Building a Bearcat Legacy
For EOP alumni Katherine (Reid) Barrow ‘91 and her family, attending has become a tradition
Katherine (Reid) Barrow ‘91 grew up in Harlem, N.Y., attended John F. Kennedy High School in the Bronx and spent most of her childhood in the city. Coming to University was a relatively big change from what she knew.
“It was an adjustment,” said Barrow, “But I’m glad I went away from home. Being a part of a program like the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) helped with my transition and adjustment. It helped me grow as a young adult.”
When Barrow was in the middle of her college search, she connected with the former director of EOP, Michael Boyd. Her connection with Boyd was a large part of what led her to choose .
“ was the only school I visited [before making a college decision],” said Barrow. “Michael Boyd was my initial contact and my conversation with him solidified my decision. The way that he explained the support system that was in place for EOP students — it just felt right.”
For Barrow, the biggest impact and influence of her time spent as part of the EOP program was the relationships that she built.
“The EOP staff was there if you needed anything and created a space for students to feel comfortable whenever they came into the office,” said Barrow. “Vanessa Young was who I confided in the most, and she was always available for me. And Westley Van Dunk embraced all the students who were part of the program, whether he was their mentor or not. The whole staff created a homey, supportive environment for the students.”
Not only did Barrow build a network with the EOP staff, she also made personal connections within the program, including meeting her future husband, Willard Barrow '91, at the EOP summer program prior to their first year.
“When I met Will, it was an instant connection,” said Barrow. “But it was definitely something that built over time as well.”
Their daughter, Miah, graduated from with a degree in environmental studies this spring. The accomplishment meant a lot to Barrow; she was especially proud of all that her daughter had to overcome in her college career.
“The whole pandemic took away the normal college experience for Miah in her first year,” said Barrow. “But when things started to open up, she sought out opportunities and didn’t let the disappointment of the previous year affect her, and I’m so proud of her for that.”
Since graduating with a sociology degree in 1991, Katherine Barrow has gone on to attain two master’s degrees, earning her master’s of social work from Albany as well as an education and special education master’s degree from Touro College. She now works as a social worker in a school setting, assisting students in their educational journeys.
Previous Alumni Spotlights
Milton Santiago '78
Westley Van Dunk '74
Samira Musah '06
Vanessa Young '78
Arianna Mendoza ‘20
Darwin Martinez ‘11, MBA ‘16
Nicole Batista '21
Frank Gyan ‘09
Veronika Polyakova '17
Count me in! EOP alumni and students connect over civic engagement
Dr. Robert Davis '94
Nelson Torres-Ríos ’99
Nicole Yearwood '97, MPA '98
Alyssia Coates
William Luis
Kimberly Reed
Fidel Galano
Yasmin Hurd
Christine Plentyhoops
Eric Lee
Ralph Gonzalez
Walter O'Neill
Deborah Gray White
Hubert Johnson
Tonya Parris
Mabel Payne
José Magdaleno
Raedell Wallace
Bea Gonzalez
Richard Marmolejos
Mara Sanchez
Tanveer Shah '14 PharmD '22
Ian Ouma '22
Janet (Mejia) Peguero '11
Count me in! EOP alumni and students connect over civic engagement
This summer a worldwide pandemic, the senseless murders of people of color at the hands of police, concerns over accurate representation in the decennial census, and a contentious election season combined to leave many people reeling and seeking ways to enact social change. A group of ten EOP alumni who graduated from in the 1990s and early 2000s and who have kept in touch over the years were among those left wondering how they could get involved in this moment in history and make an impactful change.
“While we were at ,” said Shawanda Weems ‘98, “we were all a part of different levels of student activism, and we learned to use our voices on campus when a lot of times they tried to keep us voiceless or tried to suppress our thoughts. We learned those qualities at 18, and they still show up in our lives today.”
The friends got to talking and found that they were all struggling with current events and how best to respond. Weems, a middle school English teacher in The Bronx, said that they came to a consensus that they needed to do something.
“We learned that at ,” she said. “It’s one thing to talk about it, but it’s something else to hold people accountable and to hold each other accountable.”
So, led by Katrina Huffman ’96, they decided to hold an event for EOP alumni that would create a space to talk about the complex emotions and thought processes they were faced with.
“Why vote when we might not favor either candidate? How do we make that decision as adults? How do we not just stand by? Once we realized that we were having difficulty having those conversations in our own networks,” said Weems, “we created this event called Count Me In.”
The virtual event featured guest speakers and alumni leaders representing organizations like the U.S. Census Bureau and the president of the Peekskill Chapter of the NAACP, who gave voice to “being counted and included” and provided information about voter registration, empowering all in attendance to participate in the electoral process.
A current EOP student also spoke, saying that many students were actively engaged in the summer's protests against the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, and had yet to turn their attention to the upcoming election. Some of the alumni, while excited to hear about the students' activism, were also concerned and wanted to be sure that students saw the connection between the fight for social justice and voting.
“The next step is empowering them to understand that when they leave campus, their voice doesn’t cease,” said Weems. “If they feel the need to be active and engaged as students, then the fact that they don’t think they need to vote was alarming to some of us.”
The group of alumni thought back to their time as students and recalled the impact alumni had made on them during the summer Enrichment Program (BEP).
“Every year a group of alumni would come back during the summer program and hang out with the students. There was always a workshop, and the alumni would say, ‘These are the things I’m doing now because I used my experiences to propel my life in a positive trajectory.’”
They spoke with Karima Legette, the director of the EOP, and she was thrilled to have them recreate this event in a virtual capacity during the summer 2020 BEP. One month later, they had the opportunity to meet with around 200 current students.
“We were doing what other alumni had done for us, exposing them to alumni of color — the majority of us were EOP students — that are leading pretty decent lives because we understand that the foundation that we received at allowed us to make good decisions moving forward.”
They intentionally avoided trying to tell students what to do — after all, they were students once, too, and knew that wouldn’t be effective. Rather, they told their own stories, then split off into virtual breakout rooms for small group discussions to give students a more comfortable space to voice their own thoughts and stories. They ended by coming back together and explaining that EOP is an affirmative action program and what that means, exactly.
Weems said she is happy to support ’s EOP and the work they are doing to recruit and retain students of color. They are planning to hold another event in the spring semester, thanks to the success of the fall gathering.
“These students are worthy of the opportunities that holds,” she said. “Making sure that they can forge ahead and provide those same opportunities to others is something that I am committed to.”
Dr. Robert Davis '94
Dr. Robert Davis ’94 credits and the Educational Opportunity
Program (EOP) for providing him with a family and a path to his eventual career in
anesthesiology. Having immigrated to the Bronx from Leicester, England, at the age
of 10 and then moved farther west to for college, Davis says he found the
support and family environment offered by EOP to be a big help.
“EOP provided that family feel for me while I was at ,” he says. “If you are the first in your family to pursue a college education, navigating the pathways of higher education can be challenging, and that’s where EOP provided great support.”
Davis recalls many long conversations with the mentors he met through EOP, such as Michael Boyd, the director of the program, and Westley Van Dunk, Davis’s EOP counselor, who he says were both instrumental in helping him adjust to and find his path forward.
Davis had always been interested in medicine, but he says that was really just a pipe dream until he found EOP. “I didn’t think it would be attainable,” he says. “I figured I would just have to get a job as soon as I could and not be in school for so many years.” Regardless, he chose to pursue a premed track while at , majoring in sociology, which he says allowed him to remain more well-rounded, having friendships and a life outside of the science buildings.
After graduating, Davis moved back to England for a year, but soon realized he wanted to come back to the States, so he took the GREs and eventually completed the Master of Public Health program at the University at Albany. He worked at the New York State Department of Health in Albany for a year, but his dream of becoming a doctor hadn’t faded, so he applied to medical school at SUNY Upstate.
“EOP ties all of this together,” says Davis, “I don’t know if it’s still in place, but SUNY had a deal whereby if you are enrolled in an EOP program for anything past a bachelor’s degree, your tuition is paid. So when I went to Albany for grad school, tuition was paid. And since the med school I got accepted into was also SUNY, my med school tuition was paid. All because of EOP.”
While he was originally leaning toward emergency medicine or obstetrics/gynecology, Davis ultimately chose a specialty that offered more control over the healing process. “I decided on anesthesiology,” he says, “because I was interested in 100 percent patient compliance. If I decide a patient needs a medicine, I give it, rather than give a patient a prescription and they decide whether or not to fill the prescription. It’s a good fit. You’re not specifically dealing with one specialty when you do anesthesia, because you’re responsible for relieving pain in all specialties. And that power to take breath away and bring it back is just magnificent.”
After returning to to complete his clinical rotations at area hospitals, he completed a year-long general surgery internship at the Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. He then returned to Syracuse to complete his anesthesiology residency. Upon completion of his training, Davis took a job with Sentara Healthcare in Northern Virginia, where he still lives with his three children. His oldest, a 14-year-old daughter, is just beginning to think about college, and Davis says is a potential option for her.
“She won’t be in EOP, but that’s the idea,” he says. “The idea is to use a program like EOP to overcome hardships and strife. You’re not meant to stay on programs like that for life. It’s meant to be a springboard into success. And that’s what they provided: the support and the guidance to enable that.”
Davis believes it is essential that people like him, who were helped by EOP, give back and provide support for the next generation of students.
“Everybody should do it, EOP or non-EOP,” he says. “But specifically, EOP alumni should donate regularly to a cause that provided for them. We didn’t have a book fund, and once the used textbooks were gone, they were gone. If somebody doesn’t pick a class because they can’t afford the books for that class, then that’s a shame. So for those of us who have come through the program, I think it should be a necessity to provide for those coming behind us, definitely.”
Nelson Torres-Ríos ’99
Nelson Torres-Ríos ’99 was born in the Bronx but spent a good portion of his childhood
in Puerto Rico, before returning to the Bronx in the late ‘80s, where he attended
DeWitt Clinton High School. When he was accepted into through
the EOP program, he quickly realized what a great opportunity he had been given, and,
with the support of several key EOP and faculty mentors, he set off on a path of advocacy
that was rooted in his childhood experiences in Puerto Rico and that has extended
through a successful career in community-based work, higher education and law.
“I started at in 1994 as an EOP student,” says Torres-Ríos, “and the first encounter I had there was with Linda Lisman, who I still consider a mentor today and talk to her all the time.” Lisman, who ran the EOP Tutorial Center at the time, played an important role in making sure Torres-Ríos and his peers had access to the support and resources they needed. She was also the one who helped him fill out the necessary paperwork to return to school after illness forced him to withdraw for a semester in his sophomore year.
Torres-Ríos also speaks of the honor and privilege of meeting Michael Boyd, the director of EOP from 1986 to 1994.
“[Boyd] was a frequent visitor to the dorms,” says Torres-Ríos, “and he spoke to us a lot about making sure that we went to class and took advantage of all of the opportunities. Unfortunately he died in November of that same year. I think for all of [my class], it was hard. He was so influential and he was such a good mentor to all of us. So I think as a class, we did the best we could to try to encourage other students.”
The summer program for incoming EOP students, the Enrichment Program (BEP), was also instrumental in helping Torres-Ríos adjust to life at , which was quite a change from what he was used to in the Bronx. He says the two classes he took that summer, in English and psychology, prepared him for the quality of work that would be expected of him and set him on the way to earning a bachelor’s degree in English from , and eventually a master’s degree in counseling psychology from the College of New Rochelle and a Juris Doctor degree from Rutgers University School of Law–Newark.
