PREFACE
Carmen Coballes-Vega, Ph.D.
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Our faculty share their work in this volume in a variety of ways: from the legacy of Hostos to the legacy of Magda Vasillov; from archives to online learning; from iPads to the 3-D Brain; from Birds, Bees, and Frogs to Blackboard; from the Intermittent Search for Words to ESL; from Algebra to the Urban Food Desert; from Assessment to Quantitative Reasoning; and from Bronx Latin co Mussolini's Use of Rhetoric. There is a rich diversity in the topics and threads running through this special volume and how they exemplify teaching and learning at Hostos. Our deepest gratitude to Professors Carl James Grindley and Kim Sanabria and the editorial team for their time and devotion to this volume.
When we reflect on the best reaching faculty at Hostos Community College, we identify individuals who are engaged in a series of deliberate actions including: providing intellectually rigorous opportunities for learning, purposeful planning for instruction, communicating knowledge and content rich lessons, articulating dynamic and complex concepts, challenging dispositions in need of redirection, resting hypotheses and exploring assumptions, sharing articles expressions, critically analyzing decisions and beliefs, and reinforcing or redirecting ideas toward new views or perspectives. These faculty share a common expectation for their students, i.e. cake as much as you can from the education before you and translate the knowledge, skills and dispositions you acquire coward positive act ion for your own growth, development and movement forward to become a productive citizen. As caring educators, the faculty are deeply concerned about each student, and they practice mentoring, modeling, dialogue, and affirmation. Of course, they are also ready to articulate expectations, provide focused feedback, provide redirection, firmly express disappointment as needed, and guide toward positive outcomes.
Hostos faculty participate with students in meaningful opportunities to extend learning. These exemplary faculty also find numerous opportunities to engage students both in and out of the classroom. You will find them connecting students in clinical settings, internships, cheater productions, museum and are exhibitions, media design contests, game-framed learning experiences, service learning, honors colloquia or courses, technology showcases, crave! abroad experiences, e-portfolio development, club activities, and collaborative research. We have been fortunate to have faculty lead students in intensive learning experiences: The International Fringe Theater Festival, the Cuba Study Abroad Tour, the NASA internship at the NASA Huntsville Space Flight Center, the Bronx ST EM Scholars Program, the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation in STEM; clinical rotations at Bronx Lebanon, Montefiore, and Lincoln Hospitals, the Hostos Design Lab with Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Arc (MASS MoCA), National Science Foundation game-framed math and science projects, and others. All of these activities require additional planning as well as our of class time for faculty. In a time when we are very focused nationally on persistence, retention, and graduation, it is extremely critical char our Hos cos faculty know the merits of these learning opportunities. They participate because they know these experiences are assets for Hostos students and can provide transformational change in their lives.
A recent article "How Caring Professors Can Change Lives," in the Chronicle of Higher Education (M ay, 2014), reported on a survey of 30,000 American graduates undertaken by (he Gallup-Purdue Index Report. The survey asked questions about employment, job engagement, and well-being. The results indicated chat graduates '' had double the chances of being engaged in their work and were three times as likely to be thriving if they had connected with a profession on campus who stimulated them, cared about them, and encouraged their hopes and dreams." The study also indicated char these results were found in both private and public university graduates. This evidence is consistent with other studies char have pointed to "caring faculty" as add in ire contributor of why students remember faculty they have come in contact with during their undergraduate experience.
We enhanced the theme of "caring" in the spring of 2014 when we launched the Hostos Teaching Institute, an opportunity for experienced reaching faculty to share their experience with ocher faculty within the college. The faculty who were participants commented on the quality of the ideas that were shared and the positive exchange among the faculty. We are appreciative of those who volunteered to support our new and continuing faculty and expect to continue this initiative in years to come or on an ongoing basis as part of the professional development program.
As we celebrate HOSTOS 175, we are reminded of the philosophy of Hostos' educational philosophy in the following statement: "In one of his journal entries, in Madrid, during the lace 1860s, he wrote: "Si logro aprender, lograré ser." " If I can learn, I can become". Hostos was the perpetual learner, an individual who defined himself in terms of learning" (Hernandez, p. 11-12). For o u r students, the legacy of EL1gcnio Marfa de Hostos is ever present in our faculty and their commitment to teaching and learning. The educational opportunity that our students experience here at Hostos Community College is a true testament to the groundbreaking work of Hostos the man, author, reformer, liberator, and human rights advocate. The achievements of the graduates of 2014 provide a significant and powerful intellectual connection to the educational philosophy and work of Eugenio Maria de Hostos.
WORKS CITED
How caring professors can change lives. (2014, May 16). Chronicle of Higher Education, pp. A3-6.