BRESI Award

CUNY’s Black, Race, And Ethnic Studies Initiative (BRESI) Award

CUNY’s Black, Race, And Ethnic Studies Initiative (BRESI) Award

Faculty-Led Projects

Four Kingsborough Faculty-Led Projects Funded Via CUNY’s Black, Race, And Ethnic Studies Initiative (BRESI) Award

The BRESI Council and The City University of New York, with support from the Mellon Foundation, have awarded funding to four projects led by Kingsborough Community College faculty as part of CUNY’s historicBlack, Race, and Ethnic Studies Initiative (BRESI).

More than 500 proposals from across CUNY were submitted under nine proposal categories and evaluated by members of the BRESI Council and a committee of CUNY faculty and staff members. A total of 126 proposals were selected for funding, including four from Kingsborough. The funded projects demonstrate such qualities as innovation, focus and impact on the development of ethnic studies, and sustainability. Emphasis was also placed on representing a broad cross-section of the CUNY community.

These successful Kingsborough proposals have been conferred for a project term of September 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023:

Shawna M. Brandle, Evaluating Intro to American Government: A Student Research Lab
BRES-Focused Mentored Student Research: $20,000
Building on her prior work evaluating representation of historically marginalized groups in American Government textbooks, Brandle will create a one-year research lab comprised of six CUNY community college students who will evaluate the syllabi and required readings of American Government textbooks required across CUNY.

Keisha Thompson, Kevicha Echols, and Lisa Paler-Holzmann, Reset/Respite Promoting Resilience in Equity Workers
BRES Projects to Improve the College Climate: $11,700
The faculty consortium’s program, called Retreat to Empower Strategize and Encourage Teamwork (R.E.S.E.T.), encompass a two-pronged approach over the course of two semesters to achieve the following: (1) foster a sense of community amongst the key individuals who have been contributing to equity programming on campus, (2) provide a forum for individuals to feel seen, heard and validated for their contributions thus far, (3) provide an opportunity for those who contribute to existing equity efforts to engage with the new structures being put in place, and (4) create an opportunity for individuals to retreat and learn about self-care and resilience as a part of their equity efforts.

Lili Shi, Digitizing the Diaspora: Chinatown Mothers’ Pandemic Feminist Organizing through WeChat
Community College Faculty Research Grant: $7,500
An expansion of a PSC-CUNY funded project, Shi’s BRESI project focuses on how mothers in Sunset Park Brooklyn use social media for feminist organizing to cope with parenting, personal and family care during the pandemic, and creating space to speak about racism and sexism.

Michael Spear, Civil Rights Activism and White Resistance in South Brooklyn, 1960-1975
Community College Faculty Research Grant: $8,000
Using archival sources and oral history, Spear will examine how activists in Sheepshead Bay and other South Brooklyn neighborhoods worked to address issues like police brutality and fought for housing and school integration in the 1960s and early 1970s.

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