of the assignment designed on principles of inclusive transformative pedagogy in the Social Psychology course at LaGuardia Community College, as students engaged in the semester-long class project focused on building quantitative literacy through survey research experience in the context of investigating issues of social justice. While the first part of the presentation focuses on describing the class project, the second part will focus on discussion of students’ and instructor’s experiences, including challenges of designing and implementing the project, as a process of creating inclusive transformative learning spaces and sites for identity development. This class project was designed as part of participation in the CUNY-wide, NSF funded research study Faculty Development and Student Engagement in Data Analysis (FDSEDA): Building Capacity in Numeracy among Underrepresented Students and its Data Analysis Research Experience (DARE) Program focusing on the infusing quantitative reasoning and data analysis in the curriculum.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The facilitation of inclusion and equity constitutes a perennial social justice mission, a point underscored for students with expression and verbal differences, whether documented or differences which do not fit DSM categories. These students may not express inclusion needs or may express indirectly without clarity. Students need not self-advocate when needs are apparent, but may face self-advocacy challenges when needs are not obvious. Who are these students with expression differences, what are some common issues, and how can faculty and staff assist with the facilitation of inclusion and equity needs? This interactive presentation will address these questions and discuss developing awareness of this growing student subset to remain mindful of their inclusion needs, albeit unexpressed or indirectly indicated, and will focus on engagement and advocacy strategies to move towards improved inclusion and equity. Scenarios will be presented for attendee input of best practices with this population.

In this interactive workshop, brief presentations will cover an array of transformative learning methods that structure equity into a classroom, build community, and interrogate the racist and ableist norms that influence teaching and learning. These methods work at any level, at any institution, and in any discipline, and are based on decades of research in the learning sciences showing the efficacy of active learning. As part of each presentation, the audience will engage in a short activity to put these empirically driven, classroom-tested active learning techniques into practice.

There is much recent pedagogy on antiracism in the creative writing classroom (see: Mathew Salesses and Felicia Rose Chavez), upending the dominant University of Iowa paradigm which privileges reader and silences author. But this pedagogy primarily focuses on the predominantly white classroom. What does this mean for the CUNY undergraduate creative writing classroom? How might we adapt this pedagogy and how might students benefit? A Lehman creative writing professor, a recent Lehman BA, and a recent Lehman MA discuss their time in creative writing classrooms, and demonstrate a possible workshop model (attendees will be asked to participate in the mock workshop).

The Narrative Medicine Track of Distinction at CSOM centers principles of healing through interconnected creative and academic arts as essential to student learning. This pedagogical framework lives in the classroom, in the development of educational programming, and in the work environment that is informed and shaped by the diverse experiences and knowledge of our faculty and board of advisors. Narrative Medicine offers our learning community strategies and practices including: self-reflection through close reading and writing, and attentiveness to the lived experiences of others, building the capacity of our students, educators, and staff to express empathy and solidarity towards one another. It assists CSOM in creating responsive and inclusive spaces to meet the diverse needs of our community, reimagining the arts as integral to medical education. This panel will explore how our team structures student engagement, educational experiences, and administrative meetings from a holistic, self-care focused, and trauma-informed point of view.

This workshop will consist of two parts. First, we will present an overview of our institutional ethnography exploring how language is lived on our campus, with a view toward creating more equitable language practices, particularly around the treatment of language in writing instruction. Second, using the methodology of our study as a framework, we will facilitate two consciousness-raising activities among participants to identify potential gaps and/or contradictions between how their own campuses talk about inclusivity when it comes to linguistic diversity and the actual practices that would promote equity for students no matter their language backgrounds. Through these activities, participants will identify areas for future intervention on their campus and/or across CUNY.

