KCC Ovations
About Ovations
KCC's faculty are exemplary professors, researchers, authors and more. Through Ovations, we seek to spotlight the extraordinary work, distinctive achievements and unique endeavors of Kingsborough's faculty members. Submit your news for consideration.
Illustrator Valerie Sokolova, a finalist for the 2025 Golden Pen of Belgrade International Exhibition and Competition
She is one of 83 international illustrators chosen from thousands of submissions worldwide
for this year’s Golden Pen, which showcases both established and emerging artists
in the field of visual storytelling. Read more.
Dr. Alley-Young Secures $30K Grant to Expand LGBTQIA+ Support and Visibility on Campus
Kingsborough Community College professor of speech communication, Dr. Gordon Alley-Young,
has secured a $30,000 grant from the Dr. Gordon Alley-Young to support campus programming
and services for the 2025-26 academic year. Read more.
KCC Professor Receives $200K NEH Grant for Federal Writers’ Project Institute
Sara Rutkowski was awarded an NEH to develop curricula exploring America’s story through
the FWP.
Read more.
Rarebit Animation Festival Founder Awarded National Grant
Professor Tom Eaton, a practicing animator and longtime faculty member in Kingsborough
Community College’s Department of Art, has been awarded a 2025 Faculty Grant from
ASIFA Hollywood’s Animation Educators Forum (AEF). Read more.
KCC Receives $500,000 NSF Grant to Boost Student STEM Research
A new initiative at Kingsborough Community College (KCC), funded by a prestigious
$500,000 grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). Read more.
KCC Professor Awarded $60,000 NEH Grant for Book on Children of the KKK
The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded KCC history professor Elke Sabella
$60,000 to write "Children of the Klan: Growing Up in the Southern Far Right 1950-1990,"
Read more.
Nursing professors Sarah A. Browne-Bradwisch, Erin Murphy-Smith and Catherine Wilson-Mooney
Have won APEX 2024’s Grand Award in the public concerns and trending topics category. Read more.
Ryan Chaney
CAORC Chooses KCC Anthropologist Ryan Chaney for Overseas Seminar in Mongolia. Read more.
Dr. Luz Martin Del Campo
Kingsborough Community College Anthropologist Awarded Prestigious Bodleian Visiting
Fellowship. Read more.
Elke Weesjes Sabella
'Mama las Marx' named one of The Year's Best Books by The Dutch Review of Books. Read more.
Michelle Billies
Campus Compact’s awards Dr. Billies the Thomas Ehrlich Civically Engaged Faculty Award.
Read more.
Brian Katz
Scripting a new path to teaching screenwriting.
Read more.
UnHomeless NYC
KCC’s “UnHomeless NYC” Exhibition Travels to Manhattan Read more.
3R’s Initiative challenges fashion students to give old clothes a new life Read more.
Dominic Wetzel
Sociology professor Dominic Wetzel appointed a 2023-2024 CUNY Center for Place, Culture
and Politics Faculty Fellow. Read more.
Midori Yamamura
Art history professor Midori Yamamura is one of ten fellows named to the SUNY/CUNY Southeast Asia Consortium (SEAC). Read more.
Gordon Alley-Young
Dean Gordon Alley-Young is one of five deans from across the U.S. to have been selected as an American Conference of Academic Deans (ACAD) Fellow for the 2023-24 year. Read more.
Mary Ortiz
For 10 years, Dr. Mary Ortiz's comparative anatomy classes have been tracking birds
that have visited the KCC campus. Read more
Julie Turley
KCC assistant professor/librarian Julie Turley and co-author Joan Jocson-Singh have written a first-of-its-kind book on how women have engaged with musicking as mothers. Read more
Jason Leggett
KCC associate professor Jason Leggett of Behavioral Sciences was one of five scholars selected nationwide for the second cohort of Campus Compact Fellows. Read More
Michael Sokolow
Michael Sokolow uncovers the hidden gems of NYC's minor league baseball history in his newest book, “Bush League, Big City: The Brooklyn Cyclones, Staten Island Yankees, and the New York-Penn League” (SUNY Press, April 2023). Read More.
