KCC Academy for Excellence in Teaching & Learning 

Evan Caccioppoli is an Adjunct Associate Professor of theatre, film, and speech in the Department of Communications and Performing Arts at Kingsborough Community College. He works as a theatre director, producer, filmmaker, documentary theatre practitioner, writer, and acting/audition coach. Evan holds a BFA in Theatre Performance from The University of Illinois at Chicago, MA in Educational Theatre from New York University, and MFA in Directing from The Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University. He is a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association, SAG/AFTRA, ASCAP, the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, and PSC-CUNY. 

Cesar Castope is a Doctorate Lecturer in the Department of Business at Kingsborough Community College. He received his M.B.A. in Finance and his M.P.A. with an emphasis on nonprofit organizations, as well as an M.A. and MS in Economics and Accounting. His teaching interests and experience lie in teaching accounting courses such as financial accounting, taxation as well as business courses in microeconomics, macroeconomics and money and banking.

His teaching philosophy and methodology revolve around the notion that no student should be left behind. He believes in providing engaging opportunities, both in person and remotely, for students to remain involved in their coursework. He also aims to create an engaging and welcoming learning environment where students feel comfortable sharing their ideas and experiences and exploring new ones they might encounter during their studies. In addition, he periodically volunteers as a scholarship reviewer for high school applications for nonprofit organization as well as has led our college's volunteer income tax assistance program for the last seven years as a VITA coordinator in order to provide services during tax season. Lastly, he is currently working towards completing his M.S. in Taxation and an M.A. in Industrial Organization Psychology within the next year.

Christina Colόn is full professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Kingsborough Community College where she teaches biology classes for both majors and non-majors, including Ecology. Her approach to teachings is hands-on, writing intensive, civic engagement, student focused, active, and inquiry based. In person she runs field trips for every lab in her electives and steps aside to let students take the lead and earn the status of colleague and citizen science. Online she engages students in active learning virtual labs (e.g. Google Scholar, Sim Bio, iNaturalist, Zooniverse) and in person activities that they report on using photos, PowerPoints and recorded narration of their work.

After years of research in Asia studying civets, binturongs and sun bears, she shifted to local species in order to involve students in her research. She now works with students each spring to study the spawning activity and reproductive ecology of American horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus). She works in collaboration with Fordham, Cornell, Audubon and the IUCN Horseshoe Crab Specialist Group to study, monitor and protect this 450 MYO species that plays a vital role in the biomedical industry due to the miraculous properties of its blue blood.

She also works with Gotham Coyote to record acoustic behaviors of urban coy-wolves and the resident critters to better understand the impact of this recent addition to the NY landscape on the acoustic behavior of all critters therein.

Jessica Corbin is currently serving in her ninth year as a full-time Lecturer at Kingsborough Community College, teaching in both Music and Theatre Arts. In addition to her teaching and music-directing work at Kingsborough, she is active as a songwriter, singer, pianist, and music director in New York City and Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. 

At Kingsborough, Jessica is very excited to be the new Fellow of AI & Digital Platforms in the Kingsborough Community College Academy for Excellence in Teaching & Learning and is looking forward to working with the KCC Academy to develop programming in these areas for the faculty and staff of KCC. She currently serves on College Council at Kingsborough and is Secretary of the Facilities Committee, and she is a member of the Advisory Board of the KCC Academy for Excellence in Teaching & Learning. She has received a PSC-CUNY Research Award and has served on numerous faculty search committees and the Library Committee. 

Jessica previously served for four years as Region 1 Chair of Musical Theatre for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. Before becoming Chair, she served the region as Vice Chair for Musical Theatre, Vocal Coach, and Accompanist. 

She holds a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance from Duquesne University and a Master of Music in Music Theory from Indiana University.

 

 

Gabrielle Kahn is honored to serve as a member of the advisory board at KCC’s Academy for Excellence in Teaching & Learning. A Professor of English and graduate of Teachers College, Columbia University with an EdD in Applied Linguistics, she has been a member of the KCC faculty since 2006, and is a current faculty fellow in Innovative Pedagogy at the Academy. She has been privileged to have ongoing opportunities to engage in professional development at KCC as a participant and a facilitator, in her roles as a team teacher and faculty coordinator of KCC’s learning communities, and ESL Program director. She has facilitated faculty groups at the Kingsborough Center for Teaching and Learning titled: Strategies for Success with ESL Students Across the Curriculum, Valuing Students’ Voices to Make Assessment Meaningful, and A Pedagogy of Kindness. Trained in conversation analysis, her research examines students’ development and classroom discourse from a sociocultural perspective. She looks forward to continuing to build meaningful professional development opportunities with her colleagues at the KCC Academy. 

 

Julie Turley is an associate professor and librarian working on open education, civic engagement, and outreach initiatives in the Kingsborough Library. She is part of Kingsborough Community College’s Open Education team, supporting faculty in their respective course conversions to open educational resources and open pedagogy. In her library instruction classes, Julie is dedicated to reflective practice and activities that frame students as knowledge creators.  She has published fiction in the North American Review, Quarterly West and other journals, and has presented on topics as diverse as open pedagogy, “rock ‘n’ recovery” memoirs, and mothers who participate in rock and heavy metal music subgenres, which included a presentation at the Modern Heavy Metal Conference in Helsinki, Finland in 2019. Her co-authored book-length ethnographic study of mothers who participate in heavy music subcultures–Heavy Music Mothers: Extreme Identities, Narrative Disruptions–was published by Lexington Books in 2023.