Fostering Community in the Classroom: Strategies and Reflections (Session 1)

Join faculty members from varied disciplines as they share insights, experiences, and strategies on cultivating a sense of community within the classroom environment. Through this panel discussion, explore the importance of building connections among students and between students and instructors, and how a sense of community enhances learning outcomes, student engagement, and overall classroom dynamics.

Romy Ruukel (Moderator), Director of the Shipley Center, Digital Learning & Innovation

As the Director of the Shipley Center, Romy supports BU faculty and staff with cultivating and implementing innovative ideas that improve the BU student experience. Inspired by human-centered design, adaptability and continuous improvement, she leads a team of project managers, multimedia producers and digital learning designers to accelerate the University’s educational transformation through purposeful and novel uses of technology. She holds an M.Ed degree in human development and psychology (Harvard GSE), an MA in humanities and leadership (New College of California), and a BA in English Language and Literature (Whitman College). Throughout her career, Romy’s work and research have focused on the sociology of education, universal design for learning, and 20th-century social movements.

Alison Carberry, Master Lecturer of Romance Studies, College of Arts & Sciences

Alison Carberry Gottlieb is a Master Lecturer in Spanish and has been teaching at Boston University since 2004. Originally from western Massachusetts, Alison began learning Spanish as a high school sophomore and quickly discovered a passion for exploring diverse cultures through language study. After receiving her B.A. from Wellesley College in Spanish in 2003, Alison started her graduate work and teaching career at Boston University, eventually earning an M.A. and Ph.D. in Hispanic Language and Literature. She has served as course coordinator of Fourth Semester and (currently) Second Semester Spanish. As Head of Spanish Language and Overall Coordinator of the Spanish Language Section (2015-2019), Alison focused on developing innovative teaching strategies with her colleagues and building student proficiency at every level. In 2016, she was a co-developer and runner of BU’s AP Spanish MOOC, and from Summer 2020 through Summer 2021, she served as an award-winning LfA coach in the College of Arts and Sciences. When she’s not working, Alison reads to, snuggles, and plays far too much Nintendo with her young son and, whenever possible, still tries to fit a decent siesta into her day.

Joanna Davidson, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Associate Director of Kilachand Honors College, College of Arts & Sciences

Joanna Davidson is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Boston University. She is also an affiliate faculty member of Boston University’s African Studies Center, Women’s Gender & Sexuality Studies Program, Kilachand Honors College, Center for Innovation in Social Science, and Global Policy Development Center. Her ethnographic research is based in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa. Her monographs and co-edited books include Sacred Rice: Identity, Environment, & Development in Rural West Africa (2016); Narrating Illness: Prospects and Constraints (2016); Opting Out: Women Messing with Marriage around the World (2022); and Pathos & Power: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Widowhood in Africa, Past and Present (forthcoming). She has published widely in various peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes on topics such as social and religious transformation, the politics of storytelling, and gender relations. Her current book project is tentatively titled Singing Wives & Silent Widows: Essays on Marriage, Naming, and Death. Joanna teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in anthropology and interdisciplinary humanistic social sciences in CAS and KHC. She has won several teaching awards, including the Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2023.

Laura Jiménez, Associate Dean for Equity, Diversity & Inclusion and Senior Lecturer of Literacy Education, Wheelock College of Education & Human Development

"Dr. Jiménez is a senior lecturer with Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development and the current Associate Dean of Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion for the college, as well as the founding director of The Center for Educating Critically. Her scholarship focuses on the representation of marginalized communities in children and YA literature, the ways teachers can teach social justice with and through children’s literature, as well as the ways we can disrupt and change academic spaces be justice oriented. She is deeply committed to supporting and uplifting marginalized scholars and authors. In both her scholarship and her service to the field she consistently attends to the representation of marginalized people, history, and communities and the ways oppressive bias acts to uphold racist, misogynist, homophobic, ableist, and Eurocentric norms. As such, she sees no reason to coddle oppression and unrecognized bias. She is a founding member of the editorial board of Research on Diversity in Youth Literature, and she co-authored Lee and Low’s 2023 Diversity Baseline 3.0 survey. Her work has been published in The Lion and the Unicorn, Reading Teacher, Journal of Lesbian Studies, Teaching and Teacher Education, and the Journal of Literacy Research, as well as other peer review journals."