The English Department at LaGuardia is proud to contribute to the leadership of many key interdisciplinary initiatives that foster growth in our students and faculty.
English Archives Research Project (EARP)
The English Archives Research Project supports faculty members of the English Department who wish to develop and refine courses that take advantage of the historical resources available at the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives.
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Faculty members create syllabi and assignments that improve the writing, critical thinking, and research skills of students by placing them in direct contact with primary sources that students read, analyze, and employ as evidence in their essays.
Each EARP course holds at least one meeting at the Archives in which students are introduced to the analysis of primary source documents. Students are also given a tour of the Archives and introduced to the role of archives in historical research. During the semester, students also visit the Archives on their own to examine additional documents to be used in their research essays, as directed by their particular instructor.
EARP courses also offer faculty the opportunity to develop unusual thematic courses that center on different aspects of the history of New York City. As a result, these courses tend to foster a high degree of student engagement.
The English Archives Research Project was originally conceived in 2003 by Dr. Brian Gallagher, Emeritus Professor of English, in collaboration with Dr. Richard Lieberman, Director of the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives. Over twenty members of the English Department have developed courses under this on-going program.
Contact:
Dr. Stafford Gregoire
718.482.5917
sgregoire@lagcc.cuny.edu
Learning Communities
Learning communities are courses clustered around a common theme and taught to the same cohort of students by a faculty team that share readings and assignments so that students may better understand connections among different disciplines and to learn in an active way with a community of their peers.
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Learning communities are courses clustered around a common theme and taught to the same cohort of students by a faculty team that share readings and assignments so that students may better understand connections among different disciplines and to learn in an active way with a community of their peers. Students in LaGuardia's learning communities are actively engaged in inquiry and analysis and critical and creative thinking; they approach written and oral communication, quantitative and information literacy through teamwork and problem solving. As a result, students who participate in learning communities in their first semester of college are more likely to pass their courses and to stay in college.
Since 1974, the Liberal Arts and Sciences Clusters offer a full-time introductory program in the liberal arts and many speak to the college's immigrant population and its work-related mission by addressing issues of freedom, work, and diversity. Students take a wide variety of courses including Composition I, The Research Paper, Introduction to Philosophy, Theatre, Sociology, Music, Anthropology, Film, and Media Studies in themed clusters with titles such as "Media for the Masses," "Frankenscience," "Fighting for Our Rights," and "Sex and the City."
In the 1990s, LaGuardia developed the First Year Basic Skills Academies in Allied Health, Business and Technology, and Liberal Arts for students who needed both basic skills courses and at least one course in their major, and the ESL Academy Pairs and Clusters, composed of an ESL course and a college level course such as Introduction to Business, Sociology, Oral Communication and Critical Thinking.
Our most recent learning communities are the Quantum Leap Math Academy Clusters: students take Basic Math with such courses as Critical Thinking, Oral Communication and English Composition.
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Contact:
Phyllis van Slyck
718.482.5660
vanph@lagcc.cuny.edu
Writing in the Disciplines (WID)
Writing in the Disciplines is a dynamic and challenging interdisciplinary initiative to support LaGuardia professors as they work to make writing an integral part of their courses.
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Participants engage in a one-year seminar comprising small- and large-group meetings, where they develop a writing-intensive syllabus for one of their courses, build a portfolio that reflects their work throughout the year, and engage with aspects of WID pedagogy such a responding to student writing, collaborative learning, and ESL issues.
Program leadership is distributed among a group of faculty (many of them former WID participants) who devise the syllabus, facilitate the small group process, mentor faculty, and model writing-intensive techniques. The program is also supported by six CUNY Writing Fellows, graduate students from CUNY Graduate Center who work closely with WID participants and carry out special projects such as program assessment, website development, and video production.
As part of LaGuardia's recognition of the importance of writing throughout the curriculum, WID is now tied to outcomes assessment at the institutional level. All capstone courses are now writing-intensive, and students in these classes are required to submit a piece of writing to their ePortfolio, which is then used for program assessment.
The WID program at LaGuardia was started in 1995 by Brian Gallagher, Emeritus Professor of English, who brought together a group of faculty interested in infusing writing throughout the curriculum as a means of improving student learning.
WID at LaGuardia has been growing steadily, and has trained over 200 full- and part-time faculty, recently adding refresher courses for WID graduates of previous years.
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Contact:
Dr. Jim Wilson
718.482.5678
jwilson@lagcc.cuny.edu