SPI Leadership

Luke Waltzer, Project Director
Luke Waltzer is the Director of the Teaching and Learning Center at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he supports GC students in their teaching across the CUNY system and beyond, and works on a variety of pedagogical and digital projects. He previously was the director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Baruch College. He holds a Ph.D. in History from the Graduate Center, serves as Director of Community Projects for the CUNY Academic Commons and Director of the CUNY Humanities Alliance. He is a faculty member in the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Certificate Program and the MA Program in Digital Humanities. He serves on the editorial collective of the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, and has contributed essays to Matthew K. Gold’s Debates in the Digital Humanities and, with Thomas Harbison, to Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki’s Writing History in the Digital Age. Contact at lwaltzer@gc.cuny.edu.

Stephanie V. Love, Project Coordinator
Stephanie V. Love received a Ph.D. in anthropology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) in 2022 and is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis. Her first book project, “Streets of Grievance: Everyday Poetics and Postcolonial Politics in Urban Algeria,” explores the complex ways that the colonial past gets inscribed into urban landscapes and memory practices, exerting a force on postcolonial politics, language, and urbanism in contemporary Algeria. Her research has been funded by the Wenner Gren Foundation, the American Institute for Maghreb Studies, and CUNY’s Urban Studies Core Fellowship. She has published articles in the City & Society, Journal of Language, Identity and Education, Anthropology Now, Current Issues in Language Planning, International Journal of Multicultural Education, and other journals. She was the co-editor (with G. R. Bullaro) of the volume The Works of Elena Ferrante: Reconfiguring the Margins (Palgrave McMillan, 2016). At CUNY, she also coordinated other inclusive and responsive pedagogy initiatives in higher education, including the Carnegie Educational Technology Fellowship and the Heritage Arabic eBook project at the Center for Integrated Language Communities. Contact at slove@gradcenter.cuny.edu.

Şule Aksoy, Director of Curriculum and Research
Şule Aksoy is a postdoctoral researcher at the Teaching and Learning Center at the CUNY Graduate Center. She completed her Ph.D. in College Science Teaching at Syracuse University. Her scholarly work centers on broadening participation in STEM education through enhanced student socialization and high-impact instructional practices. Her dissertation explored the relationship between organizational climate, professional identity, and postsecondary STEM teaching practices. Her teaching experience includes teaching undergraduate physical science courses at Syracuse University and K-16 learners in a botanical garden and private institutions in Istanbul, Turkey. She also served as a teaching mentor for the Graduate School at Syracuse, holding a supervisory role in STEM teaching assistants’ professional development. Contact at saksoy@gc.cuny.edu.

Incubator Facilitators

Şule Aksoy (Computational Methods) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Teaching and Learning Center at the CUNY Graduate Center. She completed her Ph.D. in College Science Teaching at Syracuse University. Her scholarly work centers on broadening participation in STEM education through enhanced student socialization and high-impact instructional practices.

Atasi Das (Community Science), a candidate in the Urban Education program, recently defended her dissertation on research focusing on developing transdisciplinary approaches to critical numeracy. As an educator with over a decade of experience, she promotes liberatory praxis – learning and doing for transformative social change. Atasi has worked in elementary schools as well as in teacher education programs at Brooklyn College and City College, cultivating insight into justice-centered and abolitionist STEM curriculum, assessment, and pedagogy. Outside of academia, she enjoys trying new recipes, biking around the neighborhood, and growing plants in her apartment.

Laurie Hurson is the Assistant Director of Open Education at the Graduate Center’s Teaching and Learning Center where she supports adoption of open educational practices, including teaching with open source educational technologies. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology from the CUNY Graduate Center. Her scholarly work focuses on undergraduates’ learning ecologies, the resource networks that students engage with as they progress through their education.

Workshop Facilitators

Workshop #1: Institute Technologies, with Laurie Hurson

Laurie Hurson is the Assistant Director of Open Education at the Graduate Center’s Teaching and Learning Center where she supports adoption of open educational practices, including teaching with open source educational technologies. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology from the CUNY Graduate Center. Her scholarly work focuses on undergraduates’ learning ecologies, the resource networks that students engage with as they progress through their education.

Workshop #2A: Community Science, with Kendra Krueger

Kendra Krueger is an educator and engineer who believes in the transformative power of science.  ​She has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in electrical engineering (BS Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, MS University of Colorado Boulder) and has industry experience in radio astronomy, photonics, nanofabrication and ceramic sciences. Her transformative teaching philosophy integrates play, mindfulness and intuitive learning with science to allow students to develop not only their analytical thinking but also their emotional and social intelligence.  Currently she serves as the STEM Education and Outreach Manager at CUNY’s Advanced Science Research Center where she oversees field trip and in-school programming along with founding The Community Sensor Lab, a space for DIY community science and advocacy.

