First-Year Experience

Program Coordinators

Allyson Bregman
Interim Director of First-Year Experience and Curriculum
Email:
Allyson.Bregman@
guttman.cuny.edu

Meghan Gilbert
Associate Professor, English
Interim Faculty Coordinator, First-Year Experience
Email: Meghan.Gilbert-Hickey@guttman.cuny.edu
Bio

FYE

FYE logo

The First-Year Experience (FYE) at Guttman Community College is a comprehensive model for academic access and future success fully aligned with the inclusive, equitable mission of the College. In their courses, students examine current world issues and use New York City as a living text and laboratory, thus connecting information and concepts across multiple disciplines, contexts, and perspectives. This immersive approach equips Guttman scholars with the foundation of knowledge and skills essential to their intellectual, social, civic, and professional endeavors in and beyond the classroom. Coursework is integrated with academic advising and an array of support services. In addition, students develop constructive, self-directed academic and social relationships by participating in a diverse learning community of faculty, advisors, and peers.

FYE Philosophy

The First-Year Experience (FYE) at Guttman Community College is the springboard for our students’ future success in higher education and the professions, leveraging the social, emotional, and cognitive dimensions of learning to promote the development of the whole student. Embracing cutting-edge best practices and a robust, integrative curriculum, the FYE program establishes an inclusive, rigorous model for Guttman students to become confident owners and authors of their educational, professional, and life paths.

To promote career readiness within the curriculum, the FYE implements course design and experiences that promote and incorporate the National Association of College and Employers (NACE) Career Competencies:

  • Critical Thinking/Problem Solving
  • Oral/Written Communication
  • Teamwork/Collaboration
  • Digital Technology
  • Leadership
  • Professionalism/Work Ethic
  • Career Management
  • Global/Intercultural Fluency

FYE Goals

Upon completion of all FYE requirements, students will:

  • Engage in critical thinking and reflective learning, showing the ability to make informed choices and persist academically
  • Develop and demonstrate responsibility for independent and collaborative learning
  • Approach personal development as a lifelong, self-directed process, involving goal-setting, planning, time management, and self-motivation
  • Gain proficiency in the practices of information literacy – to locate, evaluate, and use relevant and needed information effectively
  • Construct new knowledge in various capacities, including numerical, verbal, technological, digital, and creative
  • Integrate and apply knowledge and skills from different disciplines and multiple, diverse perspectives in intentional and deliberate ways
  • Identify and use specific skills, resources, and strategies proactively and purposefully
  • Communicate clearly and effectively in written and oral forms, in person and digitally, including to articulate personal and social values
  • Explore how social identities (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, class) intersect with identity as a student at Guttman

FYE Core Values

Integration
Self-Directed Learning
Co-Curricular Support
Community-Building
Fundamental Skills and Knowledge
Commitment to Equity & Inclusion

Promising Practices

Education should hold a holistic view of the self, providing means and opportunities for students to learn and appreciate themselves as whole, complex persons:

  • Create an empathetic and supportive environment for personal development and growth, including learning and academic performance
  • Engage the inner lives and lived experiences of students outside of the classroom through personal reflection
  • Explicitly connect course content to students’ personal experiences and lives
  • Give constructive, timely feedback beyond grades

Education should focus on student motivation, development, and well-being, facilitating positive attitudes toward self and others, in addition to the senses of belonging and of purpose:

  • Provide balanced amounts of both challenge and support to encourage student growth and readiness for ever-improved learning and performance
  • Acknowledge that fear of failure inhibits risk-taking and reduces student openness to pursuing interests and rising to challenges
  • Create opportunities for success in order to increase student confidence in their abilities, addressing the fear of failure
  • Offer choices of assignment topics and formats, helping students align choices with their personal and professional interests and values
  • Use collaborative activities, assignments, and interactions to help students find common ground and build an inclusive learning community that views diversity as a strength
  • Model practices that facilitate and nurture productive relationships in the classroom
  • Enable the production of new knowledge in the particular ways students comprehend and make use of course content (i.e. make meaning)

