Campus Culture

“Hard Times in The World” Gives Voice to BMCC Students

“Artwork by Salma Carandana” by Salma Carandana is licensed under CC BY 4.0

In this blog post, Patrizia Comello Perry and Berenice Darwich, both professors in BMCC’s Modern Languages Department, discuss how they adapted their department’s annual colloquium to the circumstances of the pandemic, giving voice to BMCC student experiences.

Q: What is The Modern Languages Colloquium?

Patrizia: Traditionally, the Colloquium has been a celebration of the engagement between the faculty of the Modern Language Department and the students of BMCC. It was designed to be a lively day of presentations around a theme. The format changed in 2017, when Dr. Alicia Perdomo took up the initiative. She had many ideas and energy to devote to this event, which she felt was important college-wide. For the first 3 years we hosted a film festival. We were lucky as the Tribeca Theater was the perfect partner and the venue was ideal to enjoy the screenings.

Q: How did the department participate when Dr. Perdomo organized the event?

Patrizia:  The films and stories from different countries were an opportunity to discuss relevant themes and reflect about the world. The Tribeca Theater contributed with their technical expertise backstage and all the teachers from Modern Languages pitched in to present the films and moderate the questions from the audience at the end of the screenings. We showcased one film for every language taught in the department. The Colloquium was a spring event, and tied-in to the syllabi of every professor of the Modern Language Department.

Q: How did you manage during the pandemic?

Patrizia: When the official XXIII Colloquium in March 2020, planned to be called A Women’s World, was cancelled because of the pandemic, we could not find an immediate way to replicate the program remotely. There was sadness and disappointment, but we all hoped to have the event live the following spring. When it was clear that 2021 was going to continue to be remote, we decided that although we could not host the usual Colloquium, we had to keep the tradition alive. The shock of Dr. Alicia Perdomo’s untimely death in July 2020 added to the general feeling of despair. Besides the difficulty of the pandemic, we all felt her loss. The effort and work of the Colloquium of 2021 was a way to celebrate our colleague’s legacy, and we thought about our students and felt the Colloquium would create a sense of community despite the physical distance.

Q: So you did not cancel the colloquium in the spring of 2021?

Berenice: No, on the contrary. We decided that it was important for us to give students the opportunity to share their reflections on the challenges we were all facing during the pandemic – uncertainty, loss, pain, anxiety. We wanted to collect students’ voices, to help them share their feelings and communicate a sentiment of unity in this hard time.

We worked with Syelle Graves, the Learning Experience Designer with BMCC’s OER initiative, to create an alternative format for the XXIII Colloquium using the BMCC OpenLab.

There were two major innovations, or differences, from the previous colloquiums. One difference was that this time no international films were showcased. Rather, the focus was to honor students’ experiences and celebrate their resilience up until that moment, which was so uncertain and difficult. The second was that the XXIII Colloquium was open for all BMCC students, as we wanted to encourage students to express their feelings, thoughts, and experiences, either through a poem, a reflection, a photograph, or a painting created by them. A great way to accomplish that was creating a project site in the OpenLab.

Q: Can you talk about the process of creating your site for the Colloquium on OpenLab?

Berenice: With the advice and guidance of Syelle we were able to create a great project site for the MLD XXIII Colloquium on OpenLab. We wanted the site to be simple in format, but rich in information, so we agreed that the CustomizerPro theme (one of the design templates on OpenLab) was the best for showcasing students’ contributions. Having a vision of how we wanted the site to look like was fundamental.  Everybody who would visit the site would read the call for contributions, find a link to the student voices already submitted, and a link to the submissions page. The site can be “cloned,” if suitable for future projects.

Since the project site is open, and anybody from around the world could read BMCC’s students’ contributions, we asked them to comply with two requirements: one, confirm that their work was original; and two, agree for their work to be shown publicly on the site.

Q: How did you promote your call for submissions, and how was it received by students? 

Berenice:  In order to promote the call for submissions, we created an invitation in PDF with the links to the XXIII Languages Colloquium website and shared it with the professors in the Modern Languages Department. The call for submissions was published in the BMCC newsletter, as well as on the Modern Languages website.

The reception was great considering that students have gone through a lot of challenges during these times. If you go to the Students Voices page now, you will see a wide array of contributions: there are reflections and poems in Italian, Chinese and English, as well as drawing, photographs and paintings that transmit the feelings and sentiments that the pandemic instilled in them. For example, a self-portrait by Salma Carandana depicts the feelings and moods she has been experienced through the pandemic, and Nancy Ramirez, in her piece “The struggles of missing you”, writes about the strong bond between her and her grandfather.

Q: What advice do you have for future projects that want to amplify student voices ?

Berenice: The OpenLab team was so helpful in setting up the site. You should definitely reach out to them for guidance. Also, it is a good idea to link the project to a class — either using it as course material, assigning students to write something for it (even if they choose not to submit), or offering extra credit for submissions. It really helps to get them motivated.

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One Response to “Hard Times in The World” Gives Voice to BMCC Students

  1. Boyda Johnstone November 15, 2021 at 2:28 pm #

    The colloquium sounds like such a wonderful event and it’s inspiring to read about how you took the opportunity to amplify student voices over the pandemic. Thank you for sharing with us and I hope you can return to an in-person event soon!

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