The Academy for Community Behavioral Health (the Academy) began piloting Nalanda Institute's Compassion-Based Resilience Training (CBRT) with NYC non-profit care providers in 2024 to protect them from stress and trauma impacts and strengthen their capacities to deliver skillful, compassionate care. CBRT is an evidence-based program in stress reduction and healing that integrates mindfulness, compassion, imagery, and breathwork from Indo-Tibetan Buddhism with contemporary science. In this session, participants will: o Experience elements of CBRT, including a brief meditation o Review findings from the Academy's recent case study exploring the feasibility and effectiveness a virtual 8-week CBRT course for NYC non-profit care providers o Relate the instructor's approach to teaching CBRT to guiding features of contemplative education and the Academy's overall learning and capacity building approach o Contribute to a dialogue about how to best support skill gains and practice changes in real-world settings by sharing your insights and questions

This workshop explores strategies for structuring engagement between students and faculty in asynchronous courses across a variety of disciplines. At its core, this workshop addresses the following questions: What is meaningful interaction in an online classroom setting? What are challenges to meaningful interaction? How can faculty work around these challenges to engage authentically with students? The workshop facilitators will both draw on their own experiences teaching online as well as qualitative data from interviews with both students and faculty to propose specific ways educators can navigate obstacles and power dynamics in the classroom to create student-centered, dialogic online learning environments. In the process, the workshop highlights the transformative potential of student knowledge. Participants will leave the workshop with a number of adaptable, student-centered assignments designed to facilitate inclusive and participatory teaching practices.

The syllabus is a critically important document for students, instructors and administrators. However, managing certain parts of the syllabus to ensure they are up-to-date with current policies can be a tedious task. Github is a free version control platform designed for managing software projects. Although designed for software, the features of Github work with any text documents. The Data Science and Information Systems has been piloting a project where the syllabi for the data science courses are managed in Github. The entire syllabus is written in markdown (a plan text format). Common components of the syllabus (e.g. academic integrity, accommodations, grade distributions, etc.) as well as the document styling (e.g. headers) are stored in a shared folder. These components are then be imported when a PDF of the syllabus is automatically generated whenever changes are detected. Additionally, generic class schedules are managed in Excel files allowing for the semester specific dates to be managed centrally. Lastly, using a version control platform like Github allows for the tracking of changes to the syllabus over time.

This session will highlight key takeaways from the 2025 AAC&U Conference on Learning and Student Success (CLASS) with a focus on embracing digital innovations to benefit SPS student success across the curriculum and co-curriculum, in turn preparing learners for the workforce and beyond.

This workshop provides a concise introduction to Open Educational Resources (OER) and their potential to enhance the quality, equity, and accessibility of health professions education. Participants will learn how to locate, evaluate, and begin integrating OER into their teaching practices.

Dr. Paradiso will share highlights from SUNY Public Good U, a conference that brought thought leaders together to address the challenges and opportunities facing public higher education institutions, students, faculty, and staff. Topics covered at the conference include: educating citizens equitably, the value of public education, and public higher education systems as role models of public good.

This presentation presents a curriculum framework tailored to the evolving needs of managers in the nonprofit sector within a university setting. As nonprofit organizations grow increasingly complex and data-driven, future professionals must possess a versatile skill set, encompassing financial management, program evaluation, and stakeholder engagement, while upholding strong ethical and mission-oriented principles. Framed with experiential learning and human capital theories, the presentation addresses this need by designing a competency-based curriculum that integrates experiential learning and human capital development to equip accounting and business students with theoretical foundations and practical skills. The curriculum model blends business and policy insights, providing students with real-world skills through internships, project-based learning, and partnerships with nonprofit organizations.

A presentation was made of Dr. Linda Ridley's qualitative study examining the exclusion of chattel slavery in the teaching of business and management. Her study employed a theoretical framework known as the Symptomatic Thought Process', a tool for faculty to revisit their curriculum development so that key scholarship is included, not excluded. Research results were presented twice in 2024, first by faculty to faculty; we then revisited the topic with multiple student presenters who were able to illustrate their application of a Symptomatic Thought Process' in their academic and business life. This presentation will demonstrate this multicultural pedagogical training for the SPS audience.

The ILS/ACS Workforce Institute partnership allows for developing and implementing learning programs to support child welfare professionals in building their skills and knowledge to best serve children and families. While the offerings are expansive and address broad professional needs and requirements, their structure is loosely defined and not aligned with a clear growth trajectory. Thus, continuous professional development/learning (from required to voluntary), with obvious achievement rewards, measurable on-the-job implementation and impact and competency alignment, is not fully realized. We are researching and developing an evidence-based approach to learning and development to further professional growth on a more linear path with recorded measures of success along the way. We have drawn on industry best practices (workforce training, child welfare and evaluation) to arrive at a proposed construct to support ACS direct service staff and contracted foster care and prevention provider agencies in their critical work. We will share the proposed construct/model and envisioned impact of the training initiative to demonstrate how we are approaching a more meaningful and effective learning strategy. Essential questions follow the presentation to invite participants to inform the project's design based on their experience in workforce development, professional training, and best practices associated with competency-based learning/learning paths and related assessment. As this is a project in development, input from CUNY peers can further shape the proposed approach to enhance the training and growth of child welfare professionals.

Supporting student success in college by identifying and addressing their academic preparedness is one of the biggest challenges facing higher education (Fay et al., 2017; Mokler et al., 2019; National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education & Southern Regional Education Board, 2010). Historically institutions have relied on placement exams for both admission decisions as well as placement into non-credit earning coursework. However, placement tests often generate data that do not accurately portray students' ability levels, which has led to the unnecessary and inappropriate placement of students in remedial courses (Belfield & Crosta, 2012; Scott-Clayton, 2012). In response to the placement exam and remediation debate, the Diagnostic Assessment and Achievement of College Skills was developed (DAACS; Bryer et al, 2024 https://daacs.net). DAACS is a suite of technological and social supports designed to optimize student learning by providing personalized feedback about their strengths and weaknesses in self-regulated learning, writing, mathematics, and reading. Results of a randomized control trial conducted in 2023 showed that students who had access to DAACS in their first semester had a 7.2% higher GPA than the control group (Cohen's d = 0.19). This presentation provides an overview of DAACS and its implementation in the CUNY SPS MS in Data Science program.

Since Spring 2023, the CUNY SPS OER Initiative has been supporting faculty reflection on transformative pedagogic practice through faculty workshops. The Open for All Workshop presents annotations to the CUNY SPS Course Review Rubric highlighting specific open and inclusive course design and teaching practices that faculty can incorporate into their courses. The Open UDL Workshop presents the overlap between Universal Design in Learning (UDL) and Open Pedagogy also through specific practices that faculty can adopt in their teaching and course design. In this session, we present brief overviews of these two workshops and showcase examples of the practices that our faculty adopted in their courses, to make these more inclusive and accessible. We invite attendees to participate in an activity based on the workshop materials.