Workshop #2B: Computational Methods, with Michelle McSweeney

Michelle McSweeney teaches data visualization at the CUNY Graduate Center and runs the Data Science Domain at Codecademy. Her professional focus is on data literacy and responsible data interpretation. She has two books coming out in the next year, one on the word OK (Bloomsbury Press), and one on the word Data (Oxford University Press), both explore the relationship between technology and language.

Workshop #2C: Early-Research Immersion, with Effie Maclachlan

Effie MacLachlan is the Director of Grants & Research Programs in the CUNY Office of Research. In her current role, she develops, administers, and assesses numerous internal funding programs and professional development initiatives for faculty and students to advance the research goals of the University. Her program assessment activities have led to the co-authorship of several articles on undergraduate research programming at CUNY. She is the Principal Investigator on two Alfred P. Sloan Foundation-funded programs, the CUNY Junior Faculty Research Award in Science and Engineering and the CUNY Summer Undergraduate Research Program. She is also the University Designee to the Public Interest Technology University Network a partnership of colleges and universities convened by New America. Prior to joining CUNY Central Office, she stewarded the establishment of the ALL CITY Foundation, a private nonprofit with an innovative mission to integrate the visual arts and community healthcare. Dr. MacLachlan received her Doctorate in Political Science from the CUNY Graduate Center.

Workshop #3 – Equitable Active Learning in STEM, with Jason Wiles

Jason Wiles is a biology professor at Syracuse University. He also has courtesy appointments in the Department of Science Teaching and the Department of Earth Sciences. His research focuses on student understanding of and attitudes towards evolution and climate change, as well as expanding equity for and diversity among students pursuing careers in biology and other STEM disciplines.

Workshop #4 – Accessibility, with Patrick Smyth

Patrick Smyth is the Postdoctoral Fellow in Humanities Entrepreneurship at the Publics Lab and is Chief Learner at Iota School, an organization focused on accessible technical training, consulting, and infrastructure development. From 2019 to 2021, Patrick coordinated Columbia’s Foundations for Research Computing, a program dedicated to building expertise and community around research computing at the university. Patrick is a blind researcher, developer, and entrepreneur who thinks critically about how infrastructure can create—or lower—barriers to entry in STEM research. In 2022-2023, Iota School will work with Space Telescope Science Institute, the center that performs science operations for the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes, to make web-based scientific outputs more accessible to people with disabilities. GitHub | Twitter | LinkedIn | | Website

Panelists

Panel #1: Teaching Inclusively to Position Students for Success on the Job Market

Robert Domanski is the New York City government’s Director of Higher Education for the Mayor’s Tech Talent Pipeline industry partnership.  Rob oversees the “CUNY 2x Tech” initiative – a $20 million dollar investment in the City University of New York (CUNY) to double the university’s number of Computer Science graduates within 5 years – which has the dual goals of economic development and workforce development: building the local pool of tech talent to grow the NYC tech industry and connecting New Yorkers to high-quality tech jobs. Additionally, Rob oversees the City’s Tech Academic Council, working with the Presidents and Provosts of NYC-based colleges and universities to determine how best to align the Mayor’s goals with the needs of the City’s academic institutions. Rob is also a former professor of both Computer Science and Political Science for the City University of New York.  His academic research focuses on Digital Government, Internet Governance, and the Politics of Algorithms. He has most recently published on the specific subtopics of Algorithmic Bias and Artificial Intelligence from technical, policy, and ethical perspectives.

Biju Parekkadan is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Rutgers University. He oversees a laboratory that specializes in cell and genetic engineering. Since beginning his academic career in 2009, his research has been disseminated in >100 invited lectures (including a TEDx talk), >60 publications in high-impact journals with >8000 citations, and >10 patent applications. He has experience in developing biotech products as a founder of Sentien, a clinical stage pioneer of ex vivo cell therapeutics, as well as advising several companies as a founding member of CellOne Partners. Dr. Parekkadan received his PhD in Chemical and Medical Engineering from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, where he also completed all MD studies. His efforts have been recognized through notable awards including being named Young Mentor of the Year by Harvard Medical School and a Presidential Early Career Scientist from the Office of the White House, the highest honor of an early stage investigator. As a hobby, he enjoys creative writing and is the creator of Legend of Sumeria, his first science-fiction graphic novel.

