Bio pending

Dr. Sarah Moroianu is a lecturer with a background in natural products and human health. She earned her BS in Environmental Biology with a minor in Biotechnology and later joined Rutgers University for her PhD in Plant Biology. For her dissertation, Dr. Moroianu explored chemical synergies in medicinal plants for new antimicrobial drugs, with a patent later being filed based on her research. In graduate school she worked as a head teaching assistant for the general biology department, where she helped in further developing a peer-led teaching program for undergraduate students. Internationally, Dr. Moroianu serves as the science and training leader for the Global Institute for BioExploration (GIBEX). Through this program Dr. Moroianu has traveled the world teaching about natural products and microbiology research; she has worked with students in Indonesia, Tajikistan, South Africa and Chile, teaching students of all levels from second grade through postdoctoral researchers.

Dr. Moroianu has a passion for teaching and pedagogy, and as a native New Yorker she is excited to be joining the CUNY Lehman College team.

Dr. Ye studied Material Science for her bachelor’s degree, and Chemistry for her Ph. D. degree. Her passion lies in utilizing fundamental chemical and material science knowledge to solve environmental problems. Hence, she began to focus on Environmental Engineering applications since her postdoctoral research in 2018. During her postdoctoral study, she has led projects on antibacterial technologies development for drinking water treatment, PFAS remediation and degradation in both drinking water and wastewater treatment, and the characterization of PFAS release from solid waste and systematic management. Her future research aims to combine chemistry and material science to create cutting-edge sustainable functional materials, catering to environmental, biological, and material engineering needs.
She is passionate about environmental protection and deeply committed to cultivating future scientists and engineers with a broad research perspective and multidisciplinary minds, supporting their growth and career development through teaching, mentoring, and outreach activities.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Chemistry, Tongji University, 2017
  
  BS in Material Science & Engineering, Wenzhou University, 2011
  

Geoffrey is currently a Lecturer at Lehman College’s Dept of Computer Science. In addition to his teaching duties, he is designing and building a Cybersecurity Program. Previously, Geoffrey was Director of Cyber Risk Management at WW (Weight Watchers) where he ran the Global Cyber Risk Management, Third Party Risk Management, and Client Security Programs. Geoffrey has over thirty-five years of experience in information technology, program management, software development, and cyber security.

Geoffrey has built numerous teams and new capabilities within the corporate environment by translating business objectives into implementation plans. He has proven experience in developing teams and is known for his empathetic teaching style. In addition to corporate-level teaching and mentoring, he has taught technology courses to high school students.

In his spare time, Geoffrey enjoys gardening and has been known to take over a planter or two in Harlem, New York where he lives.

Geoffrey earned a Master of Science in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1990, and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Rochester Institute of Technology in 1987.

Bio pending

Bio pending

Dr. Suri's professional focus is on the intersection of technology, mental health, and college student mental health, particularly students of color within higher education. Dr. Suri earned her B.A. in Media and Communication Studies from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, her M.S. in Mental Health Counseling from Long Island University, Brooklyn and her Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision from the University of New Mexico. Dr. Suri has extensive background working with a range of populations in various areas, including community health, health education, awareness, promotion, and wellness. She also has experience working with students providing one on one therapy, group therapy, and mental health outreach on college campuses as well as with clients in private practice. Her research and practice interests include college-student mental health, experiences of minority students within higher education, social media and new technology's role in identity development, community-based participatory research, and social justice advocacy. Training future counselors is one of Dr. Suri's passions and she is excited to join the Counselor Education team at Lehman College.

María Teresa “Mariposa” Fernández (she/her) is a Lecturer in the English Department at Lehman College, CUNY, where she teaches Creative Writing. Professor Fernández received recognition for her poetry in 2021 from the Mellon Foundation and Flamboyan Foundation with the inaugural Letras Boricuas Mellon Fellowship. She has been a faculty member of the Africana Studies Department at Lehman College, and on the Women and Gender Studies Steering Committee since 2018. She is also a Faculty Fellow of the Transformative Texts / Anchored in the Liberal Arts program (ATLAS), funded by the Teagle Foundation.

A proud first-generation college graduate and Bronx based, Black Puerto Rican poet, educator and activist, Fernández earned her BA in Bilingual Special Education from New York University. Her work has been published in Kevin Young’s anthology African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song, The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, and Manteca: Anthology of AfroLatin@ Poets edited by Dr. Melissa Castillo Planas & others. Her work has been featured in the HBO series Habla Ya!, Americanos: Latino Life in the U.S., BET, PBS and the international documentaries, “In Her Own Words: Nuyorican Poet and Activist,” a film by Wilfried Raussert and Alina Muñoz Knudsen and “Fragments of Belonging: El Alma Dividida de Puerto Rico,” a film by Friederike Bischoff and Raphael Vazquez, both produced by Bielefeld University, Germany (2020).