Education should emphasize a mastery-orientation toward learning:

  • Emphasize improvement, offering time in class for guided practice and skill-building
  • Explicitly communicate learning objectives for the course and each assignment
  • Provide information necessary for making decisions, performing the target tasks, and meeting desired performance goals
  • Provide low-stakes opportunities for taking intellectual risks
  • Create learning objectives and/or assignments with students, helping them identify internal motivations for doing the work and articulate what they are learning
  • Offer opportunities to submit drafts, with deadlines that do not significantly impact the corresponding assignment’s final grade
  • Have students reflect on course experiences to document challenges and risk-taking, using the reflections to focus on student development
  • Support students in articulating and embracing mastery goals (to improve or learn something important to them} in addition to performance goals (pass a class, get a certain grade, etc.)

Education should acknowledge emotions as part of the student and their learning experiences:

  • Express care for students, including acknowledging emotions in the classroom and/or in one-on-one conversations
  • Recognize students for their efforts and accomplishments in opening up, facing feelings or fears, and getting additional help
  • Encourage and model self-care
  • Consider the emotional processes underlying student behavior and resist labeling
  • Incorporate mindfulness practices focused on how to be present; to be aware of thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment; to reduce stress; and to acknowledge situations without judgment
  • Practice engaged pedagogy to promote dialogue, building trust and shared understanding in the classroom

FYE News

December 15, 2022

Over 100 Prospective Students Attended Guttman Open House

The College welcomed New York City high school students and provided on-the-spot acceptance, NEW YORK, NY (December 13, 2022) – Over 100 high school students attended an Open House at Stella and Charles Guttman Community College on Saturday, December 3, 2022. During the event, students received information about admissions, learned about the College’s academic programs […]

Read Post
June 20, 2022

Guttman Hosts Its First Year Experience (FYE) Summer Institute

Read Post
May 20, 2022

A Journey of Self-Advocacy

Miyoko Wong knows that to get what you want from life, you have to take chances. They did just that when they took a leap and moved from Honolulu to New York City nine months ago to attend Guttman. In addition to making the thousand-plus mile trip, Miyoko has also been on a journey of self-advocacy and discovery. After a tumultuous time back home, New York City and Guttman have been offering Miyoko opportunities to grow and thrive. 

Read Post
March 22, 2022

Alexandra Hamlett, Information Literacy Librarian and Assistant Professor, Library Science and Information Literacy

As an information literacy librarian, Alexandra Hamlett helps students learn essential research skills, skills that include finding, evaluating, and using multiple information types in order for students to be able to access credible information for their academic and personal information needs. In 2015, she was thrilled to join Guttman College, where an innovative and creative pedagogy is embraced. Guttman’s founders outlined a non-traditional community college and developed a curriculum tied to student success. “I have been privileged to develop an information literacy program where I collaborate closely with faculty to embed information literacy skills across the First-Year Experience and the Programs of Study,” says Professor Hamlett.

Read Post
March 2, 2022

Dr. Elizabeth Wentworth, Assistant Professor of Mathematics

“I truly believe everyone learns differently and expresses their knowledge in different ways. I love seeing a student solve a problem a new way or apply to knowledge to something new. My goal is to foster intellectual curiosity rather than memorization and to build relationships where students feel safe making mistakes and trying new things.”

Dr. Elizabeth Wentworth’s doctoral dissertation investigated the integration of music instruction in the high school mathematics classroom. Since beginning at Guttman in 2016, her focus has been primarily on teaching. “Now that I am in my third year as an assistant professor I am starting to plan for more research,” says Dr. Wentworth. “I intend to continue looking at interdisciplinary work’s impact on student success and motivation.” Prior to teaching at Guttman, Dr. Wentworth taught three years of high school mathematics and coached the high school mathematics team, as well as the Academic Decathlon team. Dr. Wentworth has an undergraduate degree from the University of Rochester with majors in mathematics, music, and English, and a minor in history. Dr. Wentworth’s master’s and doctorate are from Teachers College Columbia University where she specialized in mathematics education.