Neo-assimilation theory suggests that cultural, economic, and social parity with native-born, White Americans results in successful immigrant assimilation into mainstream United States (Alba and Nee 2004; Bean and Stevens 2005). Yet, despite aggregate Asian Americans’ ascendance in socioeconomic status, they are still met with prejudice and discrimination based on their race. At the same time, mainstream understandings of race and racism do not include the Asian American experience. As such, Asian American elite professionals – physicians, professors, and attorneys – do not necessarily attribute race to their treatment because they have “made it” by all markers of success. However, despite achievement, race, foreignization, and presumed difference continue to control elite Asian American professionals’ interactions with colleagues, patients, students, and clients. These experiences further reify white/nonwhite boundaries between those who truly belong and those who do not.

In sum, The Inclusive Workplace is a training that addresses various misconceptions which could lead to conflict in the workplace due to diverse thoughts and beliefs. The training focuses on how to avoid those misconceptions and how to co-exist and contribute to a healthy work environment. Attendees are also provided information on how to file discrimination on the bases of race, religion and various other protected classes or activities. CUNY's Nondiscrimination Policy, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, religion, national origin and ancestry (among many other protected classes) is incorporated into this training.

Culturally responsive curricula development must include a broad outreach to ensure that the inclusion part of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion engages all groups who have experienced discrimination in the educational sphere rather than choosing select groups or communities that have been targeted more recently. That there has been a challenge for the Italian American in higher education is well-documented, especially at The City University of New York where Italian Americans are considered an affirmative action category. Despite supposed attention to the issues of discrimination and underutilization, the percentage of faculty and staff who claim Italian American as their heritage group has declined in the 46-plus years since then Chancellor Kibbee pronounced this decree. The aim of this presentation is to highlight the continued failures of the efforts to include Italian Americans and offer a curricular approach to address the perennial challenge.

When faculty commit to open teaching practices and using open resources, they are instrumental to increasing student access to knowledge and economic equity. While embracing openness can be transformative to teaching, the process is not immune to systemic issues of organizational (in)equity. CUNY has a strong record of OER work, often positioned as advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the academy. In this presentation, a pair of OER practitioners / library faculty will explore how they address labor stratification and grapple with inequitable professional designations in designing faculty development programs. Utilizing an ethic of care in teaching as a loose framework, presenters will share encounters with structural impasses, how power dynamics and teacher identity figure into their work, and actions they have taken to challenge organizational inequity. Questions to be explored include how to offer professional development opportunities that don’t exclude faculty in stratified labor designations (adjunct, tenure-track, etc.).

Begun in 2017 and permanently located at https://nesri.commons.gc.cuny.edu/,the Northeast Slavery Records Index (NESRI) is an ongoing digital public history initiative that currently indexes over 64,000 original records of slavery from the 1500s through the 1860s in eight northeastern states from New Jersey to Maine. NESRI provides free reports on slavery records to thousands of towns, cities and counties. The reports instantly deliver comprehensive documentation of slavery records for each locality. This project is partially supported by an American Council of Learned Societies Digital Justice Grant, funding searches for and indexing of additional records of enslavement. It is also supported by CUNY’s Black, Race and Ethnic Studies Initiative. (BRESI) The project engages students in original historical research to enhance and expand documentation of slavery, and to diversify the historical record by reconstituting records of enslaved persons as individuals.

This panel discussion will discuss where we are today in meeting the diverse needs of LGBTQ students at CUNY. Enrolling almost a quarter of a million students per year, the University likely represents the largest population of LGBTQ+-identified college students in the NYC metropolitan area. Yet the needs of transgender and gender non-conforming individuals within the CUNY system (students, faculty, and staff) have historically been critically underserved. Egregious violations of the Gender Identity/Gender Expression law (established by the New York City Commission on Human Rights) have been documented over the past five years. Following widespread cross-campus advocacy through the University LGBTQ Council and Wellness Centers, there are now significant improvements. Panelists will discuss the current status of preferred names and gender identification at CUNY, access to gender neutral bathrooms, mental health support, student engagement within and outside of the classroom, trainings designed for faculty and staff, and offer a useful roadmap forward for the larger CUNY community

This workshop addresses the needs of the homeless and housing insecure among CUNY students. Whispers of an unidentified homeless population among college students has been increasing and will continue to grow as inflation hinders students’ ability to earn a sustainable wage without a safety net. Affordable housing in NY is scarce, making CUNY students particularly vulnerable. This problem is often swept under the rug or deemed unsolvable, exacerbated by undocumented cases due to feelings of shame and embarrassment which leads students to conceal their plight. This highly interactive workshop attempts to identify potential solutions as well as develop a pilot proposal in order to actively address this issue. The sharing economy was designed to match underutilized resources with individuals in need of them. This workshop takes lessons from the sharing economy to create a practical framework to take action as a first step in addressing this problem.

