Opening Sessions

Room: E-Building, E-259
Presenter(s): J. Elizabeth Clark, Department of English, Clarence Chan, Health Sciences Department, Reem Jaafar, MEC Department, Eric Hofmann, Associate Provost, Academic Affairs, Jasmine Edwards, Community Health and Wellness Department

This presentation introduces Learning That Lasts, LaGuardia Community College’s newly launched, public-facing website documenting and celebrating the college’s commitment to High Impact Practices (HIPs). Developed through the Learning Matters initiative, the site showcases how HIPs, including First Year Seminar, ePortfolio, Learning Communities, and Collaborative Assignments, equip students with the knowledge, skills, and habits essential for both graduation and workforce readiness.

Drawing on faculty interviews, student voices, and institutional research, the site illustrates how HIPs foster critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and problem-solving, competencies employers consistently value. Motivational case studies and curated research demonstrate how these practices create equitable learning environments that prepare students to adapt, lead, and thrive in professional settings.

Designed as both a storytelling platform and a strategic resource, Learning That Lasts supports professional development, cross-disciplinary dialogue, and curricular innovation. Faculty attendees will receive an in-depth tour of the website’s features, exploring how to:

• Contribute their own HIPs work to a shared institutional archive
• Integrate the site into classroom activities and assignments
• Use its stories and scholarship to inspire peer collaboration and student engagement

The presentation also offers behind-the-scenes insights into the project’s design, highlighting the values and methods that shaped its tone, structure, and accessibility.

Whether you are deeply engaged in HIPs or just beginning to explore them, Learning That Lasts offers practical strategies and inspiring examples for using and sharing HIPs to advance equitable learning, support timely graduation, and prepare students for success in an evolving workforce.

Room: E-Building, E-217
Presenter(s): Chelsea Encababian, Natural Sciences; Preethi Radhakrishnan, Natural Sciences

How can we take learning beyond the classroom and root it in real-world experience, civic responsibility, and career readiness? This session explores how the Sustainable Urban Agriculture (SUA) track at LaGuardia brings these goals to life through hands-on, community-connected projects that center student voice, participation, and place-based learning.

Participants will learn how SUA uses tools like scaffolded oral history assignments, partnerships with local growers and activists, and direct involvement with the LaGuardia Urban Farm to connect students to real issues and opportunities in their communities. The presentation will highlight how these strategies not only deepen engagement but also align with LaGuardia’s New Education Plan by preparing students for meaningful participation in both civic life and the workforce.

As an interactive component, attendees will participate in a short design activity based on the SUA Oral Histories Project. Working in small groups, participants will develop a draft of a community-connected interview or storytelling assignment that could be used in their own courses regardless of discipline. They’ll walk away with a flexible, ready-to-use template that brings experiential learning into any classroom.

The session will also offer details on how to connect your course or program to the LaGuardia Urban Farm, and how we are expanding offerings “including internship opportunities, community partnerships, and collaborative programming”to support students and faculty in growing sustainable, high-impact learning experiences.

Room: E-Building, E-225
Presenter(s): Karen Miller, Social Science

Writing pedagogy posits that writing is a foundational tool for complex thinking. It is through the composition, organization, reorganization, editing, and refining of prose and other texts that ideas can be honed and layered. It allows scholars — whether they are students or professors — to think through contradictions, create new meaning, and figure out where their commitments lie. It is a tool for translation and can help us move from inchoate thoughts to clear observations and assertions, from simplicity to complexity. It is both independent and completely interdependent.

How do we sustain the best parts of writing pedagogy in the face of the writing automation (AI) that we see today? How are our current responses similar to panics about other forms of writing automation like the printing press, the typewriter, the internet when they were first invented? How are they different? Why is writing pedagogy important when a computer can compose beautiful sentences for us? How is writing related to thinking? How is it different than talking? What strategies have we developed to continue to teach writing in spite of the allure of AI.

This workshop will be interactive and will focus on the contributions of participants. Faculty will come away with suggestions and ideas for how to think through writing pedagogy in the face of writing automation.