Read Post
March 1, 2022

Dr. Ayisha Sookdeo, Assistant Professor, Biology

“I think it is important for students to understand that their ability to stick with tasks, goals, and passions is crucial for success. Perseverance demands effort and practice, which is the truest way to unlock our highest potential.”

Dr. Ayisha Sookdeo joined Guttman College in 2019. She came to Guttman because she was excited to get the opportunity to teach students in a college that truly emphasizes the importance of dedicated and compassionate instruction.

Read Post
January 23, 2022

Doctor Saidiya V. Hartman Visits with FYE Faculty

Doctor Saidiya V. Hartman, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and author of several publications, including the award-winning Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval (2020), will visit Guttman’s First-Year Experience (FYE) faculty and staff on Thursday, January 27th, to discuss the significance of Humanities research, writing, and teaching within American studies and beyond. Specific attention will be paid to identity and representation and linguistic and social justice as they relate to the FYE, including two new American Studies courses and a Composition sequence that focuses on these themes.

Read Post
November 24, 2021

Guttman’s Transformed FYE Curriculum Featured in Bringing Theory to Practice Newsletter

“Grounding a Community College Education in Social Justice and Civic Engagement,” an article written by Guttman’s Dr. Meghan Gilbert-Hickey, Area Coordinator, Writing Program; Dr. Daniel Collins, Program Coordinator, First-Year Experience; and Dr. Allyson Bregman, Director, First-Year Experience and Curriculum, was featured in the Fall 2021 edition of the Bringing Theory to Practice newsletter.

Read Post
July 8, 2021

Dr. Grace Pai, Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies

“I love and live off of the ‘aha’ moments students have in class when they suddenly understand or build a new understanding of a concept. That has always been what excites me about teaching, whether it’s in a math class or a seminar course.”

In addition to the value she places on new ideas that come into being for individual students, Dr. Grace Pai sees “a career in education as a means of alleviating poverty and bringing about social mobility and equality.“ She does not mince words about “a lack of equity that too often leads to social stratification” and the scope of this crisis: “I’ve always found it astonishing that in a ‘developed’ knowledge economy like the United States’ that stresses the importance of obtaining a college degree, we still have about 15% of students who don’t even graduate from high school.” Experienced as a counselor and math teacher in NYC public schools and holding a Ph.D. in international education and development with a specialization in applied statistics for program and impact evaluation, Dr. Pai is a powerful emerging voice in the critical areas of global learning, culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP), as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as they relate to race in America. During just the last turbulent year, beset by the global pandemic, the Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies has presented or spoken at over a dozen events on CRP, Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), and racial justice.

Read Post
May 27, 2021

Dr. Gholdy Muhammad Leads Workshop on Historically Responsive and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy during Guttman’s Assessment Days

As the featured guest during Guttman’s Fall II Assessment Days, author of Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy and faculty at Georgia State University Dr. Gholdy Muhammad led an interactive workshop virtually for our instructional staff. Having presented the HILL Pedagogy – Histories, Identities, Literacies, Liberation – to the entire Guttman community in a previous virtual event, Dr. Muhammad’s session delved deeper into her framework’s overarching goals of Academic Success, Cultural Competence, and Sociopolitical Consciousness, which encompass the skill-building that students obtain and practice in class; their personal and social identities and backgrounds, in conversation with those of others; and the knowledge they gain from lived experiences outside of the classroom. In the workshop, Guttman faculty participated in revising an existing or new assignment according to the more granular criteria Dr. Mohammad has elaborated: advancing Identity, Skills, Intellect, Criticality, and Joy. The activity was designed for faculty to intentionally reflect on their higher-stakes written course assignments and directly incorporate effective, equitable, and affirming premises. This effort demonstrates and furthers the work of First-Year Experience (FYE) and English faculty to “decolonize” the curriculum, under the leadership of Assistant Professor of English and Area Coordinator for Writing Dr. Meghan Gilbert-Hickey and FYE Program Coordinator and Professor of English Dr. Dan Collins. The College’s institutional investment in student-centered, culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy, and best practices focused on equity is well-documented within the digital Center for Practice, Technology, and Innovation (CPTI).

