SUNY Online Teaching Ambassador 2022: Monroe – Renee Dimino

Renee Dimino is an associate professor at Monroe Community College, where she has taught for over seventeen years. She is also currently serving as SUNY Guided Pathways Project Director and as a state coach, working with community colleges across SUNY to support their pathways work and improve the student experience. In her faculty role, she teaches College Success courses, coordinates College Success adjunct faculty, and has worked to redesign developmental education. She values reflective practice and is passionate about student success and professional learning.

While Renee was at first skeptical about teaching College Success courses online, she decided to delve in and soon realized the value that modality offers students. Her focus in teaching online is creating a sense of community for students. Engaging in a cycle of continuous improvement, she has revised the course each semester in response to student feedback and the current context of the college. College Success also utilizes an Open Education Resources online textbook entitled College Success: A Guide to Navigating Monroe Community College that Renee extensively co-edited and customized for Monroe Community College students. She created a College Success wellness room with links to stress reduction activities within the course and piloted an initiative wherein Peer Navigators adopt a class to interact with online class discussions and share announcements. In addition, she created and shared a comprehensive faculty organization space on the College’s Learning Management System and populated it with extensive College Success resources such as interactive activities, videos, self-assessments, a library guide matched to each chapter of the text, a guest speaker list, entire courses, and more.  Renee’s innovations also include co-developing a College Success Instagram page that merges essential curricular themes with real life and offers practical tips for success.

Renee Dimino holds a bachelor’s degree in Education from SUNY Geneseo and a master’s degree in Education from SUNY Brockport.