Community Members

Hello all! My name is Joshua Belknap, and I am the ESL Lab Coordinator at BMCC, and I am also an English Adjunct Lecturer at City Tech. I am interested in OER for several reasons. With the help of the wonderful OpenLab folks at BMCC (Hi Jean and Syelle!), I’ve been creating an OpenLab site for the ESL Lab, which will offer resources for multilingual students and Academic Literacy and Linguistics faculty. I also want to continue to use free texts in the courses I teach, so I’m always eager to learn more about what OER materials are available to ESL and writing instructors.

Hello! I am Yan and I teach art history. I am interested in this faculty learning community because I learn best from others’ experiences and I enjoy talking to colleagues who are also interested in pedagogy. I look forward to meeting all of you! I have discovered that I do not really read books from beginning to end anymore, only chapters that are relevant to my interests. For this reason, I find myself willing to wait for the cinematic versions of books before I read them.

Hello! I’m Adrienne, I teach in the English Department here at BMCC. I’ve been experimenting a little bit with creating assignments that use different modalities besides the standard essay format, and I’m hoping to work on this a little bit more here. Renewable assignments are also something I have an interest in. The pandemic really led me to start rethinking and restructuring some of my classes as I had been mostly using the same assignments and syllabi for nearly a decade. I’m also excited about a seminar series I am participating  in with BMCC and Hunter faculty that focuses on addressing issues related to racism, identity, and mental health in the classroom. Like this project, it also focuses on creating new assignments and pedagogical approaches. This is the first summer that I have not had teaching or tutoring obligations, and I am using my time to focus on journalistic assignments. One of which involves reviewing a new book about the queer history of the suffragettes. It’s called Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement. I plan to spend some of this summer on the beach on Long Beach Island and exploring the museums of Philadelphia and Washington DC.

Hi Everyone! I am an associate professor of communication. I regularly teach public speaking and intercultural communication. My interest in open pedagogy peaked after I participated in workshops with Jean and others on course redesign and OER texts. After spearheading the publication of OER text in public speaking in my department I want to go the go the next step of guiding my students to be co-creators of course content. Many of my students in intercultural communication spend a lot of time reading, analyzing and writing term papers that could be useful for future students. So, I hope this workshop helps me to accomplish that. This summer I will read a memoir by one of my department colleagues, Alvin Eng.

Hi all, I decided to enroll in the OP seminar this Summer to get a better understanding on how to improve my class to better serve the students. I currently teach CIS 100 (Computer Applications). In the month of July, I’m planning to travel to enjoy some time off. Upon my return, I will spend some time working on my shell, utilizing the knowledge gain from this seminar.

Hello there! As an assistant professor of speech, I continue to seek ways to engage my students online. My next project is being available and making my course accessible to students online. Contributing to the broader community by making my courses available is an exciting challenge and opportunity.

Hi! I’ve been participating in the PD offerings here at BMCC for the last three years and they’ve been transformative in my teaching. I can’t say enough about them. BMCC is a wonderful place and I can’t say enough about it. My area is theater. I am a generalist, not easily placed into a category.  I have two great loves; Shakespeare & Electricity. Both of them move me and fascinate me in their power and mystery. Currently, I am reviewing the NEC chapter 500, which relates to Entertainment Wiring. Dry stuff but ultimately very informative.I am also studying for my OSHA 30 certificate; mostly this means slogging through online courses but there’s a lot of reading and testing as well. In addition, I am retaking my forklift and MEWP (condor, aerial platform) certifications. Also, a rigging class as well as retaking the Entertainment Technician Certification Program Entertainment Electrician test prep class. On a more “funnerer” note, I am also in a Physical Movement class at HB Studios called The Art of  Transformation, taught by Janice Orlandi, in which we create a Chekhovian character utilizing Michael Chekhov’s “psycho-physical” exercises and approach to acting, as outlined in his book, TO THE ACTOR. As an educator, I am taking as many of these development offerings as I can handle. I love them. I grow from each and look forward to figuring out how to incorporate them. My goal for the summer is to fully understand and intergrate the Gradebook in Blackboard into my teaching practice, something I have not yet been able to accomplish. In addition, I am reading a ton of science fiction, particularly by Poul Anderson. I am a daily practitioner of yoga, both yin and vinyasa.

Hello! I just started working with jean this spring, and I’ve also been working with the Office of Library Services to launch CUNY’s Pressbooks installation. After working for many years in educational publishing I am glad now for the ways that working with OER brings me into communities of educators and learners, like this one. Among the books I am looking forward to reading this summer are Either/Or by Elif Batuman, the sequel to The Idiot, and Peach Blossom Spring by Melissa Fu, a debut novel by an old friend of mine.

Hi there! As you all know, I’m the open knowledge librarian here at BMCC, and this I believe . . . Knowledge is a public good and a human right. We need to continually develop and defend the knowledge commons so that every human being has access to humanity’s accumulated knowledge. I strive to create spaces that celebrate, spark, and engage the potential of every human being to create knowledge. So many of our students have been taught to be knowledge consumers; at BMCC, they can learn to claim space and raise their voices up as knowledge creators. My summer book list is too long to include! But I’m very much looking forward to N.K. Jemison’s Broken Earth Trilogy (how have I not read this already?!?). So happy to be in community with everyone here and look forward to learning with you!