I have been an Adjunct teacher at Lehman College since the Spring of 2018. I am a graduate of Lehman College with an MS in Therapeutic Recreation and a CTRS (Certified Therapeutic Recreation Specialist) from the National Council on Therapeutic Recreation Certification. I also have a BA in Psychology from SUNY Oswego. I have had many working opportunities in the field of Therapeutic Recreation. Most of my working experiences have been within Long Term Care. I worked as the Director of a Therapeutic Recreation Department in a Skilled Nursing/Short Term Rehabilitation Facility and the Director of a Medical Model Adult Day Program serving older adults with Cognitive Challenges in New Canaan, CT. I worked very closely with Home Health Care through my role as Director of Adult Day. I also worked in an Assisted Living Facility as a TR Leader and worked Privately providing Recreation Therapy and Yoga for an older adult man in his home who had Alzheimer's Disease. While going to Graduate School at Lehman I worked as a TR Leader (for a Dementia Unit and Sub-acute Care Unit) in a Skilled Nursing/Short term/Subacute Rehabilitation Facility in the Bronx at the Jewish Home and Hospital, now called the Plaza.

Orlando Rivera PhD CSCS, joined the department of Exercise Science and Recreation in the Fall of 2023. He comes with a background in applied human performance. His research interests include resistance training loading models, performance markers in endurance athletes, and body composition. Orlando places a special emphasis on developing students critical thinking skills in order to better develop competent independent professionals.

Dr. Di Wu is an Assistant Professor of Finance, Information Systems, and Economics department of Business School, Lehman College. He obtained a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Graduate Center, CUNY. Dr. Wu's research interests are 1) Temporal extensions to RDF and semantic web, 2) Applied Data Science, and 3) Experiential Learning and Pedagogy in business education. Prior joining Lehman, Dr. Wu has taught Strategic Management, Databases, Programming Languages, Data Structures and Algorithms, Data Mining, Big Data, and Machine Learning.

Bio pending

Tailisha Gonzalez, PhD, MPH, MS is an Assistant Professor of Public Health at Lehman College of the City University of New York. Her research program examines social, behavioral, and environmental factors impacting cardiovascular health outcomes among Black, Asian, and Latino folks, including immigrants, as well as groups of U.S. women and workers. She additionally investigates risk factors such as diabetes, hypertension, and hypercholesterolemia and related health disparities. Her research also explores the role of social determinants, including acculturation, physical activity, obesity, smoking, occupational factors, and neighborhood composition in the development of cardiovascular disease. Dr. Gonzalez advocates for an interdisciplinary approach to studying Latino health, considering multiple determinants and analytical approaches to address health disparities. She is also a member of the Action on Latino Immigrant Health Analyses (ALMA) team, a national group of health disparities researchers dedicated to expanding immigrant health research and promoting health equity (PI: Dr. Sandra E. Echeverria). She collaborates with other research groups, such as the CUNY Sleep Health Study (Co-PI) and the CUNY Institute of Health Equity (affiliated faculty). In addition to her research, she is the Coordinator of the Public Health program at Lehman College, actively involved in developing educational programs that address healthcare leadership gaps and reduce health disparities in the Bronx. She serves as the Assessment Coordinator for the Health Equity, Administration, and Technology Department (HEAT), focusing on teaching excellence and student development. She leads strategic planning and assessment activities, integrating innovative curricula and multimodal approaches to teaching and learning. Previously, she worked as a doctoral fellow and Research Coordinator at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy (SPH), where she managed research projects in community settings, trained and mentored graduate level research assistants, oversaw data collection and analysis, and published manuscripts in peer-reviewed journal articles.

Bio pending

I’m a certified agrifood scientist with over 15 years of professional experience in Puerto Rico and abroad. I am highly familiarized with small economies supply chain competitiveness, sustainable development, & non-tariff measure policies on food trade. Former member & advisor of the PR’s Delegation on Agricultural Matters of the United States, Central America, and Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR). Several years of experience in leadership positions and project management in non-profit organizations. Bachelor & master in Agricultural Science and Nutrition respectively at Mayaguez-Campus, University of Puerto Rico. Postgraduate studies in Education Leadership & Supervision; Innovation Entrepreneurship at London School of Business & Finance, United Kingdom; & in International Supply Chain & Logistics in Rotterdam University of Applied Science in the Netherlands. MRes & PhD are in International Development & Economics Studies, at the University of Bradford, UK.

2018 to 2023 I worked as an adjunct assistant professor at Hostos Community College, Mercy College in NYC and Fairleigh Dickinson University, Metropolitan Campus, NJ. I have conducted research on and some publications about food insecurities in SIDS and health issues among farm-workers.

