Teaching@CUNY

CUNY is vast and complex. As the largest urban university system in the country, CUNY pursues its historical mission to “educate the whole people.” Comprised of eleven Senior Colleges, seven Community Colleges and seven Graduate, Honors and Professional Schools, the university is deeply embedded in the history and the future of the city. Today’s CUNY has been shaped by the communities it serves, and through its history has been challenged to respond by a vocal and resolute student body and committed staff and faculty. As a testimony of the city’s own complexity, campus cultures and even institutional policies vary across location; this can mean a different experience for Graduate Center students as they move from college to college.

CUNY students reflect our city’s richness, but they also face many challenges: most belong to underserved and underrepresented communities; are part of low-income families, working part-time or full-time jobs; or are recent immigrants navigating a new educational system. CUNY students enter the classroom with varying skill sets and levels of preparation. This range of experiences and identities makes CUNY’s classrooms vibrant and interesting places, but it also can make it challenging to engage all students equally. Even the most seasoned and committed faculty struggle to make sure their courses are appropriately responsive to the needs of individual students while also serving the broader curriculum. It’s important that faculty members acknowledge and accept this challenge, and commit to making their classrooms the most inclusive spaces they can be.

CUNY’s classrooms are famously diverse, with the majority of students identifying as Hispanic (31 percent), Black (24 percent) and Pacific Islander (20 percent) as of Fall 2017. While 70 percent of CUNY students are under the age of twenty-five, one classroom will feature students just out of high school learning sitting beside students who may have spent the day caring for their grandchildren. 39 percent of CUNY undergraduates speak a native language other than English and 35 percent were born outside of the U.S. mainland. (For more demographics on CUNY students, check out the Student Data Book from the Office of Institutional Research at http://www2.cuny.edu/about/administration/offices/oira/institutional).

Engaging with diverse communities of learners is not only central to CUNY’s institutional mission, but has an impact on both our teaching experiences and our growth as scholars. Better understanding who students are, how they got to our classrooms, and where they want to go next can greatly enrich our teaching.