Paul Ricciardi and Michelle Turnbull
Open Education Global (OEGlobal) revealed the 2023 Open Education Awards for Excellence (OEAwards) recipients during an OEG Live webcast on September 13, 2023. Read More.
Helen-Margaret Nasser
Director of Kingsborough Community College’s (KCC) Student Union and Intercultural Center, and Jason Leggett, KCC criminal justice professor and director of KCC’s Center for Civic Engagement, led a nationwide Communities of Practice (CoP). Read More.
Luz Martin del Campo and Richard Legum
Luz Martin del Campo and Richard Legum join the newest cohort of CUNY Career Success
Fellows. Read More.
Catherine Ma
Kingsborough Psychology Professor Catherine Ma Receives Prestigious Award from SPSSI. Read More.
Sara Rutkowski
New Book by Dr. Sara Rutkowski Sheds Light on the Federal Writers’ Project. Read More.
Homar Barcena
Kingsborough Chemistry Professor Homar Barcena Awarded Fulbright U.S. Scholarship to Study Spread of Mosquito-Borne Diseases. Read More.
Kingsborough Professor Nanin Serves as Advisor for New Training Protocols Developed by the World Health Organization. Read More.
Award-Winning FITR Program: A Model To Teach Reading Through Innovative Collaboration
KCC) Faculty Initiative on Teaching Reading (FITR) has won the 2022 Diana Hacker TYCA
Award. Read More.
Paul Ricciardi
Communications and Performing Arts, Receives $225,000 Grant for Ancram Opera House.
Read More.
KCC President Claudia Schrader
Honored By AAC&U And Cengage For Advancing Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion Read More.
Patrick Hickey
Raised $7,500 for Comic Book Company. Read More.
Dr. Elroy Allister Esdaille
Dorrance Publishing Co., Inc. has released “It's Hard To Be a Black Man in America and Other African American Poems,” a new book of poetry by KCC English professor, Dr. Elroy Allister Esdaille. Read More.
Dr. Gordon Alley-Young
Dean of faculty and speech communication professor, presented a paper titled “Bitter
Living Through Science: Melodramatic and Moral Readings of Gay Conversion Therapy
in A Place to Call Home” at the National Communication Association Annual Convention on November 21st. Read More.
Dr. Martin Matthew
In his new book, Disappeared: How a People Who Once Lived in a Small Caribbean Village Vanished Without
a Historical Trace to Mankind, it would seem as if Dr. Martin Matthew was describing an imagined paradise on earth.
Read More.
Dr. Christina Colon
Recently promoted to the rank of professor, has been actively teaching in Kingsborough’s Department of Biological Sciences since 2009. She climbed the ranks from assistant professor to associate professor, simultaneously making tenure. “It’s been a great progression,” she said. “A terrific journey.” Read More.
Kevin Kolkmeyer
Lecturer in the English department and Marine Corps veteran, has been with KCC since spring 2003. Hailing from Long Island, he also attended graduate school in California. After moving from the west coast, he decided to give CUNY a try and landed a job at Queensborough before finding a home at Kingsborough. Read More.
Dr. Red Washburn
Dr. Red Washburn, associate professor of English and women's and gender studies, has two newly released books. "Birch Philosopher X" is a collection of poems that serve as a queer thread connecting past, present and future. Washburn’s "Irish Women’s Prison Writing" explores 50 years of Irish women’s prison writing. Read More.
Dr. Alyse Keller
Has been named an Andrew W. Mellon Transformative Learning in the Humanities Faculty
Fellow for the 2021-2022 academic year. Read More.
Dr. Emral Devany
Has enjoyed a rewarding teaching experience in the biological sciences department
at Kingsborough for seven years. Read More.
Scott Cally
Scott Andrew Cally named new chair of Department of Communications and Performing Arts. Read More.
Kieren Howard
Kieren Howard, professor of earth science and astronomy in the department of physical
sciences, has been teaching at KCC since February 2013. Like some, he has had to find
creative ways to reach his students, while maintaining relevance. Read More.