“Because English is not my native language, I chose English as my major,” he says. “I needed to make sure that I mastered the language, both written and orally.”
Torres-Ríos credits several specific faculty members in the English Department for his success. Lois Einhorn, Libby Tucker and Lisa Yun all took an active interest in his work, guiding him through several independent studies and keeping in touch with him after graduation. “They really did help me through that process of becoming a more effective writer, and being able to go through that challenge of trying to really master the language.”
In his professional life, Torres-Ríos passes along the gifts of time and attention he received from these faculty members and other mentors in the EOP program. He worked for several years at the National Puerto Rican Forum, a community-based organization (CBO) in the Bronx, running English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), General Education Development (GED) and workforce development programs, and he eventually joined its executive board, where he wrote several successful grant proposals that secured over a million dollars in funding to support the organization and its clients.
By the time he started law school in 2007, Torres-Ríos was also teaching as an adjunct faculty member at Eugenio María de Hostos Community College of The City University of New York in the South Bronx, where he is currently a tenure-track faculty member in the Behavioral and Social Sciences Department, teaching courses in criminal justice.
He is currently a bar member in New York and New Jersey, where he has practiced family law, with a focus on international child abduction cases under the Hague Convention.
“There are a lot of folks in our community who don’t speak the language,” says Torres-Ríos. “[The legal system] really needs counsel to represent a lot of these clients who are new to the country, haven’t mainstreamed yet, and have a language barrier. There is a huge need for lawyers who are fluent in two languages.”
While he enjoys litigation, he says his real passion lies in legal writing — reading, analyzing and applying the law. He recently published an article in Rutgers Race & The Law Review. The article, “Limitations of the Jones Act: Racialized Citizenship and Territorial Status,” discusses how the century-long “imposed citizenship” of the people of Puerto Rico has resulted in their relegation to “’second-class’ citizenship.” Citing several Supreme Court cases and congressional actions, he demonstrates his argument in part through the lens of the devastating effect of the Jones Act, a federal law from 1920 regulating the shipment of goods between U.S. ports that gravely impacted Puerto Rico’s ability to recover from Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017.
His ability to advocate for his community in the Bronx and his family and friends still living in Puerto Rico through the legal system is largely a result of the support Davis received during his time at . His professors and the mentors he had through EOP empowered him to be an effective advocate, and he plans to continue down that path, using his skills to speak for those who need better representation. In May of this year, he was admitted to practice in the United States Supreme Court, which means he will be able to continue his advocacy at the highest level possible if necessary.
Torres-Ríos tries to pay forward some of what gave him by returning to campus occasionally to speak to current students about pursuing law school. “I always tell them, if you’re going to law school, you really should be doing a lot of reading and writing, because that’s all we do in law school. I think a lot of students don’t realize what a great opportunity they have by being here, and I hope that they stay in the moment and enjoy it. really has some of the best faculty members that SUNY has to offer.”
Nicole Yearwood '97, MPA '98
If she could give one piece of advice to current students, Nicole Yearwood '97, MPA
'98, would tell them, “Focus on your work, but also have a little fun. Be active in
at least one organization. It gives you another set of skills that will be useful
to you in life. It’s not just about the books.”
This advice is deeply rooted in her own experience at . As a student, Yearwood was active in the Black Student Union and the Student Association; she was a student representative on the Harpur College Council; and she was the vice president of the Graduate Student Organization (GSO). She admits that, in hindsight, she may have overextended herself a bit — “My grades suffered a bit because of it,” she says. But she can also trace very specific professional and personal successes back to some of the skills she learned as a student leader.
“I was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 2004,” she says, “and then after that, I worked on the presidential campaign. When I came back home, people still swear that I was depressed after that 2004 election. I didn’t know what I was going to do or where I was going to work. I was able to fall back on the skills I learned [as vice president of the GSO) of formatting documents and creating newsletters to get temp jobs. I had those skills from , and I was able to put them to work financially.”
In addition to concrete skills, Yearwood’s involvement on campus helped her discover a passion that ultimately led to a career she loved. Initially a computer science major, Yearwood says that due to her involvement with student organizations and one particular lobbying experience with EOP, she soon realized that her true passion was government affairs.
“I realized how important government was to our daily lives. When I was [a sophomore], the governor at the time was going to cut funding to the Tuition Assistance Program (TAP), so we all went up to Albany to advocate for TAP funding to either be restored or not to be cut.”
This was the experience that cemented her interest in government and its effect on average citizens. “That was when I thought, 'I like this. This is really interesting,'” she says. “And I also wondered if people understood the relationship between their elected officials and what happens in their lives.”
Yearwood has worked in government affairs in a variety of capacities over her career, and she is currently a partnership specialist with the United States Census Bureau. She is also in the midst of starting her own company, called EducatedVoter.net, where she hopes to share her expertise in government relations as a consultant, in addition to providing free information about voting rights and information via her website and a strong social media presence.
Her goal is to help people understand that they need to pay attention to what’s happening with their elected officials, even though they are busy and have a host of obligations that seem more pressing and urgent. “Government is still at work,” she says, “and people are still doing things that impact your life, even when you think you can’t afford to pay attention to it.”
She sees her job with the Census Bureau as an extension of her passion for civic engagement work, and it has driven home for her the fact that even some people who should know better have some learning to do. “I’m running into so many people who are civically engaged and active,” she says, of her work with the census, “who don’t realize that the census is connected to the government funding that we receive, and it’s connected to the Electoral College. It’s all connected.”
Because so much of her passion around civic engagement started as a student in the EOP program, Yearwood believes it’s important to give back to the program. That’s why she was happy to join the EOP Advisory Council and contribute to their goal of strengthening the program and supporting the current generation of students. And she says her professional background has also given her unique insight into the importance of philanthropic support.
“As someone who works in politics, I understand the importance of money to campaigns — how it helps people get their message out,” she says. “And as someone who is also on the board of a nonprofit and worked at a nonprofit, I understand the importance of small donations and how unrestricted funds can also help an organization.”
For Yearwood, though, supporting EOP also takes on another dimension.
“It’s about understanding the impact of those contributions, but it’s also about strengthening EOP and letting the University know that we do have some solid alumni, and that we do have the capacity to give and support. In my experience at , there were definitely good times, but there were also times where we had run-ins with the administration about things they were doing regarding students of color. I think it would be helpful if we showed what we can do financially. We can have a conversation; I can support the University. But these are also the things I want to see changed.”
Alyssia Coates '90, MA '92
As a high school senior in Queens, Alyssia Coates '90, MA '92 had no intention of
going to college. No one at her school was encouraging her to consider it, and it
was not something she particularly wanted to do. Her mother, however, who came to
New York from Trinidad and Tobago, had different ideas.
"My mother told me that I did not have a choice," says Coates. "And if anyone knows anything about West Indian parents, you don't say no to them." So, Coates decided to apply to , mainly because her older brother was already part of the EOP program here. "I didn't know what I was getting into when I applied, but when I was accepted, I just knew, well, I am going."
Coates's initial welcome at was not a great one. "When I arrived at , I was told that I would be one of the students that would go back home pregnant," she says. "That was flight or fight, and those words showed me how to fight." Coates thrived during EOP's summer program, which she says taught her how successful she could be as a student, and she ended up maintaining the highest academic record in the EOP class throughout that academic year. She was also one of the first EOP students to be accepted into the business school after her freshman year.
"While those words were meant to harm me," she says, "they changed my life and showed me what I was capable of. EOP was the platform and foundation I needed to allow me to thrive in college."
Coates says she encountered many mentor figures among the EOP staff who had a significant impact on her life. From the beginning, they set certain expectations and standards, and she found that it set her up for success. "Vanessa [Young] was my counselor, and was there when I needed her, but also gave me my autonomy. If I was doing fine, then she was fine with me. If there was a need for me to come in to see her, she was always there. I utilized the tutoring services that were available and every resource EOP offered. All of those resources were exactly what I needed to allow me to be successful at ."
Coates met Westley VanDunk the summer between finishing her senior year and beginning her master's program, when she was running EOP's summer program. "At the end of the summer, when the students were leaving on the bus, although I knew they were coming back, I began crying. And [VanDunk] said something to me, that as a young person, I did not understand. He said, 'You found your calling.' "Today, as I reflect on my career, I can see the impact of his words. That is speaking life into my students, showing them their potential and ability to dream big. Helping them understand they are leaders and destined for greatness."
EOP staff also provided Coates with career direction and, perhaps even more importantly, a deep understanding of the importance of networking and professional relationships. Her first two jobs after graduating were direct results of the connections she made through EOP. Michael Boyd recommended her for a recruitment position at SUNY's Central Office of Opportunity Programs. Ira Tolbert, the Assistant Provost for Recruitment and Retention at , recommended her for a position with the National Consortium for Minorities in Engineering and Science (GEM) at the University of Notre Dame; helping minorities at colleges around the country go on to master's and PhD programs and work with Fortune 500 companies.
Coates eventually went on to receive a PhD in organizational leadership and is still working at Notre Dame today, currently serving as the Director of Development for University Relations. "Much of my journey is credited to the EOP counselors, Carole Boyce Davies [a professor of Africana Studies at ], Agnes Green [previous director of EOP] — I knew nothing about a PhD, but these were individuals that spoke vision for scholarly achievement into my life."
The chance to come back to campus for EOP's 50th anniversary and reconnect with friends was something Coates says she couldn't pass up. The bond she has with her EOP family she says, "is forever." "I am still friends with that core group, and from time to time we get together to celebrate each other. Whether it's our successes or sometimes it's during hard times and failures — we are there for each other. That is so awesome. Words cannot express how I truly feel and value our friendship."
During her visit over Homecoming, Coates was invited to join the EOP Alumni Council, and she says they spoke about the importance of giving back to 's EOP, which ultimately spurred the generous donations made during the banquet dinner that weekend.
Coates says she was excited to see the show of support for EOP and looks forward to the chance to use her professional experience in fundraising to further support EOP. "I'm very excited to be part of the council. I look forward to helping Karima and the office leverage the network of alumni, parents and friends of 's EOP to make sure that our EOP students have access to the resources they need, so they, too, can pay it forward."
William Luis '71
William Luis '71 has spent nearly all of his adult life opening doors. Beginning as
a member of the second cohort of EOP students admitted in 1967 to Harpur College (which
later became ), he says he and his peers felt a sense of responsibility
toward those who would come after them.
"It was a very difficult time, at least at the very beginning," he says. "As you can imagine, there were very few people of color on campus. It was mainly an all-white school." Luis says he and the other students of color on campus realized that they needed to come together to support each other, but also to create a visible presence on campus. "That's when we decided to form the Afro-Latin Alliance, to give some kind of identity to our own existence at Harpur."
"It was a turbulent period," says Luis. "It was the 60s, so there were lots of things going on, and it became a moment of self-awareness, and awareness of the local and national and international politics. Looking back, that was kind of an exciting time to be immersed in change." Luis and his peers became activists, attending marches in Washington DC and elsewhere. But they also dedicated a lot of time to trying to change the culture of their immediate surroundings.
"We were thrusted into this [political] environment [and] didn't really understand all the complexities of what it meant," he says. But they did know that there was something missing in their experience at Harpur College. "And that was who we were — people of our color and of our own ethnic background. So, we proceeded to educate the University about who we were. We began to ask for professors of color, both Latino and African American, and administrators and so forth. We became very active; we became activists at the University, in order to educate not only the faculty, but in particular the administration, because there was resistance to having us there. Even though there were some people who did believe in us, there were other people who were expecting us to fail."