This session will explore moving from the traditional headspace of academia to the heart-space, while learning about DEI Fridays at Baruch College (organized by the Marxe School DEI Committee and funded by BRESI). The program’s objectives are to deepen our understanding of equity and justice; to build community around our shared humanity; and to learn practical strategies to transform our institution by centering the voices and experiences of traditionally marginalized groups. In this session, we will use contemplative practices (meditation, deep listening, and journaling), active learning, and anti-racist principles to embody education as the practice of freedom, hope, and love (bell hooks, 1994, 2003). Participants will learn how to organize a session grounded in the heart-space by experiencing one. Participants will reflect on their own identities (mirrors), learn about the experiences of those with different identities than their own (windows), and bridge differences by engaging in one-on-on connection (doors).

Non-marginalized faculty within higher education have long benefited from informal knowledge networks and mentorships that are often inaccessible to marginalized faculty. Without such networking and mentoring opportunities, marginalized faculty often can not understand the expectations of tenure and promotion committees, advance their careers, or band together to fight against injustices. Fortunately, there is a growing network of marginalized academics who are able to create new networks and mentorship programs to support marginalized junior faculty. In this presentation, four marginalized CUNY academics (including two junior academics) speak on the critical impact that accessing knowledge and mentors has had on their career and on their ability to overcome obstacles related to being first-generation academics, revise cultural barriers towards asking and accepting help, balance parenthood with academia, and garner senior faculty supporters. Finally, they share insider secrets on how to attain tenure and promotion as a marginalized junior faculty member.

Some humor, while making us laugh, contains shadows of hostility toward those who cause strife – the racists, the bigots, the unaware and uneducated. Although humor can perpetuate and preserve stereotypes, it can also redress a wide variety of prejudices and preconceptions. Humor may not have been a powerful enough weapon to overthrow despotic regimes such as, for example, the US during slavery, Nazi Germany, or the former Soviet Union, but it did provide hope to the oppressed. Humor can educate the educable, counter stereotypes and, if all else fails, possibly get even. Humor provides marginalized groups with psychological strength, and enables them to rise above despair and hopelessness. Jewish humor is used here as a specific example of how humor has been used over hundreds of years to help survive oppression and teach the history of a people.

Organized by Co-PIs of the Campus Climate BRESI grant Addressing Racism on Campus with Restorative Practices, this panel presents anti-racist projects grounded in restorative justice at Lehman College. We highlight our focus on actionable activities. Each presentation shows how engaged dialogues take place on our campus, and how they aim to call out white supremacist structures and enact strategies to counter them on campus. As a group, we illustrate how to engage the campus community on anti-racist and restorative justice actions, with an overview of the work being done at Lehman College during challenging times.

Professor Benton authored the CUNY University Faculty Senate study on the “faculty gap” which is available online: https://ufsbac.commons.gc.cuny.edu/. The study found that, between 2003 and 2019 in senior colleges, SUNY’s faculty positions grew almost twice as fast as enrollment, while CUNY’s enrollments grew three times faster than CUNY’s faculty positions. As a result, in 2019 the SUNY senior college ratio of faculty per thousand full-time equivalent students was 44% higher than CUNY’s ratio. The study also found that in NY state’s publicly funded (SUNY and CUNY) senior colleges in 2019, white students had substantially greater opportunities for full-time faculty instruction, compared to Black and Hispanic students. Professor Benton will provide updated statistics and explore how $53 million in FY 2022 investments in SUNY and CUNY faculty positions could affect these findings. Are we narrowing the “faculty gap” and are we improving minority student opportunities for access to full-time faculty instruction.

