Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

My First Conversation With Chatgpt (February 22, 2023): Origins Of A Generative Dialogue, David Smith

Publications and Research

This working paper presents the first recorded interaction between the author and the generative AI system ChatGPT, written on February 22, 2023 during the initial weeks of a faculty sabbatical in Boston. The document preserves a complete and unedited transcript of an exploratory conversation conducted without predetermined research aims, marking the author’s first encounter with a large-language-model conversational interface. Although the exchange includes creative experimentation—including musical and poetic prompts—the discussion remains informal and wide-ranging, and no theoretical framework is articulated at this stage. Rather, this transcript is published as primary-source material documenting the moment of discovery and experimentation that precedes …

1 Repository, 26 Campuses, 10 Years: Strength (And Chaos) In Numbers, Jojo Karlin, Jill Cirasella

Publications and Research

In the ten years since its inception, the CUNY Academic Works repository has grown to house and provide public access to more than 33,000 scholarly, pedagogical, and creative works by affiliates of the City University of New York, the largest urban public university in the United States. Representing all 26 CUNY campuses — community colleges, four-year colleges, and graduate/professional schools, with legacies as old as 1847 (The City College of New York) and as young as 2018 (CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies) — CUNY Academic Works has flourished thanks in large part to a system that combines central …

Propuesta Curricular Para La Asistencia Médica Bilingüe Orientada A La Concordancia De Lenguas Y La Interpretación Médica En Español, David Sanchez-Jimenez, Noemi Rodriguez, Justin Harnandan, Margarita Perez, Melissa Garcia

Publications and Research

Resumen: El presente trabajo describe el proceso para establecer una especialización secundaria bilingüe centrada en la comunicación y la interpretación médica en una universidad de Estados Unidos designada como Institución al Servicio de los Hispanos. Este nuevo título universitario brindará a los estudiantes bilingües de español e inglés especializados en el área de la salud la oportunidad de mejorar sus destrezas comunicativas para convertirse en competentes profesionales de la salud concordantes de lengua.

Abstract:This paper details the process to establish a new bilingual academic minor in health communication and medical interpretation at a United States university designated as a Hispanic-Serving …

Red Scare At Cuny: A Research Guide, Wilhelmine Coste, Scout Zabel, Erin A'Hearn, Patrick J. Mcgee

Publications and Research

The Red Scare at CUNY is a comprehensive guide to archives documenting anti-communist political repression of faculty, staff, and students at CUNY, primarily from the 1930s-1960s. Organized by repository, it highlights relevant collections within CUNY, evaluated by the authors in consultation and collaboration with archivists at Brooklyn College, City College, Hunter College, and Queens College in 2025. Each entry is accompanied by a description that incorporates information from finding aids and other published research. These collections include faculty personal and professional papers, student activist materials, and oral histories. The guide also includes collections from other repositories within New York City …

Navigating Legal Labyrinths: Health Communication And The Experiences Of Immigrant Healthcare Professionals In The Us Healthcare System, Sabahat Moughal, Sarah Price

Publications and Research

This study examines how immigrant healthcare professionals experience immigration-related stress, cultural tension, and communication demands within U.S. clinical environments. A survey of 55 clinicians at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center showed varied levels of cultural conflict and socioeconomic worry, as well as frequent adjustments to communication styles. While many participants reported feeling culturally stable, a significant portion experienced tension or uncertainty tied to immigration status. These findings highlight the wide range of adaptation experiences among immigrant clinicians, supporting the need for institutional awareness and targeted support. IRB Protocol #: 20251023-12, Wyckoff Heights Medical Center

Evaluating How New York City’S Recycling And Organic Waste Systems Reduce Resource Waste And Methane Emissions, Zihan Cao

Publications and Research

This study analyzes New York City’s waste management systems, with a focus on food waste diversion, composting, and renewable energy initiatives, to assess their role in methane emission reduction and resource efficiency. The analysis highlights the relative effectiveness of different waste management pathways and suggests that community-scale composting and decentralized anaerobic digestion are associated with substantial methane reductions relative to cost.

