D’Orazio’s new memoir, A Shot in the Dark (Blackstone Publishing, 2025), traces his journey from growing up in ���ճԹ� to working at the top of his profession in the fashion field. Here, D’Orazio reflects on his early influences, his evolution as a photographer, and the experiences that have shaped his perspective and his art.

Photographer Sante D’Orazio’s memoir of life in high fashion and Hollywood.

You grew up in ���ճԹ�.

I was raised in Flatbush and went to Erasmus Hall High School. The area is now called Kensington, but back then it was just Flatbush to me. I still have family there, though most have moved away.

In your memoir, you say you got into photography early because of a man who lived around the corner.

I didn’t know much about him except his name—Mr. [Lou] Bernstein—and that he lived around the corner from me when I was about 10. He became my mentor in photography and life. He’d been part of the old New York Photo League, with photographers like Robert Frank, Walker Evans, Weegee, and Berenice Abbott. He never worked commercially; he shot on weekends and worked at Willoughby Peerless, the equivalent today of B&H Photo.

Six-year-old Sante D’Orazio playing stickball in his ���ճԹ� neighborhood.

You started at a junior college and then transferred to ���ճԹ�.

After my father passed away, I went into survival mode. I studied commercial art at a New York Community College, thinking I might become an art director. I hated it. I was already painting nudes at the ���ճԹ� Museum and the Art Students League, so I transferred after researching the ���ճԹ� faculty. was teaching there, he was a leading Realist painter concentrating on the nude. I also discovered how strong the faculty was in the fine arts and the humanities. I’m grateful I wasn’t at a full-time art school; the humanities helped round out my aesthetic education through literature, philosophy, history, and widened my scope of knowledge of the Arts. And I loved the campus.

Your cousin, who was a hairdresser, suggested you get into fashion photography.

I went into the city with my portfolio—no appointments, no experience. I tracked down Avedon, Penn, Scavullo. I didn’t get past the front desk at Avedon’s. Penn didn’t open the door. Scavullo told me to get out. I eventually got a job as a second assistant, doing gofer work and building a portfolio.

Model Helena Christensen in Leningrad for British Vogue, 1990

You eventually made your way to Milan.

Italian Vogue was down the street from my hotel. I brought my portfolio expecting rejection. Instead, they gave me a two page-spread assignment of “Beauty” nudes, which translates to skincare, makeup, and fragrance. I was 25.

What was it like photographing the supermodels and rock stars of the 1980s and 1990s?

There was a whole new zeitgeist in the 80s. I had my first assignment with Italian Vogue, soon after my first Vogue cover with German Vogue. In Rome, while shooting the collections, I met a 15-year-old Christy Turlington with her mom in the hallway of our hotel. I became friends with Cindy Crawford, Tatjana Patitz, and Stephanie Seymour before they became the new generation of superstars, they were the first to be termed supermodels. Our careers rose in parallel.

By the 1990s, Hollywood glamor had waned and needed revitalizing. Bruce Weber, Herb Ritts, and I brought glamour back to the movie industry through the magazine world. Once we put actresses like Michelle Pfeiffer and Kim Basinger on a Vogue cover, sales shot up, and fashion magazines shifted to celebrities.

Model Tatiana Patitiz on British Vogue

And famous people like Prince.

I took this assignment because it was Prince. I was early to the studio; Prince arrived early too, with fedora, makeup, and no entourage. Though the client hadn’t arrived, he asked if we could shoot. We finished in about 20 minutes. He left before the client showed up. They weren’t happy, but I was thrilled, we got some great shots.

You have an unnerving story about taking a photo of Mike Tyson with his tiger.

I went to shoot Mike at his home in Las Vegas for Esquire magazine. I was looking for a place to shoot; he directed me out to the backyard. What he didn’t tell me was that he had pet tigers!

Heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson, 1996

When I walked out, I thought a dog was running at me from behind—it was a tiger. It jumped on me. Mike came out laughing and said, “She’s just a puppy.” So I took it in stride and acted like it was nothing, though it wasn’t the case! I asked him to take off his shirt, and he started wrestling with the 200 lb. puppy. That’s the shot.

So you’re also a painter. How do your photography and painting practices relate?

I paint images on film that become small abstractions, scan and print them large, collage them, and paint over them. The mixed media feeds itself.

What do you think about art and artificial intelligence?