This presentation will provide a valuable perspective on work in higher education—that of a Black woman in leadership roles. The experiences of Black women in educational leadership differ greatly from those of White women and other women of color. Yet, research about the challenges they face, although increasing, is still minimal. It is vital that their lived experiences and voices be heard in order to dismantle the strongholds of racial microaggression, racial battle fatigue, and gendered racial microaggression in academia. The use of the term ‘women and people of color’ distorts and detracts from the specific experiences of Black women, thereby, rendering them invisible. Black women’s experiences are different from those of (White) women, women of color, or people of color, which include men. The presentation will provide an analysis of leadership strategies and effective accomplice-ship that allowed for impactful change and reflect on the challenges that can emerge when leadership shifts and priorities change, especially in DEI work. Because their experiences are so different and are often missing or ignored in scholarship, it is imperative to conduct targeted research and conversations about Black female faculty and administrators to ascertain how their experiences shape their ability to thrive – or not.  

Refugees are, by definition, little more than people in crisis. Driven from their homes to escape war, persecution, disaster, or some other painful ailment, refugees flee to the United States in search of a better life for themselves and their children. In 2022, 1,775 refugees were resettled in New York State (Monroe, 2022). The refugees largely came from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, Afghanistan, Burma, and Ukraine, as well as 57 other countries in crisis (Monroe, 2022). Of these refugees, approximately 40% tend to be under the age of 18 and thus require admission into the education system (Baugh, 2022). Therefore, the increasing need for social justice is a direct response to the continuous growth in the number of refugees from diverse countries. To support teachers, administrators, students in training, and counselors in developing a more thorough understanding of the three levels of advocacy for social justice, this workshop will provide knowledge about the refugee crisis and the necessary tools to develop advocacy on behalf of this group.

The “We Belong: Creating a Culture of Inclusivity at BMCC” panel will examine the evolution of the Borough of Manhattan Community College’s (BMCC) Race, Equity, and Inclusion (REI) Steering Committee. REI serves as the “Conscience of the College” and creates a space and culture of true belonging. The Committee leads and supports college-wide efforts to develop strategic and sustainable initiatives to expand inclusive pedagogies; establish vehicles to share information, exchange ideas, and generate knowledge; and identify and challenge informal and formal policies/practices that may pose obstacles to institutional practices. Panelists will assess committee structure and goals; consider strategies to garner investment from the College community and leadership; analyze challenges associated with leading college-wide efforts to strengthen equity, diversity, inclusion, and a sense of belonging; and present community colleges’ unique challenges in building a space to carry out this critical work to establish metrics and achieve meaningful outcomes.

The presenters supported by CUNY's Black Race and Ethnic Studies Initiative grant awards will share their approaches for creating student health internship experiences addressing racial health inequities impacting marginalized communities in New York City. Reducing racial health inequity is a broad goal that requires action at many levels, and many organizations are developing interventions to improve outcomes for patient populations and communities. The panelist will share the model(s) used by them to educate the students pursuing degrees in public health and health sciences on the impact of racial and ethnic inequities on the health of historically underrepresented communities. Through internship experiences focused on health disparities, students gain access to communities in New York City that reflect the challenges and health inequities across the nation. These experiences provide them with opportunities to promote racial health equity on one hand and on the other, prepare them for their career in the healthcare field.

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.

There are unspoken structural barriers that impede faculty of color from experiencing an equitable workplace that supports their promotion and retention in higher ed. The service burden also known as “cultural taxation,” places pressure on faculty of color to serve as role models, mentors, even surrogate parents to students of color, and to fulfill the institutional need for ethnic/racial representation. This service burden has increased as student bodies become more diverse and college campuses increase their efforts to provide inclusive learning environments that increase student enrollment. It is important to note that while student bodies are more diverse the diversity among faculty is lagging. This panel discussion will present the lived experience of three faculty and one staff from various CUNY campuses and will provide faculty and staff of color sound guidance to thrive in academia.

