BPS FACULTY MEMBERS
Alison Better | Becoming Community Engaged Sociologists
Dr. Alison Better is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Kingsborough Community College, CUNY. Her research engages two distinct areas, one on women’s sexual agency, sex stores, and reimagining sexual categories and another exploring the role of using personal experience to enhance learning in urban community college classrooms. She is a member of Brooklyn Public Scholars and co-organizes the Women’s and Gender Studies Faculty Interest Group at Kingsborough. Dr. Better is an appointed member of the American Sociological Association’s Task Force on Community College Faculty and served as a council member for the ASA Section on Body and Embodiment. She has published articles in Sexuality & Culture and The American Sociologist and is the co-editor (with BPS colleagues Emily Schnee and Martha Clark Cummings) of the forthcoming book Civic Engagement Pedagogy in the Community College: Theory and Practice.
Christina Colon | Civic Ecology
Dr. Christina P. Colόn is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Kingsborough Community College. Her classroom and campus-wide work emphasize civic engagement through citizen science which promotes concern for local species and ecosystems. She regularly involves her students in her research on horseshoe crabs in Jamaica Bay, and shares information about her work in Southeast Asia on seed dispersal in carnivores. She conducts SoTL research on the impact of active learning on students and maximizes the opportunities for students to engage in active learning as Chair of the Eco-Festival Committee, mentor for students in Bridges to the Baccalaureate, C-STEP, and the CUNY Research Scholars Program. She is an active member of the Jamaica Bay Task Force, Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay, CUNY 2020 Planning Committee, and the New York Marine Science Consortium, all with the combined objective of promoting green jobs, green infrastructure and a green future for New York and New Yorkers (including the crabs☺).
Martha Cummings | College ESL Students Explore, Sustain and Renew Their Campus, Department of English, ESL Program
Professor Martha Clark Cummings has an MA and EdD in TESOL from Teachers College, Columbia University. She has taught at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, the New School Online University, Hunter College, and at Teachers College in New York and Tokyo. She teaches in the MA in TESOL Program at Hunter College and in the online MA TESOL Program at Anaheim University. She is currently chair of the TESOL Standing Committee on Diversity. She is the co-author of two ESL textbooks, Changes: Readings for Writers and Inspired to Write, and her articles have appeared in The Journal of Basic Writing, The Language Teacher, and PacCALL, among others.
Peter Fiume | Social Sciences in Education, Department of Behavioral Sciences and Human Services
George Hill | Exploring Community in a Freshman Seminar course
George J. Hill is an Academic Advisor and instructor of Student Development Freshman Seminarcourse (SD10) in the Opening Doors Learning Communities. Focused on Learning Communities and ways they can be best used to help students succeed, George has presented at the Atlantic Center for Learning Communities annual conference on topics such as integrating Student Affairs into Learning Communities and use of experiential learning in Learning Communities. He is also the Higher Education administrator for Teachers, an educationally focused Facebook community page.
Laura Kates | Teacher EDU Students Inquire into Sociocultural Contexts of Schooling
Dr. Laura Kates is an Associate Professor and the Deputy Director of the Education Program at Kingsborough Community College. Prior to joining the faculty of Kingsborough in 2006, she was a New York City teacher and, for fifteen years, a curriculum consultant in the New York City schools. As a professor, Dr. Kates has continued to be committed to the continuous improvement of pedagogy and practice and is involved with many of Kingsborough’s teaching and learning initiatives. Her research interests include teacher education pedagogy, policy, and program design, students’ perspectives on their learning experiences, and the integration of critical literacy into undergraduate teacher education. Her work has appeared in The New Educator, Bank Street Occasional Papers, and Breaking the Mold of Preservice and Inservice Teacher Education: Innovative and Successful Practices for the Twenty-first Century. You can view the blog she and her field students created as a result of their participation in BPS.