Room: E-Building, E-227
Presenter(s): Jose Ramos, ASAP, Ellen Quish, Center for Teaching and Learning, Olga Calderon, Natural Sciences, Milena Cuellar, Math, Engineering, & Computer Science, Reem Jaafar, Math, Engineering, & Computer Science

LaGuardia is part of a national cohort engaged in the Shared Equity Leadership (SEL) initiative, led by the Pullias Center at the University of Southern California, which aims to bring equity into action by aligning institutional priorities with inclusive teaching, advising, and data-informed practice. In this interactive workshop, SEL team members will share key findings from Year 1, including survey results from students and faculty, credit attainment trends, and equity audits of High-Impact Practices (HIPs) such as internships and global learning. Participants will explore how these insights can inform practical changes in classrooms, advising, and departmental planning.

The session will feature rotating stations where participants engage with data and applicable scenarios. Participants will walk away with strategies and tools to deepen equity-minded practice and support students’ career engagement in their respective context. This session aligns directly with LaGuardiaÂ’s strategic pillars and the Opening Sessions theme of Learning Beyond the Classroom, offering practical ways to equip students to succeed and thrive.

Room: E-Building, E-229
Presenter(s): Lara Beaty, Social Science

Trauma can have devastating effects, and the dominant culture of “moving on” leaves students vulnerable. Research over the last decades has clarified ways in which emotions are intricately connected to learning, and since the pandemic, institutes of higher education are following the lead of lower schools and health practitioners in addressing the needs of our students and ourselves. In the classroom, in offices, in co-curricular activities, and beyond, we can help students develop from their adversities while also addressing our potential secondary trauma. We first need to acknowledge that these emotional responses exist; this is a fundamental part of being trauma informed. The research on trauma-informed pedagogy, however, has been limited.

The Student Experiences Research Group (SERG), a student group under the mentorship of the author, has been studying adversity among our students and talking about what we need to succeed. Based on this work and the literature, this workshop will share some research results to understand how common adversity is in our community, the resulting trauma, and its connections to other forms of neurodiversity and common student problems. After presenting some strategies for talking with students and activities that can directly and indirectly support development, participants will be guided in sharing what we are already doing that helps and developing additional activities. While we cannot fix our students or the world we all live in, we can create a community that sees each othersÂ’ struggles and supports our development toward acceptance and meaningful academic progress. 

Room: E-Building, E-234
Presenter(s): Ian McDermott, Rena Grossman, Emma Handte (Library), Jessica Boehman (Humanities), Sandra Ribero and Emie Hyman (Health Sciences), Juline Koken, Maureen Doyle, and Maria Cuoco (Community Health and Wellness), Marta Kowalczyk (Natural Sciences), Niki Jones (Academic Affairs), Kristina Graham (Student Lead, Center for Teaching and Learning), person of contact: Ian McDermott, Rena Grossman, Emma Handte, and Marta Kowalczyk 

Open Educational Resources (OER) have been developed by faculty and students at CUNY since pre-pandemic. Initially, the goal was to create zero-cost textbook options. However, the initiative has since expanded to include a wider variety of educational materials guided by student input. In this session, we will provide a brief overview of the fundamentals of OER for those who are new to the topic.  Furthermore, we will showcase the efforts undertaken by the Humanities, Health Sciences, Community Health and Wellness, Library, and Natural Sciences departments. Additionally, a former student and current employee will share her experiences and insights regarding the use of OER. We will also discuss funding opportunities available through Academic Affairs and CUNY Central.

Room: E-Building, E-253
Presenter(s): The Wellness Center & Neurodiversity Program, Dez Rodriguez, LMHC, Jeannie Buckley, LMHC, Syria Brown, LMHC, Andrea Bellissimo, LCSW 

When students are struggling, educators have a unique opportunity—not just to respond, but to teach. This workshop introduces trauma-informed crisis intervention strategies that emphasize modeling emotion regulation, safety, and empathy in real-time classroom interactions. Drawing on Crisis Intervention Training (CIT), participants will learn to understand behavior as a form of communication and practice practical verbal and nonverbal de-escalation techniques. Special focus will be placed on how educators’ presence, tone, body language, and boundaries can create a calm, supportive environment even during disruption. 

Room: E-Building, E-213
Presenter(s): Marsha Oropeza, Ed.D- Director of Credit for Prior Learning, Office of Credit for Prior Learning (Academic Affairs)

Drawing from the research study Pathways to Degree Programs, The Road Least Traveled:  An Action Research Study on The Reasons Why Adult Learners Do Not Take Advantage of Non-Credit to Credit Pathways (Oropeza, ProQuest, 2025), this session explores why adult learners rarely continue from workforce training into degree programs, despite available pathways. It highlights how structured, flexible, career-connected interventions grounded in robust CPL (Credit for Prior Learning), targeted advising, and collaborative partnerships with faculty and staff, increase student engagement, accelerate degree completion, and advance equity. Participants will engage in a design exercise to map out learner pathways, leaving with practical ideas to consider credit for prior learning as a tool expand experiential and work-based learning opportunities for students.