Looking back now, Luis says he is extremely gratified to see the great degree of success he and his peers, as well as the generations of students who came after them, have achieved, despite the difficulties they faced. And these successes were particularly evident during EOP's 50th anniversary celebration held during 's Homecoming weekend this past October.
Luis says catching up with friends from those days and also hearing the success stories of more recent graduates was very gratifying. "You have your doctors, you have your lawyers, you have your professors, you have your professional people who came [through EOP]. But it was done pretty much out of sheer will and to forge forward knowing that we would be opening doors for those who would be coming behind us. Because there were difficult moments, to be honest with you, but we also were conscious that what we took on our shoulders, hopefully, would be helpful to those coming behind us, and they wouldn't have to carry that heavy burden."
Those who attended an EOP open house on Friday afternoon were given a particularly striking look at just how far EOP at has come. A documentary filmed by Larry Gottheim, the founder of the Cinema Department, was shown, which documented the early experiences of Luis and other students in the Afro-Latin Alliance. "It's a beautifully done film about our particular presence," he says. "The documentary is a testament to our experiences and our struggles and our ideas, and then later on, with time, our successes as well."
And their successes are many. Emerging from a childhood growing up as the son of a single parent in what he calls a "very inhospitable environment" in the Lower East Side of New York, Luis went on to receive a master's degree in Ibero-American Studies from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, followed by a second master's degree and PhD in Romance Studies with a focus on Latin American literature from Cornell University. After serving on the faculty at Dartmouth College and a few years back at University from 1988-91, he joined the faculty at Vanderbilt University, where he currently serves as the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of Spanish — the second endowed chair he has held at Vanderbilt. He's also the director of the Latino and Latina studies program, editor of the Afro-Hispanic Review and was awarded the highly prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012. Luis has also held visiting positions at Washington University in St. Louis and Yale University.
Throughout his nearly 40-year career in higher education — fourteen books written and co-edited and more than one hundred scholarly articles later — Luis says he has continuously striven to keep opening doors for students coming up. "Even now, at this stage of my life, I find myself still trying to knock doors open for others. I never envisioned that the struggle would be a lifelong battle. It's been a slow and continuous process of just building, putting the block in the right position so as to continue to move forward."
He says this struggle, which began for him all those years ago at , is worth it, though.
"I think if you look across the nation, if we focus on EOP, the number of our graduates who have obtained success is magnificent and probably beyond the imagination of those who started it, or maybe just part of their dreams. I think it's just remarkable to know that this dream has become a reality, where we are making a big difference at the educational level, but also in the professions that we hold."
Kimberly Reed '97
Kimberly Reed '97 had no particular desire to attend . She grew
up in a fairly middle class family, the daughter of a bank executive and a high school
administrator, and when it came time to consider colleges, she applied to seven, including
, but she really had her heart set on attending University of Maryland,
College Park.
But partway through Reed's high school career, things changed rather drastically when her father suffered a brain aneurysm. He survived, somewhat miraculously (the average survival rate is only around 33%, she says), but he was not able to return to work, leaving their family relying primarily on her mother's teacher's salary. And in fact, Reed came very close to not attending at all.
"My parents twisted my arm," she says. "I wanted to go to the University of Maryland, College Park, and hadn't accepted me yet." They came to visit 's campus, and Reed says her parents were very impressed, particularly with their student tour guide, Katrina Huffman '96, who was part of the EOP program. "She gave us a tour, and my parents fell in love with the way she guided us. They were like, 'You have to come here and be under her tutelage. You have to come here and let her be your mentor.'"
Nevertheless, Reed prevailed with her desire to escape the cold of Upstate New York
and go to school in Maryland, and when she still hadn't received word about whether
or not she would be accepted into 's EOP program, her parents relented.
"I'll never forget," she says. "The day that my parents mailed my nonrefundable room
and board deposit to University of Maryland, College Park, Michael Boyd called me
and told me that I was being accepted into the EOP program at ."
Reed, thinking she was safe, since her deposit had been mailed that day, told her
mother about the phone call that evening.
"She said, 'Listen, over the course of four years, that nonrefundable deposit means nothing right now!' So after about a half hour of going back and forth with my mother, I conceded, obviously. But it was absolutely the best decision of my entire academic career, without a shadow of a doubt."
As soon as Reed arrived on campus, she began to change her mind about . She says the EOP program, in particular, was what turned things around. Mentors like Michael Boyd, a second father figure who "expected greatness from us" and "instilled in us that...it was our responsibility to make sure that we took advantage of the opportunity that we were given," and Vanessa Young, her EOP counselor, who "always had an open door," had significant impacts on her life.
"That was something that I didn't realize at the time, as a 17-year-old," she says. "But that support mechanism was pivotal to my success. It really helped me graduate and graduate on time."
Returning to campus this past October for EOP's 50th anniversary was amazing, she says. She got to reconnect with Young and other EOP staff, as well as friends she hadn't seen in years.
"It was great to see how the program has continued to grow...and how great and well everyone is doing. We get so caught up in our everyday life, but I hold and the EOP program in such high regard. That's one of the reasons I do give back every year. It was great to see that all of the work that so many people applied to us — these giants who fought for this program and continue to fight for this program — hasn't been in vain. So that was great to see that alive and in color in October."
Reed, who has given to the EOP program for a number of years, was so moved after the banquet that she approached the leadership at her employer, SiriusXM, where she is a director in human resources, to see if they would consider matching her gift to the EOP Book Endowment Fund this year. " two weeks ago I received confirmation that my company matched a portion of my contribution. I was ecstatic about that!"
Reed says giving back is not an option for her — it's a personal requirement.
"I remember walking onto that campus, and feeling like I don't know if I belong here, because financially my family was struggling. I remember I had to buy a book for a math class I took, and I think it was $112. I couldn't call my mother and ask her for [that much money] for this book, but I needed it." She ended up finding a classmate who allowed her to share her book for that class, but as time went on, there were more classes and more expensive books.
"It really became a hardship. And that's why I had several jobs while I was at school, because I knew that even though my parents would do whatever they had to do to get me the funds to buy these books, it was a struggle for us. I remember being in that place, and I want to help someone else who may be in that place to be able to get the books they need. Whatever I can do to help that next generation, or that student who's there."
Fidel Galano
How does a young man who dropped out of school in sixth grade and could barely read
by the age of 17 end up with two degrees and a successful career in information technology?
For Fidel Galano '92, it took a combination of his self-proclaimed "high-energy" and
"super-positive" personality and the influence of his neighborhood priest.
"My situation was pretty unique," admits Galano, who grew up in the heart of New York City's Spanish Harlem. "I actually never went to middle school or to high school." Galano's mother had long-term health issues, so he began working full time at the age of 12 to support her and his younger brother. He also started hanging out in the streets around then, and it was only thanks to the neighborhood priest, Father William (Bill) Meehan, that he stayed out of trouble and received any semblance of an education during those years.
When Father Meehan realized Galano couldn't read, he taught him how. When he noticed Galano was spending a lot of time on the streets, he signed him up for a series of church retreats that got him out of the dangerous neighborhood every other weekend. And when Galano, at the age of 19, decided to pursue a career with the United States Postal Service, Father Meehan gave him a copy of Barron's Guide to the GED, so he could pass the test and receive the required certificate.
Galano studied throughout the summer and fall of 1983, working backwards from the answers in the back of the book to teach himself how to pass the test. He received his GED certificate in January 1984, and, at Father Meehan's suggestion, visited the East Harlem College and Career Counseling Center in El Museo del Barrio, New York's leading Latino cultural institution. It was here that he met the center's director, Mario Morales, who, like Father Meehan, saw something special in him.
"I explained to [Morales] my circumstances, and he was profoundly moved," says Galano. "He said there was no way that a person who didn't learn to read until he was 17, and took a GED by learning the answers from the back of the book, should be considering to be a postal worker, and he encouraged me to apply to schools."
Even after a round of college applications and subsequent denials, Morales refused to give up on Galano. He eventually turned to his colleague Louis Del Valle, associate director of EOP at . After much back and forth ("I really do believe I heard [Morales] beg [Del Valle] to give a kid like me a shot," remembers Galano), Del Valle agreed to let Galano attend the EOP summer program, on the condition that if he did well there, he would be admitted to the University in the fall.
"Louis Del Valle took a risk [on me]," admits Galano, recalling his total lack of formal educational background. He says he thinks Del Valle took that risk partly because he trusted Morales, but also because something about Galano's story convinced Del Valle that he had what it took.
"At the time, my mother was dying, and she was bedridden. I remember telling stories about how my mother couldn't go to the bathroom, and how I had to do all that for her, and the enormous effort that it took to be an 18- or 19-year-old man, or boy, caring for a parent — who I thought was going to make it, and did not. So I think when you hear that, you're like, 'Well, here's a kid whose life is in the way, and he's persevering.'"
Galano did well during the summer program, and was admitted to that fall. It changed his life, introducing him for the first time to the world of opportunities education offered.
"There were all these things that I could do!" he says. "I didn't have to worry about the violence. I didn't have to worry about the poverty. I didn't have to worry about the dysfunctionality of growing up in a resource-challenged environment. I was in a university where things were open to me, where opportunity was in abundance. That was the first time in my life I ever had access to not just resources, but to people who could use those resources."
Galano made the most of his opportunities. He earned a 4.0 his freshman year and maintained a strong commitment to academics throughout his college career. He was also involved in cocurricular activities, serving as the president of the Latin American Student Union, founding the chapter of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity, starting his own computer company and sitting on his residential community's judicial board, among other things.
He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in industrial engineering technology from University and then a master's degree in business administration from the University of Michigan while simultaneously raising three very successful children with his wife, Nancy Rodriguez Galano '88, whom he met through EOP. He now owns his own high-end audio design business, which he runs along with maintaining a 17-year career at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich., where he is currently the director of information management.
"I took the opportunity that was given to me by those people at the University and the EOP program," he says, "and I did my best to show people that I was appreciative of the opportunity and I wasn't going to waste it." It wasn't always easy — his oldest daughter, Maria, was born shortly after his wife graduated, so he had to work, delaying his own graduation — but he never lost sight of what a powerful opportunity he had been given. Galano says he knows that his acceptance to meant, by default, that someone else did not get the opportunity, which is why he has tried to pay it forward and make sure opportunities like the ones given to him are available for future generations.
This responsibility came to a head for Galano after the World Trade Center was hit on Sept. 11, 2011. He says he had an epiphany that he couldn't spend his career just "making a rich company richer," so he left a lucrative top-level management position with Hewlett-Packard to take a lower-paying position as the information security officer at the EPA, where he felt he could use his computer security expertise to protect some of the fundamental American values of freedom and self-promotion he had benefited from as a young man.
"I'm living a profoundly privileged life that is rooted in the foundation of education," he says. And that is why he supports EOP as another way to pay it forward. "Education is the key, and there are so many people who do not have the opportunity, that the little that I can give, when I can, I do it. Because it's going to go to what I think is the greatest gift you can give a person: the ability to learn — the ability to do extraordinary things in life."
And as for the neighborhood priest whose influence initially set him on the road to success? He still keeps in touch regularly, says Galano, and Father Meehan believes the relationship has been mutually enlightening.
"In '96, when I got my master's in business from the University of Michigan," says Galano, "I invited him to my commencement, and we were taking a photo together with my whole family ... and I remember Father Bill leaning over and saying to me in my ear — he used to call me Fi — so he goes, 'Fi, you made me believe in God.'"