Rahwa Haile is a critical social epidemiologist whose work centers around the ways in which intersecting structural inequalities linked to race and class manifest as inequities in population health. Over the past decade and a half, she has examined the impact of these social processes on a variety of mental and physical health-related outcomes, and among diverse populations, including Black immigrants, older adult gay and bisexual men, and urban multi-ethnic Black communities. As a researcher and community organizer, she works in alignment with social movements in order to help build the power necessary for Black and Brown New Yorkers to access the social determinants of health. She received her PhD in Public Health and MA in American Culture from the University of Michigan.

Mario Landaverde is a Professional Chef, Registered Dietitian and Functional Culinary Nutritionist, based in NYC, a place he calls his home, since he and his family of origin relocated 40 years ago. Mario discovered his passion for food at an early age while working as a dishwasher and prep person in the NYC Restaurant industry, in which he quickly thrived, becoming a chef and consequently holding executive positions in culinary management.  This period in his professional life helped him to develop curiosity on the biological and emotional effects of food in people; therefore, sparking an interest in food as preventive measures and its functional medicinal properties.
In 2011, Mario decided to round things up with academic knowledge, enrolling in the CUNY BA for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies Program, an academic program that allows students to combine different disciplines and create a learning curriculum that aligns with their interests.

He created a curriculum that combined Culinary Arts with Nutrition, thus obtaining a bachelor’s degree in the science of Food, Nutrition and Health.

In 2018, Mario got accepted to the Dietetic Internship at Lehman College, and promptly obtained his RDN credentials, passing the certification exam in the first seating. He is a licensed practitioner in the State of NY.

His professional career includes over 20 years of experience in the Culinary Industry, after obtaining his Nutrition Degrees, he has been working with private clients in nutrition counseling. Mario’s dietetic practice is oriented towards integrative nutrition, concentrating on food allergies and intolerances, cooking with non-allergenic ingredients as substitutions for conventional recipes. He has also worked with non-profit organizations as food and nutrition education program director.

In the fall of 2022, Mario joined the Lehman faculty body as an adjunct professor in the Department of Health Promotion and Nutrition Sciences, to his excitement he found this new challenge immensely gratifying; so, in the Fall of 2023, he joined the Lehman Faculty as a full-time member in the HPNS - Food and Nutrition.

Mario is super excited for this opportunity.

Bio pending

Bio pending

I am from Puerto Rico, and a native Spanish Speaker. I completed a dual undergraduate degree in Political Sciences and Hispanic Studies at the University of Puerto Rico. In addition, I have completed a Master of Art in Spanish and Spanish American Literature at New York University in Madrid, Spain, and a MPhil in Spanish and Spanish American Literature, at New York University in New York City.

I am deeply committed to teaching. I strongly believe that it is both our obligation and privilege to transmit not just our knowledge, but also a desire to know and to question. I view teaching as a constant learning process always open to improvement and transformation derived from contact with students, new pedagogies in language education, and colleagues.

Bernice earned her BS in Accounting from Brooklyn College in 1996, and Master’s from the same institution in Political Science in 2001. She received her MLS from Queens College in 2018. Bernice is an academic librarian and the Head of Technical Services at the Leonard Lief Library. Bernice is not new to CUNY and joins Lehman from Brooklyn College Library, where she served as Collection Management Analyst since 2009.  She has extensive experience in financial management and data analysis in the administration of library collections in both print and electronic resources supporting research, teaching, and learning.

BA/MA in Mathematics from St. John’s University and completed all courses and written exams towards a Phd at the CUNY Graduate Center in Complex Analysis. I began teaching at Lehman College as a Substitute Lecturer in the Spring of 2004 and continued here as an Adjunct Lecturer for 15 years. Most recently, I have also worked at the Math Tutoring Center at Nassau Community College. Hired as a full time Lecturer Fall 2023.

Amanda Moody Maestranzi is a doctoral lecturer at Lehman College, of the City University of New York (CUNY), in the Middle and High School Education department (TESOL). Dr. Moody teaches primarily methods courses and student teaching and internship seminars. Courses taught: ESC 609, 610, 708, 761, 763, 766, 769. Additionally, Amanda supervises TESOL student teachers and interns in Bronx schools.

Dr. Moody is a member of NYS TESOL and AERA and enjoys contributing as an editor for NYS TESOL’s Mosaic publication and via conference presentations. Her recent research explores her emerging self-work as a teacher educator, mentor and supervisor. She is interested in self-study and arts-based research, especially creative non-fiction, narrative inquiry, and poetry, and how they can be used for further collaboration and growth-oriented, critical self-work in and around her professional roles.

Dr. Moody previously taught middle and high school English as a New Language in NYC public schools and is a Peace Corps Fellow (Teachers College, MA TESOL, 2010) and Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Mauritania, 2005-2007, Secondary English Education/Gender and Development). She recently completed her Ph.D. in Contemporary Learning and Interdisciplinary Research (Fordham University, 2020).

