by Jackie Glasthal

Undergraduate students representing eleven CUNY campuses found their way to the Graduate Center on July 9 for the CUNY Pipeline Fellowship Program’s second annual Graduate School Recruitment Fair. In addition to attending workshops on CV writing, how to apply for fellowships, and finding the right school to meet one’s needs, students had an opportunity to meet with recruiters from seventeen different graduate schools, including Yale, Princeton, and of course the GC.

The CUNY Pipeline Program, first conceived in 1990 by GC faculty members, was created to address a need for greater diversity within the professoriate. Toward this end, the program provides educational and financial support annually to thirty CUNY undergraduates interested in pursuing a Ph.D. in preparation for college-level teaching and advanced research in any discipline except law and medicine. As part of the program, participants attend full-time summer workshops at the GC between their junior and senior years. There, they receive assistance with preparing for the GRE, including help with writing a personal statement to submit with their graduate school applications, and take a course focusing on either the humanities or social sciences.

“Pipeline definitely helped me with the skills I’m going to need to pursue my Ph.D.,” said Phenia Jean-Pierre, a childhood education major at Brooklyn College and the first in her family to attend college. “Professor Viscusi (Director, Humanities Institute, CUNY Pipeline) taught us about grammar and persuasive writing and the importance of revision. I’m now on the fifth draft of my personal statement, and each time I work on it, it keeps getting better.”

Adolfo Cuevas, a student of psychology at City College, also attested to the merits of the program. “I recommend it to anyone interested, not just in a Ph.D.,” he said, “but in understanding yourself and what kind of student you can become.”

“The Pipeline Program is housed at the Graduate Center so that no one CUNY college will have a monopoly on the program, since it services students from all CUNY campuses,” explains Dr. Brenda Henry-Offor, CUNY pipeline coordinator. To learn more about the program, see http://web.gc.cuny.edu/oeodp/pipeline.asp

Brenda Henry-Offor

Photo: A. Poyo