Yasmin Hurd
From an early age, Yasmin Hurd '82 was fascinated by science. Her childhood hero was
Albert Einstein, which she says was unusual for a young girl growing up in Jamaica.
She was intensely curious about nature and how things functioned in nature, but she
says she ultimately wanted to know "why people were who they were."
Her interest in people and the interplay of the genetic and environmental factors influencing them perhaps has roots in the first major transition period in her own life. When Hurd was a young teenager, her family moved from the quiet island of Jamaica to the bustling metropolis of New York City. For Hurd, who is a self-proclaimed Type A personality, it was a dream come true.
"I just loved the energy of New York City," she recalls. "I remember coming from a small island, to just millions of people around you in New York; it was overwhelming, but for me it was overwhelming in a very positive way. I was like, 'Oh, the sounds, the noise, the pulse!' I just loved it."
Even in New York City, however, it turned out that her love of science still made her stand out among her peers, albeit for different reasons now. "[In Jamaica] it was not your race that made a difference about what opportunities were available to you education-wise," she says. "It was more about whether or not you received a fundamental education. The U.S. was the first time that I really understood that, as a black girl, I wasn't supposed to like science."
Luckily, Hurd found support from the strong friendships she made with a group of girls in her new school who also felt different for various reasons. Even though these other girls — many of whom were also immigrants — weren't necessarily interested in science or from the same ethnic or racial background as her, together they formed a tight-knit, inclusive circle that valued their commonalities over their differences.
When Hurd arrived at , she continued making connections with students of all different backgrounds and interests, particularly through her active involvement in residential life. "I really got to know a lot of different types of students," she says. "I got exposed to so many things. That is one of the major positives I always talk about for a liberal arts education — it's not just the wide-ranging classes you have access to, but the diverse people studying these various topics who are around you that make a big difference."
While at , Hurd had a Federal Work-Study job taking care of the animals in the Psychology Department's research laboratory. She says she was always very interested in learning about the research being done with the animals, and she asked a lot of questions of the faculty members she came in contact with. Peter Donovick, professor of psychology, took notice and asked her if she wanted to participate in doing research. She told Donovick she would love to, but that she also needed the income from the work-study job, so he worked out an arrangement in which she could do research as a work-study student.
"My experience in his lab just enhanced my passion and my love [of science]," she says. "I really got to understand and see research up close and personal, and for that I'm always grateful to him." It was because of this experience that she created a major combining biochemistry and psychology, and was able to further her inquiries into the science of the human brain. She went on to receive her doctorate in neuroscience from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and did her post-doctoral training at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md.
Hurd is now the Ward-Coleman Chair of Translational Neuroscience and the director of the Addiction Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and she runs a laboratory that studies addiction disorders and related psychiatric illnesses. She has never forgotten her research experience at , and now works to pay forward her gratitude for that opportunity by offering an internship in her lab and a stipend for one student from the EOP each summer.
"I think my lab offers very good exposure to a wide range of neuroscience experiences, from behavioral to molecular, and also just basic science in general," she says. "And It's not that I expect everyone to become a neuroscientist because they come and do this internship, but I think it helps them to think differently and helps put them on a path that they want to get to in life. Exposure is critical to finding your path."
Because of her access to a large brain tissue repository she established, Hurd's research over the past 10 years puts her squarely in the center of hot-topic areas of study such as the opioid epidemic and medicinal marijuana.
"Our brain collection consists mainly of heroin abusers," she explains. "So I was able to conduct molecular studies when no one else was studying the human brain in this manner. And so we were able to have insights that were unique and set the stage for a lot of research that other people are now beginning to conduct."
One of the focuses of her lab has been on the effects of cannabis on the developing human brain. Her research using animal models found that use of THC — the psychoactive component of marijuana — during adolescence can enhance vulnerabilities toward addiction later in life and even across generations.
"But the marijuana plant is very complex," she notes, "so many years ago, in addition to THC, we started studying other cannabinoids, and one cannabinoid — cannabidiol (CBD) — showed that it actually reduced heroin-seeking behavior."
Her lab then ran clinical trials and showed that human subjects addicted to heroin who were treated with CBD saw a reduction in their cravings for heroin. And helping people move forward, she says, is really the goal of her work. A goal that is reflected back in her motives for inviting EOP students to work with her each summer.
"In order to change the future, we have to impact the present. Unless we give students from all walks of life the tools of a really strong education, we're never going to change opportunities for people from diverse communities. So that's why for me, I think supporting EOP is essential. It's not just handing someone something, it's helping them to work toward that goal."
Christine Plentyhoops
Like many alumni, Christine Plentyhoops '96 has made a successful career
in finance. Unlike many of her peers, however, she did not graduate from the School
of Management (she has a bachelor's degree in English literature and rhetoric), nor
did she make a beeline for the financial district upon graduation.
Plentyhoops says that throughout her college and early professional career, she did everything "the hard way," largely because she didn't know any better and didn't know she could ask for help. Her 17-year stint at Primerica, where she is currently a regional vice president in Denver, Colo., is a result of "a lot of blessings and good fortune all rolled up in one," she says. And while her career is lucrative, that is only part of what has kept her at it. She is committed to helping others realize that they don't have to do things the hard way, by teaching families and individuals how to manage their money and reach their goals.
"I basically ran away to college," says Plentyhoops, who grew up in the Finger Lakes region. "I ran away from some stuff at home, and I couldn't wait to leave. So when I went to college, I didn't have a lot of understanding that there were people you could trust and ask for help from and lean into, and I did college on my own." Her situation worsened during her freshman year at , when her father passed away unexpectedly. At that point, any support she had been able to rely on from home basically vanished.
"My mom struggled financially after my dad passed away. She didn't make a whole lot of money at all. So I paid for my own books and worked all summer so that I could have books and worked so I could have a telephone and eat. I had no help from home. And it wasn't because nobody wanted to help, it was because it wasn't possible."
In hindsight, Plentyhoops says that a program like EOP could have had a huge impact on her college experience, and by extension, her early career. She did well academically, but says she focused too much on her GPA, making few connections with people along the way. Having a counselor who could guide her through the process and provide a support network would have been instrumental in helping her understand that there were people who cared and who could help her — that she didn't have to do it all on her own.
Today, she tries to get that message out to as many young people as she can. She says one of the reasons she enjoys her career so much is that she can focus on helping middle-class families in difficult situations similar to those her own family faced.
"We teach families how to get out of debt," she says. "We teach them how to become properly protected. We also teach them how to save and invest for their future goals, whether that's retirement or education or emergency funds. And so, in the same manner that my family didn't know anything about money, I get to work with families that were just like my family and make a difference there."
Whenever possible, she encourages her clients to involve their children in the meetings so they begin hearing at a young age about the basics of money management.
"I have clients who are as young as 15," she says. "Nobody did this for me, and I probably wasn't in a place that I would have received it because of my own level of not being willing to trust anybody, but I figure if they hear one-third of what I've said and it lives in their head filed away somewhere, then hopefully that makes a difference."
In addition to reaching her clients and their families, Plentyhoops has also taught financial classes as a guest lecturer at numerous colleges in the Denver area and teaches money management classes for families at the Joshua Station, an organization that provides transitional housing and counseling for homeless families.
"It's all about somebody believing enough in other people and caring and actually saying, 'Hey, this isn't a life sentence. Your circumstance isn't a life sentence, it's a circumstance.'"
And that's also why she chose to provide financial support to the EOP Book Endowment Fund. Because she and her husband both grew up in difficult financial circumstances, they have chosen to offer philanthropic support to programs that help people better their own lives.
"It was a real struggle in semesters where I couldn't afford all of my books," she says. "It would take me all summer to earn what I needed to be able to have two semesters of books. So we want to help students who are in the same place. They want to be there. They're the first in their family to go to college or they're coming out of really difficult circumstances, and they don't really have any support. Somebody saying, 'Hey, you can do this, and we'll help you get there, but you can do this, keep going' — that's a pretty big deal."
Eric Lee
When Eric Lee '07 was deciding on a college to attend, it came down to two criteria:
strong academics and a reasonable tuition rate. He says was the obvious
choice. "I knew it was well-regarded academically, and it was right around the price
range that I was looking to spend for college."
Once he reached , though, what stood out most to him was the level of support he received from those around him — particularly his classmates. He played intramural softball and basketball, joined the Finance Society, and eventually became the vice president and treasurer of the Chi Phi fraternity, where he made great friends — many of whom are still his closest friends today. Lee says they provided social and academic support while he was at and have remained a source of support as he navigates his current career in finance. He works for a New York City-based investment management and technology firm called Two Sigma Investments, where he is a senior vice president of financial planning and analysis.
"A lot of people I was colleagues with while I was [at ] I still keep in touch with, and I see throughout my career," he says. "And anyone who is an alumni of has always given me a lot of general support in career development and career mentoring." He says he saw from the beginning that the education he received from the School of Management was well designed to set students up for success and place them in a good career upon graduation, and the additional support he got from the people he met along the way bolstered his career even more.
So when Lee began considering causes he could support philanthropically, rose to the top of his list. " itself was something that I valued a lot," he says. "It has launched my career to where I am today." He says the EOP program and Book Endowment Fund stood out to him as a meaningful way to pay forward the opportunities that has provided him over the years.
"I've always been very interested in giving back, especially since much of my decision to attend was influenced by my economic status at the time. While I considered and was accepted to other schools, such as Cornell, the significantly lower tuition made an obvious choice for me. I am very fortunate that the experience and education has turned out to be such a tremendous value."
Lee says he is happy to help support a new cohort of students who face similar challenges to those he overcame so that they can receive the same education — for which he is very grateful.
Ralph Gonzalez
When asked what it was about that stood out to him from other universities
he looked at as a teenager, Ralph Gonzalez '00 does not hesitate.
"Michael Boyd."
Gonzalez first met Boyd, the director of EOP at from 1986 to 1994, during an interview trip to when he was still deciding where to apply. "I remember he did this presentation, and I just enjoyed his honesty. He said, 'This is not for everybody.' He was just so forthcoming with the fact that it's an extremely competitive school and not everybody's going to get in. And if you're lucky enough to get in, not everybody is going to make it."
Despite deciding then and there that was where he wanted to go, Gonzalez actually didn't get accepted the first time he applied. But he refused to give up. He enrolled at a City University of New York campus and then transferred to a year later. And once he did arrive on campus, he took Boyd's words to heart and got to work.
"The moment that I entered, when I got into , I knew that I had to really bust my hump to make it. It was [Boyd's] speech more than anything else that — from the moment I walked in the door, it was game time." Unfortunately, Boyd had passed away in the year since Gonzalez first met him, but that initial impression of the EOP director as, in Gonzalez's words, a "realist motivator," has stayed with him all these years. And he found that traces of that motivation extended throughout the EOP program — most notably in his advisor, Vanessa Young, who still serves as a senior academic counselor advising EOP students today. Young's presence was probably the biggest reason he graduated, he says.
"More than an advisor, I saw her as a parent. There was nothing that I would do that I wouldn't go to her first; her door was always open." Gonzalez says that, much like Boyd, Young was a very straightforward person, but she also had a bit of a maternal touch. "You know, your mom would tell you, 'This is difficult, but you can do it.' But you actually believed her [Young], and she also gave you resources to do it. She is, to this day, like a mom to me."
Gonzalez also received support and inspiration through his fraternity, Phi Iota Alpha. Serving as the president of both the fraternity and the Latino Greek Council, Gonzalez led numerous community service initiatives while at . He has continued his involvement with the fraternity as an alum and is currently working on a fundraising campaign to create a national Latino museum through the Smithsonian. He is also largely responsible for organizing a scholarship fund for EOP students through the fraternity.