Room: E-Building, E-260
Presenter(s): Heather Barikmo, The English Language Center

In June 2025, I participated in a Fulbright International Education Administrators seminar to South Korea. Over the course of 2 weeks, I visited 14 colleges and universities around the country (including one community college), receiving briefings from students, faculty, administrators, government officials, and other leaders on the current higher education and career readiness landscape in South Korea. In this presentation, I will share how this seminar served as experiential learning for me. Participants will be invited to reflect on their own global and experiential learning, and we will consider how our exposure to these frameworks can be modeled for our students. We will discuss possible global and experiential partnerships with institutions in South Korea or in other countries with whom we have relationships. We will also consider ways to connect students to global and experiential learning in countries they may be personally connected to.

Room: E-Building, E-216
Presenter(s): Ben Rohdin, Vice President, Enrollment Management, Veronica Garcia, Director, Enrollment Services , Francis Laing, Enrollment Manager, Enrollment Management 

Enrollment is more than a process—it’s a powerful, real-world learning opportunity. LaGuardia’s Enrollment Services Center employs high-impact practices that create a welcoming, supportive environment for all students while fostering college preparedness, career readiness, and civic responsibility. In this session, we’ll explore how enrollment can serve as a site of experiential learning, student advocacy, and professional development.

Through our Enrollment Ambassador Program, upper-semester students are hired, trained, and empowered to support peers through the enrollment process—gaining valuable leadership, communication, and service delivery skills. This peer-to-peer model builds agency and connection while addressing barriers that impact student progression and retention.

We’ll also highlight how our office uses tools like Slate for integrated communication, Timekettle for multilingual support, and CampusESP for family engagement, enhancing cross-campus collaboration and equitable outreach. Our proactive, data-informed approach centers lived student experiences and enables early intervention—promoting confidence, engagement, and belonging.

Participants will take part in an interactive “Enrollment Journey Mapping” activity to simulate real scenarios and co-design responsive outreach strategies. They will leave with a toolkit of practical, customizable resources—including messaging templates, peer leadership models, and communication strategies—that can be adapted to their own needs.

Join us to explore how enrollment services can advance institutional goals, expand high-impact learning opportunities, and transform how students navigate college—building a community where student success is a shared, collective priority.

Room: E-Building, E-258
Presenter(s): Dr. Jason Hendrickson (English) and Dr. Tameka Battle (Community Health and Wellness)

The workshop is especially timely given national trends in higher education and the growing focus on student preparedness for post-graduation success as reflected in LaGuardia’s Strategic Plan through the new “Career Success & Economic Mobility” pillar. With nearly half of LaGuardia students identifying as first-generation college students, the workshop directly addresses the urgent need to support LaGuardia students while affirming that faculty and staff also need structured support and training to meet this level of engagement.

This workshop will highlight a critical gap in perception that while many college presidents believe their graduates are well-prepared for employment, employers often disagree. Moreover, while faculty overwhelmingly express a desire to help students succeed in their careers, many also report feeling underprepared to do so effectively. This workshop seeks to bridge that gap by sharing pedagogical strategies that cultivate career competencies, helping faculty translate course objectives into transferable skills that students can articulate and apply across diverse professional contexts, and highlighting the eight competencies for career readiness identified by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE).

The workshop will also feature faculty and staff participants from the Spring 2025 CTL seminar, Career-Connected Learning: A Practical and Hands-On Training for Faculty and Staff, who will share best practices and lessons learned. The former CTL participants will highlight innovative ways they have integrated career readiness into student advisement, course curricula, and service-learning projects, offering valuable insights for broader implementation across the college. Facilitated by Dr. Jason Hendrickson (English) and Dr. Tameka Battle (Community, Health & Wellness), both experienced professors, former Career Success Faculty Fellows (2023-2024), with Dr. Hendrickson serving as co-chair of LaGuardia’s Strategic pillar, “Career Success and Economic Mobility” and CUNY Career Success Leadership Fellow (2024-2025), the workshop aligns with the college’s strategic and collective objective to improve graduate outcomes and empower faculty and staff as catalysts of student success.