BRESI Community Members in Conversation
Members of the BRESI community discuss their projects and hopes for their impact on society.
GRISEL Y. ACOSTA | VAN C. TRAN | TIM AUBRY | MILENA CUELLAR & REEM JAAFAR | VIVIANA RIVERA BURGOS | LILI SHI | MILA BURNS
MAURICE VANN | ANDREA FRANCIS | JULIA GOLDSTEIN & KRISTY CLEMENTINA PEREZ | JADE ROBERTSON | JAYASHREE KAMBLE
ANNA D’SOUZA | PUNITA BHANSALI & ANURADHA SRIVASTAVA | LISETTE ACOSTA CORNIEL | CALVIN JOHN SMILEY
Grisel Y. Acosta, Professor, Department of English, Bronx Community College
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I am a full-time professor at Bronx Community College, where I teach Latino literature and creative writing in the English Department. I am also a Creative Writing Editor for the Chicana/Latina Studies Journal, the author of the poetry book Things to Pack on the Way to Everywhere, and editor of the Routledge anthology Latina Outsiders Remaking Latina Identity. My mom is Cuban, and my father was Colombian; he passed away four years ago. They were both community leaders in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago and their work inspires much of what I do, as do the punk and house music movements, and my desire to dismantle white supremacy in educational spaces.
Where were you when you found out you won your BRESI grant? How would you describe your feelings upon hearing the announcement?
I’m not sure where I was when I learned that my grant was approved, but I do remember thinking, “Now I actually have to pull this off!” I was excited to get started. I have a wide-ranging educational background: my BA is in journalism, with a minor in film; I have a master’s in education; and my Ph.D. in English focuses on race and environment in Latino literature. My feeling is that this project brings all these different aspects of my studies and my career together. I was excited to travel to Chicago, visit Logan Square, and talk with the people who made it one of the most diverse spaces of my youth. I was excited to use film as a medium again, as I hadn’t returned to that in years. Overall, I’m still as excited as I’m currently still working on this project. Read More
Van C. Tran, Associate Professor of Sociology and International Migration Studies at CUNY Graduate Center
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I am an Associate Professor of Sociology and International Migration Studies at CUNY Graduate Center. I am a sociologist of race, ethnicity, and migration, with a focus on the integration of immigrants and their children into U.S. society. I am a CUNY alumnus of Hostos Community College and Hunter College, so I have had the privilege of being part of CUNY for over two decades.
Describe your BRESI project. How would you describe your feelings when you found out you won your BRESI grant?
My colleague Na Yin (Associate Professor of Economics, Baruch College) and I received a BRESI research grant to conduct a pen-and-paper survey on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health among low-income Chinese elders in Flushing, Queens. This is a uniquely vulnerable population due to the rise in anti-Asian violence during the pandemic. Yet their experiences are not captured by most surveys on health, including the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS)—the official source of health data in the U.S. since 1957. Our project seeks to fill this gap.
I was delighted that BRESI has chosen to support this research, given its significance to the aging Asian American community in New York City. Read More
Tim Aubry, Professor of English and Department Chair at Baruch College
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I have been an English Professor at Baruch since 2003, and I am now chair of the department. I teach classes in contemporary U.S. literature and criticism, great works of literature, and writing.
Tell us about your project.
With support from the BRESI grant, I created a new course, Essentials of Publishing aimed at addressing the lack of diversity in the publishing industry, and supporting efforts to increase representation, while creating career opportunities for undergraduates in the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences.
According to a 2020 New York Times article, 85% of people who acquire and edit books in the United States are white. This lack of diversity inevitably impacts what kinds of articles and books get published and by whom. Baruch College, one of the most diverse colleges in the nation, and located in downtown Manhattan—the heart of the U.S. publishing industry—is well-positioned to help confront the industry’s homogenous makeup. Read More
Milena Cuellar and Reem Jaafar, Professors of Mathematics at LaGuardia Community College
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Milena: I’m originally from Colombia. I joined LaGuardia in 2012, and that’s when I met Reem, who is originally from Lebanon. We both grew up facing difficult social and political circumstances, which has instilled perseverance and grit in us.
Reem: I joined LaGuardia two years before Milena did, and we both started working together on the reforms of developmental math around 2015. During that time, Milena led the design of the Statway course at LaGuardia, and I was the co-director of the Supplemental Instruction program. We have been able to combine our expertise and create something that truly made a difference for our students.
Tell us about your project.
Our project focuses on utilizing innovative analytics to examine student success metrics and measure the racial equity achievement gaps in gateway courses in mathematics. These courses are frequently perceived as obstacles, especially for historically disadvantaged groups such as Black and Hispanic/Latinx students.
