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In Transit Vol. 8 Fall 2017, Laguardia Community College

LaGuardia Community College Publications

In Transit is the LaGuardia Journal on Teaching and Learning. It is published by the Center for Teaching and Learning at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY.

Advocate, Fall 2017, Vol. 29, No. 2, Advocate

The Advocate

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Editorial:

- The Rebel’s Time: Remembering Vidrohi’s Poetry of Revolution. Bhargav Rani (p. 3)

Features:

- The Revolutions Should not be Televised: The Oeuvre of Peter Watkins. Curtis Russell (p. 12)

- “The Siege” Comes to NY. Ashley Marinaccio (p. 17)

- Orwell’s Revolution. Harry Blain (p. 22)

CUNY Life:

- Whose Community?: A Scalar Report from Graduate Center Grounds. Angela Dunne and Conor Tomás Reed (p. 28)

100 Years of the Russian Revolution:

- Women and the Russian Revolution. Tatiana Cozzarelli (p. 38)

Review:

- Between Value and Valor: Review of Corey Robin’s “The Reactionary Mind: …

From Deficit To Diversity: How Teachers Of Recently-Arrived Emergent Bilinguals Negotiate Ideological And Pedagogical Change, Laura Ascenzi-Moreno

Publications and Research

Although the number and diversity of emergent bilingual students is rising, this population is viewed as homogeneous rather than vibrant and eclectic. This case study explores how two secondary English as a New Language (ENL) teachers uncover the diversity of their recently-arrived emergent bilingual population through implementing translanguaging pedagogy, a strength-based vision of student language development. The findings indicate that teachers’ shifts in how they conceive of their students are intertwined with meaningful pedagogical changes.

Dsj Editors’ Introduction To The Mass Incarceration Issue: Adult Educators, Prison, And Re-Entry Education, Rodney Maiden, Joni Schwartz

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Advocate, Fall 2017, Vol. 29, No. 1, Advocate

The Advocate

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Editorial:

- “To Revolution, or not to Revolution.” Bhargav Rani (p. 3)

Features:

- Why de Blasio’s Commission Reviewing NYC’s Monuments Matters. Anthony Ramos (p. 12)

- Boycott the NFL! Shame on Them! Jeff Suttles (p. 16)

- Free the Media! Campaign to Rehire Marisa Holmes. Conor Tomás Reed (p. 20)

CUNY Life:

- Dude, Where’s my Cohort? Sarah Hildebrand (p. 26)

- PSC Rank-and-File Take Independent Action for a $7k Adjunct Minimum Wage. CUNY Struggle (p. 30)

- Practicing Consent in the Classroom. Jenn Polish (p. 34)

Review:

- Up from Below Review of China Mieville’s …

Incorporation And Evaluation Of Authentic Research Experiences Into The Curriculum Through Development Of A Theory Of Action, Pamela Brown, Tammie Cumming, Joan D. Pasley

Publications and Research

A theory of action outlining undergraduate research program inputs and desired outcomes was developed and used to guide implementation of Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) sections and to create assessment tools to measure attainment of program goals in both apprentice-model undergraduate research and CURE. Student survey results for these two research programs were compared and suggest that many aspects of the academic goals such as designing an experiment, using equipment, collecting and analyzing data, and collaborating with others were achieved in both groups. Regarding the relationship with mentors, both groups reported receiving academic advisement in course selection and career options. …

Introduction: History And Conceptual Basis Of Assessment In Higher Education, Peter Ewell, Tammie Cumming

Publications and Research

Assessment and accountability are now inescapable features of the landscape of higher education, and ensuring that these assessments are psychometrically sound has become a high priority for accrediting agencies and therefore also for higher education institutions. Bringing together the higher education assessment literature with the psychometric literature, this book focuses on how to practice sound assessment.