This panel highlights the power of music in a variety of spaces.  The musician scholars will take the audience through a journey in their areas of expertise: education, well-being, and building community, showing the important and beautiful ways music touches our lives and influences systems.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Neo-assimilation theory suggests that cultural, economic, and social parity with native-born, White Americans results in successful immigrant assimilation into mainstream United States (Alba and Nee 2004; Bean and Stevens 2005). Yet, despite aggregate Asian Americans’ ascendance in socioeconomic status, they are still met with prejudice and discrimination based on their race. At the same time, mainstream understandings of race and racism do not include the Asian American experience. As such, Asian American elite professionals – physicians, professors, and attorneys – do not necessarily attribute race to their treatment because they have “made it” by all markers of success. However, despite achievement, race, foreignization, and presumed difference continue to control elite Asian American professionals’ interactions with colleagues, patients, students, and clients. These experiences further reify white/nonwhite boundaries between those who truly belong and those who do not.

In sum, The Inclusive Workplace is a training that addresses various misconceptions which could lead to conflict in the workplace due to diverse thoughts and beliefs. The training focuses on how to avoid those misconceptions and how to co-exist and contribute to a healthy work environment. Attendees are also provided information on how to file discrimination on the bases of race, religion and various other protected classes or activities. CUNY's Nondiscrimination Policy, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, religion, national origin and ancestry (among many other protected classes) is incorporated into this training.

Culturally responsive curricula development must include a broad outreach to ensure that the inclusion part of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion engages all groups who have experienced discrimination in the educational sphere rather than choosing select groups or communities that have been targeted more recently. That there has been a challenge for the Italian American in higher education is well-documented, especially at The City University of New York where Italian Americans are considered an affirmative action category. Despite supposed attention to the issues of discrimination and underutilization, the percentage of faculty and staff who claim Italian American as their heritage group has declined in the 46-plus years since then Chancellor Kibbee pronounced this decree. The aim of this presentation is to highlight the continued failures of the efforts to include Italian Americans and offer a curricular approach to address the perennial challenge.

When faculty commit to open teaching practices and using open resources, they are instrumental to increasing student access to knowledge and economic equity. While embracing openness can be transformative to teaching, the process is not immune to systemic issues of organizational (in)equity. CUNY has a strong record of OER work, often positioned as advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the academy. In this presentation, a pair of OER practitioners / library faculty will explore how they address labor stratification and grapple with inequitable professional designations in designing faculty development programs. Utilizing an ethic of care in teaching as a loose framework, presenters will share encounters with structural impasses, how power dynamics and teacher identity figure into their work, and actions they have taken to challenge organizational inequity. Questions to be explored include how to offer professional development opportunities that don’t exclude faculty in stratified labor designations (adjunct, tenure-track, etc.).

Begun in 2017 and permanently located at https://nesri.commons.gc.cuny.edu/,the Northeast Slavery Records Index (NESRI) is an ongoing digital public history initiative that currently indexes over 64,000 original records of slavery from the 1500s through the 1860s in eight northeastern states from New Jersey to Maine. NESRI provides free reports on slavery records to thousands of towns, cities and counties. The reports instantly deliver comprehensive documentation of slavery records for each locality. This project is partially supported by an American Council of Learned Societies Digital Justice Grant, funding searches for and indexing of additional records of enslavement. It is also supported by CUNY’s Black, Race and Ethnic Studies Initiative. (BRESI) The project engages students in original historical research to enhance and expand documentation of slavery, and to diversify the historical record by reconstituting records of enslaved persons as individuals.

