In this interdisciplinary seminar, students will examine in depth and then synthesize the history and trends in diverse public policy topics with a view towards recommendations for America's leadership role in the emerging global economy.

David Petraeus is a Visiting Professor to Macaulay Honors College. He is the highly decorated four-star general who commanded coalition forces during the “surge” in Iraq and later in Afghanistan, and who subsequently served as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.  He holds a B.S. with honors from the United States Military Academy and M.P.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.   He has extensive teaching experience as an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the U.S. Military Academy and a fellowship at Georgetown University’s Edmund A.Walsh School of Foreign Service.

Classroom 3 North | Offered by Macaulay Honors College

Reading List:
George Orwell "Homage to Catalonia"
Michael Herr "Dispatches"
Mark Bowden "Black Hawk Down"
David Finkel "The Good Soldiers"
Truman Capote "In Cold Blood"
Norman Mailer "Executioner's Song"
George Orwell "The Hanging"
David Remnick "King of the World"
H.G. Bissinger "Friday Night Lights"

The readings are designed to show the importance of an author’s perspective, knowledge, presence or absence at the events which are covered, and how sources, techniques and style of reportage and narrative shape each work. Each book has a different claim and dynamic which shed light on how the intense and consequential circumstances of war, murder and sport are reported, evaluated and illuminated, and how the author’s role and rendering shapes information and affects the reader’s mood and sympathetic understanding, as well as eventual opinion.

From the battlefields of the Spanish Civil War, Vietnam, Somalia and Iraq, from the penitentiaries and court rooms of Kansas and Utah, from the boxing ring to high school football fields, the setting, reporting and gloss on the actions and thinking of the real life characters and the use of techniques seen in works of imagination such as novels and movies, offer an experience in defining and seeking to answer critical questions and issues at the heart of journalism.

Steve Isenberg is a Visiting Professor at the William E. Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York. He was most recently the Executive Director of PEN American Center, the world's oldest literary human rights organization. He has been a newspaper publisher and senior executive at Newsday, the Los Angeles Times and the Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time, a lawyer, an interim university president and was chief of staff to New york City Mayor, John V. Lindsay.  He has taught courses on British and American  literature in the honors program at the University of Texas at Austin, where he won the teaching award in Liberal Arts, and at the University of California at Berkeley, Yale University and Davidson College, as well as courses on journalism and politics.  He holds a B.A. in English from the University of California at Berkeley; an M.A. in English Language and Literature from Worcester College, Oxford University; a J.D. from Yale Law School and an honorary doctorate from Adelphi University. His essay 'Dining on Olympus' was chosen for Best Essays of 2010.

Classroom 3 North | Offered by Macaulay Honors College

Visiting Professor Steven Isenberg will teach the Macaulay Capstone Honors Thesis Colloquium for Fall 2013. 

This yearlong course will provide students with a unique opportunity to:

• Conduct in-depth research on a topic of their choice in consultation with a faculty advisor who specializes in that subject matter
• Collaborate extensively with each other for peer evaluation
• Write a polished journal-length essay
• Create an accompanying website for further presentation of their findings
• Cultivate oral presentation skills

Throughout the two semesters, weekly assignments will be geared toward fostering intellectual community as well as cultivating skills in techniques of inquiry, writing, oral presentation, and website creativity.  As a class, we will meet to brainstorm about issues, refine arguments, and offer advice on research, revision, and representation.

Participants are expected to complete a full essay by the end of the fall semester. During the spring semester, while students continue to polish their essays, the emphasis will be on conference presentation for an academic audience and the creation of an extensive research website geared toward a wider public.

Steve Isenberg is a Visiting Professor at the William E. Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York. He was most recently the Executive Director of PEN American Center, the world's oldest literary human rights organization. He has been a newspaper publisher and senior executive at Newsday, the Los Angeles Times and the Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time, a lawyer, an interim university president and was chief of staff to New york City Mayor, John V. Lindsay.  He has taught courses on British and American literature in the honors program at the University of Texas at Austin, where he won the teaching award in Liberal Arts, and at the University of California at Berkeley, Yale University and Davidson College, as well as courses on journalism and politics.  He holds a B.A. in English from the University of California at Berkeley; an M.A. in English Language and Literature from Worcester College, Oxford University; a J.D. from Yale Law School and an honorary doctorate from Adelphi University. His essay 'Dining on Olympus' was chosen for Best Essays of 2010.

Classroom 3 North | Offered by Macaulay Honors College

In Seminar 3, Macaulay Scholars analyze issues in science and technology that have an impact on contemporary New York. Students work together to create scientific posters, which they present to their peers and others in the Macaulay community.

Charles Liu is a professor of astrophysics at the City University of New York’s College of Staten Island, and an associate with the Hayden Planetarium and Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. His research focuses on colliding galaxies, quasars, and the star formation history of the Universe. He earned degrees from Harvard University and the University of Arizona, and held postdoctoral positions at Kitt Peak National Observatory and at Columbia University.

