THE FIVE BOROUGH BALLOT
CUNY Students Soar! More Award Winners Than Ever work closely with them to help them win scholarships that support both undergraduate and graduate study. Often this is one-on-one consultation, but help also comes from workshops on the writing of personal statements and in interview-practice sessions. Our scholarship coordinators help applicants put their best foot forward.” “I got an amazing amount of support from John Jay,” said Nicholas Montano, a senior in the CUNY Baccalaureate program at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who won a rare Marshall Scholarship for graduate study in the United Kingdom – only the sixth in CUNY history. “We discussed my application and how do I fill in the gaps of things I didn’t mention or highlight.” John Jay Director of Honors, Awards and Special Opportunities Litna McNickle started by alerting him to available scholarships. Professors and mentors at New York Needs You, the nonprofit where Montano interned, “helped sculpt my application.” With Marshall requiring two interviews – one just for finalists – Vielka Holness, director of the Pre-law Institute, helped with “multiple rounds of mock interviews and more informal conversations.” By Jay Hershenson, Senior Vice Chancellor for University Relations and Secretary, Board of Trustees, CUNY
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hen Ellen Leitman immigrated from the Eastern European country of Belarus six months before starting at Hunter College, she couldn’t have imagined that in a relatively short time she’d win three major scholarships and find herself in an M.D./Ph.D. program at Harvard Medical School and Oxford University. She did it with the help of her Hunter mentors and advisers, who are part of the support system that helps outstanding students across the University obtain highly competitive and prestigious scholarships for undergraduate and graduate study year after year. In 2012, 16 CUNY students and alumni won National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships and 12 Fulbright grants for graduate study abroad. In recent years, 16 CUNY students have won Barry M. Goldwater Scholarships, which Congress created to educate scientists, mathematicians and engineers; seven won Harry S. Truman Scholarships, a federal graduate-study program in public service fields; four won Rhodes Scholarships, the most celebrated international scholarship for graduate work at Oxford, and many more received other significant awards, with the advice and help of CUNY faculty and staff, This year, in 2013, the number of award recipients is growing: for example, a record 23 CUNY students and alumni won the coveted NSF $126,000 fellowships available for three years of academic study. According to CUNY Director of Student Academic Awards and Honors James Airozo, the University’s “students excel in the full spectrum of academic endeavor. Scholarship coordinators
Earlier in his undergraduate career, he attended the Latino Leadership Initiative at Harvard’s Kennedy School Center for Public Leadership after the CUNY BA program nominated him. He also won the CUNY BA’s Thomas W. Smith Academic Fellowship. When he graduates this spring, Montano will head to England to begin two master’s degree programs over the next two years, one in research methods in social policy and sociology at the University of Liverpool, the other in criminal justice policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. “The focus of my undergraduate degree is direct client work,” he said. He chose the twin master’s because “I lacked an understanding of how policy affects the individual before he enters the criminal justice system.” He intends to pursue a doctorate afterward. Many winners of prestigious scholarships graduated from New York City public high schools. For example, Kirk Haltaufderhyde (York College, B.S. in biotechnology, 2011), who attended Bayside High School, in 2012 won a $126,000 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to pursue doctoral studies at Brown University into photoreceptors in the skin. Another NSF winner, Christie Anne Sukhdeo (City College, B.S. in biology, 2011), a graduate of Martin Van Buren High School, is using her grant to look at human-caused fragmentation of natural habitats in Madagascar in her doctoral research at the University of New Orleans. Pakistani immigrant Umussahar Khatri (Macaulay Honors College at Queens College, B.S. in mathematics, 2012) was one of four CUNY students (and 18 from other institutions) who won a highly competitive Math for America Fellowship last year. The privately funded fellowship will give each of them a stipend totaling $100,000 over and above their salaries during the first five years of their careers teaching in New York City’s
