Dear Community,

This is your year in-review. The Whyman Center for Transformative Learning continued to do what it always does: create spaces for learning that are relational, responsive, and rooted in care. Across classrooms, workshops, partnerships, and conversations, people showed up with curiosity, courage, and a willingness to learn alongside one another. Like a constellation, this work is made visible not by any single point, but by the connections between us.


This has not been an easy season. Across the college, there is real uncertainty, both inside and outside our walls. We acknowledge that reality because it shapes how people show up- and because naming it is part of being human. 


The work of expanding access and learning together matters precisely when conditions feel unsettled. This year’s programs, partnerships, and practices reflect that truth- quietly, steadily, and with intention.


When the landscape shifts, orientation matters. We find our way by standing together. Sometimes it feels like we’re standing alone; we’re not. We never are. It’s impossible to do anything alone. 


Looking ahead, we remain committed to showing up. Meaning is not found alone-it is formed together. Everything happens by people. These are the connections we made like stars illuminating brighter precisely during the darkest of skies. 

With veneration and respect,

Angela Kariotis, Director, Whyman Center for Transformative Learning, Academic Affairs

The Engaged Pedagogy Faculty Working Group

This semester, the gamma cohort of the Engaged Pedagogy Faculty Working Group gathered to explore teaching practices that center participation, curiosity, and shared meaning-making. Each session across our 12-weeks modeled strategies faculty could immediately adapt for their own classrooms—approaches that invite students to think together, take intellectual risks, and remain actively involved in the learning process. To close one workshop day, faculty used a six-word story as an exit ticket: a reflective practice that asks participants to distill a complex experience into just six words. The constraint encourages clarity, synthesis, and creativity—capturing not what happened, but what stayed.


Faculty reflections from the six-word story exit ticket: 

“Creative teaching can make exciting learning” -Jane Scimeca, History

“Encouraging students to help each other -Stephen Fowler, TLC

“Creativity is powerful; mentors are priceless.” -Peter Enge, Nursing

“Dynamic fun techniques to love teaching.” - Christine Greco-Covington, assistant dean, Psych

“Active not uncomfortable, but really fun .” -Lauren Tatulli, Economics


"Keep students talking to promote engagement." -Claire Smuga, assistant dean, Fine Art

We turned our attention toward:

• Supporting autistic students in the classroom
• Creating dynamic online spaces
• Assessments
• Interdisciplinarity and joy

Be part of a creative, critical, and caring community of educators who believe teaching can—and should—change lives—including their own.

The alpha and beta cohorts remained active through monthly sessions, deepening their camaraderie and commitment to new efforts such as supporting autistic students, introducing Transformative Learning student fellow William Ring (below) and building AI assistants with Stephen Fowler of our Gamma cohort (below). They are Greg Liano, Math, Amy Faris, Art & Design, Christine Greco-Covington, Psychology, Elisbaeth Eittreim, History, Emily Hoeflinger, English, Nicole Jackson Walker, Psychology, Donna Pope, English, Sara Burrill, Psychology chair, Georgia Cassidy, Nursing, Elisa Elorza, Art History, Alex Idavoy, Languages (retired but forever with us in the group chat...)

Civility Week: Democracy Takes Courage

Introducing Our Faculty & Student Fellows

Whyman Center Fellows serve as faculty, student and community leaders who help transform Brookdale through innovative teaching, civic engagement, creative practice, and student-centered support. Each Fellow develops specialized programming that advances Brookdale’s commitments.

Former Brookdale student and current community fellow Adriana Medina Gomez works alongside faculty fellow Ashley Zampogna-Krug and student leader Jocelyn to support immigrant and first-generation students through outreach, advocacy, and relationship-building. Adriana brings lived experience, professional understanding and wisdom to deeply challenging and often invisible work that requires patience, trust, and tireless care. Her leadership helps create a more informed, compassionate, and supportive campus community that benefits not only immigrant students, but Brookdale as a whole.

