Participants in this Roundtable will give visual presentations highlighting some innovative approaches to engaging our community college students in U.S. History, World History, and Chicanx Studies courses. Panelists will share strategies and approaches to engaging our community college students in historical thinking while increasing equity, retention, and success.

This Roundtable discussion will include presentations by: Oscar Cañedo (Grossmont College), who will discuss how to integrate both popular cultural images of Haiti with recent advances in Haitian historiography to demonstrate in an online setting how the study of Haiti is central to a thoughtful discourse of not only world history, but also United States, Latin American, and Atlantic history; Angela Feres (Grossmont College), who, inspired by the need to engage online students in conversations about diversity, identity, and history in survey courses, will discuss various ways in which she is incorporating the use of material culture, TED talks, podcasts, and music into World History survey courses to increase equity, retention, and success; Natalye J. Harpin (Grossmont College), who will discuss the ways that she incorporates Reconstruction and Post-Reconstruction laws about segregation and race to more current events in her U.S. History classes to examine the ways in which people can be legally and socially marginalized, and how it affects their direct descendants and also other groups within the country; Monica Hernandez (San Diego City College), who will share lesson plans, innovative assignments, and transborder actions to show how Chicana/o/x History educators and students in the U.S./Mexico/Kumeyaay borderlands carve liminal spaces to reimagine education and engage in an empowering learning process; Schorsch L. Kaffenberger (Grossmont College), who will discuss how students can build and enrich their historical and critical thinking skills through a deep examination of how the building of the Panama Canal can connect major international historical narratives and developments while contextualizing how it has influenced and shaped local, national, and international history. This Roundtable format will facilitate a robust discussion among panel members and the audience on strategies and approaches to engaging our community college students in historical thinking while increasing equity, retention, and success.