CUNY Year 3 - Building the CUNY PIT Lab

Through our grant funding, we were able to a.) Purchase equipment to establish the CUNY PIT Lab at CSI St. George. This lab space will function as a "Makers Space" that will allow PIT@CUNY community members to produce high-quality digital content and PIT-UN-related events. The CUNY PIT Lab has podcasting equipment, digital editing, and sound production workstations. There is also access to the ability to broadcast hyflex/hybrid events. This space will continue to be used to enhance skill building in PIT students and community/industry partners. We hope to retain additional funding to support staffing and additional equipment to allow us to expand curricular offerings at the site related to skill-building in design and digital media. This space will also be available for meeting with important PIT@CUNY partners and to support PIT-related community-based projects. We will be holding an official ribbon-cutting of the space in Fall 2023. b.) Recruit Cohort 3 and train Cohort 2 in PIT tech skills: A third cohort of PIT students have completed their first year. Cohort 2 engaged in UX training with a professional UX designer Will Zhang, who also works in the NYC Mayor’s office. Our first cohort completed their third year. Students from Cohort 1 are pursuing individual majors and have a solid foundation in public interest technology. We are working on ensuring that all PIT students are prepared to pursue a career in PIT. This year we integrated this training into our Applied Public Interest Tech course and based on this experience, we will be expanding and regularizing this course to be a UX-based lab course that will provide students with verifiable credentials in UX and PIT. Students in our course created PIT-related prototypes using Figma as part of building a professional portfolio that was evaluated by professionals in the UX field. These students then posted these portfolios to their Handshake profile. c.) Establish PIT@CUNY Committee for Sustainability & Develop a PIT Career pathway model with a focus on PIT social justice apprenticeships: In many ways, we have institutionalized the PIT@CSI learning community. We are in the process of recruiting our 4th cohort of students. The PIT@CSI students have successfully chartered a student club: CSI Tech 4 Change. We see our PIT@CSI learning community as the hallmark for defining what PIT@CUNY is. The CUNY PIT Lab has been established at CSI St. George, but it will serve as a center for PIT@CUNY. Stakeholders in the CUNY Workforce Development Office. CUNY’s Office of Career and Industry Partnerships, and community partners like BetaNYC, ComeUnity Fridge, and Floodwatch are assisting with developing opportunities for PIT social justice apprenticeships. One of our students was accepted into the Build4Good Internship program but was unable to participate because they did not have a placement for her. We are now in the process of pursuing paid opportunities in user research for our students. One student was hired by the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission to assist in developing digital content that promotes cultural competencies in their organization. Both students were awarded $10,000 fellowships from the CUNY BA Program’s Thomas W. Smith Academic Fellowship. PIT@CSI students were invited to NYU to present on their experiences to an upper-level education majors class. Professor Cumiskey presented at the CUNY Inclusion, Equity, Diversity and Access as part of a panel entitled: "The Future is Here: Place-based Pedagogy and Engagement as Inclusive Practice". All of the PIT@CSI students were involved in assisting and co-curating the 2022 PITUNConvening and developed skills in project management, team leadership, and performance. d.) Conduct formal assessment: We are working on a formal assessment of the first three years of our program that will be published and presented in multiple venues in 2024.