It was actually a conversation with Young at an alumni event in New York City a couple years ago that led to this opportunity to give back to EOP in return for the support he received as a student. "I caught up with Vanessa there, and we were talking about stuff that I'm doing outside of work, how I'm still working with the fraternity around community service and stuff like that. We talked about this book scholarship, and I thought it was a great idea, because among so many guys, so many alumni that belong to the fraternity, I was sure we were able to do something for the EOP program." That conversation led to the creation of the Juan "Firme" Adon Memorial Book Scholarship, named after a recently deceased brother who had dedicated his life to overcoming obstacles in pursuit of education.
The $1000 scholarship is awarded to one EOP student every year to help cover the cost of textbooks. In addition to the money, the fraternity members offer networking opportunities and other professional resources for the student, depending on what their career interests are. Gonzalez was able to tap his own professional connections recently. "The last [recipient] was an engineering student. I'm working hoping to put him in touch with some really good people at the federal level who do all types of engineering."
It's not only in his free time that Gonzalez devotes time to helping others. He has made a career out of it, at one of the highest levels possible. A detective with the New York Police Department (NYPD) specializing in counterterrorism technology, Gonzalez spends his days working to protect his fellow citizens, researching and helping to develop different types of technology to fight terrorist threats in urban settings. "What my jobs entails, basically, is to follow trends overseas to see what's happening over there, threat-wise, and then try to reverse-engineer the threat to work here in New York City, and figure out how to combat it before it actually happens." He works directly with numerous federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the National Counterterrorism Center. "I was an instructor for many years, within the [NYPD] Counterterrorism Bureau, but now I also travel, and I lecture different agencies on what we do and how to mold their programs." Some of his audiences over the last two years have included the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency.
A history major at , Gonzalez says his original goal was to get to law school someday and work in finance. But in the fall of 2000, in the wake of the collapse of the internet bubble, a career in finance was no longer quite so attractive. After a particularly bad day at his first job at the United Bank of Switzerland, he was ready to consider other options. "As I'm walking out to the Staten Island Ferry, somebody handed me an application and said, 'Here, take the police test.'" After doing a little research and learning that there were programs for officers who wished to continue their education, he decided to give it a shot. "So I ended up taking the test and becoming a cop. Three months later, the Twin Towers happened — September 11. That was kind of a game changer, not just for law enforcement, but the whole world."
In the wake of September 11, Gonzalez says he felt called to do something more to contribute to the counterterrorism efforts around him. So he finally did turn to furthering his education — but not through law school. Instead, he received his master's of public administration degree with an emphasis on emergency and disaster management in 2010 from Metropolitan College of New York. "I ended up training in Israel, and then when I got back, I was able to transfer into the Counterterrorism Bureau and try to implement stuff that I learned from my master's degree, from traveling overseas and meeting different people."
Gonzalez says that the ability to help current students, like the engineering student he is currently trying to assist, has been an honor. He enjoys maintaining connections to , whether through his fraternity, his relationship with Young or just bringing his kids to visit the area. "I take them up there all the time. They love it up there. Well, I only took them up there once in the winter," he laughs. "But they love it up there in the fall. I'm trying to get my son to really focus on for his university, so I'm excited that he gets to see some of this."
Walter O'Neill
By many accounts, including his own, Walter O'Neill '86 should not be sitting in an
office at Davenport University in Grand Rapids, Mich., where he serves as the executive
vice president for enrollment, student affairs and intercollegiate athletics. He should
not hold three degrees and a postgraduate certificate in higher education leadership
from Harvard University. In fact, most people who knew him in high school would likely
be surprised that he is still alive at all.
Growing up in a family of nine in Freeport, N.Y., O'Neill was in and out of trouble — but mostly in. "I was a big troublemaker," he says. "No one ever thought that I would live to twenty, let alone get out of high school. I was getting into trouble a lot, and something had to give. I had a reputation that I had to live down to and it was just not a good situation." Knowing that staying in Freeport for the long term would only result in prison time — or worse — O'Neill decided he had to get out of the area. His first choice was to move to Texas with a friend. His father, however, an insurance salesman from Brooklyn, whom O'Neill categorizes as "the closest representation of Christ" he has ever met, refused to give up on him and convinced him instead to go stay with his brother who attended .
"My dad said, 'Look, why don't you just go up there for the summer. Just hang out, get away from here. You can get a job or something. Just give this a shot.'" So O'Neill packed a bag and left Long Island for the first time in his life. He got a job at Kmart, and for a while he was doing alright. But before long, his old demons came back to haunt him and he was in trouble once again. And this time, he was convinced he had reached the end of the road.
"I didn't think I was going to get away with it this time. I thought I was, quite honestly, going to jail. And I was about 125 pounds soaking wet — jail probably wouldn't work out for me." He seriously considered suicide, and even wrote a final note to his parents, giving it to his lawyer "in case something goes wrong."
But it turned out that O'Neill had something of a guardian angel looking down on him — an angel by the name of Wesley VanDunk, who was the director of the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) at Broome Community College. In the months while he awaited his court hearing, O'Neill had decided to enroll in a couple of classes to pass the time. He met a counselor named Bruce Pomeroy who told him about EOP and got him enrolled in the program.
"I got straight A's my first semester," says O'Neill. But at the end of that first semester, he also got his court date. "I was like, I can't believe this. I'm actually turning my life over — I actually love this stuff — and now it's going to be pulled from me. So when I went to court, it was like, this is it. This is justice; this is God saying, 'Uh-uh, you're going to have to pay for that stuff.'" But when he got to court, suicide plans in place, the judge opened a letter of support from VanDunk, detailing the strides forward he had witnessed in O'Neill over the past six months. Thanks to that endorsement, the judge decided on probation, giving him one last chance to get his act together.
After completing a second semester with straight A's at Broome Community College, O'Neill applied to . "I was blown away, as was the rest of the world, when they admitted me into ," he says. After graduating from , O'Neill returned to his high school to visit his old principal and counselors. "At first I was trying to throw it in their faces, but as soon as I walked in, I was so humbled. They were almost tearful, because they were just so excited to see that I was alive."
With the help of numerous EOP counselors, including Louis Del Valle, Sylvia Carey, Savander Parker and Michael Boyd (who later became the director of EOP at University), O'Neill went on to earn a master's degree in training and development and a doctorate in educational leadership from Roosevelt University in Chicago, Ill., but he maintains that none of it lives up to the experience and EOP gave him.
"None of it could have happened if the Educational Opportunity Program didn't exist in the first place, and if the amazing people — the Michael Boyds, the Savander Parkers, the Wesley VanDunks — if they didn't give me a chance. Because believe me, I had signs all over me that said, 'Don't do it, don't take a chance on this guy.' They gave me a chance, and not only gave me a chance, but held my hand through the process. I know people say this kind of stuff all the time, but they saved my life. They were patient; they were loving; they were supportive; they were firm. They saved my life, and I have been giving back to higher education ever since."
O'Neill is the first to acknowledge that being accepted to was the ultimate turning point in his life. " had an opportunity to turn me away and rightfully and justifiably say, 'Pfft, please. Not for . Not for us. Have a nice day.' Everyone else along this journey did amazing things for me, don't get me wrong, but it's because they were already seeing potential; they were already seeing the product that was not evident when I met Michael; was not evident when I met Wesley; was not evident when I met Savander. Everyone in my life, except for my dad, really didn't want a whole lot to do with me, and rightfully so. And these guys stuck it out. I'm very grateful."
It was while working as a student employee in the financial aid office that O'Neill first discovered the passion that would lead to his career in higher education. "People — fellow students — came to me looking for help. I loved that I knew what I was doing and I could actually help people." He says that the ability to have a positive impact on another student's life, even when he was struggling personally, was transformational, and that, along with the influence of his EOP counselors over the years, led him directly to his career in higher education.
"If I had just one student in a lifetime that I was able to have a positive impact on, I would consider it icing on the cake. There's not a day that [goes by] when I start interacting with students, that I'm not displaying some of the things that [my EOP counselors] put into me. This is me just giving back out what was put in."
And that's one of the reasons he has chosen to donate to the EOP Book Endowment fund over the past few years. "We all have to remember every once in a while, that if it were not for this program, if it were not for the opportunity that we had to graduate from a place like , we would have a very different life right now. I wish I could do more, but anything I could do, for specifically, I would love to do. So if it's occasionally writing a check, if it's occasionally having funds come out of an account, I'll do whatever I have to do. Because I owe and those men. I owe them my life."
Deborah Gray White
Deborah Gray White '71, LHD '14, was one of the first students
to participate in the Educational Opportunity Program, which at the time that she
was admitted to the University was called the Transitional Year Program (TYP). She
says she remembers a little bit of culture shock based on the more rural atmosphere
in compared to her home in New York City, but primarily the shock came
from being one of so few people of color on campus. She and her cohort of TYP students
took action almost immediately to make a more welcoming place
for current and future minority students. They started by forming their own student
group.
"It was one of the first things we did on campus," says White. "The few of us who were minority students decided that we needed our own organization, so we formed the Afro-Latin Alliance. a year later it transformed into the Black Student Union, at least those of us who were black." White says part of their goal was to organize and get the University to provide more diverse academic offerings, such as more African American studies classes and eventually an African American Studies department. But it was also a matter of creating a space in which they felt they belonged. "We were a constant source of protest against some of the things we thought the campus lacked," she says, "but I still think the most important thing we did was to provide a space for ourselves to just be." And, of course, they had fun together, too. "We often put together our own productions for some of the concerts that were on campus — some of the dancing and talent contests — we were always a part of that."
While White and her friends were certainly in the minority on a predominantly white campus — "my recollection is there were no more than 10 or 15 students that came in in that first class, and there were just no [other] black students on campus," she says — they were not completely alone. She speaks fondly of John Benson, the director of TYP. "Whenever we had complaints, we went to the Special Admissions Office and John was there. He was always an advocate for us. He was just there to talk to." She also remembers Ted McKee, who joined the Special Admissions Office staff during her second or third year at as the director of minority recruitment and admissions, and with whom she's still in contact occasionally today. Both men were mentors, she says, but they were also allies. "They kept advocating for more black and minority students."
White says TYP, and later EOP, were instrumental in increasing the number of minority students on campus. "EOP was the vehicle through which many African American students came in. While I don't know what the case was with other students, the only thing that set me apart from the other students who were there, from the white students that did not come in through EOP, was that my SAT scores weren't as high as theirs. I had never had...an SAT prep class, those kinds of things. So what I think EOP did then, and perhaps does now, was give kids like me, who had a very high high school average, a chance to compete on a level playing field." And once White got to , she says she never had a problem keeping up academically.
Since graduating from , she has gone on to a distinguished career in higher education, earning a master's degree from Columbia University and a PhD from University of Illinois at Chicago, as well as an honorary doctor of humane letters (LHD) from in 2014. She is currently the Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of history and professor of women's and gender studies at Rutgers University, where she studies issues of identity and the intersection of race, class, gender and sexuality. She is a prolific writer, with seven or eight books to her name, and also takes pride in training graduate students who have gone on to their own successful careers across the country.