Sarah Henderson Rosenberg (Hendo), Program Manager for Tech Education for Google NYC, has spent the last ten years at Google building and growing computer science education programs and partnerships, with the vision of democratizing access to tech education and careers. For the last three years, Hendo has led Google NYC’s tech education and workforce partnerships and advocacy efforts to impact hundreds of thousands of underserved students, teachers, and job-seekers. Hendo supports partnerships with over 60 local organizations and institutions, sits as a corporate advisor on many regional tech talent advisory boards (including the NY Jobs CEO Council and Tech Talent Pipeline), and has overseen $10M+ in grants and sponsorships to tech education and workforce efforts. Alongside the campus recruiting team, Hendo’s advocacy has grown Google’s outreach, training, and hiring presence at CUNY dramatically over the last four years. Previously, she managed some of Google’s largest and longstanding CS Education programs, including both the Computer Science Summer Institute and CS First. She was instrumental in the establishment of NYC as the largest Google US Apprenticeship hub, and notably in 2020, she led the office’s COVID-19 volunteer response, facilitating over 1000 volunteers, 7,300 volunteer hours, and $8M in individual philanthropy for NYC. The frameworks and results of Hendo’s work were so impactful that it led to the creation of a national US team undertaking similar efforts in other regions.

Kate Sonka is the Executive Director of Teach Access. She holds a Master’s degree in Bilingual/Bicultural Education and has more than 12 years of experience in higher education. She has worked to improve teaching and learning with technology through course design and support, experiential learning, and training and mentorship for faculty members and students. In exploring how accessibility exists in professional and academic spaces, she helped establish the Teach Access Study Away Silicon Valley program, implemented the Teach Access Faculty Curriculum Development Grant Program, and founded the Accessible Learning Conference at Michigan State University. Kate’s teaching experience includes a first-year writing course for non-native English speakers; a study abroad program about language acquisition and global English in China; a study away program where students explored and met leaders in the film and creative industries in Los Angeles, USA; and a study away program where students engaged with tech companies about accessibility in Silicon Valley, USA.

Panel #2: Student Perspectives on STEM Learning Environments

Lionel Colon (preferred pronouns: he/him) is an incoming graduate student at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who graduated from the City College of New York with a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy. Currently, Lionel is the Coordinator of the Borough of Manhattan Community College’s Science and Technology Entry Program, where he and his team focus on increasing diversity in the STEM fields.

Li Kuan Phang is an environmental engineering Senior of the City College of New York (CCNY). She focused on liberal art during high school and changed her academic direction to STEM in college. The change was a challenging experience, but she managed to overcome it with the help of her STEM professors.

Rusia Lee is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at the CUNY Graduate Center in the lab of Dr. Jill Bargonetti at Hunter College. She has been in the CUNY system since her high school years taking college level courses at City College. She is also an instructor at Hunter College teaching General Biology, Cellular Biology and Biochemistry lab courses. She is excited to be a part of the discussions to benefit CUNY students and their education at the STEM Pedagogy Institute. https://www.linkedin.com/in/rusiahjlee/ Bargonetti Lab Website: http://bargonetti.bioweb.hunter.cuny.edu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=104&Itemid=69

Christopher Shen is a rising senior at CCNY doing a degree in physics with a sub concentration in biophysics. He currently does protein design research with Dr. Ronald Koder in the CDI and plans to use the experience he gains to pursue a career in research and teaching.

Panel #3 – Postsecondary STEM Education for Social Transformation, with Atasi Das, Anna Stetsenko, and Jenn Adams

Jennifer D. Adams is a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair of Creativity and Science and Associate Professor at The University of Calgary. She is the PI of the Creativity, Equity and STEM Lab where she and her team research equity in STEM teaching and learning environments with an emphasis on identity-affirming, anti-deficit, and justice-oriented approaches. She collaborates with scholars across Canada at the lead advancing racial equity in STEM in Canada such as “Securing Black Futures” which seeks to increase the visibility and support the flourishing of Black students in STEM. She is a graduate of the Urban Education program at the Graduate Center, an NSF Early CAREER award recipient and has served on the executive board of the National Association of Research in Science Teaching. Her prior appointments include Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center, CUNY, New York City public schools and the American Museum of Natural History.

Atasi Das, a candidate in the Urban Education program, recently defended her dissertation on research focusing on developing transdisciplinary approaches to critical numeracy. As an educator with over a decade of experience, she promotes liberatory praxis – learning and doing for transformative social change. Atasi has worked in elementary schools as well as in teacher education programs at Brooklyn College and City College, cultivating insight into justice-centered and abolitionist STEM curriculum, assessment, and pedagogy. Outside of academia, she enjoys trying new recipes, biking around the neighborhood, and growing plants in her apartment.

Anna Stetsenko is on the faculty in Psychology and Urban Education at the GC CUNY, with her research situated at the intersection of human development, philosophy, and education/pedagogy, with particular interest in topics of agency and social transformation. Her works advance activist agendas for social justice and equality with connections to radical pedagogy and critical projects of resistance/activism. This work has culminated in the Transformative Activist Stance approach with implications for pedagogy of daring (The Transformative Mind: Expanding Vygotsky’s Approach to Development and Education, Cambridge University Press, 2017). http://annastetsenko.ws.gc.cuny.edu/https://www.gc.cuny.edu/people/anna-stetsenko visit www.academia.edu and https://www.researchgate.net/ for recent publications. editor: https://culturalpraxis.net/ and https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/hmca20