BWRC Breakfast Talk May 10

The Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center is pleased to announce another Breakfast Talk!

What’s There Now and What Might Be Coming: A Look at Land Use along the Brooklyn Waterfront
Richard Bearak, Director, Land Use, Brooklyn Borough President’s Office

Brooklyn Borough Hall’s director of land use, Richard Bearak, will offer a comprehensive look at the Brooklyn waterfront, speaking of what has changed during the Borough Presidency of Marty Markowitz and what changes will occur on the waterfront in the future.

DETAILS:
Friday May 10th
8:30am to 10:00am
Room N119
Free and open to the public!

Find more details and register at the BWRC website.

Collaborative Meeting, Collaborative Strategies

On Friday February 22 we held our third annual combined meeting of the City Tech General Education Committee and our Living Lab Seminar Fellows. Once again it was an exciting and productive opportunity for collaboration. We focused on small group discussions of questions that face both initiatives right now, centering on the topic of dissemination. How do we promote, share, and collaborate with faculty in our own departments and across the college to disseminate the work of the Gen Ed Committee and the Living Lab project? How can we institutionalize our lessons learned, and continue to learn with and from each other as we strive to improve our students’ educational experiences?

As part of the ongoing conversation about these important issues we thought it would be useful to all to post the notes taken during the meeting here. Please feel free to peruse them, and to use them as a jumping off point for your own conversations with colleagues!

During the first part of the meeting, faculty groups discussed the attributes of 1st and 3rd year students at City Tech and relevant General Education Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs). This year the Living Lab Seminar Fellows are working on strategies for their 1st and 3rd year courses.
Discussion 1 notes from all groups

During the second half of the meeting, the same faculty groups answered and discussed questions about the work of the collegewide General Education and Assessment Committees and the Living Lab Project, with a focus on strategies to further disseminate and implement these initiatives.
Discussion 2 notes from all groups

BWRC Sponsors Biking in Brooklyn Conference

On Friday March 22, the Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center will host a half-day conference on the history, culture, and future of biking in our namesake borough. The conference will bring together local authors, business people, planners and advocates in a conversation about what is happening on our streets and why it matters to Brooklyn and New York City. Hope to see you there!

Bikes on the Brooklyn Waterfront Conference

Call for Second-Year Faculty Fellows

UPDATE: Our call for second-year faculty fellows is closed for this year. Please watch for news about their work, and consider applying to join us as a third-year fellow in Fall 2012.

New York City College of Technology of the City University of New York

A Living Laboratory: Redesigning General Education for a 21st-Century College of Technology
Title V Grant supported by the United States Department of Education

GENERAL EDUCATION SEMINARS — Spring 2012

Second-Year Seminar Description
Faculty Fellows will participate in an intensive seminar during the Spring 2012 semester aimed at exploring innovative pedagogical approaches and incorporating them into courses to be offered during the Fall 2012 semester. During the second year of the seminar, Fellows will be expected to share their work with colleagues throughout the college through a series of public workshops, events, and reports.

This seminar will concentrate particularly on the second year of the student experience at our College, a critical year for our students that focuses on collaborative assignments and projects, and associate degree capstones.

Among the questions seminar participants will consider are these:

  • What changes can we make to the second-year experience that will not just prepare our students to succeed at City Tech, but also support creative, original, and critical thinking?
  • How can we use one of City Tech’s greatest assets — its location within the “living laboratory” of the downtown Brooklyn waterfront — to create hands-on learning opportunities with our students?
  • How can we use social media and open-source digital platforms to customize learning experiences for our students that will make them more engaged with, and contribute to, the intellectual fabric of our College?
  • And how can we find ways to make that intellectual fabric more visible to our own community and to the wider public?

As seminar participants consider these and other questions, they will explore a variety of possible ways in which the second-year experience at City Tech might become a culminating moment of transformation for students and for the professors who teach and learn alongside them.

Compensation
Faculty Fellows will receive 3-credits of release time during the Spring 2012 semester. Work done as part of this project is vital service to the College as it reshapes its curriculum.

Eligibility
To take part in the seminar, faculty must be:
– full time.
– teaching a second-year course in fall 2012.
– available on Fridays to participate in grant activities.
– willing to work in a highly collaborative environment.
– willing to participate fully on an open digital platform (OpenLab).*
-willing to attend an OpenLab training workshop prior to the Spring semester (choice of dates TBD).
– able to make a two year commitment (December 2011 through January 2014).
– approved by their department chair.

Application
To apply, please complete the application form.

Application Deadline: 12pm, October 3, 2011

Further Information
Please contact Julia Jordan, Acting Director of the Faculty Commons, at jjordan@citytech.cuny.edu or x5637 if you have questions or need additional information.

Welcome to the Living Lab in Action!

Brooklyn BridgeHow can learning be more dynamic using Movement, Place, Time, Talk?

One of the largest grant-funded initiatives on campus, this project aims to redesign general education at City Tech by using our unique neighborhood as a Living Laboratory. Learn more about our current work, future opportunities, and what the project will mean to you.

Students, Faculty, and Staff are welcome.

Date: Friday, September 23, 2011
Venue: A632 / Faculty Staff Lounge
Time: 10:30am – Noon

RSVP: facultycommons@citytech.cuny.edu

Download the poster