Noam Scheindlin has been a professor at LaGuardia since 2011, where he directs the Creative Writing program and is co-director of the college’s Honors program.  He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the City University of New York.  His contributions to the study of the French writers Marcel Proust and Georges Perec have appeared in various academic journals, and his poetry, in various literary journals. 

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​Lee Boyar, CPA, received his training in public accounting at Deloitte and has been a faculty member at LaGuardia Community College since 2013. He emphasizes career readiness, whether in accounting or a different field, and the foundational skills required for future coursework. Publications include articles in The CPA Journal and Honors in Practice.

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Dr. Jaafar has been a math faculty member at LaGuardia Community College since 2010. In 2011, she co-founded the Math Society to engage students in co-curricular math learning and help them compete in regional and national math contests. She teaches mathematics courses, first-year seminars, and capstone courses for liberal arts students. Since 2022, Dr. Jaafar has served as the Director of Research and Evaluation for the Queens STEM Academy, a $4.6 million Department of Education HSI grant expanding STEM access and completion.

An active scholar, Dr. Jaafar has published research on theoretical physics, assessment of high-impact educational practices, and equity-focused student success analytics. She has presented this work at national conferences. She holds memberships in the Association for the Assessment of Learning in Higher Education (AALHE), the National Association for Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE), and the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges (AMATYC). As a lifelong learner, she is currently enrolled in a program focused on disability services. She has been awarded grants driving equity in student success, including from the Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies Initiative (BRESI) at CUNY. Fluent in French, Arabic, and English, Dr. Jaafar is dedicated to empowering students from all backgrounds.

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​Dr. Frank Wang received my Ph.D. from Columbia University and currently is a Professor of Mathematics at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY.  His research interests include differential geometry and dynamical systems: they stemmed from his childhood dream of understanding Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity.  He has served as a board member of the National Numeracy Network, an organization to promote quantitative reasoning across disciplines. He is also an associate editor of Numeracy and a contributor to Media Highlights of College Mathematics Journal.  He has been regularly teaching MAT 120 Elementary Statistics Honors at LaGuardia.

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​Dr. Robin Kietlinski is a Professor of History in the Social Science Department at LaGuardia Community College. She received a BA from the University of Chicago and an MA and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, all in East Asian Languages and Civilizations. Since 2012 she has taught courses in world and East Asian history at LaGuardia. Her research focuses on intersections of sport and society in modern Japan and she has published over two dozen articles and a book on aspects of Japan’s long history with the Olympic Movement. 

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Dr. Yves Ngabonziza is a Professor of Engineering and the Director of the Engineering Program in the Math, Engineering, and Computer Science Department at LaGuardia Community College. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the City University of New York. He has published numerous papers in the field of solid mechanics and engineering education and has given talks at various major national and international conferences. Dr. Ngabonziza’s research interests include engineering education, composite materials simulation, electrical and mechanical behaviors of nanomaterials, nano-/micro-mechanics, and self-sensing of damage in carbon fiber reinforced structures and systems. Dr. Ngabonziza is also passionate about finding opportunities to provide students with industry-aligned career preparation.

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Dr.Monika Ekiert is a Professor in the Education and Language Acquisition Department and has her doctorate in Applied Linguistics from Teachers College, Columbia University (2010). At LaGuardia, she teaches courses in linguistics and education. She offers an Honors section of ELN 101: Introduction to Bilingualism every Spring semester. The course focuses on the phenomenon of bilingualism, universal bilingual practices, simultaneous and sequential language acquisition, and language policies around bilingualism, especially in the United States. This is an urban study course and a US Experience in Its Diversity Pathways course. Monika’s research interests lie at the intersection of second language acquisition and pedagogy. Currently, she is involved in research projects focusing on task-based language teaching (TBLT) and written corrective feedback in writing instruction. Additional research interests include crosslinguistic influence (CLI) in second language acquisition and conventions of academic writing. She has published her empirical work in multiple journals, including Applied Linguistics, Language Teaching, ELT Journal, and TASK Journal as well as in edited volumes. At LaGuardia, she is a faculty Co-Director of Assessment and Institutional Learning. She is also the Director of the TESOL/Linguistics Program in Liberal Arts.

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Dr.Karen Miller is a professor of history and American studies at LaGuardia Community College and the CUNY Graduate Center. She earned her PhD at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Managing Inequality: Northern Racial Liberalism in Interwar Detroit (NYU Press, 2014). She is co-editor of Prehistories of the War: A Critical Genealogy (U. of Pennsylvania Press, 2024) with Yumi Lee. Her most recent articles appeared in the American Quarterly, “’ Thin, Wistful, and White’: James Fugate and Colonial Bureaucratic Masculinity in the Philippines, 1900–1938” (2019) and “Agents of the Settler State: Incarcerated Filipino Workers, Conjugal Migration, and Indigenous Dispossession in the American Colonial Philippines” (2024). Dr. Miller is currently working on a book that analyzes the relationship between internal migration within the boundaries of the Philippines, the dynamics of colonization, and struggles for freedom from the late-nineteenth into the mid-twentieth centuries.

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Professor Luskin is the author of “Unchaste Veneration in Titian’s Worship of Venus,” in New Studies on Old Masters: Essays in Renaissance Art in Honour of Colin Eisler, and of the book reviews of Colantuono’s Titian, Colonna and the Renaissance Science of Procreation: Equicola’s Seasons of Desire and of Israëls’ Piero della Francesca and the Invention of the Artist in Renaissance Quarterly. She has also presented papers at conferences sponsored by the Society of Renaissance Studies, the Renaissance Society of America, and the Sixteenth Century Studies Society and Conference, and given gallery talks at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her discovery that a row house on West 29th St. in Manhattan was an Underground Railroad Station, and her successful campaign to preserve it, have been the subject of documentaries, articles, and broadcasts.

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Professor Natalia Biani has been a lecturer at LaGuardia since 2022. She received a PhD in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research unravels the mutually beneficial relationship between tropical bees and their mites’ associates. Her publications appear in several academic journals, and she has served as a translator of scientific articles and a book from Spanish to English. Originally from Argentina, she has explored diverse ecosystems throughout the Americas. She teaches introductory biology courses and tries to instill in her students a sense of wonder and love for all life on the planet.

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Joy Sanchez-Taylor is a Professor of English at LaGuardia whose research specialty is science fiction, fantasy, and race studies. Her book Diverse Futures: Science Fiction and Authors of Color (2021) examines the contributions of late twentieth and twenty-first-century U.S. and Canadian science fiction authors of color to the genre. She is currently working on her next book Diverse Fantasies. In her free time, Dr. Sanchez-Taylor loves reading more books, any good music, and traveling. 

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AnaLucίa Fuentes received her doctorate degree in Molecular Biology from the University of British Columbia, Canada. Her research has focused on investigating factors that modulate the innate immune system, particularly the activity of phagocytes, and has multiple peer-reviewed publications in the field. Over the past few years, she has also introduced research on the microbiome of water samples from the East River, into the General Biology curriculum. She sees the teaching and understanding of science as an important tool to advance social equity.