TOMORROWS STELLAR ALUMNI
By Chris Hann
“It doesn’t get much better than this,” Ramapo President Peter P. Mercer told the audience inside Friends Hall, an appraisal confirmed by the six students profiled below. |
Ramapo’s annual Honors Convocation, a celebration of the brightest young minds on campus, confirmed the notion that tomorrow’s distinguished alumni start out as today’s honors students. The Convocation, held on April 22, recognized 25 students in Ramapo’s College Honors Program, including 14 who were awarded honors with distinction. Another 60 students, grouped according to the College’s five undergraduate schools, were cited for outstanding academic achievement.
Louis Maraj / Poetry
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Louis Maraj had never stepped foot outside Trinidad and Tobago before venturing to the United States in 2005 for what turned out to be a memorable first semester at Ramapo.
That December he suffered a seizure. He was prescribed medication, but the seizures continued. Then one day communications professor Kathleen Sunshine confided that her sister had died of a misdiagnosed brain tumor. She urged him to see more doctors. Long story short: In February 2007, doctors removed a tumor– benign but life threatening–from his brain.
Louis, now 22, returned to Ramapo in three weeks, completed the semester, and has not had another seizure since–a good thing, because his academic load would not tolerate delay. A triple major–communications, literature, and social science–Louis spent a semester in India and was awarded College Honors with Distinction. His College Honors project, completed under the guidance of associate professor of English James Hoch, was a collection of poems, “Because No One Wants to Walk Over There.
“I owe a lot of my work and where it is now to him,” Louis says of Hoch. “If a line seems too sentimental, he has a saying: ‘It sounds like poetry with a capital P.’ And you don’t want to write poetry with a capital P.”
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Veselina Stoyanova / International Business
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Veselina Stoyanova arrived at Ramapo from her native Bulgaria with two suitcases, no cell phone and no computer. She left, following her graduation in May, with a degree in international business and big plans for her future.
Her decision to study international business, she says, went beyond mere academic considerations. “Because I am coming from a small country, where the economic situation in the 1990s was not good,” she says. “I witnessed the hardship of my family when both of my parents lost their jobs. I really want to understand the factors why the economic downturn happened. You can’t really understand the political and social factors without understanding the economic factors.”
At the Honors Convocation, Veselina, 23, was awarded College Honors with Distinction. Her College Honors project was titled “Assessing
Corporate Social Responsibility through the Prism of the European and the American Business Model.” This fall Veselina will enroll in a graduate program at the University of Edinburg in Scotland. She hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in international business and one day return to Bulgaria. “I would like to go back,” she says, “when I gain some experience and I feel I can really make a difference.”
Karen Rivera / Communications Arts, Journalism
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So great is Karen Rivera’s passion for journalism that she says the calling chose her. “It wasn’t something that I chose myself,” she says. “In one way, shape, or form, I was always writing.”
She joined the student newspaper, The Ramapo News, in her freshman year. As a junior, she was named editor-in-chief. Her four internships included stints at the New York bureau of CNN and the New York Daily News.
“Journalism is just a combination of all the things I love,” she says. “I really fiercely believe in the power of words and truth and information.”
Karen, 22, credits professors Edna Negron and Dan Sforza for helping her develop as a journalist. Negron, the student newspaper advisor, wrote recommendations that helped Karen get hired for the internships. Sforza, an editor at The Record and advisor to the student paper, helped her become a better writer, though the process was not easy on the ego. “After the first time he edited one of my pieces, I thought I was the worst writer in the world,” she recalls. “I cried when I got home.”
Karen studied in Japan the summer after her sophomore year, and she aspires to become a foreign correspondent. “I’m just going to try and find whatever way I can to get there,” she says.
Something tells us she will.
| “It wasn’t something that I chose myself,” she says. “In one way, shape, or form, I was always writing.” |
Lisa Perlmutter / Nursing
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Lisa Perlmutter had already earned a bachelor’s degree in biology and was enrolled in a Ph.D. program in biomedical sciences when she decided to alter her career path. It turns out the biomed program restricted her to working with laboratory animals. She preferred to work with human patients, so she enrolled in the nursing program at Ramapo.
“I studied all day every day,” Lisa says of her two years at Ramapo. “It’s a very difficult program, but well worth it.” She gives special credit to nursing instructor Cristina Stearns and associate nursing professor Margaret Greene.
This fall Lisa, 25, will enter a graduate nursing program at the University of Pennsylvania. She plans to become a family nurse practitioner, with a special focus on juvenile diabetes. The graduate program includes a minor in global health. As a junior at Stetson University in Florida, Lisa took part in a 100- day voyage that allowed her to treat needy people from Asia to Africa to South America.
Eventually, Lisa says, she’d like to start a medical clinic of her own. “I have to decide who needs it the most before I decide where to go,” she says. “It depends on where they have the least clinics and the most need.”
Marissa Malkowski / Psychology
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You might say that Marissa Malkowski has a natural affinity for the study of psychology. As the daughter of deaf parents, Marissa says, “I always wondered what someone’s brain would be like if they were deaf.”
That curiosity has carried Marissa a long way. This fall she will enter the University of Toronto, where she will begin a five-year doctoral program in cognitive psychology. Not incidentally, she will study under Laura Ann Petitto, a Ramapo alumna who has conducted pioneering research on the biological origins of human language, bilingualism and sign language.
At Ramapo, Marissa says, the “awesome” faculty in the psychology department helped enhance her Ramapo experience. “I’ve really been close to them the past four years,” she says. “I’ve always respected them because of how well they teach. They’ve been a huge influence on what I want to do in the future.” |
In Petitto, Marissa will have a like-minded mentor. “I want to study the neurological underpinnings of people who learn sign language,” Marissa says. “I just want to keep doing research and become a professor.”
At Ramapo, Marissa says, the “awesome” faculty in the psychology department helped enhance her Ramapo experience. Last year she helped the department develop a Web site for psychology students. “I’ve really been close to them the past four years,” she says. “I’ve always respected them because of how well they teach. They’ve been a huge influence on what I want to do in the future.”
Mary O’Shea / Spanish
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Mary O’Shea took just one course at a time when she first started at Ramapo, and the first course she took was a Spanish class taught by associate professor of Spanish Iraida Lopez. It must have made an impact. Mary, a Spanish major with a concentration in education, was cited at the Honors Convocation for outstanding academic achievement.
Her time at Ramapo has been filled with experiential learning opportunities in Spanish language and culture and in education. She will spend part of this summer with 12 other Ramapo students in Bilbao, Spain, a study program organized by assistant professor of Spanish Natalia Santamaria-Laorden. Another Ramapo trip took her to Cajola, Guatemala during spring break. “We got to talk with the people and learn about the culture of the Mayas, who are still there today,” Mary says. “It was amazing to go to a place like Guatemala to see a culture that I’ve been learning about in my books.”
She has worked with
students in elementary
and middle schools and
this fall, during her last semester at Ramapo, she
will work as a student
teacher at Indian Hills
High School in Oakland,
New Jersey. After graduating
in January 2010,
Mary plans to become
a teacher.
