News & Events
City Tech Receives Prestigious NEH Grant
Effinger-Crichlow (left) and Burke.
How can a “technological” college enhance its curriculum to provide students with a broader, deeper education -- one that embraces the liberal arts while not sacrificing the intensive preparation its graduates need to enter industry?
New York City College of Technology/CUNY (City Tech) is about to explore how to accomplish this. The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has just funded a faculty development project at the College with the goal of creating a curriculum that will integrate study of the humanities and the technologies more deeply and more logically, so that students will experience and understand the connections between these different areas of study.
"Currently, all of our degree programs have a core general education requirement, from which students can select courses in art, music, literature, language, history, philosophy and other liberal arts subjects," explains Dr. Bonne August, provost and vice president for academic affairs. "Too often, though, these courses are entirely separate from the students' technology courses, and students regard them as just requirements instead of opportunities.
"This initiative will help students value the liberal arts and humanities as much as they do their career studies," she adds. "Ultimately, the curricular changes produced by the project will enrich our students' lives and help ensure their long-term career success."
Five New York City neighborhoods -- Sunset Park and East Flatbush/Crown Heights in Brooklyn, Flushing and Jackson Heights in Queens and Harlem in Manhattan -- will serve as the "interdisciplinary text" and "living lab" for the 15 faculty members from various academic departments chosen to participate. The neighborhoods were selected for their "architectural interest, literary associations and vibrant cultural characteristics," according to Dr. Marta Effinger-Crichlow, project director and an assistant professor in City Tech's Department of African-American Studies.
A benefit of the NEH project's hands-on approach -- which includes field studies and tours of each of the neighborhoods -- is that the participating professors will have a better sense of the context of their students' lives; fall 2005 enrollment figures indicate that one in three City Tech students come from the communities and surrounding neighborhoods being studied.
Titled “Retentions and Transfigurations: The Technological Evolution and Social History of Five New York City Neighborhoods," the NEH grant will enable faculty members to study the cultural consequences of such technological developments as subways, skyscraper and bridges on community life. They will also look at the ethnic histories of the neighborhoods, including how different groups have replaced one another over time.
“The project is locally inspired yet global in reach, as we use specific neighborhood-based case studies to examine the continuum of technological evolution and social change," says Professor Effinger-Crichlow. "Participants will trace immigration and ethnicity patterns and artistic contributions that have given each neighborhood its distinctive character.”
The project has three components:
- a rigorous year-long seminar for the selected faculty members with core texts that include Ann Douglas' Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s, and excerpts from Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Morty Sklar and Joseph Barbato's Patchwork of Dreams, and Anna Deveare Smith's Fires in the Mirror, among others;
- visits to the five neighborhoods led by Dr. Jack Eichenbaum and Mr. Francis Morrone, consultants to the Municipal Art Society, one of New York’s oldest and most respected institutions devoted to the study of the architectural environment;
- the infusion of humanities content into technological studies at the College, with Dr. Michael Dinwiddie, an associate professor and curriculum chair of NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, serving as curriculum consultant.
In addition to Professor Effinger-Crichlow, seminar participants include four City Tech faculty facilitators chosen for their specific expertise in the subject matter of the seminar and ten competitively selected faculty members from the College's Schools of Arts & Sciences, Professional Studies and Technology & Design, referred to as NEH Faculty Fellows.
Together, the City Tech participants and Professor Dinwiddie will develop units of study for a wide variety of technological and professional courses that incorporate the new humanities content focusing on New York City neighborhoods. The end result will be an enriched curriculum, using a "Humanities Across the Curriculum" model.
"Anticipated outcomes include a professionally renewed faculty, at least 15 courses revised to reflect a new humanities content, and a more open and outward-looking intellectual culture," according to Professor Effinger-Crichlow.
Public lectures by distinguished New York City scholars will enhance the neighborhood studies undertaken by the City Tech faculty. Dr. Renee Blake, associate professor of linguistics and Africana studies at New York University, inaugurated the public event component of the initiative on September 18 with a talk, "Exploring NYC and Its People in the 21st Century: Beyond 1920s Mongrel Manhattan," which sparked a spirited discussion.
A symposium and a second public lecture by another distinguished New York City scholar are among the other events planned. In addition, photo essays and other media exhibits will be created to show the College community what this interdisciplinary project has achieved.
“The project will strive to transform technological and professional courses of study into richer and deeper reflections on the relationship between technology the professions, and the liberal arts,” explains Barbara Burke, director of the Office of Grants and Contracts at the College, who was instrumental in obtaining the NEH grant.
Please note: Reporters who would like to join the 15 City Tech faculty members on the scheduled neighborhood tours, which will take place on selected Fridays from October through April, may contact Michele Forsten, mforsten@citytech.cuny.edu, 718.260.5979.
10/3/06
