Digital Commons Network^™

The Biographical Interview, L Torres

Open Educational Resources

I am currently revising the final unit of my English 110 class so students can delve deeper into language, literacy, literacy sponsorship, place and learning. This final unit project asks students to interview someone from Queens and ask them to share their educational history, as well as their migration story, as it relates to language and identity. The goal is to have students use the tools they’ve acquired throughout the semester and use their critical thinking skills to understand how literacy sponsorship varies from one person to another, and how migration, cultural upbringing, language and identity shape how we interact …

Speculative Automated Refactoring Of Imperative Deep Learning Programs To Graph Execution, Raffi Khatchadourian Ph.D., Tatiana Castro Vélez, Mehdi Bagherzadeh, Nan Jia, Anita Raja

Publications and Research

Efficiency is essential to support ever-growing datasets, especially for Deep Learning (DL) systems. DL frameworks have traditionally embraced deferred execution-style DL code---supporting symbolic, graph-based Deep Neural Network (DNN) computation. While scalable, such development is error-prone, non-intuitive, and difficult to debug. Consequently, more natural, imperative DL frameworks encouraging eager execution have emerged but at the expense of run-time performance. Though hybrid approaches aim for the "best of both worlds," using them effectively requires subtle considerations. Our key insight is that, while DL programs typically execute sequentially, hybridizing imperative DL code resembles parallelizing sequential code in traditional systems. Inspired by this, we …

Analysis Of Libraries’ Onboarding Documentation At A Metropolitan University Consortium, Sonali Sugrim, Eric Silberberg

Urban Library Journal

This study investigates the extent to which onboarding documentation for academic librarians prioritizes long-term employee success. The authors applied content analysis to the onboarding documents from a consortium of libraries in a major metropolitan area in the United States. Study findings reveal that the onboarding documents prioritize introducing new hires to organizational structure rather than integrating them into the workplace culture. Most documents are checklists; however, some libraries provide comprehensive manuals, particularly regarding the tenure process. Notably, only half of the libraries include information about mentorship programs. Based on these findings, this study offers recommendations for improving onboarding documentation, including …

Synthesis Essay Assignment, Reema A. Rao

Open Educational Resources

The synthesis essay assignment is the second major assignment of ENGL 110, Freshman Composition Course. This assignment invites students to select a topic of personal interest and then do research to develop a well-supported cohesive argument. The assignment supports learner autonomy by allowing students to choose topics that resonate with their goals, curiosities, and motivations which fosters learning and meaningful engagement.

Students are encouraged to use a wide range of scholarly and non-scholarly sources. By integrating and synthesizing these sources, students build critical thinking and analytical skills. Students also present their research in class and respond to questions about their …

Editorial: Migration And Health: A Human Rights Perspective - Conference Insights And Beyond, Noemi Rodriguez, Mira Goral, Justine Mcgovern, Allison Squires, María Isabel Roldos

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Ethical And Legal Concepts For Pt, Clarence Chan

Open Educational Resources

This course introduces the topics of medical ethics and legal issues as applied to physical therapy practice. Students will have the opportunity to apply legal and ethical theories and concepts to analyze and discuss issues faced by healthcare practitioners. Ethical and legal standards set forth by the legal system in the United States, the Standard of Practice of New York State, and the American Physical Therapy Association core ethics documents will be explored. Students will also become familiarized with the various aspects of administrative, financial, quality improvement, and personnel management information as related to health care practice in the United …

Global Cities, Public Memories, Padmini Biswas

Open Educational Resources

I am attaching a lesson plan for a module in my URBST 206 Global Cities class, called “Global Cities, Public Memories.” Students will visit the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, then design a monument that honors their history here in Queens (or a place significant to them).

Learning Outcomes

• Demonstrate a nuanced understanding of how global flows of capital, ideas, people, technology, and media impact and are represented in global cities like New York.
• Articulate the complex interplay between global events, local experiences, and the construction of public memory.
• Develop critical thinking skills regarding the design, purpose, and impact of memorials …

Untargeted Metabolomics Reveals Organ-Specific And Extraction-Dependent Metabolite Profiles In Endemic Tajik Species Ferula Violacea Korovin, Sylhiya Mavlonazarova, Kenneth Acosta, Rinat Abzalimov, Saidbeg Satorov, Vyacheslav Dushenkov

Publications and Research

Ferula violacea Korovin, an endemic Tajikistani plant with purported medicinal properties, remains understudied. This study employs untargeted metabolomics to characterize the metabolite profiles of ethanol extracts and juices from F. violacea roots and seeds. In total, 540 distinct metabolites are putatively identified, 419 of which are previously unreported in the Ferula genus, representing a substantial expansion of its known chemical diversity. The most abundant metabolites are terpenoids, amino acid derivatives, and alkaloids. A particularly abundant group of daucane sesquiterpenoids, sharing a common (6-methyl-azulen-4-yl) cyclohexanecarboxylate substructure, is identified, including known metabolites such as ferutidin and ferutinin. Comparative analysis reveals organ-specific metabolic …

Finding Solutions: Meeting Essential Needs To Overcome Health And Educational Inequities Among College Students, Nicholas Freudenberg, Rashida Crutchfield

Publications and Research

Many economic, academic, and social factors influence college completion, and scholars have documented that a significant cause of students leaving school before graduation is that many do not have their basic needs for food, housing, and health care met. These barriers undermine their academic success by forcing students to reduce the time spent on their studies, work more hours, or stop out of school to support themselves or their families. Unmet essential needs jeopardize academic and life success for students in higher education across the United States and widen racial/ethnic and class inequities in college completion and health. Our review …

Clacls Reportage, Vol. 2, Tatiana Bertolucci Peixoto, Marcela Joya, Oscar Aponte, Ana María Granados Romero

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

This second volume of the CLACLS Reportage Series is a testament to our ongoing commitment to public-facing scholarship that bridges academic research and the lived experiences of Latinx communities in New York and beyond. This edition brings together three distinct yet interconnected stories that speak to belonging, migration, and cultural transformation across generations.

Tatiana Bertolucci Peixoto follows the legacy of Marielle Franco, the Black, queer, favela-born activist whose political assassination in Rio de Janeiro reverberated around the world galvanizing a global network of resistance—from Brazil’s favelas to New York’s diasporic communities—turning her name into a living emblem of feminist, anti-racist, …

Design And Implementation Of Data Quality Controls In The Eq-Daphnie Study: Insights From The Pilot Phase And 15-Country Analysis, Fatima Al Sayah, Hilary Short, Juan M. Ramos-Goñi, Rosalie Viney, Erica I. Lubetkin, Mathieu F. Janssen, Jeffrey A. Johnson

Publications and Research

Objective

The EQ-DAPHNIE (EuroQol Data for Assessment of Population Health Needs and Instrument Evaluation) project is a large, multi-country survey initiative designed to generate population norms and enable comparative research using self-reported health measures. This paper describes the quality control processes and summarizes data quality metrics from the United Kingdom (UK) pilot and full implementation across 15 countries.

Methods

Representative samples were recruited via Dynata, an online survey panel provider, using quota sampling by age, sex, income, community setting, and language (where applicable). The UK pilot (n = 3012) informed survey refinements ahead of full rollout (n = 68,411). Quality …

Enabling Coercive Drivers With Green Supply Chain Management Practices To Gain Performance Nexus Through External Collaboration And Monitoring, Aamir Rashid, Rizwana Rasheed

Publications and Research

Businesses primarily provide products or services, expand operations, and generate profits. However, they frequently disregard the environmental and economic consequences of their actions as they strive for profitability and growth. Consequently, the main objective of this research was to examine the impact of a multifaceted supply chain function on performance. Data were collected from 415 respondents employed in various manufacturing companies within a developing economy. The hypotheses were evaluated using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) through Smart PLS. The findings discovered that ten of the thirteen hypotheses tested were supported, while three were not. Coercive drivers were observed to significantly influence …

Recognition Of Service: Information For Faculty Seeking Tenure, Certificate Of Continuous Employment (Cce), And Promotion, The Center For Excellence In Teaching, Learning, & Leadership, Soniya Munshi, Elena Sigman

Open Educational Resources

Service is an important element of the faculty experience at Queens College. In Spring 2025, the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Leadership (CETLL) convened two panels about fulfilling expectations for service activities for QC faculty at various stages of tenure and promotion. Each of the panels was comprised of deans, department chairs, and faculty members, including a Provost’s Faculty Fellow.