Read Post
April 19, 2021

Faculty Feature: Dr. Karla Fuller, Associate Professor of Biology and Program Coordinator of Science

“More than anything, I want our students to know that they can succeed in science and math. They don’t have to pursue it, but I don’t want them to think that it’s not for them for any particular reason, except [if they don’t choose it.] If they want to, they can be good at it, or they can be interested in it… I just want them to feel like they belong. That it’s for them, if they want it.”

Dr. Karla Fuller, Associate Professor of Biology and Program Coordinator of Science, bears the unique distinction of being the very first faculty hired at Guttman, prior to the convocation of its inaugural first-year class in 2012 and the naming of the College. Seeing it as the urban likeness of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCU), she determined to fulfill her “mission in life” – giving students of color sustained opportunities to “have that moment like, ‘Oh, maybe I could study science’,” the realization critical to “increasing the overall percentage of underrepresented people in America who are scientists, the number of Black and Latino scientists in the field, and this means pursuing graduate studies or professional school after a Bachelor’s degree.” To this ambitious end, Dr. Fuller has spearheaded the establishment of Guttman’s Associate of Science (A.S.) degree Program of Study, forthcoming in Fall 2021.

Read Post
March 8, 2021

Guttman Faculty Dr. Thomas Martin Publishes Article and Book Exploring Maritime Carpentry

Adjunct Assistant Professor Dr. Thomas Martin’s first book, Craft Learning as Perceptual Transformation: Getting ‘the Feel’ in the Wooden Boat Workshop , has been published by Palgrave Macmillan in January 2021. Using first-person participant fieldwork in three wooden boat workshops on the East Coast of the United States, the author examines “his changing sensory experience as he learned the basics of the trade. The book reveals how experience in the workshop allows craftspeople to draw new meaning from their senses, constituting meaningful objects through perception that are invisible to the casual observer.” Dr. Martin’s research on skilled work practices is directly related to his teaching of Guttman’s hallmark Ethnographies of Work course, wherein students utilize the methods of ethnography to learn about diverse work experiences.

Read Post
September 11, 2020

Dr. Maggie Dickinson, Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies

“I want for students to understand how their own curiosity can become a resource for self-education… that they can take control of their own education, follow their interests, and trust themselves to learn independently.”

“What drew me to Guttman is teaching,” Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies Dr. Maggie Dickinson proclaims with passion, “that community of faculty who are just so dedicated to understanding teaching as a practice and putting that at the center of their work.” The Online Course Development training she led with fellow Guttman faculty Dr. Kristina Baines, which became urgent as COVID-19 took hold in Spring 2020, embodied this value. “Dean Blake really supported us in making it a home-grown professional development. We drew on the resources at Guttman to put it together [so] it really built on the work that everybody was already doing.” Since coming to the College in 2016, Prof. Dickinson has observed the shift to recognizing “that we have faculty who are leaders in understanding some of these [pedagogical] questions and we can draw on them as experts.”

Read Post
August 3, 2020

Guttman’s Exceptional First-Year Experience (FYE) Holds Annual Summer Institute for Integrative Learning

The Guttman Community College First-Year Experience (FYE) hosted its annual Summer Institute for Integrative Learning, held virtually June 22-26, 2020. Organized by Professor of English and FYE Program Coordinator Dr. Daniel Collins and Dean of Academic and Faculty Affairs Dr. Nicola Blake and supported by Assistant Dean Lavita McMath, the Institute focused on the cornerstones of the FYE: inclusion, integration, and community. The Institute prepares faculty and staff to work in the FYE and promotes excellence in teaching and student support, with the ultimate goal of increasing student retention and success in higher education. As the Guttman community grapples with the persistent social inequalities that put our Black, Latinx, and immigrant students at risk, made starkly clear by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Promising Practices that the FYE espouses have become especially relevant.

