This panel features faculty, staff, and students from the Borough of Manhattan Community College and Guttman Community College who will offer a curricular and cocurricular approach to fostering student belonging, both of which center around shifting students from passive learners to active participants in the creation and dissemination of knowledge and understanding. BMCC will demonstrate a curricular approach of how faculty can collaborate with Career Services to implement career advisement in the classroom through specific interventions to increase engagement such as LinkedIn, group-based problem solving, and the contextualization of course materials. Also, the use of podcasting in Native American/Indigenous literature courses will be presented as a means of further validating student voices and experiences. Guttman and its chapter of Phi Theta Kappa (PTK) Honor Society will present their cocurricular Amplifying Student Voices initiative. The shift to remote learning has resulted in decreased student belonging and interaction, which has compounded stereotypical thinking because of fewer opportunities to build mutual understanding and empathy. In response, PTK members created a student-run website that culminates in an Ending Single Stories event designed to provide all students with a space to engage in dialogue about their collective diversity and to ensure student’s voice is represented in the larger college community. Attendees will be invited to consider how resources on their campus might support curricular and cocurricular efforts to build an inclusive academy in which students are active knowledge creators.