Seven Hostos faculty members have been promoted to full professors this fall. Congratulations to Professors Craig Bernardini, Jacqueline M. DiSanto, Karin Lundberg, Catherine Lyons, Gregory Marks, Alisa Roost, and Antonios Varelas.
 
Learn more about Hostos’ newest full professors:
 
Craig Bernardini received a B.A. in The Writing Seminars from The Johns Hopkins University in 1991 and a Ph.D. in English (concentration in Creative Writing) from the University of Utah in 2003. He started teaching in the CUNY system as an adjunct at John Jay College in 1998 and came to Hostos in 2004, where he teaches the core writing courses, as well as Studies in Fiction, Latin American Literature in Translation, and Writing About Music. His stories, essays, and poems have appeared in Cimarron Review, Conjunctions, The Gettysburg Review, New Ohio Review, TriQuarterly, and many other journals; his research interests include early and antebellum American literature, the gothic, popular music, and film. His blog Helldriver’s Pit Stop—one of the longest running on the CUNY Academic Commons—serves as a venue for him to pursue his avocational interest in writing about music. Craig has held a number of leadership positions in the English department, including Chair from 2012-15, and is a longstanding member of the College Senate. A committed union activist, Craig has been involved with the chapter’s Executive Committee for almost as long as he has been at Hostos; he currently serves as Chapter Chair. He lives with partner, dogs, cats and chickens in the beautiful mid-Hudson Valley, where he enjoys taking long rambles with the dogs in the woods. He worships at the altar of coffee several times a day, drums on the nearest available surface, and wishes Naomi Klein were president.
 
Jacqueline M. DiSanto, Ed.D., is chair of the Education Department and coordinator of Teacher Education. She is a founding member of POINT, Hostos Writing Group, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning committee. She is co-chair of the Middle States Standard II Working Group, co-chair of ETLC, and a long-time member of Hostos Online Learning Assessment. She represents Hostos on the CUNY Committee on Academic Technology, CCCRC Pathways Committee, and the newly charged CUNY Student-Parent Task Force, part of Ascend/The Aspen Institute. Her recent scholarship focuses on the use of open educational resources, peer observations, and student evaluation of teaching. She co-authored several chapters in Developing Technology at an Urban Community College (2019). She frequently presents at local, national, and international conferences, most recently at Drexel University's 2020 Annual Conference on Teaching and Learning Assessment with the Hostos Instructional Evaluations Committee.
 
Karin Lundberg, Ph.D. is Professor and Chair of the Department of Language and Cognition. Dr. Lundberg holds a Master’s degree in German Literature, English Studies (Anglistik; English and American Literature), and Linguistics from Ruprecht Karl Universität Heidelberg, Germany and a Ph.D. in Germanic Languages and Literatures from New York University. Her doctoral work on The Role of Coherence in Second Language Discourse Comprehension laid the ground for her interest in genre grammar and reading strategies, and critical discourse analysis in the L2 classroom. Further, her research focus covers history of knowledge, the relationship between language and knowledge acquisition, specifically the role of general education for ELLs, as well as the impact of gamified language instruction on L2 writing skills. Her latest article: A New Global Space: Rethinking General Education in the New Global Learning Environment reflects on the concept of global citizenship and the ELL curriculum.
 
Catherine Lyons joined Hostos in 2006 as an Instructor in the library. She was promoted to Assistant Professor in 2007 and Associate Professor in 2014. In the library, Professor Lyons is Head of Reference and Library Technology. She is interested in how organizations adopt technology, and in teaching with games. She and Professor Miles are currently working on a research project to evaluate and develop games to teach media literacy, which they've presented at multiple conferences, including CUNY’s Games Conference (2020). She and Professor Lundberg are working on gamifying an assignment in ESL 86, which led to their article: “Using Twine to Deliver a Grammar-Linked Creative Writing Assignment in a Hybrid ESL Course” (published by HETS). In addition to her work in the library, Prof. Lyons began working with the EdTech Office in 2006, and in the nearly 15 years since, she’s previously co-chaired the Educational Technology Leadership Council, and also served on HOLA (the Hostos Online Learning Assessment) committee, the Bronx EdTech Showcase Organizing Committee, and the newly formed COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) Committee, and as Faculty Liaison, worked closely with the office to restructure the Online Learning Initiative (starting in 2010). In 2019 she worked with the EdTech Team as editor of Developing Educational Technology at an Urban Community College (published by Palgrave Macmillan), a book that discusses the last decade of technology adoption and change at Hostos. Professor Lyons holds a Master of Science in Nonprofit Management from NYU, a Master of Science in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Grinnell College.
 
Gregory Marks is a Professor of English at Eugenio María de Hostos Community College in the Bronx, New York. He has a B.A. in philosophy, but switched mid-stream to English and has an M.A. from the University of Dallas, and a Ph.D. from Louisiana State University. He lives in Queens with his professor wife and high schooler daughter.
 
Alisa Roost is the chair of the Humanities Department at Hostos Community College. She received her Ph.D. from the Graduate Center at the City University of New York (CUNY), her master’s from the University of Illinois at Urbana, and her bachelor’s from University of California at Santa Cruz. Her research interests combine politics and popular culture, with a strong focus on musical theatre. She has a book chapter on the stage director coming out in the new Palgrave anthology next year. Recent publications include “Losing It: The Construction and Stigmatization of Obesity on Reality Television in the United States” in The Journal of Popular Culture; “Remove Your Mask: Character Psychology in Introspective Musical Theatre– Sondheim’s Follies, LaChiusa’s The Wild Party, and Stew’s Passing Strange” in Modern Drama; and “Supporting Veterans in the Classroom” in Academe. Dr. Roost directed the off-Broadway revivals of Flahooley and Bloomer Girl at the theatre at St. Clements and she is the stage manager for the annual Netroots Nation convention. She has taught in the New York State Otisville Correctional Facility. Her current projects focus on masculinity in musicals and the way that murders in musicals illustrate racism. She is the proud mama of Eric, age 3, and has finally learned the finer points of excavators versus backhoes.
 
Antonios Varelas, Ph.D. in Learning Processes, is a Behavior Analyst and Professor of Psychology in the Behavioral and Social Sciences Department. His record of scholarship includes research in the areas of concept formation in the classroom, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, and most recently, the impact of Supplemental Instruction on students who serve as peer leaders in these programs. This work with an interdisciplinary team is in-press with the Journal of Peer Learning. Dr. Varelas’ current research efforts are related to his work as co-author and co-PI on the $1 million NSF-funded, Hostos Engineering Academic Talent (HEAT) Scholarship Program, in which he studies the impact of a combined faculty and peer-mentorship model on scholar’s academic, professional and personal development. His service to Hostos and CUNY have included positions as Behavioral Sciences Unit Coordinator, an Hostos OAA Assessment Fellow, an at-large member of the Hostos College-Wide Personnel and Budget Committee, co-chair of the Hostos Grants Committee and the CUNY Psychology Discipline Council, and his current work as co-Chair of the Middle States Standard VII Working Group and the Hostos HRPP Coordinator.