AI can only remix what it’s fed. It can’t produce the true idiosyncrasies that only the human mind can create. Perfection is machine-made and meaningless, soulless. That energy from hand to paper—AI can’t replicate that.

There’s a growing interest among young people in film and analog processes. Have you seen that?

My son used to make fun of me for not understanding digital manuals. Now he asks me about film. I like that people are going back to handwriting and notebooks. I wrote my memoir by hand. I believe in that process, it extends your sensory perception.

What advice do you have for today’s young photographers and artists?

Know your history, or you’ll copy people without realizing it. Have chutzpah—knock on doors. Show up, even if you’re mopping floors. That’s how artists always learned and grew, from the past, and the bottom up! Most of all take criticism, if you can’t, you’re not ready.

Anything else you want students to know?

If you spend your time trying to satisfy the right and the left, you’re stuck in the middle—that’s the definition of mediocre. Reach inside yourself, fail and get up again. Don’t be afraid of who you are, as long as it’s real to you. And study, always study. ���ճԹ� is exceptional when it comes to the quality of education, it’s the best kept secret in the N.Y.C. school system. But then I’m biased—I have a real soft spot for my alma mater

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Warren received the award for his acclaimed book����(University of Chicago Press, 2024). The George Rosen��Prize��recognizes outstanding scholarship in the history of public health and social medicine, and Warren’s book was honored for its significant contribution to understanding the historical, medical, and social dimensions of vitamin D deficiency.��

Warren is widely recognized for his��expertise��in the history of medicine, public health, and the environment.��His research examines how medical knowledge develops and how scientific ideas influence public policy and everyday life.��

Established in honor of physician, public health leader, and historian George Rosen, the��prize��is presented by the AAHM, the leading professional organization dedicated to the��worldwide��study of the history of medicine. Warren’s book was selected from a highly competitive field and recognized for illuminating how scientific knowledge, public health policy, and social conditions have shaped the understanding and treatment of one of humanity’s most persistent nutritional diseases.��

Warren received the award at the AAHM conference this year in Buffalo, New��York, which��ran from��June 4��to��7.��

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The novel follows May, a woman who��loses her��job��to artificial intelligence in a world where humans live alongside��humanoid robots��known as “hums.” As she struggles to support her family in a society increasingly dominated by technology, she undergoes an experimental procedure that allows her to evade surveillance and��seeks��refuge in one of the last remaining green spaces in her city.��

Judges praised��Hum��for its��timely��exploration of climate anxiety, technological disruption, and the commercialization of nature. According to the Climate Fiction Prize, the novel is “a book that deals with love, community and family in the face of ecological and technological collapse.”��The��award is presented annually to a novel that offers “imaginative and compelling responses to the climate crisis.” Now in its second year, the prize has quickly become one of the most prominent international honors for climate-focused literature.��

Phillips, who teaches creative writing in��the��Department of English, is the author of several celebrated books, including��The Beautiful Bureaucrat,��The Need, and��Some Possible Solutions. Her work has been widely recognized for its inventive blend of speculative fiction, literary storytelling, and sharp social observation. Phillips earned her M.F.A.��from ���ճԹ� and now serves as a��full��professor, mentoring emerging writers while continuing an internationally acclaimed literary career.��

The Climate Fiction Prize judges selected��Hum��from a shortlist of six novels that examined the climate crisis through a range of literary approaches. In awarding the prize, the judges highlighted the novel’s ability to connect environmental concerns with questions of technology, privilege, family, and human resilience.��

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Routledge has published , the first comprehensive academic study devoted to Lerner’s work. Co-edited by scholars Yannicke Chupin and Karim Daanoune, the volume brings together 14 essays by international critics and researchers examining Lerner’s contributions to contemporary literature, poetry, fiction, criticism, and artistic collaboration. The collection also includes an unpublished piece by Lerner, titled Erring Together.

A celebrated novelist, poet, essayist, and professor in the Department of English, Lerner has built a career exploring and challenging the boundaries between literary forms. The new volume argues that his work consistently crosses and redefines the lines between poetry and prose, narrative and criticism, and literature and other artistic media. According to the publisher, the book is the first study to situate Lerner’s writing within the broader field of contemporary intermedial and cross-genre literature.

The publication marks a notable milestone in Lerner’s career. Authors are accustomed to filling pages with words; few reach the point where hundreds of pages are devoted to understanding, analyzing, and debating those words. In a fitting twist for a writer whose work often reflects on authorship itself, Lerner now finds himself on the other side of the sentence.

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“Take your time,” one her peers yelled from the audience.

If the pause betrayed any nervousness around giving the student address in front of the boisterous crowd in the Claire Tow Theater, it quickly gave way to a fiery speech that struck a chord with the assembled.

Adversity? “Seen it. Lived it. Felt it,” she said defiantly, after invoking Langston Hughes and recounting a childhood that taught her that life won’t always look like what you expected.

“Our accomplishments,” she told her fellow graduates, “live in every sacrifice, every setback, every reason we could have stopped, but didn’t.”

Chin-Phillips says she certainly had her share of challenges growing up between ���ճԹ� and Barbados. Born in the United States, her mother was deported when she was 6 years old, so she was raised mostly by aunts and other family members in New York while her mother stayed in Barbados.

As she prepares to apply for doctoral programs in occupational therapy, the transfer student talks about growing up apart from her nuclear family, learning that support would always show up when she needed it, and her gratitude for the community and mentors at ���ճԹ� that reminded her of her worth.

What was your childhood like?

My family is from Barbados and Guyana, and I spent a lot of time going back and forth between the two places. Every summer, I was in Barbados almost immediately after school ended, and I’d come back right before the school year started again.

We kept in touch however we could—lots of Skype calls, emails, all of that before FaceTime and texting were really a thing. It wasn’t easy, but it definitely taught me resilience and adaptability very early on.

What brought you to ���ճԹ�?

���ճԹ� actually wasn’t my first stop. I originally attended LIU ���ճԹ� as a health science major. Eventually, I realized I wanted to pursue a path connected to speech pathology, so I decided to transfer. A family friend encouraged me to apply to ���ճԹ�.

You’re now majoring in linguistics with a minor in communicative sciences and disorders.

Linguistics overlaps a lot with CSD, especially when it comes to language development and communication. I believe courses like these should be required for people studying education, literacy, sociology, and child development because language impacts everything.

What opportunities have stood out to you during your time at ���ճԹ�?

One of the biggest was participating in the Mellon Undergraduate Transfer Student Research Program with [Assistant] Professor Anne Fredrickson. My group researched how accredited colleges in New York prepare future speech-language pathologists to work with bilingual populations.

I really loved that experience because it combined research, language, and questions of equity and representation. It also gave me confidence in my own voice and perspective as someone who grew up between cultures.

I also received the Zicklin Scholars Degree Completion Grant, which was incredibly helpful during my academic journey.

Outside the classroom, what communities or organizations have been important to you?

A lot of my extracurricular involvement has centered around Black Faculty and Staff initiatives on campus. This past year, I became treasurer of the Black Solidarity Day Committee, which has been a really meaningful experience.

When I first transferred to ���ճԹ�, I didn’t know much about Black Solidarity Day or some of the history behind it. Through mentors, faculty, and staff members, I became more involved and started to understand how important community-building and cultural advocacy are on campus. That work really helped me feel connected here.

Looking ahead, what would your dream career look like?

I always struggle to answer that because I don’t think there’s one perfect path for me yet. But I know that whatever I do, I want it to connect back to culture, community, and the Caribbean.

Anything involving the West Indies or Caribbean culture immediately interests me. I already do work with the West Indian American Day Carnival Association here in ���ճԹ�, and I love being part of spaces that celebrate where I come from.

At the end of the day, I think I just want a career where I can help people while still staying connected to my roots and my community.

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During his fellowship year, Robin will advance his new book project,��King Capital, which reinterprets major economists as political theorists. The project argues that influential accounts of capitalism are, at their core, disguised visions of politics. Robin contends that modern economic theories often translate ancient ideals of aristocratic, dynastic, and imperial rule into contemporary economic language.��His research examines the work of canonical thinkers, including Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, William Stanley Jevons, Alfred Marshall, Joseph Schumpeter, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman, alongside lesser-known Marxist, socialist, feminist, and Global South economists.

As a Berlin Prize Fellow, Robin will join an international cohort of scholars and artists in residence at the American Academy in Berlin. Fellows receive dedicated time and resources to pursue major scholarly and creative projects while engaging with German academic and cultural institutions. Through lectures, readings, and public programs, fellows contribute to vibrant transatlantic dialogue and intellectual exchange.

Awarded annually, the Berlin Prize recognizes U.S.-based scholars, writers, composers, and artists who demonstrate exceptional achievement in their fields. Recipients represent disciplines spanning the humanities and social sciences, journalism, public policy, fiction, visual arts, and music composition.