public secondary schools. That includes the year spent pursuing a tuition-free master’s degree in math education at City College of New York. She attended Benjamin N. Cardozo High School, where she earned college credit through CUNY’s College Now program. Ellen Leitman scored a trifecta. As a junior, she won a Goldwater Scholarship. The privately funded Howard Hughes Medical Institute awarded her a research fellowship to the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, MA, during the summers following her sophomore and junior years. There, she explored the misregulation of proteins in neurodegenerative diseases. “That was the turning point for me,” she said. “I said to myself, ‘I have to do research. I can’t live without research.’” After she graduated in 2010, Leitman began an M.D./Ph.D. program at Harvard Medical School, and in 2012 won a highly competitive Clarendon Fund Scholarship. It covers tuition and college fees, plus a generous allowance for living expenses at Oxford. With two years of medical school under her belt, she is now in the United Kingdom for three years of doctoral work, studying pediatric HIV in association with a research center in South Africa. She plans to return to Harvard to finish the two clinical years of medical school after earning her doctorate. CUNY’s other Clarendon winner, in 2011, was Kunchok Dolma, an immigrant from Nepal whose family came from Tibet. She was the valedictorian of Macaulay Honors College at Lehman College in 2009. As an undergraduate, in 2006 she received a Jeannette K. Watson Fellowship, which seeks to increase students’ ability to make a difference in their own and other people’s lives. The Watson enabled her to have 10-week summer internships with the United Nation’s Population Fund in New York (2006), the New York State Supreme Court (2007) and the Tibetan government in exile (2008); the latter was in Dharamsala, India, where the Dalai Lama lives. She also won a prestigious internship as a New York City Urban Fellow in the Mayor’s Office of Adult Education (2010); these city-sponsored fellowships introduce students and graduates to local government and public service. With the Clarendon, she is pursuing a master’s degree in international relations at Oxford’s Balliol College. “I am very humbled and honored to be accepted,” Dolma said when she learned of the Clarendon Scholarship. With a reference to the people at CUNY who helped her win these prestigious awards, Dolma added: “I hope to live up to the expectations of my mother, my teachers, mentor, and my friends without whom this would not have been possible.” The Keys to Fort Knox: Scholarship Coordinators Each CUNY campus has designated a coordinator to help students apply for prestigious scholarships. If there’s a vacancy or the designee is not available, students can ask the dean of students’ office for help. Students also can contact CUNY Director of Student Academic Awards and Honors James Airozo at james.airozo@mail.cuny.edu. CUNY posts information on prestigious scholarships at www.cuny.edu/prestigious.
Senior Colleges • Baruch College, Valeria L. Hymas, Assistant Director, Zicklin Undergraduate Honors Program and Post-Graduate Fellowships Specialist, Valeria.Hymas@baruch.cuny.edu • Brooklyn College, Stephen Gracia, scholarship coordinator, sgracia@brooklyn.cuny.edu • City College of New York, Jennifer Lutton, scholarship coordinator, jennifer.lutton@gmail.com • College of Staten Island, Michele Galati, Center for Advising and Academic Success, Michele.galati@csi.cuny.edu • Hunter College, Myrna Fader, advising services, myrna.fader@hunter.cuny.edu • John Jay College, Vielka Holness, scholarship coordinator, vholness@jjay.cuny.edu • Lehman College, Lynne Van Voorhis, assistant dean of undergraduate studies and study abroad, lynne.vanvoorhis@lehman.cuny.edu • Medgar Evers College, Evelyn Jacques, director of Scholarship Department, ejacques@mec.cuny.edu • New York City College of Technology, Dr. Olliver Davis, director of scholarships and residency, odavis@citytech.cuny.edu • Queens College, Ross Wheeler, director of honors and scholarships, ross.wheeler@qc.cuny.edu • York College, Brunilda Almodovar, scholarship coordinator, almodovar@york.cuny.edu Community Colleges • Borough of Manhattan Community College, Sussie Gyamfi, scholarship and special services coordinator, sgymafi@bmcc.cuny.edu • Bronx Community College, Yvonne Erazo, scholarship coordinator, Yvonne.erazo@bcc.cuny.edu • Hostos Community College, Irene Garcia Mathes, coordinator, global scholars and honors, igarcia@hostos.cuny.edu • Kingsborough Community College, Associate Provost Reza Fakhari, rfakhari@kbcc.cuny.edu • LaGuardia Community College, Karlyn Koh, honors director, kkoh@lagcc.cuny.edu • Queensborough Community College, Ellen Hartigan, vice president for student affairs, ehartigan@qcc.cuny.edu • The Stella and Charles Guttman Community College, Rebecca Hoda-Kearse, director of student engagement, rebecca.hoda-kearse@ncc.cuny.edu
cityandstateny.com | SEPTEMBER 23, 2013
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