Tashika is a proud Bronxite and Lehman College alumni where she earned her BSW later pursuing her MSW from Columbia University’s School of Social Work.

Tashika is a holistic social worker, educator, somatic healing circle facilitator, restorative justice practitioner and trainer.

Tashika McBride is a Lecturer in the Middle High School Education (MHSE) department at Lehman College, City University of New York. Tashika coordinates the Human Rights and Transformative Justice advanced certificate program and serve as co-advisor for MHSE Undergraduate students.

Tashika founded two transformative initiatives, The Boys Upstairs (TBU) and ReBirth Your Soul (RBYS), offering a safe and accountable space for their respective communities. Through her healing circles, Tashika encouraged participants to embrace the power of somatic healing, trauma healing, shared storytelling and accountability, facilitating growth and empowerment for all involved.

Tashika McBride research interests include Somatic Healing in Education, Human Rights Education, Trauma Healing, Restorative/Transformative Justice, Youth Advocacy, Youth Empowerment, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), Abolitionist Teaching, Culturally Responsive Pedagogy, Professional Development, and Curriculum Development.

Kevin McEwen holds a Bachelor's degree in Business Management from Hampton University, and a Master's degree in Dance Education from New York University. Kevin previuosly tought at Queensborough Community College, where he has taught a variety of courses in African and Caribbean dance, dance history, and dance video production. He is known for his engaging teaching style and his ability to connect with students from diverse backgrounds. In addition to his work as a teacher, Kevin is also a public speaker, presenting his work at various conferences throughout his career.

Kevin is committed to promoting equity and access in higher education, and he is actively involved in initiatives to support underrepresented students. He also serves as a mentor to young and aspiring artists through his dance company Kofago Dance Ensemble, helping them find their own creative voice while developing effective teaching strategies as aspiring dance educators.

Sandhya Nadadur preferred name Sandy migrated from India with a bachelor’s degree in nursing. She has been a clinician for more than 30 years with experience in various specialties including critical care, rheumatology, and pain management. In 1997 she graduated with a master’s in nursing in the family nurse practitioner specialty from Pace University. She earned her doctorate in nursing practice in 2020 from the College of Staten Island in adult-geriatric primary care.  She was an adjunct clinical faculty at the College of Staten Island for 18 years.

Sandy’s research focuses on improving health outcomes for vulnerable population. Specifically, her area of interest is in medication adherence and its effect on improving chronic disease outcomes among low-income racial minority groups. Her extensive clinical experience led to her patent filing on multidose smart syringes with memory to prevent excess dose and adverse outcomes. She strives to study the social determinants of health and risk mitigation to improve health outcomes in the Bronx community. She serves as a board member in a federally qualified health center.

Sandy’s teaching interest includes developing and enhancing critical thinking skills among students which they can transfer to the practice settings. Her main interest lies in developing astute clinicians for the future by developing and promoting skills of active listening, observation and engaging with patients and their caregivers.

Bio pending

Bio pending

Bio pending

Charleen Jacobs-McFarlane, MS, ANP-BC career spans seventeen years of experience in nursing as a clinician, educator, sickle cell disease expert, and community advocate. She graduated from Adelphi University College of Nursing and Public Health with a bachelor’s degree in nursing in 2006 with honors. Charleen practiced as a critical care nurse in various ntensive care units throughout New York City. Ultimately, Charleen pursued an advanced nursing degree as an adult nurse practitioner and completed her studies at the City University of New York – Hunter College Adult Nurse Practitioner Program in 2014.

Charleen’s clinical area of expertise is chronic pain management and sickle cell disease. Most of her time as a nurse practitioner has been spent working with adults living with sickle cell disease. She is an expert in sickle cell disease management and healthcare delivery. Charleen is a certified medical cannabis prescriber in New York State and holds a buprenorphine X-waiver.

Charleen is a Ph.D. in nursing candidate at Adelphi University College of Nursing and Public Health. She is completing her dissertation: The Lived Experiences of Adults with Sickle Cell Disease Deciding Curative Treatments.

Research Interests: sickle cell disease management, decision-making in sickle cell disease, curative therapies for sickle cell disease.

Academic Interests: interprofessional collaboration, advanced practice registered nurse scope of practice, innovative teaching strategies.

Boram Kim (she/her/hers) is an assistant professor of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences at Lehman College of the City University of New York (CUNY). She holds a PhD. in Linguistics from the Graduate Center of CUNY. Her fields of interest are investigating articulatory characteristics in children with speech sound disorder using an ultrasound imaging technique and prosodic characteristics in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Her main teaching interests lie in the areas of speech science, phonology/phonetics, and ASD. As a bilingual speech-language pathologist with a culturally linguistically diverse background, she is committed to creating an inclusive learning environment in her classroom.

Bio pending

Bio pending