This volume provides comprehensive and detailed descriptions of tools for and approaches to assessing student learning outcomes in higher education. The book is guided by the core purpose of assessment, which is to enable faculty, administrators, and student affairs professionals with the information they …

What Changes To Title Ix Mean For Higher Education, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

The fight for civil rights in this country has a long history. It became particularly notable in the 1960s with the passage of The Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yet, such a law did not include any prohibition against gender discrimination in public education and federally assisted programs. After some legislative battles, Indiana Democratic Sen. Birch Bayh proposed in 1971 a provision that would eventually become Title IX within the Higher Education Act of 1965 and was signed into law by President Nixon in 1972. In the words of Bayh, this provision would provide “an equal chance (for women) to …

Morpho-Phonemic Analysis Boosts Word Reading For Adult Struggling Readers, Susan H. Gray, Linnea C. Ehri, John C. Locke

Publications and Research

A randomized control trial compared the effects of two kinds of vocabulary instruction on component reading skills of adult struggling readers. Participants seeking alternative high school diplomas received 8 h of scripted tutoring to learn forty academic vocabulary words embedded within a civics curriculum. They were matched for language background and reading levels, then randomly assigned to either morpho-phonemic analysis teaching word origins, morpheme and syllable structures, or traditional whole word study teaching multiple sentence contexts, meaningful connections, and spellings. Both groups made comparable gains in learning the target words, but the morpho-phonemic group showed greater gains in reading unfamiliar …

Feeling Overwhelmed, Professors? Let’S Fix That (Q&A With Dr. Tim Slater), Norman Eng

Publications and Research

Dr. Tim Slater discusses time management ideas that new professors should keep in mind. What are his top recommendations? How do you juggle multiple professional opportunities? How do you grade large classes? We discuss this and more in my Q&A with "The Busy Professor."

Online Education Is Faulty And Needs Reform, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

Online courses have become very popular – and very controversial – for many reasons. In the fall of 2014 there were 5.8 million students taking online courses, with 2.85 million taking all of their courses online. Originally being offered by for-profit institutions, now a number of public colleges and universities are offering them under a number of premises, such as making higher education more accessible, the belief that offering on-line courses is cheaper than in person and that they provide an easier way to learn.

Yet, it has been the common wisdom that students consistently perform worse in an online …

The Higher Purpose Of Higher Education Is Real, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

In the last few months we have witnessed a number of political debates that have become part of the national discussion on issues such as healthcare, immigration, infrastructure, freedom of speech, the media and truth itself. What is the connection between these topics and higher education? It is much more obvious than you might think.

National progress – economic, social and individual – depends on winning these debates. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, large parts of the nation’s transportation system, as well as the public higher education system, have all been heavily funded by the federal government through taxation. The rationale …

Design And Revision Of An Open-Educational Resource Microbiology Lab Manual Using Student Feedback, Joan Petersen, Susan K. Mclaughlin

Publications and Research

Open educational resources are becoming increasingly important in higher education, and are a valuable resource for instructors who want to customize course content while saving their students money. We designed, revised, and assessed an open educational resource for our Principles of Microbiology course. Student feedback was used to guide the revisions, which took place over the course of several semesters. Student survey responses to lab manual content were very positive, and students overwhelmingly favored a no-cost online manual over one that is commercially published. The process we used to develop this lab manual serves as an example for others who …

Critical Conversations With Children’S Literature: How Cultural And Political Vignettes (Cpvs) Support Young Readers, Jacqueline Darvin

Publications and Research

This article will discuss ways that teachers of young students can address sensitive or controversial issues in their classrooms through reading children’s literature and responding to Cultural and Political Vignettes (CPVs). First, it provides a brief overview of a four-stage pedagogical model that was designed to help teachers address controversial or sensitive issues in their classrooms (author, 2015) and briefly discusses two of the theoretical frameworks that support the model and its accompanying teaching strategies. The article then provides two detailed examples of how teachers of young children successfully addressed sensitive issues with their students. These examples contain descriptions of …

Colleges Need To Prepare For Generation Alpha., Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

The 19th century American theologian and

author James Freeman Clarke is credited with

coining the phrase, “A politician thinks of the

next election. A statesman, of the next generation.”

