Zurine Cadena Jimenez

“My goal is to obtain a position at UNICEF where I can work with regional organizations to provide access to early childhood education in developing countries,” says Zurine Cadena Jimenez.

Zurine is an International Studies major with a minor in Human Rights and Genocide Studies. She has a 3.85 GPA. She plans to continue her education at Columbia University to earn a master’s degree in Human Rights Studies. In addition, Zurine has an associate’s degree in Studio Art.  Her poetry has also been published in literary magazines such as “Driftwood” and the “Promethean” and has been featured twice as Reward Publishing’s Poet of the Month. 

Zurine is from Mount Arlington, N.J. and is currently a preschool teacher for Kindercare Learning Centers.

Awarded Scholarships

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2018

Aronsohn, Ernst Memorial Scholarship

Ernst Aronsohn was born in 1917 in the town of Posen, in what is now Poland.  At the onset of World War ll he was in school in Italy, and because of his Jewish faith could not return home to his family, who later perished under the Nazis.  Instead, Mr. Aronsohn went to Denmark to work on a farm with other young Jews displaced by the War.  It was here he met his wife, Erna Meier.  When the Nazis invaded Denmark, the Aronsohns were ferried to Sweden by Danish fishermen.  At the end of the war, they went to Israel.  It was in Israel that Mr. Aronsohn was recruited by the United States to return to Germany to help find Nazi war criminals.

In 1958 the Aronsohns moved to the United States with other Holocaust survivors and settled in Queens, N.Y.  Mr. Aronsohn had a successful career in finance.  After his wife’s death in 1989 Mr. Aronsohn was visiting a friend in Florida.  The friend introduced him to Jane Yanowitz, and they remained constant companions for 25 years.  At Mr. Aronsohn’s death in 2015, the Yanowitz family created this scholarship to honor his memory.

Sykes Family Scholarship

Suzanne Sykes and her late husband, Donald, founded Marpac Industries Inc. in 1967. Marpac manufactured custom plastic containers for specialty chemicals, with offices in Waldwick, NJ and manufacturing sites in New York, California, Oklahoma and Ireland. After selling the company in 1998, Sue enrolled at Ramapo as a returning adult student. She earned her degree in American Studies in 2006 and remains very active with her alma mater.

Of her experience at Ramapo, she says, “The encouragement of the faculty was the probably the most surprising and most meaningful for me. I had some initial concern about how I would be accepted by other students, but it had not occurred to me how the professors might feel about an older student. I was put at ease and never felt uncomfortable. On several occasions, professors told me that they appreciated my presence in their classes, because it changed the dynamics and brought fresh perspectives. Needless to say, I was delighted.”

Sue was a volunteer counselor with the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE), which provides small business mentoring and training, and is a former member of the Alumni Advisory Board of the School of Humanities and Global Studies. She now devotes her volunteer hours to various leadership roles in her church and the Ramapo College community. She established the Sykes Family Scholarship to benefit other returning adult students who are pursuing American Studies at Ramapo. She hopes that by completing her college degree as an older adult, she has set a good example for her five grandchildren that learning is a life-long rewarding endeavor.