The English Department contributes to innovative opportunities throughout the college that will support your academic development. These opportunities include Learning Communities, LaGuardia Humanitarian Initiative, The Wikipedia Project, and COIL. You are encouraged to join them!
Learning Communities
Learning communities are courses clustered around a common theme and taught to the same cohort of liberal arts students by a faculty team. Readings and assignments are shared so that students may better understand connections among different disciplines and to learn with a community of their peers. Students in LaGuardia's learning communities are actively engaged in inquiry and analysis, and critical and creative thinking through teamwork and problem solving. As a result, students who participate in learning communities are more likely to pass their courses and to stay in college.
Since 1974, the Liberal Arts Clusters have offered students a full-time introductory program in the liberal arts, and many of the themes speak to the college's immigrant population and its mission by addressing issues of freedom, work, and diversity. Students take a wide variety of courses including Composition I, The Research Paper, Introduction to Philosophy, Theatre, Sociology, Music, Anthropology, Film, and Media Studies in themed clusters with titles such as "Sex, Money and Pop Culture," "Blacklash: The Urban Black Experience," "Global Politics," and "Constructing Identity."
Contact:
Naomi Stubbs
718.482.5680
nstubbs@lagcc.cuny.edu
LaGuardia Humanitarian Initiative
LaGuardia Humanitarian Initiative also known as LHI is a collegewide initiative for students to engage in an interdisciplinary inquiry about a global issue as addressed by the United Nations.
Through partnerships with local and global NGOs, LHI provides students with career and professional development workshops, while creating avenues to apply classroom learning and lived experiences to their advocating efforts for an inclusive society. LHI also offers students with opportunities to volunteer, publish, and intern at various organizations. Students are invited to present their work at the annual LHI showcase in June. ALL LHI participating students receive a certificate, digital badge, and one-on-one career counselling on how to document their LHI experiences when transferring or /and when applying for jobs and internships.”
- As part of the LaGuardia Humanitarian Initiative theme this year, "Education for All", The Women's Center invites students to submit their educational stories, attend a storytelling workshop, and be part of a global movement by posting their story to the Malala Assembly. Storytelling Workshops occur the first Friday of every month at 1:00pm. Register here.
- Malala Fund “Education for All”
- Volunteer opportunities to tutor at LaGuardia’s Center for Immigrant Education and Training, ACE Program: Student volunteer tutors will provide one-on-one online academic support in Math OR ELA OR Science to the families of low-income immigrant student parents’ school-aged children (KG-12). Apply.
Wikimedia Projects
Wikimedia projects are open access, open content, open collaboration research and educational projects published in one or more of Wikimedia Foundation wikis such as Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikidata, Wikivoyage, and Wikisource. Teachers may assign Wikimedia projects in their research and writing classrooms (such as creating a collaborative textbook in Wikibooks), and they may invite selected students to partner with the archivists and historians of the La Guardia and Wagner Archives to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of the history of New York City in the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives GLAM Project. Every year we coordinate a two-day college-wide Wikipedia translatathon (Wikipedia translation events) open to students, faculty, staff, as well as to the community at large.
If you are interested in learning about opportunities to contribute to the largest free knowledge projects in history, please contact Ximena Gallardo C. at xgallardo@lagcc.cuny.edu.
Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL)
Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) allows students enrolled in English and other classes to collaborate with peers abroad on exciting virtual course projects. COIL projects take place in face-to-face, hybrid, and fully online courses. In the past, students have explored the meaning of quality education in Japan and the US, studied racial injustice through literature in South Africa and the US, co-wrote poetry and attended a book club with students in Russia, and learned about Partition of India with students from several countries whose families have lived through this trauma. The program enables students to obtain a global perspective on the course content while engaging in project-based activities with international peers. They make new friends in other countries, learn about different cultures through authentic interactions, and develop a new level of self-awareness.
At the end of their COIL projects, students are invited to present at the COIL Showcase, an international gathering attended by all students and faculty who participated in COIL in a current semester. Students also receive certificates of achievement and are guided to integrate the COIL experience in their career-related documents, such as resumes.
Every semester, several LaGuardia professors develop COIL projects in their classes to create an engaging learning environment for their students. You can see current offerings on the COIL website. These courses do not cost extra. All you need to do is sign up as you would for regular courses.