Whyman Center's Open Doors Mentorships

The Open Doors Mentorships are poverty-informed, co-curricular professional development experiences designed to expand access to mentorship, social capital, and real-world learning. Students participate in small mentorship cohorts alongside faculty liaisons and professionals in the field through observation, shadowing, conversation, and reflection. Rather than task-based work or internships, Open Doors creates opportunities for students to witness how professional environments function, build meaningful relationships, and imagine themselves in careers they may not otherwise have access to. Honorariums help reduce barriers to participation for working students, caregivers, and students navigating financial hardship, ensuring that access to professional development is not reserved only for those who can afford unpaid experiences. Next year, we're looking forward to mentorships with Two River Theater and Monmouth County Park System.

Peter Boynton & Monmouth County Human Services: Students learned directly from Monmouth County leadership about housing insecurity, mental health, nonprofit development, and systems advocacy. Gratitude to Director of Human Services Peter Boynton.

WAGE (Women and Girls Education): Students explored women’s leadership, facilitation, and educational advocacy through workshops and mentorship. Gratitude to WAGE's president Heather Mistretta. Special thanks to the School of Social Justice in Long Branch as our collaborators.

Monmouth Cares: Interdisciplinary students- from political science to education- explored systems of care, youth mental health, and nonprofit leadership through shadowing and guided reflection. Gratitude to Executive Director Marin Kerby De Leon and her team.

ShedHead Vintage: Fashion merchandising and design students observed entrepreneurship, e-commerce, merchandising, and the realities of running a small business. Mentors and business owners Hallie and Hailey are Brookdale alums.

Open Doors Mentorship: Brookdale’s New Values Community Mural Project

We launched the Brookdale Values Community Mural Project, led by Art & Design students mentored by adjunct faculty and artist Justin DeMattico. The point is to build their professional portfolios and jumpstart a public art initiative starting with the Whyman Center itself.

Students worked together through concept development, meeting with the President's TaskForce on Mission, Vision, and Values, design conversations, public paint days, and reflection, while learning about collaboration, artistic process, and community-centered creation. Members of the Brookdale community were invited to contribute brushstrokes during open paint sessions, transforming the mural into a shared expression of who we are and who we hope to become together. Join us in the fall for the reveal. Murals are memory imprints of an institution. Daily reminders. Where else needs a mural?

Storytelling

In partnership with Count Basie Center for the Arts, the Whyman Center for Transformative Learning welcomed teaching artist, filmmaker, poet, and writer Christopher Harrison into Professor Donna Pope’s English classroom for a workshop series on storytelling. Students explored the mechanics of narrative craft while also being encouraged to write deeply personal stories rooted in their own lived experiences—stories that can later support scholarship essays and future opportunities. Many students initially believed they did not “have a story” worth telling; through this work, they began to recognize the value, complexity, and power of their voices. The experience was further enriched through the involvement of Phi Theta Kappa (below) and its Threads of Identity project, which has spent the past two years collecting authentic community stories in multiple forms. The collaboration exemplifies the Center’s commitment to creating transformative co-curricular experiences that bridge classrooms, clubs, departments, and community partners in meaningful and human-centered ways. We honor Donna Pope, not only as an exceptional professor but also a storyteller herself.

Brookdale's Reading Circle

As we do every year, the Whyman Center hosted community reading circles. We read Democracy Awakening and On Tyranny as part of our ongoing commitment to civic learning, dialogue, and democratic engagement.

Faculty, staff, students, and community members gathered in participatory sessions that moved beyond traditional book discussion into reflection, imagination, and collective meaning-making. 

Participants explored prompts about courage, responsibility, truth, belonging, polarization, and what democracy asks of ordinary people in everyday life. 

Conversations encouraged participants to identify tangible actions they could take within their own classrooms, workplaces, and communities.


Join us next year as we explore new texts. Possibilities include: Rest as Resistance and The Wealth Money Can't Buy

Living Room Conversation with TIN: misogyny, misandry, the manosphere and other stereotypes.

