This is Samina Shahidi’s eleventh year as academic advisor for the Urban Studies MA program. During this decade, Samina has worked with hundreds of graduate students in the URB MA program toward the goals of putting each student’s professional, academic and organizing skillset in productive dialogue with their goals in the URB MA degree. These conversations inform her collaboration with SLU’s student affairs and advisement teams. Samina has played an integral role in these capacities through two transitions, and several program projects, while maintaining responsive policy advocacy for SLU students. Samina currently serves as a member of CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress Delegate Assembly.
Samina holds a B.A. from Fordham University, and is finishing an M.A. in Liberal Studies at the Graduate Center. Her previous graduate program work includes extensive study at Lehman College, where she taught initially as a teaching fellow, and then as an adjunct lecturer for seven consecutive years in Lehman College’s composition, literature and humanities departments. Her research interests focused on post-colonial hybrid genres of writing that explore social movement-making, such as political memoir/testimonio. Her background also includes teaching English as a Second Language. Her ongoing research, writing and advising interests are in service of a CUNY that reflects and serves the resilience, diversity, struggle and vision of its student body.
