Inquirer Fall 2025 Issue

Please check out the Fall 2025 issue of the Inquirer, a faculty journal devoted to teaching, learning, and scholarship at BMCC. The Inquirer gives us an opportunity to hear from our peers about their experiences and insights, and is complemented by the Inquirer Talks series of presentations by Inquirer authors.

The Fall 2025 issue leads with a submission from one of our students at Otisville. While we know much about our students, sometimes they can write things that surprise even the most seasoned of us. Tony Acevedo’s piece was that for us. You’ll also find another thoughtful and well-documented look at our students’ mental health from Hardaye (Sharie) Hansen and Michael McGee, who in this issue consider feelings that cause imposter syndrome for some students, how we as instructors can recognize it and how we as an institution can take steps to mitigate and prevent it. These two pieces are followed by two additional pieces about seeing and hearing our students, one from Brian Lorio and Virginiya DiDonato on student storytelling and a BMCC collaboration with The Moth and one from Kelly Rodgers on ways to respond to our students that is not “colorblind” and that takes into consideration the “what is” of their lived experience.

We also have an article in this issue that defines and clarifies what academic freedom really means. Written by the Academic Freedom Committee of the Academic Senate, this piece is timely and important for all of us. Elizabeth (Betsy) Wissinger’s piece inspired us to look forward to the intellectual depth we can find in a full-year sabbatical, and Brett Wysel’s contribution helps us to think about how to create boundaries in between! We complete this issue with a collage of quotes compiled by Geoff Klock about the nature of things, the role of art in our lives, and the ways we alter our thoughts and our world with what we accept and what we do not.

Many thanks to all our contributors! And a special thank you as well to Rob Gizis in Public Affairs for the Inquirer design. 

Comments and questions can be directed to editors, Holly Messitt, English, and Hollis Glaser, Speech, Communication, and Theater Arts. Holly will be stepping down this year to focus on her role as co-chair of the Middle States Accreditation Self-Study, and Hollis will be joined by returning co-editor Elizabeth Wissinger, Social Science and Human Services.   

You can find the Inquirer, Vol. 32 on the BMCC OpenLab:  Inquirer – A journal devoted to teaching, learning and scholarship at BMCC.