Examples of Good Practice from Kingsborough Community College/CUNY

Annual Eco-Festival

Since 2005, Kingsborough’s faculty have organized an annual three-day Eco-Festival—coinciding with Earth Day—that provides a unique opportunity for students, faculty, and members of the community to gather together, under a common banner, to engage in a dialogue centered on the environmental problems and challenges we face at the dawn of the 21st century. The Eco-Festival mission is to raise ecological literacy, promote meaningful dialogue about environmental issues and sustainable development, inspire grassroots environmental action and stewardship, and foster global citizenship.

Eco-Festival is constituted by students and faculty from many disciplines, community leaders, environmental activists, writers, and artists. It features keynote speakers, films, lectures, workshops, and other events and activities. The event is free and open to the public. Around 900 people attend Eco-Festival each year. It has gained recognition in the CUNY system and beyond and has been nominated for the 2008 CUNY Sustainability Award.

Student World Assembly (SWA)

Kingsborough supports the development of student organizations dedicated to enhancing global understanding, promoting democracy, and upholding human rights. It has strongly supported the Student World Assembly, a student-run, non-partisan organization devoted to “promoting global democracy, one student at a time.” Kingsborough’s President is a member of the SWA Honorary Advisory Board and the College’s Associate Dean of Academic Affairs serves as the Chairman of Board Directors. SWA provides a deliberative assembly where students around the world can exchange views, vote on global issues through online discussion forums and in annual international conventions, and translate these views into meaningful actions. It has around 15,000 student members globally, representing 149 countries. By giving students from the most remote to the more accessible institutions an equal voice, SWA enables all students to educate, participate, and take action, and to begin thinking of themselves as global citizens.

The Kingsborough chapter is the flagship chapter of the SWA and a forceful presence on campus. The Chapter organizes a number of activities on- and off-campus. Last year’s activities included Campus Clean-Up, Campaign against Poverty (including raising funds for Care Packages for the poor children in Ghana), “Better World Books” drive, World AIDS Day (HIV/AIDS Education and Prevention) as well as co-sponsoring KCC’s Annual Eco-Festival and Iraq Eyes Wide Open exhibit and forum. Kingsborough students have attended the SWA International Conventions at McGill University in Montréal in 2006 (focused on HIV/AIDS) and at the University of Ghana in Accra in 2007 (focused on Human Trafficking). They are gearing up for participation in the 2009 International Convention in Pakistan (focused on Poverty).

International Experiences

Kingsborough aims to develop globally and multiculturally competent learners and citizens by engaging students in valuable international experiences that are anchored in specially-designed preparatory courses. Each year 10 students take the “Global Ethics” class as a preparation course to participate, on full scholarship, in the week-long International Study Program of the Salzburg Seminar in Salzburg, Austria.

The ISP provides an intensive international experience for participants to explore issues of worldwide concern and to view them from a perspective both literally and figuratively outside the borders of the United States. Students develop the tools to be more discerning in their assessment of information pertaining to world affairs and to understand what it means to be a “global citizen.”

Each summer 10 Kingsborough students participate in a month-long “Peace and Reconciliation Program in Costa Rica” on scholarship. This unique program is designed to give an overview of Cost Rica through Spanish language classes and peace and reconciliation studies via a combination of classroom seminars, experiential learning, and cultural immersion and self-study. Students live with home-stay families to further their cross-cultural understanding. To facilitate greater global learning on the part of the students, they are required to take “Spanish I” in the spring before they depart for the summer program.

Finally, each year, 12 Kingsborough students are selected to take the “International Organizations” course that will prepare them for fully-paid participation in the National Model United Nations (NMUN). The NMUN brings together annually about 4,500 students in New York City from every part of the world for a week-long simulation of the United Nations. Each delegation is assigned a country to represent during the Conference. Students gain extensive training in the workings of the UN and learn and practice the art of multilateral diplomacy. Kingsborough delegation represented New Zealand in 2007 and Austria in 2008.

This page is part of a series of Examples of Good Practice.