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Aleah N. Ranjitsingh

At ���ճԹ�, Assistant Professor Aleah N. Ranjitsingh, Department of Africana Studies and the Caribbean Studies Program, is reshaping how we think about knowledge, identity, and the Caribbean itself.

A proud alumna of the college who earned a B.A. in political science and an M.A. in comparative politics, Ranjitsingh centers her scholarship on the Greater Caribbean as an epistemological space—one where Caribbean and other diverse populations are not merely subjects of study, but knowledge producers whose lived realities, family histories, and cultural practices are legitimate sites of inquiry. Across her inter- and multidisciplinary work, she challenges monolithic narratives of the Caribbean and foregrounds the complexity of identity formation, gender, mixedness, and racialization both “at home” and across the diaspora.

Through projects such as “Becoming Black: Afro-Caribbean and/in ‘Black America,’” “Dougla Lives: At the Intersections,” and “Chinese Caribbean Narratives: Migration, Identity, and Belonging at Home and Diaspora,” she documents how Caribbean peoples navigate race, belonging, and migration in shifting social contexts.

Just as vital to her work is mentorship. Through programs including the Tow Mentorship Initiative and Mellon Mays, as well as sustained independent study, Ranjitsingh positions students as knowledge producers in their own right, encouraging them to claim their intellectual lineage and recognize that what they think, know, and create truly matters.

How does working across disciplines allow you to tell fuller stories?

I am a political scientist and a gender scholar, but more importantly I am a Caribbean scholar. Caribbean studies is inherently interdisciplinary, and here at ���ճԹ�, the Caribbean Studies Program, directed by Associate Professor Dale Byam, reflects this breadth—from classes on the steelpan, to climate justice, to Carnival, and much more. My own research is shaped by this interdisciplinarity, and it has deeply informed the oral history projects I undertake.

Oral history is about the stories of those whose voices are often marginalized; it is about memory, and how the same moment can be remembered differently depending on one’s lived experience.

In my first oral history project, “Becoming Black: Afro-Caribbean and/in ‘Black America,’” which centers Afro-Caribbean immigrants in New York City, I was interested in how Afro-Caribbean immigrants re/construct identity as Black and/or African American. I was also deeply interested in how these immigrants understood the 2020 moment when Black Lives Matter protests erupted across the United States and globally. Understanding how people experience a shared historical moment—while also situating that moment within broader political histories—required me to move across disciplines, drawing from political science, Africana studies, and history.

Before my third project, on Caribbean people of Chinese and mixed-Chinese ancestry, I was reading Caribbean literature and history whenever I could—Kerry Young’s Pao and the work of historian Walton Look Lai. Literature and history both inform my oral history practice because I am interested in how Caribbean people write themselves into being, and how meaning is made through narrative.

I also draw heavily from institutional and intellectual communities. Professor Joseph Entin and colleagues who founded the ���ճԹ� Listening Project have been central in shaping oral history work at the college. Likewise, Dean Philip Napoli, an oral historian and faculty member in the Department of History, met with me when I was first simply curious about doing oral histories. These mentors helped me understand that students’ stories matter—and that those stories are themselves knowledge.

Was there a moment when you realized lived experience could function as scholarship?

I do not think there was a single moment. Rather, over the last decade—especially after completing my Ph.D.—there was a gradual but clear shift in my research toward the personal and toward lived experience, including my own as a Black, Dougla, Caribbean woman in the Caribbean and New York City.

Even in my doctoral work on gender and the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, I conducted more than 70 interviews with women in Caracas and Mérida. I knew then that to understand whether participatory democracy and 21^st��century socialism had expanded citizenship and political agency, I had to speak directly with women themselves. That commitment reflects feminist standpoint theory, which holds that knowledge is socially situated and produced from multiple social locations.

Later, in conversations with colleagues at the University of the West Indies—particularly within the Institute for Gender and Development Studies—we began reflecting on mixedness and Douglaness in Trinidad and the diaspora. These conversations affirmed that our stories were not just personal reflections; they were also scholarly interventions. The Dougla identity—Caribbean people of African and Indian ancestry—became a central site of inquiry.

From those discussions, Sue Ann Barratt and I co-authored Dougla in the Twenty-First Century: Adding to the Mix (2021), based on interviews with more than 100 Douglas in Trinidad and Tobago and in New York. The project foregrounded lived experience as theory, showing how people narrate identity, race, and belonging in their own words.

