Preface
Christine Mangino
Welcome to the eighth volume of Touchstone, Eugenia Maria de Hostos Community College’s scholarly journal of teaching and learning. I had the privilege of authoring the first article in the initial edition of Touchstone (2008) and it is truly an honor to now write this preface. The journal was created at a time when all new faculty were reading Ernest Boyer’s Scholarship Reconsidered as part of the new faculty orientation and discussing the equal importance of teaching, service, and scholarship to faculty’s role in academia. It is apropos for our community college, focused on classroom instruction, to have Touchstone to share our teaching strategies with one another while celebrating our faculty’s successes as educators.
Since the inception of this journal, the Professor Magda Vasillov Center for Teaching and Learning has further integrated these tenets. There is now a group of faculty within the center whose work is focused on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. We have developed the Hostos Teaching Institute, a year-long series of workshops designed to support faculty in their teaching, and the Office of Academic Affairs (OAA) Teaching Project, a more intense application and reflection of pedagogical strategies. Within OAA, we have developed “The Academic Scoop” a monthly online newsletter which serves as a vehicle for sharing useful experiences. The faculty-authored Chalk Talk section is dedicated to highlighting various teaching strategies, and each month a different faculty member shares a unique technique from the Hostos classroom.
Teaching matters. Quoting John Dewey, “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.” A teacher’s job is never stagnant--the world is a dynamic place, each new cohort of students comes to us with new and diverse experiences. We must reflect on what we are doing, how our students are learning, and how to best prepare our students for an ever-changing job market.
There has been much talk nationally about how students are not “college-ready,” but we must shift the paradigm to a more proactive approach, asking instead: “how do we as educators and as an institution become student ready.” These are our students and it is our responsibility to make sure they are successful, to prepare them for the tomorrows they are seeking.
Hostos is a college of passionate and dedicated educators, faculty and staff who are working hard to prepare our students for their tomorrows and to help Hostos strengthen our ability to stand up and say, “We are student ready.” We have many faculty who are conducting action research, including some who have involved students as researchers and even co-presenters at national conferences. Our faculty had over 300 pieces of work either published or presented at conferences in the past year. This is no small feat considering the heavy workload and our faculty’s level of engagement in service to the college and our students. It has been a privilege to get to know our faculty’s work and areas of interest in depth. In my role as Provost, I have the opportunity to read the exemplary articles and books produced here; we have so many faculty doing such high-caliber and interesting—even life-altering—work.
Going forward, we need to identify additional opportunities for sharing these works. Sometimes we are so busy doing our jobs, we rarely have time to engage in conversations around our teaching. Touchstone is one way for us to have these vital dialogues. Enjoy the conversations and thank you to all those who submitted articles and to our editorial review board for making this eighth edition happen. A special thank you to Professor Jason Buchanan for taking on the responsibilities of editor for Touchstone.
Our community has fully embraced the goal of continuous improvement from our strategic plan. By focusing the past five years on examining how we can do what we do better, we are experiencing the outcomes to show we continue to improve. In 2016, we witnessed our largest graduating class to date; we saw the highest three- year graduation rate for Hostos and the highest job placement rates for our career program students. As I reflect on my experiences with Touchstone and the Hostos community, I am proud to have spent my career working at being the best educator I can beside such dedicated professionals. As we continue the work to be “student ready,” I look forward to the next edition of this publication and seeing the progress we will have made as we continue to strive for our students.
Christine Mangino
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Summer 2016
Work Cited
Dewey, J. (1944). Democracy and Education. New York: Macmillan Company. p. 167.