When the College of Staten Island’s English Language Institute opened its summer session on Monday, May 18, students encountered a curriculum unlike any other ESL program in the New York area. Working in partnership with Dr. Jane Marcus-Delgado of CSI’s General Education program, ELI Director Christian Perticone and instructors Derek Baylor and Thomas Speirs have designed a Mastery- and Foundations-level course sequence — in Reading and Writing, Listening and Speaking, and Grammar in Use — built around lectures from CSI faculty themselves and paired with field trips across New York City. “CSI’s greatest resource is its faculty,” said Perticone. “Their generous assistance in this project has helped us create a curriculum that will help students and set our program apart from other NYC-area summer language programs.”

The visiting lecturers include Dr. Stephen Ferst, who will speak on the viability of the post-Bretton Woods world order ahead of a student trip to the United Nations; Dr. Richard Flanagan, whose comparison of Fiorello La Guardia and Zohran Mamdani will set up a visit to the Museum of the City of New York’s Activist New York exhibit; and Prof. Lisa French, Dr. George Vachadze, and Dr. Marcus-Delgado herself. Each lecture aligns directly with a CSI General Education course students may take as they continue their studies — including HON 122 and POL 103 — giving language students both academic preparation and early connections with faculty they may encounter again.

The redesign was made possible by a $16,000 Open Educational Resources grant awarded to the ELI — which sits within CSI’s Center for Global Engagement — to convert eight of its courses to a Zero Textbook Cost model. Across the eight converted courses, students are projected to save at least the full grant amount in textbook costs by next summer, if not sooner. Christina Boyle of the CSI Library is overseeing the grant and guiding the ELI faculty, all first-time OER recipients, through the implementation process. The team has built 16 CUNY Academic Commons sites to host the redesigned materials, with departmental review each term to keep them current.

The new curriculum launched on Monday, May 18. Dr. Jane Marcus-Delgado delivered the first visiting lecture on Thursday, May 21, on the immigrant experience past and present — push and pull factors, then and now — preparing students for their visit the following day to the Museum at Eldridge Street, housed in the 1887 synagogue built by Eastern European Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side. Perticone will introduce the new curriculum to potential international partners later this month at the NAFSA 2026 Annual Conference in Orlando, which the Center for Global Engagement is attending under this year’s “Global by Design” theme.

By Christian Perticone