Introduction

Carl James Grindley
Kim Sanabria

The number seven is considered universally propitious. Happily, Touchstone is now in its seventh edition, and this year's faculty journal honors an important land­ mark in the college's history: the 175ch anniversary of Eugenio Maria de Hostos. This year, Hostos was also voted the first of the "Seven Treasures" representing the cultural heritage of his birth place, Mayagüez. The award was yet another recognition of the beliefs and achievements of the pioneering educator and philosopher after who m our college is named.

Respecting the work of those who have gone before us was a hallmark of Hostos’s thought. To honor his legacy in some small way, Touchstone opens with three pieces directly connected with his life and with our college's history. First, Humanities Professor Hernandez gives an overview of Hostos's importance, discussing particularly the massive impact he had through the continent as he opened doors to educational opportunity for the disenfranchised, in particular to women. This year, the college has been honoring his memory in a yearlong series of events and celebrations, and students across the college have been reading his visionary writings.

William Casari, Library Archivist, addresses the importance of preserving our college's collective memory and describes the efforts taken by the library to safeguard the precious records that document the college's birch and history. The accompanying photographs show the ho pes and dreams of the first students at the college, as they enter a disused tire factory in 1970 where the first classes were held, armed with the surety of their determination to succeed. These goals remain unmitigated today, as any student or faculty member at the college will attest.

The Hostos Archives house many of the photos that one of the original faculty members, Professor Magda J. Vasillov, took of the facilities, faculty, and students. Magda, a talented photographer, played a major role at the college until her death in 2006. During the last period of her life she served as chair of the Humanities department and led the college in forward. thinking initiatives such as the Genera l Education competencies. The Center for Teaching and Learning was named for this beloved colleague, and the journal honors her memory.

Since chat first day when students are pictured entering class for the very first time, the process of learning has evolved in ways char were unimaginable at char rime, and pedagogy is incorporating the new possibilities of the online world. We next include three pieces dedicated to the ways in which technology is shaping the educational experience for us all. Professor Aragona, from the Education department, gives an insightful overview of e-learning, and explains how andragogy, the learning behavior of adults, has acquired new meaning in a world where studying can take place in the self. directed environment that technology creates. Simultaneously, the role of the instructor has undergone a perceptible change, and as educators, we are now poised to redefine and reshape the learning experience of our students. Such is the thrust of the next piece, a collaborative report by Professors Seixas and Wolfe from Behavioral and Social Sciences, which describes ways in which the iPad enhances students' motivation and their ability to access resources. Finally, Sherese Mitchell, in her words a former "hesitant educator who ran from change in the area of technology," cells Blackboard the way she has come co feel about its impact on her life.

Touchstone was specifically designed as a forum for presenting personal reflections, scholarly articles, new initiatives in reaching and learning, and reports on classroom innovations. And, as in previous editions of the journal, we are now proud to include an original piece of literature, "Bronx Latin," an enigmatic tale leading to an encounter in the East Academic Complex. English Professor Hubner screeches a veil across the American continent, to disclose characters whose despair and determination, temptations and successes eerily echo emotions and situations that we all recognize.

The role and power of words are compelling copies to all language instructors and particularly so co Professor Wan der, from the Humanities Department's Unit of Modern Languages (French and ltalian). In "Mussolini's Rhetoric," he argues char abstract oratory underpinned Mussolini's transformation from journalist to dictator to world conqueror.

II Duce may have used words co forge fascist thought, bur the thread of the next piece, "Adamantia," is chat words also make conversations, convey dreams, and preserve legacies. Here, Professor Lara· Bonilla assembles a collection of micro stories to delineate her journey co Hostos, from the time during her childhood when she would plead with her grandfather to cell her stories of the Spanish Civil War.

Returning to the present day, we next present four perspectives from mathematics, English, science and engineering. The first two, by Professors Cunningham/Doyle and Steinhoff, respectively, consider the intricacies of assessing the emerging abilities of students who score under the cutoff points of the CUNY Assessment Tests. Recent revision of mathematics assessment instruments has complicated efforts to measure all aspects of students' performance, but available data do provide the opportunity to make the most advisable modifications co class syllabi and practices. In "Assessment of Our Assessment," the make-or- break exam model is brought under scrutiny and a pica is made to reevaluate the ways in which we allow students a say in their education. These are questions that certainly demand our urgent attention.

Yet, the promise of creative pedagogy is on our side. Business Professor Ridley has found that promoting critical chinking, exercising greater focus on what researcher Carol Dweck has called a growth mindset, and experimenting with models such as the flipped classroom all lead to better outcomes among our students. And in a three -way collaboration between professors from the Natural Sciences Department and a representative from Information Technology, we learn about the ways in which quantitative reasoning skills can be: enhanced in an e-portfolio environment when students are prompted to include personal reactions together with their reports on chemical formulae, separation of mixtures, and titration. Self-reflection appears not only to bolster students' self-confidence, burro make far more accurate judgments too.

Seeking a similar level of student engagement, English Professor Zucker structured her Expository Writing class to include a service learning component. She reports on the experience, describing it as her most significant achievement of the academic year, in the following piece. Seemingly, her students were similarly de­ lighted with the experience of participating in the Hostos Garden Market, because their journals revealed that they had learned nor only how co research and document a topic, but also how to best apply critical information about agricultural methods, food distribution, health benefits of local produce, and food justice. Furthermore, their collaboration with Professor Figueroa's Business Communications students was tangible proof of the benefits of working as a team.

Given the recurring symbolism of the number seven, for Nachmanides the number of the natural world, for the Iroquois seven generations of sustainability, and for the Chinese its association with the similar sounding words “arise" and " life," it seems only fitting that our lase piece in this seventh volume of Touchstone should focus once again on our interconnected existence. Arguing vehemently for more responsible ways of thinking about our planet and our place in it, Professor Trachman would doubtless agree with Hostos's argument in Moral Social: ''the first truth co be learned .... and applied throughout is that individuals are a part of humanity and that the natural source and sustenance of each man is society as a whole." We owe it to ourselves, to each other, to our students and to our college to tackle the intractable challenges we face collectively. In this spirit, we offer you, our colleagues, this seventh edition of the journal of the Magda Vasillov C enter for Teaching and Learning.

Special thanks go to the Provost, OAA and the Center for Teaching and Learning for supporting Touchstone; to contributors for sharing their work; and to the dedicated members of the college who worked hard on chis volume: Jason Buchanan, William Casari, Robert F. Cohen, Sherese Mitchell, and Jennifer Tang.

Carl James Grindley Kim Sanabria