In partnership with The Innovation Network (TIN), we hosted a “Living Room Conversation” that brought Brookdale club leaders together to discuss misogyny, misandry, stereotypes, loneliness, and the influence of the “manosphere” on young people. Designed as a facilitated dialogue, the gathering created space for honest reflection, listening across difference, and collaborative thinking about healthier relationships and campus culture. Deep gratiude to club leader. Special thanks to Debbie Mura and TIN for the invitation. 


I'm sharing this to say: Groups, departments, and student organizations interested in hosting facilitated conversations or participatory dialogue experiences on topics important to them are invited to reach out to me.

Supporting Autistic Students in the Classroom

This year, the Whyman Center partnered with Brookdale alum Goop Ring to expand conversations around neurodiversity and inclusive teaching practices. What began as a question raised by a faculty member in the Engaged Pedagogy Beta Cohort- how do we better support disability and neurodiversity in dynamic classrooms?- grew into a series of three campus workshops for faculty, staff, and employees focused on supporting autistic students in the classroom. Goop also collaborated on the creation of a 36-practice rubric that was integrated into the Engaged Pedagogy Faculty Working Group as a tool for reflection and course design. We are proud to support Goop as a fellow and will continue to follow his work.

Leadership Brookdale

I was lucky to have been invited to present to Leadership Brookdale about organizational culture. We participated in an interactive workshop. Yes, we got up on our feet and talked to each other! We reviewed dominant culture and then reflected on an alternative framework for learning and processing. There are more sustainable ways toward excellence that are in deeper alignment with our stated values. Gratitude to Nursing's Tricia D'Aloia Gandolfo for her connection and willingness. This interdisciplinary cohort is dedicated to their own personal development, each other's and Brookdale's. Invite me to host a workshop with your group.

Good Ideas Conference Workshop with Monmouth County Guidance Counselors

This year, the Whyman Center for Transformative Learning also shared its work beyond Brookdale through a presentation at the Good Ideas Conference, a regional gathering of guidance counselors and educational professionals from across Monmouth and Ocean Counties. The workshop, focused on generative conflict, drew a full room of participants eager to explore. Opportunities like these help extend Brookdale’s work into the broader educational community- making the Whyman Center’s mission more accessible while building new partnerships, collaborations, and shared learning across institutions.

Innovation Station Award

We launched the Innovation Station Award to help faculty and employees pilot creative, student-centered ideas connected to co-curricular learning, career exploration, and project-based experiences within and beyond the classroom. The goal is simple: to seed promising ideas, support experimentation, and create meaningful opportunities for students through collaboration and innovation. Special thanks to Stacie Carter, Synde Kaufman, and Sara Burrill for helping bring these early projects to life and demonstrating what becomes possible when ideas are supported with trust, imagination, and care.

Facilitating Generative Conflict

This year, I was invited into the classroom of Sabrina Mathues to work with students on conflict, dialogue, and the challenge of facilitating disagreement well. I opened with the question: What might we win if we disagreed well?- an invitation for students to think differently about conflict as a space for growth, understanding, and connection rather than avoidance or polarization. Before my work at Brookdale, I taught communicationat Seton Hall University, and I continue to teach and facilitate this work beyond the college. I taught as a teaching artist and in the formal classroom for 25 years, I believe in the power of critical thinking and connection. One of the greatest joys of this role is being invited into classrooms and shared spaces as a collaborator, resource, and partner in creating meaningful learning experiences for students.

Pi Day with the Brookies

It's my favorite time of year. Brookdale Community College celebrated Pi Day and it added up to a joyful day!

Co-hosted by the STEAM Institute and the Center for Transformative Learning, this celebration continued a beloved tradition: welcoming the Brookies—our affectionate name for young students from local schools invited to spend a day exploring campus and discovering their potential; imagining themselves as future Brookdalians. The point is to create a memory imprint of how Brookdale made them feel to be here. The point is to grow our future students. We were thrilled to host 75 fifth graders from Long Branch's Gregory Elementary, GLC Elementary, Anastasia Elementary for a day full of inspiration, discovery, and delight. This joy was a respite and a relief for all of us too.