Together with co-authors Robert Irion and Neil Tyson, he received the 2001 American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award for his book “One Universe: At Home In The Cosmos.” More recently, he is the author of “The Handy Astronomy Answer Book” (2008, Visible Ink Press). He and his wife, who is way smarter than he is, have three children.

2nd Floor Classroom | Offered by The College of Staten Island

The relationship between gender, feminism, and technology has long been fraught, in theory, narrative, and lived experience. For feminists, technology has been seen as a crushing war machine, a liberating domestic appliance, a site of bullying and support—a way to an egalitarian, utopian future or uniquely able to entrench and augment disparity. Feminist scholars have also introduced the idea that gender is itself a sort of technology, constructed and reproduced by relationships and social institutions. This course will serve as a platform for defining terms of the debate, exploring how gender and technology are deployed in novels, films, and various media platforms, and understanding feminist analyses of them. The course will be taught online with some face-to-face meetings and make space for reflective discussion of that virtual, mediated experience and how it interacts with the course material and experience.

Students that are interested can register for the course via E-permit:

• Course: MHC MHC356.H81W (Hybrid/writing intensive)
• Class Number: 26962

For more information, contact Professor Brundage at lbrundage@gmail.com

Lisa A. Brundage holds a PhD in English from the CUNY Graduate Center. Her work focuses on race, sexuality, and maternity in 20th century literature alongside professional commitment to instructional technologies and the scholarship of teaching and learning. After holding an Instructional Technology Fellowship and Postdoctoral Digital Learning Fellowship at Macaulay Honors College, she was recently named the Acting Director of CUNY Advance, a coalition working on digital initiatives in the university.

Course: MHC356.H81W | Class Number: 26962 | Offered by Lehman College

The Macaulay Springboards represent a pilot effort at Macaulay Honors College to work with students to redefine the capstone project.

For seniors who are interested in fulfilling their capstone project requirement in a new way, this blended course (online with limited face-to-face meetings) will be offered to all graduating students as a non-credit guided workshop in preparing springboard projects, an alternative to the traditional capstone or honors thesis. Students will design and create springboard projects, which will be launched at graduation (and eligible for Capstone Reimagined Awards).

The Springboard Experience, as a course and as a project:

• Builds on a student's earlier work and displays and reflects that work.
• Proposes new directions, asks unanswered questions, poses unresolved dilemmas. In response to these challenges, the Springboard Project proposes specific research and learning pathways, providing a plan with clear goals and defined next steps
• Includes personal reflection, uniting the affective and the cognitive elements of research.
• Includes multimedia facets, utilizing appropriate tools and presentation techniques to present extra-textual resources.
• Is presented to, and open to the interaction of, a wide public audience. It is a multidirectional communication.

But to really get a sense of how we hope things will work, check the FAQ page.

Joseph Ugoretz, Associate Dean of Teaching, Learning, and Technology at MHC , earned his masters degree in the Teaching of English at Columbia University Teachers College, and his doctorate at the City University of New York Graduate Center. In addition to his work with Macaulay Honors College, he currently serves as a member of the Consortial Faculty for the CUNY Online Baccalaureate, and teaches in CUNY's graduate program in Interactive Technology and Pedagogy.

As a professor of English, Dr. Ugoretz has over a decade of experience incorporating educational technology into his literature and composition classes. He has also been responsible for mentoring fellow faculty members across disciplines. He was a campus coordinator for the Visible Knowledge Project, a five-year project aimed at improving the quality of college and university teaching through a focus on both student learning and faculty development in technology-enhanced environments. Some of his collaborative work from that project is documented in the online gallery "Looking at Learning, Looking Together."

This hands-on workshop is designed to give students the skills necessary to develop and produce digital content.  Students will:

• Apprentice on an ongoing web series in production,
• Learn the “user engagement” method of creating transmedia content,
• Participate in a digital studio production model,
• Develop a “pitch” and write a “bible” for your own transmedia content,
• Research the current new media landscape, including the information and entertainment patterns of key demographic groups, emerging technologies and start-ups and opportunities for employment.

Albie Hecht is the former president of Nickelodeon Entertainment and SpikeTV, where he oversaw the development and production of many hit television shows such as SpongeBob SquarePants, Dora the Explorer, and UFC Franchise as well as co-created and executive-produced the Kids Choice Awards.  In addition, he has produced several box-office successes including Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Rugrats Movie and the Academy Award nominated Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. Albie's current company Worldwide Biggies is creating original transmedia content for Nickelodeon, Disney Interactive and Miniclip.  He also founded Shine Global, a nonprofit film production company dedicated to ending child exploitation through the creation of films and other media, which produced the Emmy winning, Academy Award nominated film War/Dance and this year's Oscar winning documentary short Inocente.