This panel discussion will discuss where we are today in meeting the diverse needs of LGBTQ students at CUNY. Enrolling almost a quarter of a million students per year, the University likely represents the largest population of LGBTQ+-identified college students in the NYC metropolitan area. Yet the needs of transgender and gender non-conforming individuals within the CUNY system (students, faculty, and staff) have historically been critically underserved. Egregious violations of the Gender Identity/Gender Expression law (established by the New York City Commission on Human Rights) have been documented over the past five years. Following widespread cross-campus advocacy through the University LGBTQ Council and Wellness Centers, there are now significant improvements. Panelists will discuss the current status of preferred names and gender identification at CUNY, access to gender neutral bathrooms, mental health support, student engagement within and outside of the classroom, trainings designed for faculty and staff, and offer a useful roadmap forward for the larger CUNY community

This workshop addresses the needs of the homeless and housing insecure among CUNY students. Whispers of an unidentified homeless population among college students has been increasing and will continue to grow as inflation hinders students’ ability to earn a sustainable wage without a safety net. Affordable housing in NY is scarce, making CUNY students particularly vulnerable. This problem is often swept under the rug or deemed unsolvable, exacerbated by undocumented cases due to feelings of shame and embarrassment which leads students to conceal their plight. This highly interactive workshop attempts to identify potential solutions as well as develop a pilot proposal in order to actively address this issue. The sharing economy was designed to match underutilized resources with individuals in need of them. This workshop takes lessons from the sharing economy to create a practical framework to take action as a first step in addressing this problem.

This session will explore moving from the traditional headspace of academia to the heart-space, while learning about DEI Fridays at Baruch College (organized by the Marxe School DEI Committee and funded by BRESI). The program’s objectives are to deepen our understanding of equity and justice; to build community around our shared humanity; and to learn practical strategies to transform our institution by centering the voices and experiences of traditionally marginalized groups. In this session, we will use contemplative practices (meditation, deep listening, and journaling), active learning, and anti-racist principles to embody education as the practice of freedom, hope, and love (bell hooks, 1994, 2003). Participants will learn how to organize a session grounded in the heart-space by experiencing one. Participants will reflect on their own identities (mirrors), learn about the experiences of those with different identities than their own (windows), and bridge differences by engaging in one-on-on connection (doors).

Non-marginalized faculty within higher education have long benefited from informal knowledge networks and mentorships that are often inaccessible to marginalized faculty. Without such networking and mentoring opportunities, marginalized faculty often can not understand the expectations of tenure and promotion committees, advance their careers, or band together to fight against injustices. Fortunately, there is a growing network of marginalized academics who are able to create new networks and mentorship programs to support marginalized junior faculty. In this presentation, four marginalized CUNY academics (including two junior academics) speak on the critical impact that accessing knowledge and mentors has had on their career and on their ability to overcome obstacles related to being first-generation academics, revise cultural barriers towards asking and accepting help, balance parenthood with academia, and garner senior faculty supporters. Finally, they share insider secrets on how to attain tenure and promotion as a marginalized junior faculty member.

Some humor, while making us laugh, contains shadows of hostility toward those who cause strife – the racists, the bigots, the unaware and uneducated. Although humor can perpetuate and preserve stereotypes, it can also redress a wide variety of prejudices and preconceptions. Humor may not have been a powerful enough weapon to overthrow despotic regimes such as, for example, the US during slavery, Nazi Germany, or the former Soviet Union, but it did provide hope to the oppressed. Humor can educate the educable, counter stereotypes and, if all else fails, possibly get even. Humor provides marginalized groups with psychological strength, and enables them to rise above despair and hopelessness. Jewish humor is used here as a specific example of how humor has been used over hundreds of years to help survive oppression and teach the history of a people.

Organized by Co-PIs of the Campus Climate BRESI grant Addressing Racism on Campus with Restorative Practices, this panel presents anti-racist projects grounded in restorative justice at Lehman College. We highlight our focus on actionable activities. Each presentation shows how engaged dialogues take place on our campus, and how they aim to call out white supremacist structures and enact strategies to counter them on campus. As a group, we illustrate how to engage the campus community on anti-racist and restorative justice actions, with an overview of the work being done at Lehman College during challenging times.

