CPL Meetup: 2025 Annual Spring Showcase, March 28, 2025

Spring has officially sprung; we started the season off showcasing our incredible CUNY Peer Leaders and their passions! We last held a meetup on Friday, March 28th at the CUNY Graduate Center for the annual Spring Showcase. This event was an opportunity for interested leaders to apply for and be a part of presenting their projects to other peer leaders in a low-stakes and high-support setting. Of course, there was catered food to keep us nourished during the nearly three hours of dynamic and thoughtful presentations.

We can all agree that the variety of projects presented was impressive! Some students presented work from their previous or current classes, and hopefully their professors know how proud students are of their work and learning. Other students created entirely new projects for the showcase or showed how their work continues to develop. Examples of projects include a video podcast about politics and gaming, an entertainment discount guide for NYC youth, tips for navigating college as a first-generation student, and critiques on anti-Black, Eurocentric curricula in public education. Each presentation taught us something new about the topic, as well as about the positionalities of our CPLs.

The Spring Showcase is an example of how Futures Initiatives and CUNY Peer Leaders supports Active Learning. In under three hours, we walked away with new knowledge about 14 different topics and presenters. This is not the type of learning and interaction that would happen in a lecture-based environment. Particularly, it was refreshing to have the students be the experts in our room. Let’s congratulate our 2024-2025 leaders for sharing their engaging passion projects and embodying what the future of learning could look like!