The main objective is to gain a comprehensive understanding of how different racial groups are represented in the success rates of these courses. Through this research, we aim to uncover the influence of traditional math teaching methods on the achievement of Hispanic/Latinx and Black students. We will then use these insights to guide initiatives that address and minimize equity gaps, fostering more equitable classroom experiences. Read More
Viviana Rivera Burgos, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Baruch College
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Baruch College, where I teach Latino Politics and Race and Ethnicity in American Politics. Much of my research is inspired by the politics of Puerto Rico, where I grew up and went to college, and its unique relationship with the US.
Tell us about your project.
This project is the starting point for a multi-year, multi-institution effort to create and sustain the first academic center for public opinion research in Puerto Rico. BRESI has afforded me the opportunity to include CUNY as a partner institution in this project, along with the University of Michigan and the University of Puerto Rico, the latter of which will house the newly established Puerto Rico Public Opinion Laboratory.
Describe one of your major milestones to date.
As of July 2023, we have finished designing and field-testing a survey of the social and political attitudes of Puerto Ricans living on the island, and hope to launch the full survey in the fall of 2023 on a nationally representative sample.
Where were you when you found out you won your BRESI grant?
I don’t remember exactly where I was, but I do remember it was so nice to receive this great news in the aftermath of my father’s passing. We loved talking politics together, and I remember thinking “he would’ve loved to hear about this project.”
How do you hope this project will have an overall impact on society?
I hope this project offers the public, scholars, and policymakers alike a rigorous understanding of the preferences and needs of the Puerto Rican public, at a time when the island is undergoing deep changes and overcoming compounding crises.
Lili Shi, Associate Professor, Director of Speech Communication, Dept of Communications and Performing Arts, Kingsborough Community College
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I am Lili Shi, a professor of communication studies (yay, I was just promoted to full in June) at the Department of Communications and Performing Arts of Kingsborough Community College. I am a former international student from China, a first-generation immigrant to New York City, a researcher of Brooklyn Chinatown women and their communities, and a mother of two young children living in Staten Island.
Tell us about your project.
My BRESI project is about the unique dynamics of identity formation and community organizing that happened virtually on WeChat, a China-based social medium, among Chinese immigrant mothers in Sunset Park Chinatown during the pandemic. I hope to delineate the ways that these moms created important diasporic online spaces of survival facing covid crises and Asian Hate. Read More
Mila Burns, Summer Chair/Assistant Professor – Department of Latin American and Latino Studies, Lehman College
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I am originally from Brazil and have lived in New York for the past 15 years. I teach at Lehman College and live in the Bronx. I love living in the city, enjoy biking to work, and feel lucky to have so many brilliant students. I am also de Associate Director at the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at the Graduate Center.
Tell us about your project.
The Trilingual Certificate Program in Latino Studies is a fully online certificate open to the general public. There are no prerequisites and all classes are offered in three languages: English, Spanish and Portuguese. That allows people from other countries in Latin America to apply, attend online classes and complete the credits necessary to the certificate from their home countries, even if they do not have English proficiency. For Lehman students in all fields, it offers the possibility of adding to their expertise the knowledge of a community that is, today, one of the most important intellectual, political, and economic forces in the United States. Read More
Maurice Vann, Assistant Professor, Social Work Department, Academic Director of Campus Honors, Lehman College
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I am Dr. Maurice Vann, an Assistant Professor in the Social Work Department at Lehman College, specializing in forensic social work, social work policy, and social justice issues. My research focuses on leveraging computational social sciences and emerging technologies to address critical social challenges within urban communities. In 2018, I attended the Summer Institute for Computational Social Sciences (SICSS) which increased my interest in the nexus of coding, emerging technologies, and social welfare. Currently, I serve as the Academic Director of the Lehman Campus Honors Programs and hold a dual appointment in the Social Welfare Department at the City University of New York, Graduate Center.
I am also the principal investigator of the Credible Messengers Justice Center (CMJC) grant, a program funded by the New York City Department of Probation, which centers on the use of Credible Messengers as crucial intermediaries for community-based peacebuilding initiatives.
Tell us about your project.
My research project aims to evaluate the impact of the Oculus Quest 2 and its simulations on homelessness and racism in enhancing critical skills like anti-racism, empathy, critical thinking, and social activism among current and former students at Lehman College’s Social Work Department. With the support of the BRESI grant funding, we will conduct a 4-week follow-up survey to gather a third data point, facilitating our study. We recruited 100 participants from the BSW and MSW programs, randomly assigning them to either the experimental group using the Oculus Quest 2 or the control group. Read More
Andrea Francis, Professor of Accounting, LaGuardia Community College
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I’m originally from Cape Town, South Africa, where I grew up under the Apartheid regime and eventually witnessed the transition to a fledgling democracy. I moved to New York 17 years ago and worked at Deloitte in public accounting before transitioning to academia. I’ve been teaching at LaGuardia Community College for 14 years and have led numerous college-wide and departmental initiatives during that time.