Professor Benton authored the CUNY University Faculty Senate study on the “faculty gap” which is available online: https://ufsbac.commons.gc.cuny.edu/. The study found that, between 2003 and 2019 in senior colleges, SUNY’s faculty positions grew almost twice as fast as enrollment, while CUNY’s enrollments grew three times faster than CUNY’s faculty positions. As a result, in 2019 the SUNY senior college ratio of faculty per thousand full-time equivalent students was 44% higher than CUNY’s ratio. The study also found that in NY state’s publicly funded (SUNY and CUNY) senior colleges in 2019, white students had substantially greater opportunities for full-time faculty instruction, compared to Black and Hispanic students. Professor Benton will provide updated statistics and explore how $53 million in FY 2022 investments in SUNY and CUNY faculty positions could affect these findings. Are we narrowing the “faculty gap” and are we improving minority student opportunities for access to full-time faculty instruction.

This presentation will provide a valuable perspective on work in higher education—that of a Black woman in leadership roles. The experiences of Black women in educational leadership differ greatly from those of White women and other women of color. Yet, research about the challenges they face, although increasing, is still minimal. It is vital that their lived experiences and voices be heard in order to dismantle the strongholds of racial microaggression, racial battle fatigue, and gendered racial microaggression in academia. The use of the term ‘women and people of color’ distorts and detracts from the specific experiences of Black women, thereby, rendering them invisible. Black women’s experiences are different from those of (White) women, women of color, or people of color, which include men. The presentation will provide an analysis of leadership strategies and effective accomplice-ship that allowed for impactful change and reflect on the challenges that can emerge when leadership shifts and priorities change, especially in DEI work. Because their experiences are so different and are often missing or ignored in scholarship, it is imperative to conduct targeted research and conversations about Black female faculty and administrators to ascertain how their experiences shape their ability to thrive – or not.  

Refugees are, by definition, little more than people in crisis. Driven from their homes to escape war, persecution, disaster, or some other painful ailment, refugees flee to the United States in search of a better life for themselves and their children. In 2022, 1,775 refugees were resettled in New York State (Monroe, 2022). The refugees largely came from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, Afghanistan, Burma, and Ukraine, as well as 57 other countries in crisis (Monroe, 2022). Of these refugees, approximately 40% tend to be under the age of 18 and thus require admission into the education system (Baugh, 2022). Therefore, the increasing need for social justice is a direct response to the continuous growth in the number of refugees from diverse countries. To support teachers, administrators, students in training, and counselors in developing a more thorough understanding of the three levels of advocacy for social justice, this workshop will provide knowledge about the refugee crisis and the necessary tools to develop advocacy on behalf of this group.

The “We Belong: Creating a Culture of Inclusivity at BMCC” panel will examine the evolution of the Borough of Manhattan Community College’s (BMCC) Race, Equity, and Inclusion (REI) Steering Committee. REI serves as the “Conscience of the College” and creates a space and culture of true belonging. The Committee leads and supports college-wide efforts to develop strategic and sustainable initiatives to expand inclusive pedagogies; establish vehicles to share information, exchange ideas, and generate knowledge; and identify and challenge informal and formal policies/practices that may pose obstacles to institutional practices. Panelists will assess committee structure and goals; consider strategies to garner investment from the College community and leadership; analyze challenges associated with leading college-wide efforts to strengthen equity, diversity, inclusion, and a sense of belonging; and present community colleges’ unique challenges in building a space to carry out this critical work to establish metrics and achieve meaningful outcomes.

The presenters supported by CUNY's Black Race and Ethnic Studies Initiative grant awards will share their approaches for creating student health internship experiences addressing racial health inequities impacting marginalized communities in New York City. Reducing racial health inequity is a broad goal that requires action at many levels, and many organizations are developing interventions to improve outcomes for patient populations and communities. The panelist will share the model(s) used by them to educate the students pursuing degrees in public health and health sciences on the impact of racial and ethnic inequities on the health of historically underrepresented communities. Through internship experiences focused on health disparities, students gain access to communities in New York City that reflect the challenges and health inequities across the nation. These experiences provide them with opportunities to promote racial health equity on one hand and on the other, prepare them for their career in the healthcare field.

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.