Jason Leggett | Law, Society, & Justice: Mapping Our Socio-legal Communities
With a diverse background in a variety of educational settings, and with practical experience in political advocacy and community organizing, the non-profit sector, and research and writing interests in law, society and justice, Jason focuses on improving student learning in diverse environments by enhancing motivation, introducing student development skills, promoting civic engagement, and using advanced technology in pedagogical and practical ways. He presently focuses on Global Human Rights issues, working on the story of the case of Luis Jimenez, an undocumented immigrant who was privately repatriated to Guatemala. Jason is also researching with students on issues related to the rule of law, socio-legal services, political behavior and environmental change, and citizen rights and responsibilities.
Stuart Parker | Defining Community
Stuart Parker EdD. is an Assistant Professor at Kingsborough Community College – CUNY in Brooklyn, New York. He teaches Urban Sociology and the Sociology of Religion, in addition to the introductory course. His research focuses on social justice issues related to urban education, educational policy and curriculum and instruction. Dr. Parker worked in the K-12 public school system for over 20 years as a teacher, program developer and administrator in several under-resourced districts. The details on his research and teaching materials are visible on his blog.
Anna Rozenboym | Incorporating Civic Engagement in the Human Anatomy and Physiology Course, Department of Biology
Emily Schnee | Engaging Students in the Community of College
Dr. Emily Schnee is Assistant Professor of English at Kingsborough Community College where she teaches composition and developmental English. Her research focuses on issues of access and equity in urban public higher education with a particular focus on community college students. Her work has appeared in Community College Review, Teachers College Record, Thought & Action and Radical Teacher. She is the co-editor (with BPS colleagues Alison Better and Martha Clark Cummings) of the forthcoming book Civic Engagement Pedagogy in the Community College: Theory and Practice.
Debra Schultz | Civil Rights as Civic Engagement
Dr. Debra L. Schultz is Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Philosophy and Political Science, and BPS Project Director at Kingsborough Community College. A Brooklyn native, she is excited to be involved in thinking about community engagement at KCC through the Brooklyn Public Scholars Project, the Bridging Cultures across the Humanities Project, and the Teagle Foundation National Community College Project on Civic Engagement. She has received fellowships to attend the Aspen Institute Wye Faculty Seminar on Citizenship, and the Facing History and Ourselves Faculty Seminar. She is the author of Going South: Jewish Women in The Civil Rights Movement (New York University Press) and scholarly articles on intersections of race, class, ethnicity, and gender. Her current research focuses on representing lessons and legacies of the civil rights movement in teaching and public memory. Prior to teaching at KCC, she helped found the Soros Foundation’s International Women’s Program and served as its Director of Programs for ten years. She also writes on her blog, DebThink: Reflections of a Social Change Historian.
Indira Škorić | Immigration Hub
Dr. Indira Kajosevic Skoric teaches in the History/Political Science/Philosophy Department at the Kingsborough College in New York. She founded and served as the executive director of Reconciliation and Culture Cooperative Network. Dr. Skoric holds a PhD from the Fielding Graduate University in Human Development. Her work has been recognized through a number of awards and fellowships (the Union Square Award, the American Association of University Women Fellowship). Dr. Skoric has worked with American Friends Service Committee, International Federation of Red Cross, International Organization for Migration and the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security, as well as with a number of women-led activist groups.
“A Life of Activism and Advocacy.” Fielding Graduate University, 2013
Tisha Ulmer | Building Bridges through Research, Department of English
Tisha Ulmer teaches developmental English, English composition and African-American literature. She received her Ph.D. from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her research interests are composition and rhetoric and African-American literature.
Jason VanOra | Exploring Community in a First Semester General Psychology Course
Dr. Jason VanOra is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Kingsborough. His research addresses the ways in which narratives can be used to reveal both individual and collective struggles, resiliency, identity, and “wisdoms” among persons living within conditions of both marginalization and hope. Recent and forthcoming publications concern the narrative identities and motivations for persistence among community college students assigned to “remedial” or “developmental” classes and the potential for qualitative meta-analyses to help narrative researchers “power-up” their findings and impact social policy. Dr. VanOra’s forthcoming book, Desperate to Achieve, examines the life histories and academic challenges of community college students assigned to “developmental” or “remedial” classes and is one of the sole texts to illuminate their commitments to scholarship, unique wisdom about teaching and learning, and identities that are enhanced by relationships with others.