From there, my work has continued to move in that direction: treating lived experience not as anecdote, but as method, archive, and scholarship.

How is mentorship part of your scholarship?

For students to believe that what they think, know, and create matters, I first had to believe that for myself. When I tell students to “have the audacity,” I am also reminding myself.

Mentorship, for me, is a form of radical care. It is about telling and showing students that their intellectual lives are valid—even when their projects do not fit neatly within disciplinary boundaries.

I think of students like Cynthia Leung, Katryna Alexis, Marisha Sampson, Maciel Rosario, and Brandon Abram, each of whom developed projects that emerged from their own lived realities: oral histories of church communities, Afro-Guyanese Kwe Kwe traditions, interrogating the displacement caused by foreign-owned mining companies in the Dominican Republic, explorations of mixedness and Black radical thought. In each case, my role was not to define the limits of their work, but to affirm that their questions were worth pursuing.

With Brandon Abram, for example, we developed a project that began with his desire to write about himself in relation to Blackness and identity. I introduced him to autoethnography as a method, and we read Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde together. What began as uncertainty became a conference presentation and is now developing into a published duoethnography.

This is what mentorship looks like in practice: shared intellectual risk, collaborative reading, and mutual learning. Students are not simply recipients of knowledge—they are co-producers of it.

This philosophy is reflected institutionally as well. At ���ճԹ�, I serve as chair of Black Faculty and Staff (BFS), where we launched the Sankofa Excellence Program to support student mentorship, recognition, and retention. Alongside the members of the executive board, which is composed of Assistant Professor Lawrence Johnson, Crystal Schloss-Allen, Sherome Stone, Assistant Professor Donna-Lee Granville, and the BFS community, we also continue traditions like the Donning of the Kente pre-graduation ceremony, which celebrates students as they approach graduation. I am also grateful for incredible faculty mentors such as my chair, Associate Professor Prudence Cumberbatch of the Africana Studies Department.

Mentorship is not separate from scholarship. It is scholarship—because it produces knowledge, relationships, and intellectual communities.

What do you hope students carry with them?

Long after students leave my classroom, I want them to remember that their lives are connected to broader histories and communities.

I want them to see critical thinking not as an abstract skill, but as a daily practice: questioning assumptions, reading widely, and reflecting honestly on their own experiences.

I hope they continue to “have the audacity” to take up space, to dream, and to speak—even when they are the only ones in the room with their particular voice, accent, or perspective.

In a world that is often unjust and uneven, I hope they choose kindness without losing intellectual rigor. Most of all, I hope they trust that their stories matter.

And I hope they remember ���ճԹ�—not only as an institution, but as a place where they were supported, challenged, and cared for; a place where they belonged.

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The psychology major has taken full advantage of the academic and experiential opportunities available to him. Through The Tow Mentoring and Research Program, which pairs students with faculty mentors to conduct scholarship, Shaad worked in a biochemistry lab studying the link between bone health and diabetes.

Through Global Medical Brigades, he volunteered in rural clinics in Panama and Belize. He later interned in Morocco through a study-abroad internship, observing surgeries and shadowing physicians. He most recently spent a summer in Kenya through Columbia University’s ICAP Next Generation Internship, an initiative funded by The Tow Foundation that provides students with opportunities in global public health. In addition to the internship, he worked alongside a doctor building a new hospital—something he dreams of doing in his native Bangladesh.

Shaad’s engagement extends far beyond the classroom. He has served as president of the Philosophy Society, competed internationally with the Speech and Debate Team, and played on the ���ճԹ� tennis team, helping lead them to two City University of New York Athletic Conference finals. These experiences strengthened his leadership skills while reinforcing a sense of belonging and purpose.

“���ճԹ� has so many opportunities,” Shaad says. “If you reach out, the people and resources here can truly change your life.”

He is on track to graduate in spring 2026 and is applying to medical school, carrying forward the impact of an education designed to open doors and transform lives.

Visit Boundless ���ճԹ�

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Trina Yearwood ’00

On a spring afternoon in the ���ճԹ� Student Center, Trina Yearwood ’00 stood at the back of a crowded room, watching middle schoolers, high schoolers, and college students lean forward in their seats at the first‑ever Future Educators Summit—an event devoted to imagining lives, education, mentoring, and youth advocacy. As the room buzzed with questions, Yearwood felt a lump in her throat.