Laura Spinu
Laura Spinu has been a faculty member in the Communications and Performing Arts department since fall 2017. “My journey so far has been exciting, challenging, and incredibly rewarding,” said Laura. Read More
The Igniters: A Research Support Group
Amid the pandemic last fall/winter, six junior faculty members founded a research support group with the simple idea of joining forces to support each other in their research. Read More.
Bryan Powers
Professor Bryan Powers (Media Arts), as a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), just completed another year as a member of the selection panel for the 2021 GSA BAFTA Student Awards Read more.
Midori Yamamura
Congratulations to Midori Yamamura on the co-publication of Visual Representations of the Cold War and Postcolonial Struggles, with Yu-Chieh Li. Read More.
Sara Rutkowski and Elke Weesjes
Associate professor of English, Sara Rutkowski, and Adjunct Assistant Professor of
History, Elke Weesjes Sabella were named 2022 Mellon/ACLS Fellows by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). Read More.
Red Washburn
Dr. Red Washburn, associate professor of English and director of Women’s and Gender Studies at Kingsborough Community College, was awarded a $40,000 Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowship for their project Nonbin@ry: Tr@ns-Forming Gender and Genre in Nonbin@ry Literature, Performance, and Visual Art. Read more.
Catherine Ma
In honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Dr. Catherine Ma, associate professor of psychology at Kingsborough Community College, will be hosting a discussion: Incorporating Aspects of Asian American Studies as Tools for Teaching about Race and Discrimination on May 7 from 5:30 – 7:00PM sponsored by the Asian American/Asian Research Institute. Read more.
Anthony Alessandrini
Dr. Anthony Alessandrini of the KCC English Department has been invited to be a member
of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) at Princeton University for the 2021-2022
academic year.
Read more.
Ivana Espinet
Join Ivana Espinet, a professor in the Education program in the Behavioral Sciences
department, for the book launch of “Translanguaging and Transformative Teaching for
Emergent Bilingual Students.”
Read more.
Susan Carpenter
Advocating for students is at the top of Dr. Sue Carpenter’s list. Associate Professor
in the Department of Behavioral Sciences Education Program, she recently formed a
successful international advocacy group to advocate for students with intellectual
disabilities to attend and contribute to higher education in the United Kingdom.
Read more.
Shawna Brandle
Dr. Shawna M. Brandle, an associate professor in the History, Philosophy & Political
Sciences department at Kingsborough Community College, has received a Fulbright U.S.
Scholar Program award.
Read more.
Megan Brandow Faller.
The Female Secession: Art and the Decorative at the Viennese Women’s Academy (Penn
State University Press, 2020) about women artists in the early 20th century defying
the rigid strictures of the day to make innovative art.
Read more.
Farshad Tamari, Kristin Polizzotto, Dmitry Brogun, and Azure Faucette.
Kingsborough biology professors Farshad Tamari, Kristin Polizzotto, Dmitry Brogun,
and Azure Faucette have recently released a new OER, The General Biology Lab Manual,
in an effort to boost online student engagement. The exercises will help to ensure
that students have the most effective and accessible materials to learn at no additional
cost to them.
Read More.
Daniel Kane
The Sport Journal mentioned KCC's Assistant Professor of Tourism and Hospitality
Dr. Daniel Kane in their recent article.
Read more.
Keisha V. Thompson
Kingsborough Community College is thrilled to announce that Associate Professor of
Psychology Dr. Keisha V. Thompson will be recognized as an honoree for the annual
Caribbean Life Impact Awards.
Read more.
Jacek Czarnecki
The Pilsudski Institute of America Presents “Horseman in the Age of Armor: The Polish
Cavalry (1918-1939),” an Online Lecture with Dr. Jacek Czarnecki.
Read more.
Bob Blaisdell
’
Creating Anna Karenina: Tolstoy and the Birth of Literature’s Most Enigmatic Heroine
by Bob Blaisdell, Professor of English.
Read more.
Maureen Fadem
Congratulations to Maureen E. Ruprecht Fadem on her latest publication, Silence and Articulacy in the Poetry of Medbh McGuckian.
The Economics of Empire: Genealogies of Capital and the Colonial Encounter
Jose Nanin
The COVID-19 Comprehensive Resource for Education, Health, and Administrative Services.
Read More.