On May 19, we had the opportunity to celebrate all that our Faculty Fellows, graduate students, undergraduate students, peer mentors, and Graduate Fellows have accomplished throughout the 2015-2016 academic year.

We were able to showcase some of the work coming out of the Futures Initiative courses of the 2015-2016 academic year:

• Encountering Cuba – Global Race, Postcoloniality, Cultural Expression
  • Kandice Chuh and Sujatha Fernandes
• Global Perspectives on Language and Education
  • Ofelia Garcia and Carmina Makar
• Agency and Social Transformation: Increasing Equity in Education and Beyond
  • Anna Stetsenko and Eduardo Vianna
• Mindfulness and STEM Education
  • David Forbes and Gillian Bayne
• American Literature, American Learning
  • Cathy N. Davidson

Kashema Hutchinson, a PhD student in Urban Education at the Graduate Center, CUNY, shared some of the fascinating work that she completed throughout the Mindfulness and STEM Education course taught by David Forbes and Gillian Bayne.

The full slide deck that Kahema presented at our event are below:
[pdf-embedder url=”https://futuresinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/MMM.pptx.pdf”]

We enjoyed hearing from other students who presented on the exciting work that they did within their courses, and reflected on how what they were working on related to driving equity in higher education.

Futures Initiative Fellow Michael Dorsch shared his CUNY NYC Language Mapping project, which he worked on in collaboration with Faculty Fellows Ofelia Garcia and Carmina Makar as part of their Global Perspectives on Language and Education.

Futures Initiative Director and Professor Cathy Davidson shared the work that her students did in her American Literature, American Learning course, which culminated in the online book Structuring Equality: A Handbook for Student-Centered Learning and Teaching Practices.

Lauren Melendez, who is directing the Peer Mentoring program for the 2016-2017 academic year, gave an update on our goals for the program, and how embedding mentors throughout the CUNY undergraduate campuses can foster collaboration and student-driven knowledge production.

We were able to share a recap of our event series, The University Worth Fighting For, which will continue through the 2016-2017 academic year. Full Flickr album of our year-end event is available here.

As we reflected on the past year and shared in one another’s achievements, we began to look forward to the next academic year and our commitment to advance change for social good within the university.