Her desire to help others succeed is a large part of what encouraged her recent donation to the EOP Book Endowment Fund. "I see students on campus now, and often they can't afford the books," she says. "It's one thing to get the book out of the library, but you can't — well, you shouldn't — mark it up and really make it your own. I just think that students who have their own books have an advantage. Often, people can somehow scrape together the money for tuition, etc., but it's often the books that can make the difference between whether someone can get an A or a B, or even a C or a B. It really matters whether or not you can pick up a book at two in the morning, if that's the time that you have, as opposed to having to read it on reserve in the library, or to take it out and have to give it back in a certain period of time. It's a little bit, but any way I can help EOP, since they gave so much to me, I'm wanting to give back."
Hubert Johnson
Dr. Hubert Johnson '74, MA '75, MD, has always been busy. As a student at
University, he played three sports, had a radio show on WHRW, was an RA and even built
his own major in biology and anthropology. After he earned his bachelor’s degree and
then his master’s degree in anthropology from , he received his MD from
Rutgers Medical School, did his residency at Tufts Medical Center and completed a
Harvard vascular fellowship at Beth-Israel Deaconess in Boston.
Now chief of surgical services at Beverly Hospital and attending vascular surgeon at Lahey Hospital Medical Center in Boston, Johnson has strong memories of .
Originally from Rochester, Johnson was recruited to the EOP program by Mr. Mackey. Having done well in Regents courses, Johnson was awarded some scholarships and was considering Syracuse and Cornell universities when Mackey suggested he apply to . A visit to campus did the trick. “I was sold,” said Johnson. “I liked the nice, quaint campus, so matriculated in September 1970, as one of the first EOP students from upstate.”
Johnson played soccer, in addition to other sports, and that’s how he met the people he considers the most influential during his time at – longtime soccer coach and fellow Rochesterian Tim Schum, and then-track coach Gary Truce. “Tim Schum came by,” Johnson said, “and he says, ‘You know you can play soccer here. We’ll recruit you and you can play for us.’”
was Division III back then. “I think my first year I started and never expected that and had four good years of soccer,” said Johnson. “My second year we were No. 1 in New York state and got our first NCAA bid. I also ran track for Gary for two years and swam for Dave Thomas for two years.”
Schum and Johnson stay in touch and still get together for golf every so often. “Tim is one of those people, if I wasn’t starting, he would say, ‘If you’re not starting, it’s because I don’t think you should. Don’t make problems where there are none.’”
Johnson remembers a number of “really good” professors as well. “Batten was my biology teacher – I made my own major in biology and anthropology – Al Vos was English lit. Zach Bowen. They were all great guys and Bruce McDuffie was my analytical chemistry teacher. All great people.”
But Johnson was also a bit of a maverick when it came to the EOP program. “They wanted to put EOP students together so they would be comfortable, but I said I’ll live wherever they put me,” so he would be prepared for different experiences and the ability to work with diverse people when he went out into the world.
“I got a lot out of the University,” Johnson added. Because he played sports and traveled to away competitions, he had to work to keep up with his academics. “There were no fax machines or things like that back then, so I had to listen to tapes after road trips.
“I was an RA in Dickinson with Carrol Coates as master,” Johnson said. “He would sit down and talk about life and help me appreciate how things work. Then I moved to Cayuga in College-in-the-Woods as an RA. I had the full run.”
Johnson credits his ability to accomplish so much to discipline. “I went to Catholic school as a kid and you get a lot of discipline out of that. So when school demanded you would do the work, I was prepared for doing that,” he said. “It was never easy, but I had a goal from the time I started. I applied to dental schools as well. My roommate Dan Goldstein, probably one of my best friends, and I still get together and talk about all these things.”
Johnson went into practice at the North Shore Medical Center/Salem Hospital as associate chief of surgery after completing his medical degree, residency and fellowship. He served there for about 25 years before moving to Lahey and Beverly Hospital three years ago. He noted that Beverly Hospital is where part of the movie Manchester by the Seawas filmed.
Summing up , Johnson said, “It’s just a great college and you have to immerse yourself in college life and examine yourself. Seeing that you can help other people is a great thing. It’s a tribute to the people who were there.
“My college prepared me for medical school. I was an anatomy TA, and I actually tested out of part of the year of anatomy because of my courses,” Johnson said. “I thought medical school was going to be harder, but when I finished and went to residency, people would say they would take more people from my school because of the way I performed. You’re responsible for the people who follow you.”
He then said there’s a “tell” when people compliment you. “If they ask you, ‘Where did you go college?’ you know they’re impressed. They always ask that,” he said.
Johnson’s wife, Michele, is an active ob-gyn physician. They have four children -- three girls and a boy. One is a lawyer, Johnson said. “They have good role models. Good parents keep you heading in the right direction. We need to acknowledge them and the other people who have helped us along the way.”
Tonya Parris
Not only did Tonya Parris ’92 have the drive to be the first in her family to graduate from college, but she had the drive to choose a profession that was male-dominated.
“At the age of nine, I saw and fell in love with my first computer,” she said. “It was in the school library and students were invited to explore at recess. I was intrigued and explored daily until the dean called home and expressed concern that I was not socializing.”
After that, the dean, Parris and her mom came to an agreement that she would split her time equally between recess and the computer. But that exploration time changed her life. “I decided that I was going to study how computers worked and I did,” Parris said. “I chose a high school that taught me four programming languages before I got to college.”
Accepted initially into Harpur College before transferring to Watson College as a computer science major, Parris first learned about the EOP program when a package came in the mail explaining the Enrichment Program (BEP) that she had the option of attending the summer prior to her freshman year.
“I had earned a regents diploma and had a high enough high school average so that it was not mandatory for me,” she said. But she didn’t waste her summer: “I opted out and attended the International Federation of Keystone Youth Organizations (IFKYO) conference in Australia instead.”
was unlike anyplace she had been. “Coming to was definitely a culture shock, both as a brown person and as a woman. I grew up in the Bronx, and the majority of my interactions were with people of color – in my neighborhood, at school and at home,” she said. “On campus, there were very few people of color, but I found solace in the gathering of cultural SA-chartered organizations as well as EOP.
“Even though I didn’t attend BEP, I used the Tutorial Center as a resource to support me with connecting to other EOP students,” Parris said. “As an engineering student, I noticed that not only was I the only African American, I was often the only woman. I slowly gained my footing and assimilated as best I could.”
She also relied on a number of support staff who made a difference in her life.
“My EOP counselor, the late Louie DeValle, was the Watson school liaison and as an EOP student I was a general admit and had to transfer,” she said. “He stood by me every step of the way and believed in me as much as I believed in myself.
“That was a new experience for me,” Parris added. “I grew up with so many people telling me what I could not do and my belief system was built around the general expectation that he would do the same. But he didn’t; he was my strongest advocate and I had no trouble at all getting into Watson – faster than expected, according to Louie!”
Linda Lisman, the head of the EOP Tutorial Center, “welcomed me with open arms and gave me a home away from home,” Parris said. “I spent an inordinate amount of time at the Tutorial Center and Linda always greeted me with kindness. I never once felt like I overstayed my welcome and I really appreciated feeling welcomed and accepted.”
The late Ira Tolbert was also an advocate. Then assistant provost, Tolbert instilled in Parris the importance of applying to the Ronald E. McNair Fellowship program. “Dr. Tolbert was the reason for my experience to have an opportunity to work with Dr. CK Cheng, a well-respected computer science professor at the University of California, San Diego. He also expressed how important it was to attend graduate school and because of him I attended graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania.
“And Bobbie Friedman, who was then director of the Career Development Center [now the Fleishman Center for Career and Professional Development], taught me about professionalism, the power of networking and creating results through kindness,” Parris said.
All of the support paid off for Parris, setting her on the path to becoming a leader. She involved herself on campus in a number of organizations, co-founding the University’s chapter of National Society of Black Engineers. In addition, she was social action chair of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. and participated in the Gospel Choir, BSU Youth Program, Big Sister, co-rec football as quarterback, intramural basketball as a shooting guard and intramural softball as a short stop.
Parris cherishes her memories of . “Being in service to others as social action/public service chair as a member of Delta Sigma Theta; creating on- and off-campus events that supported the student and local community; serving as a big sister in the BSU Youth Program were all memorable,” she said. But so was stepping into responsibility. “Writing my own checks to pay bills and getting my very first credit card,” she said. “Building life-long friendships and co-rec football; showing up teams who didn’t think girls could throw a football more than five feet!”
She’s now CEO at The Parris Group, Inc. in NYC, overseeing a foundation that focuses on providing programming in the science, technology, engineering and math fields (STEM) to middle-school students. S.T.E.M.ulating Minds exposes young people to possibilities at an impressionable stage.
Her leadership has paid off for her family as well. She showed her family what was possible and her four younger siblings followed her to .
“Earning a degree meant that I was the first in my family to graduate from college. It meant that as the oldest of five, I had made my family proud,” Parris said. “It was more than just earning a degree. It was earning a degree from Watson College of Engineering in computer science as an African American woman who grew up in public housing and was part of the EOP program.
“It changed me because I showed me that I can defeat all odds no matter what circumstances or obstacles are placed before me,” she said. “It was my baseline for success and it gave me the confidence to pursue whatever I imagined.
“I had such a wonderful experience at and received an excellent education for the cost. I wanted to share that gift with each of my siblings.”
Mabel Payne
The Educational Opportunity Program recently benefited from
one of its earliest graduates. Mabel Payne ’71, who started in the EOP program before
it was even called EOP, has made a six-figure donation to the program to support students
and program activities.
Persistence and perseverance are apt words to describe Payne.
Offered the choice in the late 1960s to attend a community college in the Bronx tuition free or to attend as part of the fledgling program, she opted for the four-year degree at , thinking about pursuing a career as a teacher or in the helping professions.
“I had never heard of , knew nothing about it and didn’t know if I wanted to go to a school that wanted me just because I’m black,” said Payne. “My counselor said, ‘So you’d rather go to Bronx Community?’ So I thought about it and said, ‘I’ll go there [].’
“The first night there I went outside and sat and cried my eyes out,” Payne said. The next day, she learned that she didn’t have enough money to cover the entire year at . “Mr. Benson asked how I would be dealing with the rest of the money, so I started boo hooing. He increased my loan and my work study so I was able to go to school. I worked in the post office and then became an RA for my junior and senior years and got free room and board, so I didn’t need work study after that.”
Although she did work in the Upward Bound program during the summers. “I had been in Upward Bound in the Bronx,” Payne said. “Since I was an Upward Bound alumna I worked in the program in with students who came from Mississippi the summer of my sophomore year. Another summer I went to Los Angeles to visit my cousin and take a course at UCLA. As luck would have it, UCLA had an Upward Bound program and I got a job and moved on campus.”
Payne loved the upstate atmosphere and the campus, she said. “It’s phenomenal and I loved to walk in the snow. When it would snow, I would sink down and enjoy being the first person to walk in the new snowfall.” She further said that, “There were fewer than 20 of us. We were the chocolate chips in the milk.” There wasn’t an official EOP program until the next year.
“Mr. Benson was the program as far as I knew,” Payne said. “There were financial aid advisors as well, but that first day I immediately took what he said to heart and understood what was what for my future and what I was getting.” Payne was a good student and applied herself. “To me, I didn’t need any academic assistance and found out from my Upstate white roommate that I had better preparation than she.”
Her experience did change her. “It made me more outgoing being in . In high school when you’re in the honors school in a city school, it’s a small group that travels around in a little bubble and rarely associates with others, except in non-academic things,” Payne said. “The degree opened up my experiences and I associated with a lot of different people and was accepted by them.”