“Those were tears of joy,” she said later. “I think about our young people who are often counted out before they even have an opportunity. It makes me happy that I’m doing something meaningful.”

That sense of meaning has always been her compass. Now, as the newly appointed president of the ���ճԹ� Alumni Association (BCAA), Yearwood is bringing that same purpose to an organization charged with sustaining the college community long after graduation.

Yearwood assumes the presidency following the passing of Arlene Lichterman ’53, whose devotion helped shape the association for decades. Having served as first vice president, Yearwood steps into her new role with a deep understanding of the BCAA’s mission and a clear vision for its future.

Her platform is simple and resonant: ���ճԹ�, Always.

“It echoes the college’s watchwords: All In,” Yearwood explains. “The BCAA also embraces ���ճԹ�’s spirit—how all alumni carry its values into their workplaces, their leadership, and how they show up for our communities and our students.”

Where Purpose Took Root

That spirit shaped Yearwood long before she held any titles. Growing up in ���ճԹ�, she learned early what it meant to advocate. At five years old, she watched police officers pull over her mother’s car and wrongly accuse her of running a stop sign. With guns drawn.

“I’m going to court to tell the judge you’re lying on my mom,” Yearwood announced, before her grandmother silenced her. It became family lore that she might become a lawyer.

High school rewrote that plan. A young Black English teacher changed her life by teaching “to our humanity,” says Yearwood, introducing Black authors, demanding excellence, and making students feel deeply cared for. By the end of the year, Yearwood knew she wanted to teach.

���ճԹ� was not her first choice; her teenage wish was to leave home for a far‑off campus. But teachers—many ���ճԹ� alumni—encouraged her to consider its education program. Her mother, also an alumna, added a practical note: staying local meant tuition would be covered.

Even so, the transition was not easy. Early in her college career, one professor dismissed her writing as “gibberish,” shaking her confidence. Everything changed when she found her way to Africana studies.

“Africana studies resuscitated me,” she says. “It gave me back belief in myself.”

In the Classroom, Full Circle

Yearwood graduated with bachelor’s degrees in English and Africana studies, then returned to Samuel J. Tilden High School—her alma mater—as an English teacher, working alongside the mentor who had inspired her.

“Teaching is the most noble and sacred profession,” Yearwood often says. “When students know you care, they rise.”

Her students never forgot the care she showed them. Years later, many returned to tell her so. At one ���ճԹ� event she organized, a former student opened the keynote by saying, “Dr. Yearwood, my success is a return on your investment.” Another went on to become a teacher, crediting Yearwood’s belief in her with altering the course of her life.

Answering a Need

Yearwood’s career eventually expanded beyond the classroom into higher education leadership. She earned an M.Ed. from Cambridge College in Boston, an Ed.D. in educational leadership and higher education administration from West Virginia University, and a certificate in diversity and inclusion from Cornell University. She directed the Teacher Opportunity Corps II at ���ճԹ�, served as associate dean at Long Island University and interim associate dean at Queens College (CUNY), and has been an adjunct assistant professor at ���ճԹ� since 2011.

Along the way, Yearwood noticed a troubling pattern: talented educators leaving the profession. In response, she founded TREAT—Teachers Ready to Educate, Advocate, and Transform—in 2018. What began as a small professional learning community grew to reach more than 12,000 teachers, counselors, administrators, and families. During the pandemic, TREAT became a lifeline, offering mental‑health workshops and honest conversation. In 2024, Yearwood went on to lead TREAT full time.

“Stepping away from academic leadership was scary,” she admits. “But I knew it was time to fully step into the work that I had been building, work that is both meaningful and transformative.”

Leading the Alumni Community Forward

She brings the same resolve to her leadership of the BCAA, with a vision to connect alumni to one another and to the college through mentorship and other strategic programming.

For Yearwood, becoming president of the BCAA is not a culmination—it is a continuation.

“���ճԹ�, Always,” she says, “is about who we are and who we commit to being—together.”

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Data analytics students

By fall 2023, about one-quarter of all students—and a significantly higher share of graduate students—were studying fully online. In response, colleges and universities are redesigning degree offerings with adult learners in mind, expanding fully online master’s programs, hybrid course models, accelerated and stackable credentials, and year‑round scheduling that better fits work and family responsibilities.

For ���ճԹ�’s graduate students, college is not a beginning, it’s a return.