The panels aimed to address recurring faculty questions about service, including:

• what activities are recognized as faculty service

• how to document service activities

• how service activities factor into tenure, promotion, and CCE decisions

This informational document condenses the …

Does Idiosyncratic Volatility Follow A Random-Walk? Evidence From U.S. Stocks, Zihan Cao, Ossama Elhadary

Publications and Research

In asset pricing literature, idiosyncratic volatility (IVOL) measures the firm-specific risk that is not explained by broader market movements. In this study, I investigate whether the idiosyncratic volatility (IVOL) of individual stocks follows a random-walk. Using monthly residuals from the Fama-French three-factor model (Fama & French, 1993), I estimate IVOL for more than 11,000 U.S. stocks, and apply the Augmented Dickey-Fuller test (Said & Dickey, 1984) to determine whether IVOL behaves like a random-walk. While most stocks display random-walk behavior, the proportion varies across industries, with some sectors showing deviations from random-walk behavior. Stocks with different levels of average return …

Writing Workshop Journal: A Student-Centered Guide For College Composition, Tanya Zhelezcheva

Open Educational Resources

This comprehensive OER workbook supports ENGL 101 (Composition) students through a structured journal-based writing system. The resource combines Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles with post-process pedagogy to offer diverse pathways for student learning and writing development.

The workbook features:

- 4-component journal entry structure (exercises, reflection, next steps)

- 40+ writing exercises across four categories (Foundation Skills, Reading Logs, Drafting, Growth Mindset)

- Extensive planning and organizational tools (weekly/monthly calendars, goal-setting frameworks)

- Metacognitive reflection exercises that build writing awareness - Backward planning and time management strategies

- Evidence-based approaches to developing thesis statements, integrating sources, and crafting arguments …

Rape Myth Acceptance, Pretrial Publicity, And Decision-Making: An Examination Of Perceptions Of Victim Credibility And Perpetrator Guilt In A Real-World Sexual Assault Case, Lindsey Strouse

Student Theses

This study explores how the media narratives and political perspective of pretrial publicity (PTP) can influence jurors’ perceptions in sexual assault cases, raising significant concerns about justice in courtrooms. Specifically, it examines whether media framing of a real-life sexual assault case — through varying media narratives, with media that either challenges or endorses rape myths, and media source (liberal vs. conservative) — affects mock jurors’ rape myth acceptance (RMA), views of victim credibility, and judgements of perpetrator guilt. Participants first completed a RMA scale, then read mock news articles varying in media narrative and political affiliations (media source), followed by …

Engagement By Design: Belongingness, Cultural Value Orientations, And Pathways Into Emerging Technologies, Daisuke Akiba, Michael Perrone, Caterina Almendral, Rebecca Garte

Publications and Research

This theoretical article examines how belongingness, defined as the sense that one’s participation is legitimate and valued, interacts with cultural value orientations to help explain persistent disparities in U.S. technology engagement, including emerging technologies, across racial and ethnic groups. While structural barriers (e.g., racism, poverty, linguistic bias, etc.) remain essential to understanding such inequity, we argue that engagement patterns in technology also reflect how different cultural communities may define and experience belongingness in relation to digital domains. Drawing on Triandis and Gelfand’s framework, and focusing specifically on educational contexts, we propose the Belongingness through Cultural Value Alignment (BCVA) model, whereby …

Beyond “A Purely Passive Servitude”:Antonio Oblitas, Casta, And Afro-Descendants In The Rebellion Of TúPac Amaru Ii, Tacuma Peters