Although higher education in this country

is currently embattled on many fronts, that should

not distract us from looking years ahead to figure

out how we can prepare for new generations of

students.

One of those upcoming generations has been

labeled “Generation Alpha,” a term crafted by

Mark McCrindle, an Australian social researcher,

demographer and futurist. Unlike “Generation Z,”

born in the mid 1990s and who are today’s college

students, generation …

Students: Professors, I Wish You Would.., Norman Eng

Publications and Research

What do students wish they could tell their professors about their instruction but never do? Read their unvarnished responses in this eye-opening post.

Why More Hate Groups Target College Campuses., Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

In 1943, the U.S. War Department produced a 17-minute educational short titled “Don’t Be a Sucker.” The film portrays the rise of Nazism in Germany and alerts Americans against repeating the mistakes of intolerance made by the Nazis. It stresses that Americans will lose their country if they let themselves be turned into "suckers" by fanaticism and hatred. The film was produced to make the case for the desegregation of the United States armed forces by revealing the connection between prejudice and fascism.

The film became “viral” on YouTube after the events at Charlottesville, Va., because it teaches how to …

Funding Science With Science (And, Admittedly, A Lot Of Math), John R. Ziegler, Dylan Hunzeker, Edward Lehner

Publications and Research

Scientific funding within the academy is an often complicated affair involving disparate and competing interests. Private universities, for instance, are vastly outpacing public institutions in garnering large, prestigious grants. Inequities also extend to the kinds of research funded, with government, corporate, and even military interests privileging certain types of inquiry.This work proposes an innovative type of research fund using cryptocurrencies, a fast growing asset class. Although not a total funding solution, staking coins, specifically, can be strategically invested in to yield compound interest. These coins use central hub technology to collateralise the network and speed transaction pace. Additionally. These staking …

When Secrecy Hurts Institutions Of Higher Ed., Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

In 1982, seven people died in the Chicago metro- politan area after ingesting Extra Strength Tylenol that had been deliberately contaminated with potas- sium cyanide. Johnson & Johnson, the manufacturer, responded by pulling 31 million bottles of tablets back from retailers, stopped all production and advertising of the product, got involved with the Chicago Police, FBI, and FDA in the search for the killer, and offered up to a $100,000 reward for information on the culprit, all while permanently discontinuing the capsules and developing tamper-resistant “gel caps.”

The crisis cost the company more than $100 million, but Tylenol eventually regained …

5 Tech Tools Every Professor Should Use Now, Norman Eng

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Modeling And Visualizing Bacterial Colony Purification Without The Use Of Bacteria Or Laboratory Equipment, Grace L. Axler-Diperte

Publications and Research

This paper describes an activity that simulates bacterial purification without the use of biohazardous materials and provides immediate feedback to students regarding the efficacy of their technique.

The War On Higher Education Is Now Underway., Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

In 1969, President Richard Nixon formally declared

a “war on drugs” that would be directed to combat the

use of illicit drugs in the U.S. This and other “wars,”

such as the “war on gangs” or “war on cancer” have

come to signify major efforts by the federal government

against something they perceive as a threat.

In past articles in this column I have written about

concerted efforts by some groups and conservative

media to diminish funding for higher education, defame

college education as a passport to better standards

of living, portray colleges and universities as “liberal

nests” out of …

Pulling The Plug On Microscopes In The Anatomy And Physiology Laboratory, Zvi Ostrin, Vyacheslav Dushenkov

Publications and Research

Virtual microscopy (VM) has been widely available for more than a decade, especially in clinical settings and medical schools. In recent years the movement away from conventional optical microscopy (OM) and towards VM has been accelerating and several VM websites are now available online and readily accessible to educators. VM can enhance the instructor’s ability to teach the histology component of anatomy and physiology classes, facilitate student learning, save time for both students and instructors, and ultimately save money that can be more productively used for other facets of the laboratory. The many pedagogical and practical advantages provided by VM …

Tenure Carries Both Privileges And Responsibilities, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

Politicians and many in the general public ask, “Why do university faculty need tenure?” One could give many reasons based on history or philosophy. But sometimes examples prove the most powerful explanations.