Students arrive with résumés, responsibilities, and a clear-eyed sense of urgency. They want education that respects their time and opens the door to meaningful work. To meet those realities, we have created a variety of flexible pathways that help adult learners reinvent their careers without putting the rest of their lives on hold.

Across business, education, journalism, and urban sustainability, the college has rolled out and expanded programs that can often be completed in a year, taken online or in the evenings, and closely align with workforce demand. Together, they reflect a strategic shift rooted in ���ճԹ�’s long-standing mission of access and rigor, updated for a world of nonlinear careers.

Credentials Built for Working Lives

“We’re seeing students who already have careers, or who started one path and realized it wasn’t right,” says Professor Seungho Baek, who directs the M.S. in Finance program. “They don’t want to start from zero. They want something efficient, rigorous, and directly connected to opportunity.”

That thinking drives the M.S. in Finance, which can be completed in as little as one year and is offered both online and face‑to‑face. Students choose between specializations in quantitative finance and risk management or investment management and asset valuation. The program’s in‑person courses are held at 25 Broadway in Lower Manhattan, a deliberate decision intended to bring working professionals and industry experts into the classroom.

“We wanted to make it easy for people who are already working in the financial sector to participate,” Baek says.

Professor Seungho Baek leads the new finance master’s programs at ���ճԹ�.

Industry professionals teach select courses, grounding theory in real‑world practice. Beginning next fall, eligible undergraduates will also be able to opt into a 4+1 pathway in finance, earning both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in five years by taking graduate‑level coursework during their senior year.

The business school has applied the same model to accounting, launching a fully online M.S. in Accounting that can also be completed in a year, an especially appealing option for professionals seeking a credential with clear licensure and career outcomes.

Meeting a Citywide Need, One Teacher at a Time

In education, many graduate students are working professionals for whom flexibility can be the difference between persistence and attrition.

According to María R. Scharrón-del Río, dean of the School of Education, ���ճԹ�’s approach has been shaped by both student realities and the urgency of citywide need.

“New York City Public Schools is facing a massive staffing challenge,” she says, pointing to that will significantly reduce class sizes by 2028. “That means thousands of additional teachers will be needed, far more than the current pipeline can provide.”

���ճԹ� has long partnered with the city through Teaching Fellows programs, but in recent years those pathways have expanded and evolved. New alternative‑certification initiatives, including , are designed to help paraprofessionals and substitute teachers—many already working in classrooms—become certified teachers of record while completing their degrees.

“These are adult learners who know exactly what they’re getting into,” says Roberto Martínez, who oversees the Teaching Fellows and Ed Prep programs. “They’re already in schools. They’re parents. They’re career‑changers looking for stability and meaning.”

A key factor in ���ճԹ�’s success, Scharrón-del Río notes, is modality. ���ճԹ� was the only CUNY campus to offer its Ed Prep programs fully online (with required in‑person fieldwork), a distinction that quickly translated into demand.

“By word of mouth and because of the quality of our programs,” she says, “we received more applications than all the other CUNY campuses combined.”

The School of Education has also launched a new online advanced certificate program in reading science, designed to be completed in a year. The program responds to growing demand for teachers trained in evidence‑based literacy instruction, particularly in early grades—another area of acute need.

Katie Pace Miles, director of the Reading Science program, which addresses the growing demand for teachers trained in evidence‑based literacy instruction.

The Fast Track to a Master’s

Beyond education and business, ���ճԹ� has expanded accelerated options in fields tied to civic life.

A 4+1 in journalism allows students to earn a master’s degree in one additional year, while a newly launched 4+1 partnership in city planning with Baruch College creates a streamlined pathway for ���ճԹ� urban sustainability majors to earn a master’s in city planning.

“A lot of our students are returning students,” says Professor Tammy Lewis, who heads the urban sustainability program. “They’re here because this work matters to them. The master’s degree opens up more opportunity.”

Tammy Lewis shown here with students participating in the Tow Mentorship Initiative.

While each program is distinct, the common thread is intentional design: online delivery where possible, evening schedules, accelerated timelines, and curricula shaped in conversation with employers and communities.

Taken together, these programs signal an evolution in how ���ճԹ� understands its role—not just as a place of first chances, but of second and third ones, too.

“People are reinventing themselves multiple times now,” Martínez says. “���ճԹ� has always made that possible. We’re just building clearer, more flexible routes to get there.”

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