Publications and Research

This article examines the contributions of Afro-descendants to the Túpac Amaru II rebellion in Peru. It argues that although historians have recognized the importance of race and casta in the rebellion, they have been insufficiently attentive to the complex roles that those of African descent have played. It argues that the most famous Afro-descendant, Antonio Oblitas, has often been ignored, misidentified, and minimized in his aesthetic and visual contributions to the uprising. This problematic historical approach extends to other free and enslaved men because scholars place them within the paradigm of passive (and enslaved) servitude. Furthermore, the article contends that …

Designing Equity-Focused Pedagogy In Mathematics Teacher Preparation With Digital Data Tools, Nadia Stoyanova Kennedy, Boyan Kostadinov, Sandie Han

Publications and Research

This study examines the implementation of a course module that integrated computing and data analysis. The module aimed to engage prospective mathematics teachers in the practice of working with datasets and analyzing data to investigate questions related to local Brooklyn schools, as well as to gain deeper insight into the students and communities where they conduct their field experiences. Throughout the module, teacher candidates explored issues such as student learning opportunities, achievement gaps, school segregation, educational (in)equity, and other social justice concerns through readings, data analysis, and direct engagement. They shared and reflected on their findings with peers, deepening their …

Covid-19 Asian American Oral History Project: Reflecting On Identity And Oral History At A Community College, Thomas Cleary

Publications and Research

In this article, I share narrators’ stories from the Covid-19 Asian American Oral History Project based at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY, to illustrate how Covid-19 and increased anti-Asian hate during the pandemic shaped Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) identities in Queens, New York. Narrators’ stories shed light on how Black Lives Matter impacted their own understanding of race and racialization, particularly as AAPI identity and race relate to the Model Minority Myth. This project also laid the groundwork to develop a broader oral history culture at the college, developing faculty pedagogy to incorporate oral history interviews and interviewing into …

Feminist Scholarly Editing: A Provocation, Marlowe Daly-Galeano, Melissa J. Homestead, Claudia Stokes, Leila Walker

Publications and Research

This essay examines the feminist challenges posed by the protocols and history of scholarly editing. Prompted by the recent revival of bibliographical studies, the essay seeks to instigate a similar reconsideration of scholarly editing, bibliography’s counterpart in textual criticism. Scholarly editing has a vexed history with regard to women and gender: women writers were seldom the beneficiaries of editorial attention, but editors regularly used gendered metaphors to describe their work and often relied on the unacknowledged labor of women. This essay examines the history of sexism within the field of scholarly editing, illustrates the challenges and promises of editing women’s …

Eng 110 Rhetorical Situation Worksheet, Catrina E. Vininski, Missy Watson

Open Educational Resources

This rhetorical situation worksheet asks students to analyze a text based on the rhetorical situation. Students must identify the significance of the context for which the text was published, the author of the text, the genre, the audience, the purpose, the argument, and the evidence that the author uses to support their claims. This can be used for course readings, films, or other types of texts that you assign over the course of the semester.

From Summer Institute To Action: Advancing Equity And Inclusion In Stem Classrooms, Sandie Han, Nadia Kennedy, Malgorzata Marciniak, Diana Samaroo

Publications and Research

This Editor’s Note provides background on the CUNY Innovative Teaching Academy Summer Institute for Equitable and Inclusive STEM Teaching and Learning and introduces the articles featured in this special issue.

Decidiendo Lo Mejor Para Su Educación: Immigrant Latine Madres At The Intersection Of Confianza, Ideology, And The Illusion Of Choice, Emmeline Ortiz

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative multiple case study examined the decision-making processes of immigrant Latine caregivers selecting schools and language programs for their children classified as Multilingual Learners (MLLs) in New York City. Although policy frameworks position caregivers as central decision-makers, bilingual program access remains limited, especially in charter schools, and families must navigate language ideologies that privilege English as the safest educational pathway. Ten immigrant Latine participants, nine mothers and one grandmother, whose children attended traditional or charter elementary schools in one NYC district, shared their experiences through semi-structured interviews conducted in Spanish. Data were analyzed through iterative coding and thematic analysis …

Fundamentals Of Business Communication Eco 21660 - Unit 2, Assignment 3: Key Concept Report, Catherine M. Young

Open Educational Resources

The Business Communications Key Concept Report assignment prompts students to "compose a business report using the analytical, indirect strategy business writing style." Students select a concept based on their interests and define it. They then select a company and discuss their concept within the context of the company. Students must access three outside resources for their report. A holistic rubric describes A-range, B-range, and C-range work. The assignment provides the foundation of Unit 2's oral presentation curriculum.