Tell us about your project.
The Accounting Program DEI Accelerator at LaGuardia is a three-phase model where a faculty member identifies accounting majors from historically excluded racial and ethnic groups and provides guidance and coaching for scholarships, internships, and professional development opportunities. The Accelerator’s sustainable framework identifies participants, catalogs opportunities on and off-campus, and offers information sessions, workshops, and supports for participants to access opportunities. The Accelerator ultimately aims to change the common narrative about who is and isn’t supposed to be an accountant. Read More
Dr. Julia Goldstein and Dr. Kristy Clementina Perez, Co-creators of Talking About Race faculty workshop series
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Dr. Julia Goldstein: I am the Associate Director of Baruch’s Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute, where I work to support active, inclusive, communication-intensive teaching and learning at Baruch College. I am passionate about helping faculty develop their craft as educators to facilitate deep and empowering learning experiences for our students. In addition to pedagogy and curriculum development, my background is in Theatre and Performance Studies, and I continue to teach in that area as well.
Dr. Kristy Clementina Perez:
I serve as the Director of the Percy E. Sutton SEEK Program at Baruch College where I have the privilege of working with students from the start of their college journey and beyond. Prior to joining Baruch College, I served as high school English teacher at my alma mater at Perth Amboy High School in New Jersey. I am a proud first-generation college graduate and a CUNY alum from Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College. I am a social justice educator and life-long learner who loves working with students. Read More
Jade Robertson, Assistant Professor, Department of Mass Communications, Creative and Performing Arts and Speech
Tell us a little about yourself.
I am an Assistant Professor of Dance and Media Technology at Medgar Evers College. I’m also a dancer, choreographer, film director and entrepreneur.
Tell us about your project.
Gold Sphere [is] a mixed-media-virtual reality video research project and interactive exhibit that uses motion capture technology to create a universe where Black girls can connect with ancestry, spirituality, and dance. After the death of Breonna Taylor in 2020, and while being stuck in quarantine in my mother’s home, I began searching for ways that I could use my imagination as a tool of liberation against oppression and white supremacy. Being a Black woman, artist, and educator, constantly means looking for innovative ways to create, make and teach things that are culturally relevant and empowering to myself and students. When the reality became too much to handle, I researched escapism and yearned to create narratives I had the power to control in life and in death. Born out of this frustration, in 2020, I produced the superhero dance film. Read More
Jayashree Kamble, Professor, Department of English, LaGuardia Community College
Tell us a little bit about yourself
I’m a Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College, where I teach composition as well as literature courses. My research area is romance narratives in popular fiction and other media and I currently serve as the President of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (iaspr.org). I am the author of Creating Identity: The Popular Romance Heroine’s Journey to Selfhood and Self-Presentation (Indiana University Press, 2023) and one of the co-editors of the Routledge Research Companion to Popular Romance (2021). My first monograph was Making Meaning in Popular Romance Fiction: An Epistemology (2014).
Tell us about your project
My BRESI-supported project, “BIPOC Writers, Editors, and Novels: The Missing Chapters in the Story of Mass-Market Romance,” continues my work on Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) contributions to the mass-market romance novel industry, which I began in 2021 with an ACLS/Mellon grant. In addition to helping fill a lacuna in pop culture studies when it comes to the history of BIPOC editors and writers in romance publishing, BRESI has given me space to conceive of units in literature courses. Thanks to BRESI-funded time, I can update courses with novels and other data to show the diverse student body at LaGuardia their own communities within this sub-genre of popular fiction. Read More
Anna D’Souza, Associate Professor and Provost Innovation Fellow for Inclusive Teaching, Baruch College
Tell us a little bit about yourself
I am an Associate Professor at the Austin W. Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College (CUNY) where I teach economic analysis and international development courses to our creative and hard-working undergraduate and masters’ students. I’m a development economist who examines food security, shocks, conflict, governance, and trade. I was born in India and raised in Long Island, NY. And I was inspired to study poverty and inequities during my childhood visits to India. I am deeply committed to the mission of CUNY and am grateful to have been part of this community for 9 years now.
