Our group includes Joe Ugoretz (English), Rachel Theilheimer (Early Childhood Education), Suzanne Schick (Speech, Theater and Communication), Sharona Levy (Developmental Skills), and Rafael Corbalan (Modern Languages). Bill Friedheim (History) acts as an unofficial (and welcome!) consultant.

We meet regularly to discuss our projects and the scholarship of teaching generally. We also meet and consult with our colleagues from the other CUNY VKP campuses.

Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) was founded in 1963 and opened in 1964 as a small, primarily business-oriented community college offering programs aimed at the mid-town business community. During the next two decades, the mission of the College changed in response to the advent of the City University's open admissions policy in 1970 and in response to an emergence of new technologies and changes in business and industry. Open admissions significantly extended higher education opportunity to thousands of students, many of them non-traditional.

After BMCC relocated in 1983 to its new building at 199 Chambers Street, the programs of the College became more diversified and reflected many of the emerging new technologies. BMCC now offers a wide range of degree programs including Accounting, Allied Health Sciences, Business Administration, Business Management, Computer Programming and Operations, Computer Science, Corporate and Cable Communications, Early Childhood Education, Engineering Science, Human Services, Liberal Arts, Mathematics, Multimedia Programming and Design, Nursing, Office Automation and Operations, Science, Small Business Entrepreneurship and Writing and Literature, as well as many non-degree programs in Adult and Continuing Education.

Consistent with the mission of City University to preserve academic excellence and extend higher educational opportunity to a diversified urban population, Borough of Manhattan Community College deems its mission as providing general, liberal arts, and career education, as well as transfer programs, relevant to the needs, interests and aspirations of our students, along with continuing education for adults of all ages. The College is committed to offering quality education in a pluralistic urban environment, to fostering excellence in teaching, to facilitating the enhancement of learning, and to sustaining full access to higher education for those who seek fulfillment of personal, career or socioeconomic goals. BMCC is also committed to providing collaborative programs and services responsive to the educational, cultural and recreational needs of the community. (From the BMCC Fact Book)

199 Chambers Street New York,  NY  10007 / Contact: Joe Ugoretz / Phone:212-220-8297

Rafael Corbalan
The objective of this project is to improve the teaching of a foreign language through the use of new technologies and to assess the students' progress during the semester

Sharona A. Levy
What do the textual annotations made by developmental reading students reveal about students' reading process? Can they can be used diagnostically? Do they help students become metacognitively aware of their own reading?

Suzanne C. Schick
I will teach one of the units of my class in a traditional, lecture-type way. For another unit, I will use new media to facilitate a more student-centered, interactive style of teaching. I will then survey the students to see what they see as the advanta

Rachel Theilheimer
Combining interview data and student work, I'm hoping to trace students' understandings about early childhood education during an introductory course at the community college level.

Joseph Ugoretz
In my online course, Science Fiction, I am looking at the ways in which asynchronous discussion, especially "topic drift," affects students’ appreciation and understanding of personal and philosophical issues.

* = primary researcher for 2005-06