Zero Textbook Cost Syllabus For Env 3070 (Agroecology), Benjamin Iuliano

Open Educational Resources

Our relationships with the food we eat are deeply personal, but also connect us to a wide array of people, plants, animals, and landscapes around the world. Encompassing a diversity of scholarly approaches, the field of agroecology seeks to understand the interactions among these components, draw attention to the consequences of our present industrial food system, and create the conditions for more sustainable and just futures. In this course, students will learn about the science, practice, and social movement of agroecology through lectures, course discussions, field trips, and hands-on activities.

Zero Textbook Cost Syllabus For Pol1101 (American Government: Practices And Values), Michael A. Villanova

Open Educational Resources

In this course, we will analyze the ideas, history, and values of American politics and government. This course is divided into three parts. First, we will examine the foundations of American politics by looking at America’s founding documents, early American political thought, and the history of civil liberties and civil rights. Second, we will read about political behavior and discuss what motivates political participation in America. Third, we will look at American political institutions in the three branches of government: legislative, executive, and judiciary. This class will provide students with an introductory understanding of key concepts, theories, debates, and ideas …

Open Ended Item Response Dataset For "In Their Own Words: Qualitative And Quantitative Analyses Of What Students, Staff, And Faculty Say About Vertical Transfer", A. W. Logue, Vita Rabinowitz, Kerstin Gentsch, David Wutchiett, Barbara Condliffe, Sophia Sutcliffe, Yoshiko Oka, Stephanie Abbeyquaye, Rhina Torres, Nayeon Yoo, Kyle Du

Publications and Research

This dataset consists of statements by CUNY students and faculty concerning their knowledge of and experiences with vertical transfer (transfer from a community college to a bachelor's college). The statements were obtained via open-ended survey questions. Thousands of students and thousands of faculty participated.

Active Learning: Eight Models That Shape Instructional Practice, A.E. Dreyfuss, Ana Fraiman, Karmen T. Yu

Publications and Research

Developed since the mid-20^th century, several instructional models have provided practical means to shift the emphasis in learning from lecture to engagement by students. The snapshots of models presented in this paper include Cooperative Learning, Problem-Based Learning (PBL), Supplemental Instruction (SI) (also PALS, PASS), Team-Based Learning (TBL), Emerging Scholars Program (Mathematics Workshop, MathExcel), Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL), Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL), and Learning Assistants (LA). These models have been well-disseminated, widely adopted, and incorporated in disciplines beyond their origins. For purposes of exploration and consideration of implementation, these “snapshots” provide an overview. Features of each model are …

Validation And Trend Analysis Of Satellite-Derived Surface Water Temperature Observations Over Adirondack Lakes, Marzi Azarderakhsh, Carolien Mossel, Abdou Rachid Bah, Aisha Malik, Fahmeda Khanom, Jonathan Borrelli, Pete Mcintyre, Hamidreza Norouzi, Kevin Rose

Publications and Research

This study aims to validate and evaluate satellite remote sensing observations from the Landsat series over 135 lakes in the Adirondack State Park, located in upstate New York, and to examine their surface temperature trends over the past 40 years. It utilizes data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), along with Landsat 5 and 7. Park-scale results were derived by extracting MODIS surface temperatures within the park boundary, while lake-scale results were estimated using Landsat 5 (1984-2012) and Landsat 7 (1999-2023) observations. In addition, field observations were utilized to perform a comprehensive validation and evaluation of satellite-based surface temperature …