Two weeks ago, on July 18, one of the world’s academic heroes passed away. His name is not familiar to most, but thanks to his work we live in a healthier world. His name was Herbert Needleman. Born on Dec. 13, 1927, in Philadelphia, he came from a Jewish family of modest means. His father sold furniture, and his mother, whose family owned a pickle business, ran the …

Race, Gender Play Role In College Graduations, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

One of the best ways to measure the accomplishment of colleges and universities is by assessing the percentage of their undergraduate students who graduate within six years of enrollment. Although most undergraduate degrees are designed to be completed in four years, the norm is to count grad- uation rates in six-year intervals because many students have to work (many of them full-time), while others do not have the adequate preparation from high school to succeed and need more time to overcome their academic shortcomings. There are many factors that can delay time to graduation.

Many states tie funding for their …

Content Analysis Of Data Science Graduate Programs In The U.S., Duo Li, Elizabeth Milonas, Qiping Zhang

Publications and Research

Data science is an emerging academic field (Paul & Aithal, 2018), which has its origins in “Big Data/Cloud Computing” and complexity science domains. Data Science is about managing large and complex data (Big Data management) and analytics technologies (Paul & Aithal, 2018). Data, technology, and people are the three pillars of data science. In addition, Data Science is composed of three key areas: analytics, infrastructure, and data curation (Tang & Sae-Lim, 2016). Stanton (2012) defined data science as “an emerging area of work concerned with the collection, preparation, analysis, visualization, management, and preservation of large collections of information (Song & …

An Action Research Study Of Barriers To Paraprofessional/Teaching Assistant Licensure In New York Community Colleges, Tonya L. Johnson

Publications and Research

The majority of New York State teachers remain disproportionately White, while their student populations grow increasingly diverse, and New York has experienced a dramatic increase in the number of diverse students, often referred to as students of color, including a large number of immigrant groups, in nearly all regions of the state. Recently published research has underscored that in order for multilingual, multiethnic, and multiracial teacher candidates to successfully enter the teaching profession, teacher preparation programs may need to alter some of their practices. In particular, the bulk of the research highlighted a need to expand recruiting for more diverse …

Aligning The Curriculums For College Success: High School And College Library Collaborations, Carl R. Andrews, Dickens Saint Hilaire

Publications and Research

Many students enter college lacking the necessary research and critical thinking skills needed for academic success. A strong body of literature shows evidence that information literacy instruction at the secondary level enhances college readiness in freshman students. The authors discuss the importance of collaborative curriculum development and the role academic libraries play in supporting college readiness. The research will review and cite successful high school and college partnerships, curriculum development initiatives, secondary information literacy instruction, and teacher professional development. The utilization of select library databases as a tool to promote college readiness is also discussed.

Higher Ed Opinions Divided Along Party Lines., Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

Until recently, higher education commanded a good standing in public opinion polls. According to a 2013 Gallup-Lumina Foundation survey, 72 percent of people in the U.S. thought that to have a college degree was “very important,” and 25 percent thought it was “somewhat important.”

However, that good image has been eroding rapidly. According to the results of a 2016 survey funded by the Kresge Foundation, Americans are increasingly uncertain about the necessity of college for success in the workforce. When asked the question, "Do you think that a college education is necessary for a person to be suc- cessful in …

College Enrollments Continue National Decline., Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

If there is a statistic that all college administrators look at every year it is enrollments, the bread and butter of higher education for multiple reasons. First, all private colleges – and increasingly public ones – depend upon students enrolling in order to main- tain the financial flow to their institutions. Second, many public institutions have their state budget tied to the number of students they enroll. Third, the attractiveness of an institution of higher education is partly based on its enrollment success. No wonder everybody looks at those numbers every year with apprehension.

Enrollment numbers for the spring semester …