​​RAÚL RUBIO @ THE NEW SCHOOL

At The New School, Raúl, and his Languages Department colleagues,  have endeavored to reimagine and re-envision the role(s) Languages play  at the university, in a wide-range of areas, including: an improved  system of Coordination of the Language Programs, continued development  of full-time and part-time faculty, a revised department curriculum  (course models), a review of the four language studies Minors offered by  the department, the approval and implementation of Graduate Minors in  Chinese Studies, French Studies, Japanese Studies, and Hispanic Studies,  university-wide curricular planning and articulations with Milano,  Parsons, Lang, and the College of Performing Arts (COPA), spearheaded  exploratory Study Abroad options, and conducted an Online Synchronous  Pilot (now entering its 5th year during AY 20-21) for introductory  courses in Japanese, French, and Spanish (with Chinese initiated in AY  18-19). He has served on the University Curriculum Committee (UCC) since  2016, and on University’s Honorary Degree Committee (2 cycles) and from  2015-2019 as part of the Executive Committee (EC) of the School of  Undergraduate Studies and collaborated with the initiatives of The  Observatory on Latin America (OLA). More recently, upon the  re-organization of the Languages Program, Raúl has served in Schools of  Public Engagement's School’s Council and the Executive Dean's Office  Leadership Committee.

Raúl’s teaching portfolio has included  courses in and beyond the Languages Department, including Professional  Spanish (2016), Foundations of Gender Studies (2016, 2017), Cuba Now!  Arts and Society (2016, 2018), Comparative Ethnic Studies in the  Americas (2016), (a comparative research methods course, which intended  to serve students approaching ethnic studies from a wide-range of fields  and disciplines), and more recently NEW courses, Storytelling in  Spanish (2018, 2019) and Latin American Film & Media (2018). He  taught a new course in Spring 2020, titled “Latinx Lives” which was  contextualized in relation to current day topics associated with Latinx  communities in the US, broaching issues related to the term "Latinx"  itself as well topics related to bilingualism and biculturalism in  film/TV, new media, and literature. Also new to his teaching repertoire  is the course “Latinx Media” which was offered synchronously via Zoom in  Fall 2020.

Pioneros: Building  Cuba’s Socialist Childhood. September 17 to October 1, 2015. Sheila C.  Johnson Design Center, Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries, Parsons  School of Design/The New School.  An unprecedented exhibition of the  material world of childhood in Cuba through the decades of the 1960s,  1970s, and 1980s. The exhibit explores the relationship between the  political and the material orders, offering a portrait of the effects of  global and national politics on the material environment and in  everyday life, as well as of the impermeability and resilience of some  individual and collective practices to politics. More than 200 objects  like toys, furniture, books, clothing, appliances, and children  ephemera, designed for or used by Cuban children in the decades of the  1960s through the 1980s, will be exhibited along with old photographs  obtained through Facebook and other social media, or directly  contributed by their owners. They will attest to both the efforts of the  Cuban state to shape a socialist “new” man and the individual tactics  to resist them (stressing the role that objects played in these  processes). The exhibition, co-curated by sociologist Maria A. Cabrera  Arus and art historian Meyken Barreto.  

“In my efforts to continuously develop and improve in teaching. I embark on assessing student’s performance in relation to the course’s learning outcomes by continuously engaging in improvements of course materials and teaching techniques. One recent innovation is the more frequent use of digitally available target-language materials in order to supplement weekly clusters of the course. Beyond the overall objective of improving language proficiency, I consistently implement activities that apply the target language to the development of critical thinking, in particular, real-life culturally relevant situations. With the integration of available digital materials in the form of Spanish-language media, civic and artistic cyber forums, and academic research tools, the thematic clusters of the course come to life.”

“I also continue to improve the pedagogical formats that increases the oral and listening competencies of students by implementing oral presentations of wide-variety. The use of drafting for written assignments has proven to develop self-authored student results, which empower students to take the helms of their learning. With my close guidance, I establish reflection moments throughout the semester in which students self-assess their learning in each of the four language skills (speaking, listening, reading and writing), as well as their cultural acquisition (depending on the course), and their general participation performance.”