There are unspoken structural barriers that impede faculty of color from experiencing an equitable workplace that supports their promotion and retention in higher ed. The service burden also known as “cultural taxation,” places pressure on faculty of color to serve as role models, mentors, even surrogate parents to students of color, and to fulfill the institutional need for ethnic/racial representation. This service burden has increased as student bodies become more diverse and college campuses increase their efforts to provide inclusive learning environments that increase student enrollment. It is important to note that while student bodies are more diverse the diversity among faculty is lagging. This panel discussion will present the lived experience of three faculty and one staff from various CUNY campuses and will provide faculty and staff of color sound guidance to thrive in academia.

This panel highlights the power of music in a variety of spaces.  The musician scholars will take the audience through a journey in their areas of expertise: education, well-being, and building community, showing the important and beautiful ways music touches our lives and influences systems.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Drs. Emma Tsui and Spring Cooper will present on the Public Health Education Now (PHEN) Oral History Project. This project asks students, faculty and staff at CUNY SPH how our lived experiences since 2020 have shaped our vision of what we want public education to be. We’ll discuss the oral history interviews that the team conducted, focusing on experiences of not only the COVID-19 pandemic, but also the increased visibility of racism and other oppressions, and movements for racial justice that are reverberating both in and out of the classroom. The results of this project have asked us to be more intentional about our pedagogy; demanding that we incorporate trauma-informed teaching into our repertoire. This workshop will cover trauma-informed principles, how to apply them, and workshop classroom examples with participants.

This panel discussion will discuss where we are today in meeting the diverse needs of LGBTQ students at CUNY. Enrolling almost a quarter of a million students per year, the University likely represents the largest population of LGBTQ+-identified college students in the NYC metropolitan area. Yet the needs of transgender and gender non-conforming individuals within the CUNY system (students, faculty, and staff) have historically been critically underserved. Egregious violations of the Gender Identity/Gender Expression law (established by the New York City Commission on Human Rights) have been documented over the past five years. Following widespread cross-campus advocacy through the University LGBTQ Council and Wellness Centers, there are now significant improvements. Panelists will discuss the current status of preferred names and gender identification at CUNY, access to gender neutral bathrooms, mental health support, student engagement within and outside of the classroom, trainings designed for faculty and staff, and offer a useful roadmap forward for the larger CUNY community

This workshop addresses the needs of the homeless and housing insecure among CUNY students. Whispers of an unidentified homeless population among college students has been increasing and will continue to grow as inflation hinders students’ ability to earn a sustainable wage without a safety net. Affordable housing in NY is scarce, making CUNY students particularly vulnerable. This problem is often swept under the rug or deemed unsolvable, exacerbated by undocumented cases due to feelings of shame and embarrassment which leads students to conceal their plight. This highly interactive workshop attempts to identify potential solutions as well as develop a pilot proposal in order to actively address this issue. The sharing economy was designed to match underutilized resources with individuals in need of them. This workshop takes lessons from the sharing economy to create a practical framework to take action as a first step in addressing this problem.

Some humor, while making us laugh, contains shadows of hostility toward those who cause strife – the racists, the bigots, the unaware and uneducated. Although humor can perpetuate and preserve stereotypes, it can also redress a wide variety of prejudices and preconceptions. Humor may not have been a powerful enough weapon to overthrow despotic regimes such as, for example, the US during slavery, Nazi Germany, or the former Soviet Union, but it did provide hope to the oppressed. Humor can educate the educable, counter stereotypes and, if all else fails, possibly get even. Humor provides marginalized groups with psychological strength, and enables them to rise above despair and hopelessness. Jewish humor is used here as a specific example of how humor has been used over hundreds of years to help survive oppression and teach the history of a people.

Organized by Co-PIs of the Campus Climate BRESI grant Addressing Racism on Campus with Restorative Practices, this panel presents anti-racist projects grounded in restorative justice at Lehman College. We highlight our focus on actionable activities. Each presentation shows how engaged dialogues take place on our campus, and how they aim to call out white supremacist structures and enact strategies to counter them on campus. As a group, we illustrate how to engage the campus community on anti-racist and restorative justice actions, with an overview of the work being done at Lehman College during challenging times.

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.