Ctrl + Alt + Inner Speech: A Verbal–Cognitive Scaffold (Vcs) Model Of Pathways To Computational Thinking, Daisuke Akiba

Publications and Research

This theoretical paper introduces the Verbal–Cognitive Scaffold (VCS) Model, a cognitively inclusive framework which proposes the cognitive architectures underlying computational thinking (CT). Moving beyond monolithic theories of cognition (e.g., executive-function and metacognitive control models), the VCS Model posits inner speech (InSp) as the predominant cognitive pathway supporting CT operations in neurotypical populations. Synthesizing interdisciplinary scholarship across cognitive science, computational theory, neurodiversity research, and others, this framework articulates distinct mechanisms through which InSp supports CT. The model specifies four primary pathways linking InSp to CT components: verbal working memory supporting decomposition, symbolic representation facilitating pattern recognition and abstraction, sequential processing enabling …

Fast & Forensic: Rapid Detection & Quantitation Of 30 + Emerging Novel Psychoactive Substances In Hair Using Lc-Ms/Ms, Seokjin Hwang

Student Theses

The continuous emergence of novel psychoactive substances (NPS) poses a significant challenge for forensic and clinical toxicologists, due to their structural diversity, rapid turnover on the illicit drug market, and limited toxicological information. Hair is a powerful matrix for retrospective drug exposure assessment and monitoring NPS worldwide. Not only does it provide a broad window of detection but also a simple sample exchange amongst laboratories. However, the extraction of multi-class NPS in a single method remains an analytical challenge. Therefore, there is an urgent need for extraction techniques and analytical methods that are both rapid and capable of multi-class quantitation …

Understanding Mental Health Crisis Response Through The Lens Of First Responders, Ella Gibson

Student Theses

Responses to mental health crises are becoming an increasingly contentious topic as cases of extreme police violence or fatality during a crisis are publicized in the media. Although first responders’ experiences with mental health crisis response have been explored in prior literature, there remains a lack of research that gathers data from multiple first responder roles and compares their experiences across groups. There is also a significant gap in research examining the perspectives of co-response teams. This study sought to gather qualitative data on the experiences of police officers, EMTs/paramedics, and co-response team members, and to explore their perceptions of …

Eyewitness Consent To Be Video Recorded: Implications For Identification Accuracy And Confidence, Sarah Argüelles

Student Theses

Recently, a recommendation has emerged for law enforcement to record the full eyewitness identification procedure, recognizing the critical role eyewitness testimony plays in the justice system (Wells et al., 2020). However, in some states, such as New York, law enforcement is required to seek consent from witnesses before recording (Municipal Police Training Council & Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2017). Since this practice is relatively new, there has been limited research on how obtaining consent may affect eyewitness accuracy. It was hypothesized that obtaining consent to video record could be linked to a witness’s confidence in their identification, with higher …

A Detailed Investigation Into Word-Order In The Modification Of Pronouns, Kelli Hesseltine, Joseph C. M. Davis

Publications and Research

This study builds upon Hesseltine and Davis ([2020]. “The Communicative Function of Adjective-Noun Order in English.” WORD 66 (3): 166–193. https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.2020.1793499), which examines word order in modification in English and proposes the Assertion of Characterization hypothesis. To communicate an assertion of an entity’s traits, speakers employ two different meanings: weaker, signaled by the order AB as in long (A) hair (B), and stronger, signaled by BA as in hair (B) long (A). The attribution of the characterization is thus made less or more assertively. This work focuses on examples where the characterized entity, the B, is a form traditionally …

Saussure’S Universal Distinctive Feature Dimensions, Thomas M. Eccardt

Publications and Research

This paper revisits Saussure’s scalar analysis of phonemes, offering a modern reinterpretation that replaces binary features with phonological dimensions grounded in measurement theory. By redefining Saussure’s [openness] and [backness] as ordered scales and Chomsky and Halle’s “combination and concatenation” as partially ordered scales, the paper introduces a notion of “[phono]logical simultaneity.” This framework renders the variously-defined phoneme and segment redundant, and shifts the focus of distinctiveness to the linguistic sign, the morpheme. It demonstrates how phonological dimensions link continuous articulations and acoustic signals (e.g., F1 and F2) with discrete linguistic signs through calibrated distinctive features. The analysis identifies Saussure’s two …

Lessons From Tiktok: Using Popular Social Media Platforms To Engage Gen Z, Debra Bernstein

Urban Library Journal

This study looks at how academic libraries in the New York City metropolitan area are using TikTok to engage with their communities, particularly students. It analyzes the most popular videos from five active library accounts, categorizing content types and measuring engagement through TikTok’s built-in metrics. Results indicate that humorous and lighthearted content consistently receives the highest engagement, while instructional or “how-to” videos tend to underperform. These findings suggest that while TikTok may not be the most effective platform for instructional outreach, it holds potential as a tool for visibility, community engagement, and humanizing the library’s presence. As students increasingly turn …

Notes From The Editor, Derek Stadler

Urban Library Journal

I am very pleased to welcome you to the first issue of the 31^st volume of Urban Library Journal. This issue includes articles about history and archives, training programs in librarianship, recommendations on how to improve the onboarding of librarians, and the social media platform TikTok.