“Initially, I thought I would be a counselor because I was an RA and found I was good at helping people,” she said. So she took a civil service exam to help her get into the workforce, first in public assistance in the home relief area, working with adults with no children. “The kind of help I could provide was very limited and I realized I would need a graduate degree to provide better help. That led me to do a master’s degree,” she said, earning her master’s degree and professional certificate in counseling and student personnel services from SUNY Albany. “I thought it would help me get a better job in the helping professions.”
After earning her master’s degree, Payne worked as a career counselor in a program in a grant-funded non-profit to help train and reorient people who had been out of work for a long time. “I conducted trainings and helped people get certification to work with the NYC Department of Education,” she said. “We were helping public high-school students gain internships in industry and I worked to certify our internship professionals so they could be part of the NYC Board of Education system.”
Her position was grant funded, so eventually the program ended and Payne became a freelancer, but the civil service system came calling again when Payne took a city-wide exam that would utilize her work in management of grant-funded programs to full advantage.
Still, she needed steady money and knew education was the road to a better position, so she went to Teachers College at Columbia University on a fellowship, and earned her master’s degree in organizational psychology.
Happenstance while earning her master’s brought her together with a young woman from the NYC Board of Education, and she started working for the Department of Education. In early 1987, the results of the city-wide exam came out and included a title in the section of the Department of Education where Payne was already working as an Education Officer. “I was the first person hired off a civil service list in that area – now the Office of Accountability – which was established to administer and score city-examinations and conduct program evaluations of all the grant-funded programs in the city schools. That’s how I started at the Department of Education.”
“It came to pass that my director wanted to leave and I had risen to assistant manager by then. When he left, I became in charge of our unit and moved into the management aspect and titles in civil service.”
No Child Left Behind came along next and Payne’s unit was responsible for interfacing with the state and figuring out how to do the assessment of non-traditional schools for the state standards, and evaluations and reporting all of the schools’ achievement data to the state. “I was one of the liaisons with the state and the people doing the standard setting and I became known as the trainer and data reporter for all of the schools in the city on state standards and how to meet them,” she said.
Payne remained in the state accountability training and data reporting NYC Department of Education position until her retirement in 2013, and now she does research on teaching and learning in grades K-16, looking at the impact of globalization and the focus on STEM achievement with some emphasis on secondary education in the Caribbean. She consults for the NYC Department of Education, works on National Science Foundation grants, and provides career and educational counseling and development services – and she also travels the world and has fun.
“We go to Singapore quite often, that’s our favorite place to travel. It’s a tropical, small, island city state that is quite advanced,” said Payne. “My family comes from the Caribbean and to see the contrast of the advancement of Singapore versus the Caribbean islands is quite inspiring.”
“I also did my DNA ancestry and I’m traveling to different countries in Africa because that’s from where all my DNA comes. This year I’m going to Togo. The Togo/Benin region is from where 39 percent (the highest amount) of my DNA comes.”
José Magdaleno
When José Magdaleno graduated from in 1978 with dual majors
in political science and Latin American studies, he took away with him much more than
a degree and fond memories.
He took a love of learning and a passion for education that remains with him today.
And he owes it all to his cousin.
“I learned about and EOP through a cousin who was enrolled in the EOP program at the time,” he said. “I was born in Manhattan and largely raised in the Bronx. I attended public school – Theodore Roosevelt High School in the Bronx.
“My first higher education experience was at Lehman College (City College of New York),” Magdaleno said. “I was a first-year student and it was a bit of a bumpy path, so when my cousin told me about EOP and life at , she suggested I consider applying.” Magdaleno felt as if he was a freshman when he arrived at because he had been unsuccessful in his year at Lehman. “The EOP representative invited me to meet him at a hotel in Manhattan to interview me and I vividly recall the conversation, he said. “I essentially told him about my interest in EOP and and he saw something in me, thank god, and gave me an opportunity to attend through the EOP program. It really was a pivotal moment in my life.”
Magdaleno came from very modest, humble beginnings, and, as many EOP students, was the first in his family to attend college.
“I was the oldest of three and growing up did not leave New York City at all,” he said. “I thought you needed a passport to go to New Jersey! Among the myriad of teen jobs that I had, I was a messenger and once I was sent on the PATH train to New Jersey and I just marveled that I was on it and going there. I knew Manhattan and the Bronx, and thought Staten Island was an international destination, which was fairly typical for people like me. There hadn’t been an opportunity to see much of our world – or our country.”
Saying that arriving at was a major culture shock for Magdaleno is an understatement. “For a young Hispanic kid like me who grew up in a minority community?” he said. “Even though the Bronx was changing demographically and I lived in it at this time of great change, it was a very black and brown community. Traveling to a place like was indeed a culture shock, with fewer people, different ethnic backgrounds, a different rhythm of life that was slower and with a lot less distraction.”
But the change ended up part of Magdaleno’s success formula, he said. “Being in a quieter, slower-paced life with less distractions from family, friends and others – in the final analysis is part of what made my journey successful.”
Magdaleno navigated his life at by connecting with a supportive cohort of older students, most from the NYC area. “They were very encouraging and they taught me the ropes,” he said. “I learned that you want to hang out in the library, not the student union. Folks who spend more time in student union and not the library, may not be as successful. They talked to me about success strategies.
“Also, my EOP counselor, Leo Fields. He was my counselor and I really, really connected with him,” Magdaleno said. “I’m fond of saying when I needed a swift kick in the head he gave it to me, and when I needed words of encouragement he gave to me. He saw my strengths and problems solves and was an instrumental person in my life. I’m forever indebted to him.”
Getting involved on campus with organizations like the Latin American Student Union also helped anchor him to , Magdaleno said. “I attended meetings and events regularly. Networking with other students and meeting people with common interests and values was very helpful. It helped to create a home away from home and to bond me to the University.” After moving off campus, he used the OCCT bus system and has fond memories of camping at Lake Empire. “The college provided a bus to get there,” he said. “And I remember Stepping on the Coat and hanging out in the pub between classes over a pitchers of beer. I connected with a lot of people, made a lot of friends.”
Magdaleno also took advantage of studying abroad – twice. Calling the opportunities transformational for him, he spent a semester in Cuernavaca, Mexico, which was a requirement for his academic program, under the guidance of the chair of the Latin American studies program, Adalberto Lopez. He also spent a semester in Puerto Rico. “Having the opportunity to see how other people lived was a valuable experience for a kid who never left NYC,” he said.
“My first trip ever was essentially to , so traveling to other countries was an eye-opening experience that helped my self-reflection, growth and development and shaped a broader world view,” he said. “I link that opportunity to me attending . I had great learning experiences and in my career in higher education I always talk very positively to students about trying to take advantage of studying somewhere else.”
Among the jobs Magdaleno had while at was working at Chenango Valley State Park as a seasonal park ranger. “A kid from the Bronx who grew up with a lot of cement – can you imagine that?” he said. “I was a seasonal park ranger and walked the trails and communicated with the campers, so following graduation they kept me on for about eight or nine months and I stayed in . I also stayed in summers and worked, so once I left NYC I didn’t come back until I graduated and came back to NYC for grad school at Columbia, which offered the best deal. Tuition free and I earned my master’s in social work.”
After graduation and working as a social worker for a few months, the same cousin who told him about and EOP and who worked at Montclair State University and told him about an opening there as an academic advisor. He got the job and hasn’t looked back since.
And now, Magdaleno has completed the full circle: He’s back where he started his higher education journey – at Lehman College. But rather than a rocky path, he worked his way up and has been Lehman’s vice president for student affairs since 1999.
Now, he’s able to help students like him, who didn’t grow up with a community or family structure that was familiar with college or college life. “My family was working class, migrants. My father worked on assembly line for GM and my mother did not finish high school,” he said. “I grew up watching “Leave it to Beaver” but our house didn’t look like that. I dreamed about going to college, but my family couldn’t give me the advice that someone who had had that experience could.
“So it really was attending that showed me the sort of success model that higher education is supposed to be. The experience put me on a path to success and allowed me to dream and see that a lot was possible if I continued on the path helped me get onto,” he added.
His position at Lehman is rewarding, he said. “We are an urban commuter institution serving many immigrants and many, many first generation students, so it’s truly rewarding to give back in a community I know well, an experience I know well,” Magdaleno said. “In all of the students we serve I see bits of myself and know the journey they are on. I try to do everything I can to coordinate services to help students succeed here and provide models and paths to success.
“It’s more than just a job for me; it’s a life’s mission. “I’m very blessed and fortunate to be in the role to shape policy and practice at an institution like Lehman that really serves as a model of success for the American dream,” he said.
Magdaleno is also grateful for the support that the SUNY board and state legislature have given to the EOP program. “It does make a difference in the lives of many people,” he said. “I trust that in the years ahead, the legislature will continue to support EOP at and throughout the state.
“I’m not sure how it would have shaken out for me without this opportunity, and now I have three children who are all college graduates,” he said. “Talk about the impact on families and future generations! I know part of their success is linked to the fact that I’m a college graduate and can talk to them about the experiences one tends to have in college and how to develop positive coping strategies for the challenges of college life.”
Raedell Wallace
Raedell Wallace graduated from in 2001, from the program in
Philosophy, Politics and Law. For the past eight years, she has worked for the NYC
Early Childhood Professional Development Institute at the City University of New York
(CUNY) where she is Director of Career Development. In her role for the public/private
non-profit organization, Wallace helps provide free, comprehensive career development
services to all current and aspiring early childhood professionals.
Wallace learned about the Educational Opportunity Program and from her high school counselor. “I went to A. Philip Randolph Campus High School – one of the high schools located on a college campus affiliated with City College of New York in Harlem.
“A big focus of the school was to make the college connection for students. It was designed to be a college preparatory school and that goal is always part of the trajectory of many student,” she said. “The end goal is to get you to college, so it had a college office and advisor and there was a lot of interaction with that office.”
Like many students, Wallace had two main reasons for choosing – one financial, the other logistical. “ was the most financially feasible and its proximity to New York City helped,” she said. “It wasn’t too far away from home and the campus had a really great look, size and feel to it. All of that weighed into my decision.”
Even so, was unlike anyplace she had ever been. “I always knew I wanted to go to college away from home, but I didn’t really have a concept of what that meant. wasn’t so close that I could quickly get home any time I wanted, so being away from family and out of New York City was hard, especially being in close quarters with people I didn’t know.
“It was a big learning experience for me, but the Enrichment Program (BEP) really helped ease that transition. Because I came through BEP, my freshmen year start wasn’t as much of a culture shock as it could have been,” she said. “I felt a lot more comfortable than other new freshmen at the time. Still, that summer was hard because I basically went right to from high school graduation. It was a big change.”
When she arrived, her intent was to major in business, but she quickly changed her mind, and relied on her EOP counselor, Steve Duarte, for help in deciding on an alternative.
“He was definitely a good advisor and a good person to bounce ideas off of about what you really want to do and what that looks like after ,” Wallace said. “He was also really helpful when I was finishing at , helping me to figure out what I wanted to do next.”
Her BEP instructor, Katrina Huffman, and Teaching Assistant Natalie Bledman, were also a huge help, she added. “They helped me know what would be expected of me as a college student both socially and academically. They challenged all of us in BEP to think a little broader about learning; what critical thinking means and what it looks like in action. They also talked about the importance of being involved what that meant both to us and to the campus community.”
Hearing from Huffman and Bledman – students who had gone through the process – and getting the inside scoop was what Wallace needed. She learned which offices to utilize, what people to know, and what things to do so that she could keep on top of her academics, financial aid and be an active participant in her time at and her education.