Tell us about your project
DEI Fridays engage faculty, staff, and students in a collaborative effort to deepen our shared understanding and to build community around our shared humanity. The program aims to improve the campus climate around issues of equity, inclusion, and justice and to equip participants with knowledge and tools to engage in social transformation in their communities beyond Baruch. It was started by the Marxe School DEI committee in November 2022. The topics have been curated to cover individual biases and prejudices; individual sense of belonging at Baruch and CUNY; and structural and institutional discriminatory policies, procedures and practices. Importantly, we have intentionally centered issues of importance to historically marginalized, underrepresented, and Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and Asian communities and have chosen speakers that represent these groups. Most sessions begin with a welcoming, the reading of community agreements, and a brief breathing or guided meditation exercise to help participants enter the session with intention. Then, there is a presentation of a topic (typically in an interactive interview format), followed by break-out sessions, share-outs, and informal discussion. Read More
Punita Bhansali and Anuradha Srivastava, professors of Biological Sciences and Geology at Queensborough Community College
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Punita Bhansali: I’m an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences & Geology and the Director of the Medical Assistant A.A.S. Degree Program at Queensborough Community College (QCC). I am a neurobiologist by training, but in my time at CUNY, I’ve developed a huge interest in healthcare and creating opportunities for students that promote academic success and professional development.
Anuradha Srivastava: I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and Geology and the Director of the A.S in Public Health Program at Queensborough Community College. I am a public health professional whose interest extends to my teaching as well as research. I am very interested in promoting Health Equity and thus improving health outcomes for marginalized populations. For this, I want to train the future healthcare workforce and become the change they want to see in this sector.
Tell us about your project.
Across the United States, racial and ethnic minority groups are at higher risk for poor health outcomes compared to their white counterparts. The goal of this project has been to create student internship opportunities aimed at improving racial health equity. We have developed partnerships with various organizations in New York City where students have participated in activities such as community outreach and education, patient navigation, and promoting preventative care. An additional mission of this project has been to spread awareness about racial health inequity within the CUNY community through a seminar series titled The Impact Of Racial Disparities On Health Outcomes. Read More
Lissette Acosta Corniel, Assistant Professor of Ethnic and Race Studies, Borough of Manhattan Community Colleges
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I am an Assistant Professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College in the Department of Ethnic and Race Studies. My research area is slavery, gender, and resistance in early colonial Hispaniola, what is today is the Republic of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Tell us about your project.
Black Studies Across the Americas (BSAA) is a faculty-student research mentorship program that pairs faculty from disciplines that traditionally do not teach Ethnic and Race Studies, such as Business, Math, and Science with faculty from our department to collaborate and develop Open Educational Resources related to Afro-descending communities and are also created based on the interest and skills of the student mentees. Faculty and student researchers also collaborate with leaders from the Afro-descending communities that they are conducting research about. BSAA was first funded by the President’s Fund for Excellence and Innovation (PFEI) supported by the MacKenzie Scott Foundation. Read More
Calvin John Smiley, Associate Professor of Sociology, Hunter College
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I am an associate professor of sociology at Hunter College. My research broadly focuses on issues of social justice, inequality, and race. More specifically, a large part of my research has involved interrogating the U.S. criminal legal system and its impact on low-income urban residents. My recent book, Purgatory Citizenship: Reentry, Race, and Abolition is a qualitative study of understanding how individuals exiting carceral spaces navigate and negotiate this process while having diminished legal rights and amplified social stigmas. In the end, I argue that individuals must do reentry as an active ritual and ceremony and that if we want to create safer communities, we need to focus on an abolitionist praxis that eradicates systems of subjugation and violence and replace with systems of care. Beyond this, my second monograph, coming out in May 2024 explores the #defund movement as a particular moment within a longer legacy of struggle for racial, gender, and class liberation. Further, I’m currently working on a book project with a colleague that explores how individuals utilize social media in their reentry process as we live in an ever-increasing technological world. Finally, what I am most passionate about is the work I do with system-impacted youth in New York City as I facilitate restorative justice programming and instruct Introduction to Sociology as college credited course within the facilities.
Tell us about your project.
My project entitled “From Prison to College” is based on the work I do within NYC’s youth detention centers. Here, I instruct introduction to sociology for earned college credits through CUNY’s College Now program that allows NYC high school students to take CUNY courses. Research in the areas of incarceration and education, highlight that education is a vital component to decrease recidivism and further criminal legal contact. Therefore, bringing this opportunity NYC’s most vulnerable youth is an important public policy issue. I utilized my BRESI grant to create custom introduction to sociology textbooks as standard textbooks are typically costly and/or out-of-touch with the population of students learning. Here, I wanted to create a book that brought sociological theory in a way that is both engaging and relatable as well as focus on topics and scholars that have been historically ignored or downplayed in the discipline to “decolonize” the course. Additionally, I created a custom 52 card deck of playing cards. Here, cards have both restorative justice and sociological terms as well as several Black/Latinx/Indigenous scholars and activists. The purpose of the cards is to create a sort of osmosis as many youths play cards frequently so these cards can be both a form of recreation and learning, simultaneously. Finally, the remainder of these funds helped purchase school supplies such as pens and notebooks that are following secure facilities in New York as the youth do not have access to technology and other learning tools that many 21st century college students use. I was also able to host three different panels about the need for education in carceral settings. Read More