2020 BWRC Summer Research Fellowship Award

Overview

Professor Susan Philip and student Omar Alonson will be designing an interdisciplinary course that will examine the economic, socio-cultural, and environmental evolution – and future – of the Brooklyn waterfront. Using the existing course framework of “Learning Places: Understanding the City,” the project team will research the the impacts of leisure, manufacturing, shipping, immigration, housing, and transportation along the waterfront. The course will track the transformation of Brooklyn’s maritime economy to a more service-oriented economy that is balances the forces of gentrification, preservation, and climate change.

The course will plan place-based learning experiences using the Brooklyn waterfront as an integral part of the course.  Taking the pandemic into account, the course will examine and utilize virtual tools available to expand opportunities for place-based learning. Throughout the course, the Brooklyn waterfront will be used as a living lab for the many issues that communities currently face. Leaning on multidisciplinary research methods, students will create virtual walking tours of the Brooklyn waterfront, and they will be made available to the public.

Project Team

Susan Phillip is an associate professor in City Tech’s Department of Hospitality Management, teaching courses in tourism. She earned a Master of Science in tourism management from New York University. Her background includes museum-sponsored educational travel; her research interests are sustainable, culturaland specialinterest tourism. She has written about tourism destinations in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Caribbean. She teaches Geography of Travel and Tourism, Sustainable Tourism, Urban Tourism, and Hospitality Management Research SeminarPlace is pedagogy in her teaching, in which she draws upon many disciplines. She is a frequent guest lecturer in the College’s interdisciplinary courses, including Black New York, Environmental Economics, and Learning Places: Understanding the City.

Omar Alonso is a third-year City Tech student studying towards a BT in Electrical Engineering Technology.  He has an AS degree in computer science from Borough of Manhattan Community College and is expected to graduate from City Tech in 2022. His work is supported by the CSTEP Summer Undergraduate Research Program. He has worked as a foreman and electrician mechanic at electric corporations in New York City.