KCTL Advisory Board

Evan Caccioppoli is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of theatre, film, and speech in the Department of Communications and Performing Arts at Kingsborough Community College. He works as a theatre director, producer, filmmaker, documentary theatre practitioner, writer, and acting/audition coach. As a director, Evan has staged World and American premieres, re-imagining of classic plays, musicals, and contemporary works from American and foreign playwrights. Evan coaches private students and teaches workshops in acting technique, song interpretation, scene study, character development, and performing the works of Tennessee Williams and Contemporary American Playwrights.  His current areas of research involve The History of Queer American Theatre and The Women of Italian Cinema. He has had articles and reviews published by Howlround and New York Theatre Review. Evan holds a BFA in Theatre Performance from The University of Illinois at Chicago, MA in Educational Theatre from New York University, and MFA in Directing from The Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University. He is a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association, SAG/AFTRA, ASCAP, the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, and PSC-CUNY.

Cesar Castope is a Doctorate Lecturer in the Department of Business at Kingsborough Community College. He received his M.B.A. in Finance and his M.P.A. with an emphasis on nonprofit organizations, as well as an M.A. and MS in Economics and Accounting. His teaching interests and experience lie in teaching accounting courses such as financial accounting, taxation as well as business courses in microeconomics, macroeconomics and money and banking.

His teaching philosophy and methodology revolve around the notion that no student should be left behind. He believes in providing engaging opportunities, both in person and remotely, for students to remain involved in their coursework. He also aims to create an engaging and welcoming learning environment where students feel comfortable sharing their ideas and experiences and exploring new ones they might encounter during their studies. In addition, he periodically volunteers as a scholarship reviewer for high school applications for nonprofit organization as well as has led our college's volunteer income tax assistance program for the last seven years as a VITA coordinator in order to provide services during tax season. Lastly, he is currently working towards completing his M.S. in Taxation and an M.A. in Industrial Organization Psychology within the next year.

Christina Colόn is full professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Kingsborough Community College where she teaches biology classes for both majors and non-majors, including Ecology. Her approach to teachings is hands-on, writing intensive, civic engagement, student focused, active, and inquiry based. In person she runs field trips for every lab in her electives and steps aside to let students take the lead and earn the status of colleague and citizen science. Online she engages students in active learning virtual labs (e.g. Google Scholar, Sim Bio, iNaturalist, Zooniverse) and in person activities that they report on using photos, PowerPoints and recorded narration of their work.

After years of research in Asia studying civets, binturongs and sun bears, she shifted to local species in order to involve students in her research. She now works with students each spring to study the spawning activity and reproductive ecology of American horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus). She works in collaboration with Fordham, Cornell, Audubon and the IUCN Horseshoe Crab Specialist Group to study, monitor and protect this 450 MYO species that plays a vital role in the biomedical industry due to the miraculous properties of its blue blood.

She also works with Gotham Coyote to record acoustic behaviors of urban coy-wolves and the resident critters to better understand the impact of this recent addition to the NY landscape on the acoustic behavior of all critters therein.

Jessica Corbin is currently serving in her 6th year as a full-time Lecturer at Kingsborough Community College, teaching in both Music and Theatre Arts. In addition to teaching and serving as music director at Kingsborough, she also works as a songwriter, singer, pianist, and music director in and around NYC and the Lehigh Valley Area of Pennsylvania. At Kingsborough, she has been the recipient of one PSC-CUNY Research Award. She has served on numerous faculty search committees, as well as the library committee. Jessica served as the Region 1 Chair of  Musical Theatre for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival for four years, and before that she served as Vice Chair for Musical Theatre as well as a Vocal Coach and Accompanist for the region. Jessica holds a B.M in Piano Performance from Duquesne University and an M.M in Music Theory from Indiana University.

Gabrielle Kahn, Professor of English, received her EdD in Applied Linguistics from Teachers College, Columbia University. What drew her to KCC was its learning community program, and since joining the faculty in 2006 has been privileged to be an active member of Kingsborough’s faculty-led learning communities and a teacher and administrator in ESL learning communities. With colleagues across the college, and students in her ESL and Literature courses, she is continually exploring sociocultural approaches to teaching and learning that are grounded in a commitment to building knowledge with others in ways that meet their individual needs. She has served as co-editor of the journal Learning Communities Research and Practice with former KCTL director Janine Graziano, and has co-facilitated KCTL Faculty Interest Groups titled: Strategies for Success with ESL Students Across the Curriculum, and Valuing Students’ Voices to Make Assessment Meaningful. Trained in conversation analysis, her research interests include classroom discourse, the role of play in education, and designing open-ended materials that are accessible to all learners. She is thrilled to be a member of the KCTL advisory board, and looks forward to furthering her own growth as she works to provide meaningful professional development opportunities to her KCC colleagues.

Julie Turley is an associate professor and librarian working on open education, civic engagement, and outreach initiatives in the Kingsborough Library. She is part of Kingsborough Community College’s Open Education team, supporting faculty in their respective course conversions to open educational resources and open pedagogy. In her library instruction classes, Julie is dedicated to reflective practice and activities that frame students as knowledge creators.  She has published fiction in the North American Review, Quarterly West and other journals, and has presented on topics as diverse as open pedagogy, “rock ‘n’ recovery” memoirs, and mothers who participate in rock and heavy metal music subgenres, which included a presentation at the Modern Heavy Metal Conference in Helsinki, Finland in 2019. Her co-authored book-length ethnographic study of mothers who participate in heavy music subcultures–Heavy Music Mothers: Extreme Identities, Narrative Disruptions–was published by Lexington Books in 2023.