Read Post
June 24, 2020

Guttman Faculty Shows in International Print Center New York’s New Prints 2020/Summer Exhibition

The International Print Center New York (IPCNY) New Prints 2020/Summer show, titled Give Me Space, includes two prints by Adjunct Lecturer Kathryn Larkins. This cycle of the biannual open-call exhibition focuses on spaces for political dissent and the body. It features new works by 41 artists working in the medium of print, selected by Brooklyn-based visual and multimedia artist Chitra Ganesh. The show can be viewed remotely from June 25 to September 19, 2020.

Read Post
June 1, 2020

Dr. Marla Sole, Assistant Professor of Mathematics

“In all of my classes, my biggest focus is building up students’ confidence so that they can persist and overcome obstacles.”

“When I first came to Guttman” in 2014, remembers Assistant Professor of Mathematics Dr. Marla Sole, “I designed a signature assignment for my Statistics class.” Working as “empirical researchers to collect data and analyze it,” students compared the prices of iced and hot coffee. Dr. Sole also arranged a visit to a local café, where the coffee buyer spoke to the class and provided the essential context that makes coursework come alive. “When I think about that research,” published in 2017 in the Journal of Statistics Education, “I always remember my first group of students” at the College, the first of many Dr. Sole has taught in courses ranging from the Quantitative Reasoning component of City Seminar to Calculus.

Read Post
April 6, 2020

Dr. Alia Tyner-Mullings, Associate Professor of Sociology

“The thing that you always want as a professor is that moment when the students get what you’re talking about… see something and connect it to their lives, or see [something] in their lives and connect it to [what’s] happening in the classroom… When you do something in a class and the students say it was the first time they did that, or the first time they saw the point of something.”

There is little that Associate Professor of Sociology Dr. Alia Tyner-Mullings has not done as a Guttman Founding Faculty, joining in 2011, a year before the College’s doors opened to students. Colleagues assume, she laughs, “that any committee that exists, I’m on it, which obviously is not true.” Dr. Tyner-Mullings has chaired Guttman’s chapter of the Professional Staff Congress since its inception, a position she has held through several election cycles and crucial contract negotiations. A vocal advocate for establishing the Academic Senate, she presently serves as its Vice Chair. Dr. Tyner-Mullings has collaborated to revise Guttman’s unique two-semester Ethnographies of Work (EoW) sequence and, subsequently, to create an Open Educational Resource (OER) for these courses. In addition, the acronym she coined for the Guttman Learning Outcomes that articulate educational goals and reflect the institution’s vision for our students – GLOs – has been heartily adopted.

Read Post
February 27, 2020

Dr. Vivian Lim, Assistant Professor of Mathematics

“I always say [to my students], I want you to be the master of mathematics rather than mathematics being the master of you.”

Assistant Professor of Mathematics Dr. Vivian Lim finds Guttman “the perfect setting for being able to teach math in a way that is meaningful, that engages students critically about the world.” Teaching the Quantitative Reasoning (QR) component of City Seminar in the First-Year Experience since Fall 2017 has been ideal as “one of the fundamental learning outcomes is students being critical and using math in an interdisciplinary way.” Dr. Lim freely admits that “this is my dream job,” an opportunity to connect math directly to her students’ lives and empower them as civic agents.

Read Post
January 6, 2020

Dr. Tashana Samuel, Assistant Professor of Psychology

“My students are deserving of the wonderful opportunities that life has to offer, even if they have to demand a seat at the table.”

