This proposal to develop an interactive pedagogy infused with knowledge of the cultures and social worlds inhabited by both the “new “ and “more traditional” American students is a joint venture of three Borough of Queens, New York colleges in the CUNY system.  Like many four-year schools, Queens College has drawn an increasing number of transfer students.  Queensborough and LaGuardia Community Colleges are among its most important feeder schools and account for 24.3% of all transfers to Queens College.  The three colleges together serve the areas in the borough of Queens where immigrants from many different societies are flocking.  Immigration has made Queens, always a borough of neighborhoods, an extraordinary mix of cultures, religions, languages, and practices.  According to the 2000 Census, 46.1 percent of Queens’s residents are foreign born, up from 36.2 percent in 1990.  Furthermore, the origins of the foreign born are changing.  While overall the foreign-born population increased 45 percent, many of the European groups showed declines. Individuals born in Asia soared about three-quarters and those born in Mexico more than tripled.

Together the three colleges have students who hail from over 160 different countries and identify over 100 languages other than English as first languages.  Of the 12,339 undergraduates who were enrolled at Queens College in fall 2001only 45.3% identified themselves as white.  Forty-four percent of Queens College undergraduates were born in a country other than the United States.  Similarly, at Queensborough Community College, only 22 percent identify themselves as white and half speak a language other than English at home.  At LaGuardia Community College 17% of its 11,700 students are identify themselves as white and 60% are immigrants, and 75% speak a language other than English at home.  The most common ethnic identities other than American are Guyanese, Dominican, Ecuador, Columbia, Chinese, Indian, Jamaican, and Haitian, as well as other Asian, Latin American, Caribbean and African Countries. 

Despite the diversity of our student body, our students are not particularly “cosmopolitan.”  Immigrant and native-born students alike tend to be ethnocentric with little interaction, little understanding, and often little tolerance of the varied cultures nearby.  Examples of ethnic, racial and cultural ignorance and prejudice exist on all the campuses.  Moreover, especially on commuter campuses, we cannot count on the simple fact of diverse student bodies or the existence of co-curricular activities and groups to create environments that foster the ability to transverse cultural barriers and boundaries. Rather, the problem needs to be addressed through the learning process itself.  Without explicitly addressing issues of racial, ethnic, and cultural ignorance and prejudice and helping students (and others) obtain a better understanding of the various groups, their histories, their cultures, their aspirations in America, such ethnocentrism will continue unabated.  At the same time, the diverse backgrounds of the students make it realistically possible for them to learn from each other in the right setting and under the right conditions. 

SPECIFIC ACTIVITIES

The three colleges, in partnership, plan to address the needs of these massively diverse student bodies as well as those of the diversifying faculty and staff with the following set of curricular revision and faculty development activities directed mainly through the social science departments at the three institutions.  The core of the proposal consists of course releases for 15 faculty members from the three institutions for each of the three years of the grant to enable them to participate in course revision and the faculty development needed to revise their courses so as to incorporate the development of cultural competencies into both content and pedagogy.