“These people were the most impactful in terms of shaping my experience and how I entered school,” Wallace said. “I’m the first in my family to go to college. I didn’t have an understanding or perspective of what it would be like, so having that help as soon as I got to , initially, instead of somewhere down the line was what I needed in order to be successful.”
Wallace became involved in the Black Student Union, including serving on its e-board for two years. She also worked in admissions and EOP. And her eyes remained on her goal of earning her degree.
“At the time I went to college I wasn’t thinking beyond earning my bachelor’s degree,” Wallace said. “That was the goal. But having the experience and having the types of relationships that grew out of my time at inspired a commitment to continued learning and a dedication both to inspiring that in others and continuing to pursue that for myself.
After Wallace graduated from , she earned a master’s degree in public policy from George Washington University, and continued to look for opportunities to be involved with her community and organizations, and to be impactful in her work.
“That all stemmed from opportunities I had at ,” she said. “Because it was so impactful for me, it became the thing that I wanted to do. My career goals changed over that time and I became very focused on policy- specifically education and social policy. I was very interested in how programs like EOP even came about and what it would be like to develop programs to support students in the same ways that shaped where I went and what I do.”
And it all started with BEP, she said. “My biggest memory is of my BEP experience. I feel like everything that came after that was rooted and grounded in that experience. It was part of the foundation of my career choices, and where I met many of the people who traveled with me through my college experience and beyond.”
Bea Gonzalez
From the time she was a young child, Bethaida (Bea) Gonzalez has been connecting dots
– and people. As the first English speaker in her family, she frequently translated
and made appointments and connections for her migrant-worker parents. She remains
a “connector of people” today.
Growing up, Gonzalez frequently moved back and forth between Syracuse, N.Y. and Puerto Rico, where her family was from. In fact, she made 11 transitions between the two places during elementary school alone. “Through all of that moving around I learned to adapt pretty quickly,” she says.
The oldest of six children, Gonzalez found the Educational Opportunity Program (then called Transition Year Program) through her Upward Bound experience. “Five of us went to Upward Bound and they did a really good job working with us as first-generation kids, to help us figure out the systems and get us connected into higher education,” she says.
“I’m a product of the war on poverty and living proof that it works,” she says. “So that’s how I found out about EOP. I went to sight unseen. It was within the drive range.”
It wasn’t only Bea who experienced culture shock when she arrived. “I tell this story to other first-generation students now so they won’t be embarrassed by their families, because I arrived at in a station wagon full of people and the cat! Dropping me off at the University was a family affair,” she says. “It was exciting for entire family.
“But the culture shock was on multiple levels. My father was like, ‘Why are all these men in this building?’ I never told him the truth that they lived there,” she says. “I told him they were helping girls move in because I didn’t want him to take me home. Culture shock #1 was my fathers’ expectations!”
Her culture shock came when she moved into the multicultural corridor of her residence hall and nobody believed she was a real Latina. “Downstaters didn’t believe anything existed past the Bronx and I was from Syracuse, so I had to earn credibility. But I wasn’t alone; there was one other Latina from Buffalo.”
Gonzalez would often bring her friends home to Syracuse for a home-cooked meal, and by the time she graduated, the Latina/o student organization honored her parents with an award for their support of students. “My dad still has it up on the wall at his house,” she says.
A political science and Latino American studies major while at , Gonzalez says she “totally blew” her freshman year and nearly had to leave the program. “I got suspended after freshman year for grades,” she says. “In the program, we had John Yedell, who was on loan from IBM if I remember correctly. I went to him in tears and he let me work for him for the summer and said he would see what we could do in the fall. I never failed another course.”
And her successes continue. Currently the dean of University College at Syracuse University, and special assistant to that school’s chancellor for diversity and inclusion, Gonzalez is a national leader in her field, having served as president and past-president of the University Professional and Continuing Educators Association, the leading association for professional, continuing and online education. She has also been elected to office three times in Syracuse, including serving on the Syracuse City School District Board of Education and for nine years as the City of Syracuse Common Council president.
“This is part of my wanting to provide service and access,” she says. “And I have done both in higher education and as an elected officer. It’s part of how I see myself.”
Not surprising, given that she was always working to make sure the clubs and organizations for students of color at worked together. “We were pretty tight as a group of students,” she says. “I made lifelong friends and we’re still celebrating our birthdays together. Some of them I met freshman year and we’re all still hanging tough, including a number of us in higher education.”
When asked about some special memories, Gonzalez recalls bubbles in the fountain that used to be located in front of the Bartle Library Tower where the Pegasus statue now stands. She also remembers camping on weekends at Empire Lake with friends (with their clothes on), including one time in particular: “One spring it was beautiful day and we thought we should go camping to Empire Lake, and there was a foot of snow when we got there! Instead of turning around, we trudged through the snow and set up camp,” she says.
That determination is also what helped Gonzalez right herself after her freshman year, and set her on the path of being an educator herself. “Going back to John (Yedell), he got me engaged with peer advising and I caught the bug,” she says. “I realized I was good at it and built genuine relationships with people. I could really support them in their goals and I’ve been doing it ever since on multiple levels.”
Gonzalez stayed at following graduation; she had been working for the Upward Bound program during summers and then worked on campus for eight years as an EOP advisor. She left for Syracuse in 1984, where she began as an academic advisor and has never looked back. “I’ve stayed in continuing education my entire career,” she says. “It’s a perfect fit for my values. Not too shabby for the daughter of migrant workers.”
Gonzalez gives her parents a lot of credit for her successes, but she also recalls the support she had while at . A few years ago she bumped into Ted McKee, who was the admissions officer and signed her admissions letter to . “He’s a judge in Philadelphia and on the board of trustees at Syracuse,” she says. “We connected here and he said, ‘I know I did the right thing bringing that skinny kid from Syracuse to .’”
There were a number of counselors Gonzalez was close with and she also remembers the serious side of . “I met some of the most critical Black and Latina artists in the country while I was there,” she says. “We were really blessed with the kind of people we could attract to help us develop our own identities and social political agendas. We had Santana and so many others. We were really lucky in terms of the people we drew to help educate us and round us out.
“Earning a degree meant those people who thought we weren’t capable were proved wrong,” Gonzalez says. “But it also meant I had a responsibility to make sure that I was available for others the same way these programs and people were available for me.”
Richard Marmolejos
Richard Marmolejos ’07 is a firm believer in education – and he credits the Educational
Opportunity Program at with helping him earn his bachelor’s degree with
a double major in political science and sociology.
He’s such a believer that he became a teacher, and is currently teaching history to 10th graders at Manhattan Bridges High School in New York City. With block scheduling of 72-minute periods, classroom preparation is no simple task as Marmolejos prepares lessons for the 142 students he sees over the course of each school week.
Manhattan Bridges is a school similar in size to the high school Marmolejos attended – the High School for Law and Public Service in New York City – where his guidance counselor and a college advisor suggested he apply to and to the EOP program.
“My guidance counselor and my college advisor suggested it, and I visited on a college tour and liked it a lot,” Marmolejos says. “There were a few people at I knew from when I played football in high school and my coach always spoke about people who went to .”
But wasn’t the only school on his list. Marmolejos had even had been offered a partial scholarship to play football at another school. “ was definitely one of the options, and I also applied to Syracuse, Albany and a few others,” he says. “I liked a few of the schools and was one of them. I liked the Nature Preserve, but wasn’t too sure because there was no football team. I love football, but I wasn’t going to go pro so I decided was a better academic school and I should just go there.”
Marmolejos attended the Enrichment Program the summer before his freshman semester at . “It was very helpful to be there a little early and get lay of the land,” he says. “Everyone was super supportive and it was my home away from home.”
His counselor, Kim Allen Gleed, “was awesome and very supportive,” Marmolejos says. “I also always talked to Wes Van Dunk. He took on the role of a father figure and was very straightforward and always spoke with sincerity. He offered the male perspective. Kim was my go-to and was lovely. It was a good balance.
“I was the first in my immediate family to go to undergraduate school and it was a big change. The EOP program helped support me in getting through it because it was a new experience,” he adds. “The process of engaging in an environment I was never in before – EOP helped me navigate that. I would have failed or flunked out or decided it was too much if weren’t for them.”
In fact, when Marmolejos thinks specifically about what the EOP program meant to him, it comes back to education. “They helped facilitate my enrichment,” he says. “That word really applies to them.
“If anything, they definitely tried to foster education,” he adds. “Education is definitely very important and I try to communicate to my students now that no matter what your background, education provides you with access. They helped me realized the importance of education and how it is the key to doors and it provides you with the access to opportunities.”
Now that Marmolejos, who worked as a college advisor at Pace University before becoming a teacher, has seen the administrative side of higher education, he hopes more resources can be provided to EOP and similar programs. “There are certain reasons why people attend universities and if an institution where you’re supposed to gain knowledge and education provides access, we need to make sure all facilities and departments that help students gain that access are well funded – not just with money – but with people acknowledging that educational programs are very helpful and necessary.
“EOP is a very important program and people are beginning to realize it,” he says. “There are great people out there not from well-to-do families and they have a great deal to offer; we need to support them.”
Mara Sanchez
Mara Sanchez ’78 recalls sitting with a group of about 75 other prospective students
in the Susquehanna Room on the campus and being asked, “What
makes you think we should pick you above any other applicant [to attend ]?”
“I looked around and said, ‘Of all these people here, I am probably the one who will graduate,’ Mara responded. “It was a bold move to get in this place.”
The bold move worked, and Mara made it in, but still had to find her path to becoming a theatre major with a focus on dance. “I applied for the voice department and wasn’t accepted,” she says. “Then I tried theatre and that didn’t pan out either. Then I went to the dance department and Percival Borde said ‘come on in!’”
Sanchez calls attending “the sparkling, saving force of my life.” She left a very dysfunctional home and applied not knowing where was or what to expect, but after moving off campus made great friends and loved the school. “I had huge support and felt a lot of love,” she says. “I had friends from all races – and the townies – you can’t get any more redneck than that!
“I had great mentors and advisors and people who would help me out,” she says. “With no money it was a struggle because I was there by myself, but on graduation I was one of only two of those 75 who made it to graduation that year.”
Most of her mentors were older students, she recalls. “For me, Louis Del Valle and Mimi Del Valle were like my touchstones. We used to gather in their room and make rice and beans. They spread the culture and through them connected me to my culture. And Michael Boyd [EOP director at from 1986-1994] was a great buddy of mine. I came back and sang at a function when he was still alive.”
Sanchez is paying the opportunities she had forward through her many years as an arts and education activist in the New York City. She calls herself a Teaching Artist and has worked for several organizations on grant-funded projects over the years. “I’ve been teaching schools how to integrate the arts and whenever I see kids, I tell them they are natural born leaders,” she says. “I am a leader and have been able to survive.
“I’m proud of that work because it’s a sacrifice,” she says. “The financial benefits are low, but the benefit to me is four years later some young person will reach out to me on Facebook to tell me he’ll/she’ll\ never forget how I helped him. If there isn’t that shining beacon of light, where do they go?”
Now in the top inner circle of voiceover artists, she has done commercials and toured internationally as a singer as well. When she was brand-new in NYC, she also danced with Bill T. Jones in a waterfront performance on sand. “That was the most difficult and rewarding summer. Bill is tough,” she says.
Moving forward, Sanchez is hoping to fulfill her dream of getting back to full-time music. “I always think there’s a second chance,” she says. “I was shy went I first started at and could only express myself through movement, but I had a voice and now it’s time to express that.”