At the Wellness Center, I told students (if they get through high school first), they are already accepted to college here. I welcomed them as future college students. They gasped! We imagined ourselves building things, discovering.

In the Math Lab, led by our amazing WEST Club students...

In the Biology Lab, where Bio Lab students helped them explore with microscopes and furry tarantulas (Cassiopea needs her own green room)...

With S-STEM scholars and Engineering Club, where they played critical games and crushed bridges...

So many of the Brookie's declared,

"This was the best day ever. I can't wait to come to college here."

Let's do it again next year. Who's in?

One magical day on campus can inspire a lifetime of learning.

Adolescence is a fork in the road- when young people begin to wonder who they might become. We want them to choose hope. We want them to see themselves in college. We want them to feel they belong. This is long-game work. It takes vision, patience, and heart.

Thank you to those who have it: Robert Gant & Sally Kimble, Daniel Lopez, Michael Nolan & Samantha Doluweera, Spyros Roubos, the Biology Club, Engineering Club, WEST Club, Math Lab and student volunteers- recognized by Global Citizenship Project awards.

Finalist for the Bellweather Community College Futures Assmebly

This year, Brookdale Community College was named a national Bellwether Award finalist for its college-wide Poverty-Informed Constellation framework — an institution-wide effort aligning policy, practice, and culture to better support student success- representing Brookdale at the Community College Futures Assembly with Dr. Katie Lynch, Sara Burrill, Dr. Christine Greco Covington and Summer Deaver. We presented how every division — from Academic Affairs and Student Affairs to Enrollment, Career Services, Human Resources, Advancement, the Foundation, Facilities, the Wellness Center, and Transformative Learning — has contributed to a shared, poverty-informed approach rooted in belonging, basic needs, and just-in-time support. The presentation highlighted Brookdale’s commitment to redesigning systems so students do not have to navigate barriers.

This year, I had the privilege of co-chairing President's Task-Force on Mission, Vision, and Values process alongside Dr. Katie Lynch with good people representing every division. What stays with me most is not only what we created, but how we created it: with joy, vulnerability, imagination, and genuine collaboration. New relationships formed across the campus- constellations of people who may not otherwise have found one another- and those connections continue to endure long after the meetings ended. (I can't believe it took me this long to get Geoff Shields in my life!) The process became a reminder that the quality of our work is inseparable from the quality of the way we work together. The Whyman Center for Transformative Learning is proud to help situate this work within a poverty-informed framework that necessitates "being brave".

"Rooted in Care, Connected in Purpose, Growing Futures Together "

I was deeply honored to receive honorary membership in Phi Theta Kappa at this year’s induction ceremony hosted by Brookdale’s extraordinary five-star chapter, led by advisor and English professor Angela Saragusa. They humbled me with the image and metaphor of a redwood tree in recognition of my support of the chapter and its work throughout the year. Professor Saragusa spoke about the redwood- not as a singular towering figure, but as part of an interconnected root system built on communication, collaboration, shared strength, and collective care. It was one of the most meaningful recognitions I have ever received because it reflected the spirit the Whyman Center for Transformative Learning and what we're trying to build together at Brookdale. In a year that was difficult for many people, this gesture of love, trust, and community moved me profoundly, and it will carry me for a very long time.

Hosted by Sara Burrill, this Living Room Conversation closing Civility Week brought together faculty, staff, students, and community members in the spirit of dialogue and shared humanity. At the center of the conversation was historian Susan Whyman. Dr. Whyman has been one of the most meticulous supporters of the work we do through the Whyman Center for Transformative Learning. I have watched her lend her time, her energy, and her care not for recognition, but because she believes in a world where people show up for one another. This model of shared leadership, intergenerational partnership and sustained commitment is one I am actively working to cultivate here at Brookdale.

Let's Grow.