“Lean into the present and don’t waste time” are tenets of Dr. Tashana Samuel’s proactive philosophy, words by which she lives. A child psychologist specializing in cognitive development, Dr. Samuel holds a Ph.D. from the CUNY Graduate Center, with research experience including a longitudinal study at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital Center under Drs. Catherine Monk and Laraine McDonough. Since becoming Assistant Professor of Psychology at Guttman in 2015, Dr. Samuel is simultaneously teaching Statistics in the First-Year Experience and Introduction to Psychology in the Liberal Arts and Sciences – Humanities and Social Sciences Program of Study; conducting research on “techniques to alleviate academic anxiety in community college students”; publishing the promising findings in an article co-authored with fellow Guttman faculty Dr. Jared Warner; and sharing their pedagogical impact in service of our students. Also involved in expanding psychology course offerings at the College, she is excited to teach Guttman’s upcoming first iteration of Child Psychology.

Read Post
November 19, 2019

UMOC Scholars Present at Interdisciplinary Conference on Race

Seven first-year United Men of Color (UMOC) student scholars, accompanied by Professors Mary Gatta and Marcus Allen, presented at the Monmouth University Interdisciplinary Conference on Race on November 16th at Monmouth University’s campus in West Long Branch, NJ.

Read Post
November 15, 2019

Prof. Keino Brown, Lecturer of Mathematics

“You will not have learned everything possible at any point in your life. The learning process is a lifelong endeavor. It is never over.”

Defying deep-seated expectations, Lecturer of Mathematics Keino Brown reveals that he was once “hellbent on becoming an English professor. Then, math happened.” He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Mathematics at the CUNY Graduate Center, “securing the requisite firm footing in the breadth of my discipline’s concerns.” Though “not yet settled on any particular interest,” Prof. Brown will likely select his research focus from one of the “pillars” of mathematical physics: topology, differential geometry, or complex analysis. Since Spring I 2014, Guttman has counted him among the pure mathematicians at the College, where he has taught every mathematics course offered at least once, aiming “to make the classroom feel like a shared space for learning how to think about abstractions logically.”

Read Post
November 1, 2019

Prof. James Rodriguez Published in Racial Inequality in New York City Since 1965 Anthology

Assistant Professor of History Dr. James Rodriguez has been published as a contributor to Racial Inequality in New York City since 1965, recently released by SUNY Press.

Read Post
June 19, 2019

Dr. Rodrigo Lobo, Assistant Professor of Business

“Life is good, life is beautiful. Enjoy it. Use it to the full extent. Don’t waste your moments. Create an objective for you and go for it!”

Assistant Professor of Business Dr. Rodrigo Lobo has been all about business for over 30 years. Before taking the daring “180 degrees toward full-time work in academia,” his career spanned the breadth of “corporate life.” For nearly a decade, Dr. Lobo contributed his analytical expertise to a unique public project: the Itaipu Binacional Company, an initiative of the Brazilian and Paraguayan governments that jointly runs one of the most productive hydroelectric power plants in the world.

Read Post
April 30, 2019

Dr. April Burns, Assistant Professor of Psychology

“After my experience [as a student] at CUNY, my own working-class background, and my experience as a first-generation graduate, I really saw my place in a community college.”

Further affirming “solidarity” with her students, Dr. April Burns calls her trajectory to becoming Assistant Professor of Psychology at the College in 2016, “a winding path.” Her doctoral research in social psychology, completed at the CUNY Graduate Center under advisor and mentor Dr. Michelle Fine, focused on “the experience of upward mobility through education” and the impact of this experience on “first-generation graduates[,] their beliefs about justice and equity, education, merit, and… their interpersonal and family relationships.”

Read Post
April 4, 2019

Prof. Marcia Edwards, Clinical Professor and Program Coordinator of Human Services

“I really want [my students] to be insightful, self-reflective, and mindful of the human condition.”

Initially piqued by the New Community College Concept Paper, Prof. Marcia Edwards, Clinical Professor and Program Coordinator of Human Services, was recruited to Guttman faculty for Fall 2013 to “develop the fieldwork component of the Human Services major.” Bringing her 30 years of social work practice and teaching to bear, Prof. Edwards has worked to align the required internship with the expectations of social work programs while teaching every Human Services course in the Catalog, along with Ethnographies of Work and several special courses; leading a Global Guttman group to Jamaica; and becoming Program Coordinator.

Read Post