Global Development Theories At Your Doorstep, Jorge A. Alves

Open Educational Resources

This resource is an assignment for a course on the politics of international development (PSCI 230). This assignment will likely be a summative assignment either at the end of the first unit (where I discuss the different theories / approaches to development over time) or perhaps a substitute for the midterm exam. The goals of the assignment are A) for students to localize and critically ground existing global theories of development in their own lived experience / communities, and B) critically reflect on core assumptions and implications about the different conceptualizations of development (especially to see how these approaches might …

Local And Community History – Ten Blocks, Johnathan Thayer

Open Educational Resources

Description

Walk or otherwise move through physical space ten blocks (or its equivalent) in any direction from wherever you call home. Take note of the component parts that make up your locality, including the weekly topics on our syllabus (nature, parks, cemeteries, burial grounds, buildings, restaurants, bars, theaters, temples, schools, and governance). Make a list of the histories of these components that you know, and a list of the histories that you wish you knew more about.

Where I plan to use this resource

In my LBSCI class Local and Community History Methods. This will be the first assignment of …

Environmental Justice And Warehouse Pollution In New York City, Natalie Bump Vena

Open Educational Resources

I am preparing a class module that will help students learn about environmental (in)justice, air pollution attendant to urban warehouses, and city policymaking. The primary learning outcomes will be:

1. Apply the concepts of environmental racism and environmental justice to the problem of NYC’s warehouse facilities and the resulting movements to mitigate their pollution.
2. Read and analyze legal documents.
3. Analyze the extent to which an individual’s interests and experiences shape their policy positions.
4. Evaluate the efficacy of proposed city legislation and zoning changes in advancing environmental justice in communities living with warehouses.

This project engages Queens by considering how proposed citywide …

Analyzing Large-Scale Infrastructure Projects: The Case Of Willets Point In Queens, Dwayne Baker

Open Educational Resources

This teaching resource focuses on a multi-week assignment for my URBST 260: Planning & Politics course for the Spring 2026 semester.
The purpose of this assignment is for students to analyze a large-scale planning project within New York City and particularly Queens. This assignment will focus on the Willets Point redevelopment in Queens. By the end of this assignment, students will be able to:

• Explain the context of Willets Point. That is, students will be able to explain the
  1. actors involved (whether for, against, or indifferent to the redevelopment),
  2. planning and policy tools used to develop the site, and
  3. historical …

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 …

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.

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 …

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, …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Zero Textbook Low Cost Syllabus For English 2100 (Writing 1), Anne Grevenitis

Open Educational Resources

In English 2100, our focus will be on autoethnography as a genre of writing. To write an autoethnography is to examine the value of the personal and use traditional modes of research to flesh out the narrative of the self. Through diverse research methods (interviews and site observation) and a multiple-step writing process (journaling, drafting and peer reviewing), your autoethnography should make a substantive contribution, have aesthetic merit, have reflexivity, make an impact, and express a reality.

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 …

Cross-Cultural Validity Of The Ppi-R In U.S. College Students, Cassidy Liang

Student Theses

Psychopathy has traditionally been studied using Hare's Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) but self-report measures like the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised (PPI-R) have gained popularity due to comparative ease, speed of administration, and its broader applicability to the general population. However, the validity of the PPI-R across cultures has produced mixed results, particularly in non-Western and non-English speaking participants. This study examined racial/ethnic and gender differences in the PPI-R in a diverse sample of 536 college students. The internal and external validity of the PPI-R was good. The PPI-R correlated with the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM), as well as trait anxiety, and empathy …

Theory Comparison, Chen Li

Open Educational Resources

This assignment invites students to critically compare two developmental theorists (the professor can choose which two theorists), reflecting on their similarities, differences, and personal evaluations. Students will explore where they agree or disagree with each theorist and connect their reflections to contemporary contexts, cultural perspectives, or personal experiences. The assignment also includes peer engagement, with thoughtful responses to two classmates to deepen discussion and understanding.