With a theme of “Building a Student-Centered College,” this semester’s Faculty Development Day, held on August 26, brought faculty together for the chance to learn new skills, strategies, and approaches to support student success. Sponsored by the Teaching and Learning Center (TLC), this was the first time students were involved in the presentations, further illustrating John Jay’s commitment to creating an environment centered around its students. “When faculty and staff came up with the ideas for their sessions, they decided that they wanted to be more authentic and believed that if they included student voices, it would speak to the faculty more,” said Gina Rae Foster, Ph.D., Director of the Teaching and Learning Center. “Often times, faculty only hear student voices in the classroom. We want to make sure that student voices are heard, because their voices are an integral part of the College’s mission, so it’s groundbreaking and wonderful to have our students here.”

Focusing on how to increase student success, the day’s sessions highlighted topics like open educational resources, diversity, ePortfolios, and research and plagiarism. One of the workshops, “Essential Services for Students: Financial Aid, One Stop, Accessibility and Counseling,” was focused on providing faculty with information regarding services that help students outside the classroom. “It takes a village. Our students come to us with lots of needs, and as an urban campus, we have to be prepared to address them,” said Gerard W. Bryant, Ph.D., Director of Counseling. “We have a unique population and unique services. And, I really believe that John Jay has one of the strongest teams to help our students succeed. My hope is that you all leave here today with a better understanding of our centers and how we all can better help our students.”

During the collegewide discussion with Anthony Carpi, Ph.D., Professor of Environmental Chemistry and Dean of Research, and Dara Byrne, Ph.D., Associate Provost for Undergraduate Retention and Dean of Undergraduate Studies, faculty learned about the College’s growth in research, student retention, and graduation rates. Talking about the total grant dollars garnered over the past six years, Carpi said that John Jay has created a new record. “In the past two years we have had record numbers for grants. Last year we had over $31 million. And this year we have broken $33 million, making it the largest total grant intake in the College’s history,” he said. “If we look at the works produced by our faculty, the College’s numbers increased dramatically over the past half dozen years, from 1.2 works per faculty member to 2.3. And, both last year and this year, John Jay ranked first among all the CUNY senior colleges in terms of the works produced by our faculty.”

When Byrne spoke, she highlighted the increase in the College’s graduation rate. “In more than 10 to 11 years, we have moved our four-year graduation rate from 19 percent to 33 percent,” she said, adding that it is all because of the hard work of everyone in the John Jay community. “When we look at these numbers, what we are talking about is the impact of your classroom leadership on the students. They trust us to get them to the next step in their journey. We are at the top in CUNY when it comes to students and credit accumulation in the first year. What we are seeing is that our students are attempting and earning more credits than other students at senior colleges and community colleges, and I’m really proud of what John Jay is doing.”

We spoke with several faculty members to find out what they hoped to learn and experience at this semester’s Faculty Development Day.

I went to Lehman College for my bachelor's degree and master's degree, and I majored in Mathematics. I had every intention to teach middle school or high school math, but then I realized that I was a better fit to teach at a college. I understand a lot of the struggles John Jay students go through, because I was a teen mother and married young. Being the only woman in my math classes was discouraging at times. But, I was determined to finish and get my degree. I am excited to be teaching at a College that has such a diverse group of students. Being a part of the CUNY system and John Jay feels like home.

For Faculty Development Day, I partnered with Allison Pease, Ph.D., Associate Provost for Institutional Effectiveness, in designing the content for the day. I’m excited to see people I’ve known for years come in and enjoy the day. And I’m excited to see students be part of this event for the first time. This year we got nearly 200 RSVPs from faculty and then there are those who will be registering onsite. That’s a new attendance record for us. 

I’ve been coming to Faculty Development Day for eight years and I’m always excited to be here, because you always learn something new. The session that I’m most interested to go to is the one about critical thinking. I want to help my students become better critical thinkers, but doing this changes from semester to semester, because of new ideas, different students, and new faculty. We need a day like today to be able to bounce around new ideas off each other that will enable us to better serve our students.  

It’s exciting for me to be here because this is my first Faculty Development Day. I’ve had a relationship with John Jay through the Prison-to-College Pipeline, in my previous role as the Superintendent of Otisville Correctional Facility. However, I would like to see the College’s take on developing staff, staff interaction with students, and the media. And, I would like to hear more about John Jay’s philosophy. I will be teaching Human Resources here at the College, and with all the new laws and federal regulations that are coming down on the criminal justice field, it would be interesting to see the similarities and differences in the correctional criminal justice fields throughout the country.

 More scenes from the event: