Rupam Adak is a Business Administration major at LaGuardia Community College, who looks forward to becoming a successful entrepreneur. He is working towards making this venture a successful one in the next five years, and hopes that will make future ventures possible. He has worked with several companies in India and USA, and know several languages (English, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, and Urdu). He is also in the President’s Society and serves as a Peer Advisor at LaGuardia. He used to perform stand up comedy, and recently completed an internship at MoMA to expand his knowledge in the field of art, film, and history. Rupam likes accepting challenges and responsibility, has an adaptive attitude, is a team player, and has the utmost respect for everybody. The humanities play an instrumental role in his thought and decision making process.
Born and raised in Monteria, Colombia, Susana Alvis moved to the United States in 2011. She is currently pursuing her Associates in Spanish – English Translation at LaGuardia Community College. Susana desires to use her passion for languages and cultures to work in embassy and diplomatic settings under the umbrella of International Relations/ Intercultural Relations. Among the cultures that she is most passionate about is the Chinese Culture; where she plans to focus and work in the area of cross-cultural communication. Susana’s love for languages and cultures translates into her role of Student Success Mentor, through which she has had the opportunity to teach the First Year Seminar studio hour to over one hundred freshmen students per semester; her students are from various parts of the world, in this way, she helps them to acclimate to the college system and culture in order to reach a successful graduation. Susana also serves as a LaGuardia ambassador through President’s Society, representing the college in networking events and meetings with donors; served as the student representative at the Steering Strategic Directions Committee that planned the Strategic Directions Summit to help shape the future of LaGuardia; and is part of the LaGuardia Rising Committee that works towards the safety and protection of student’s rights. She is an ePortfolio Scholar and a New York City Hispanic Chamber of Commerce 2018 Scholarship Award Winner. Susana’s passion for cultures and languages has been her vehicle to better serve and understand those around her, and has allowed her to become a better person by taking in the richness and beauty of those around.
Jason Barrera is a theater major from Belize. Acting being his forte, Jason is familiar with the stage from multiple class performance showcases a one man show and working with tony award winner Stew on Columbus is Happening which he played multiple characters. From these experiences he has gained from acting, Jason plans to open a new door for himself and some of his peers through writing plays. Jason plans to graduate from Laguardia after the summer session and to move on to a BFA acting conservatory in the fall.
Brandon Francis is a Computer Science major at LaGuardia Community College. He is currently pursuing a career in video games. He loves to figure out how things work, and exploring game mechanics is part of that. As such, he is also interested in video game design and development, and would be interested in starting his own game company someday. One of the mechanisms he seeks to understand is the mind: he believes that people come from many different perspectives and interpret information differently.
.
.
.
.
Carlie Guevara is an artist using interdisciplinary means via computer science and visual arts to present new ideas and production. She is motivated by the integration of technology in everyday life and our seamless acceptance of it too. Moved to show the integration of technology and life she is producing a line of robots with limited functions that each create their own work of art. For the Mellon Humanities Scholars program she presents: x01. x01 is a play written automatically using Google Trends searches that are combined using arbitrary parameters.
Originally from Bonn, Germany, Anne Husman arrived in New York in August 2017 to pursue an acting career. Her dream is to become a film and theater actress working on projects that bring light to important topics. Anne has traveled to Australia and South America, where she has enjoyed learning about different cultures. The months of travel have shaped her worldview and motivate her to become a well-educated women, who wants to help others. During her time at LaGuardia Community College, Anne has been a part of the newly developed Musical Columbus Is Happening by Tony Award Winner Stew. Anne works at the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center and is happy to have become a part of the Theater Community on campus. Moreover, Anne is a President’s Society alumni and received the Foundation Scholarship for the academic year of 2018-2019. Anne hopes to transfer to a 4-year university to continue her education in theater in fall of 2019. Even though, Anne moved to Brooklyn by herself two years ago, she feels extremely supported by her family and friends back in Germany and wants to thank everyone who believed in her vision to move to New York City to pursue her dream to educate herself further and become an actress.
My name is Katherine Pinzon and I am a first generation college student. My father took me on my very first fishing trip at the age of 6 years old. Fishing has changed my life completely; allowing me to develop leadership and communication skills that has allowed me to take advantage of the many opportunities presented to me throughout my life. In my first semester at LaGuardia, I became a LaGuardia Mellon Humanities Alliance Scholar and a Student Affairs Ambassador. The LaGuardia Mellon Humanities Alliance Scholars program allowed me to make a dream of mine come to life. With the guidance of mentors, I have created a youth fishing initiative called Pesca NYC that will be a permanent non-profit program that I plan on running each summer. As a Student Affairs Ambassador, I work closely with Vice President Seals and the Student Affairs Leadership team in order to improve the student experience on campus. Because of my experiences with the Vice President, the Deans, the Foundation, and the student body, I have decided that I want to pursue my masters degree in Higher Education with the goal of becoming a Community College Dean. Because of my experiences as Mellon Humanities Alliance Scholar and a Student Affairs Ambassador, I was able to use the leadership techniques that I have obtained from both programs to become an active member in LaGuardia’s Phi Theta Kappa International Honors Society Chapter. With the guidance of my mentor, the encouragement of my peers, and my love for the LaGuardia student body, I was elected as LaGuardia’s Phi Theta Kappa International Honors Society Chapter President for the 2019-2020 year.
Born and raised in New York, Giselle Mendoza is a Business Administration major at LaGuardia Community College. She is currently a member of the Mellon Humanities Scholars Program with the CUNY Graduate Center. This year, as part of a required showcase in the program, she will continue bring awareness to invisible disabilities through art. When she is not in class, Giselle is working on campus in the Development Department helping students with scholarship applications, and spending time with her son.
.
.
.
.
Jean Carlos Santos is a New York based musician and a Music Option major at LaGuardia Community College. Through teaching, he hopes to show others the peace, fun,and discipline that he has found through music. Currently employed at School of Rock NYC as an Assistant Show Director, he engages and leads young minds in performance based group classes.
.
.
.
Juan Sebastian Sepulveda is a media studies major. He enjoys making short films, and he hopes someday to become a film director and an actor. Recently he was given the opportunity to help students as a Student Success Partner at ASAP. Helping and supporting students succeed in their career path is one of the most thrilling experiences he has as a Student Success Partner. Moreover, he is part of the LaGuardia Mellon Humanities Scholars program, where he gets to discuss with other scholars relevant topics that affect the immigrant community in the U.S.; especially, the Latino community. He hopes to change the misconceptions that exist about immigrants through a documentary that will expose the reality of the Latino community in the U.S. Besides, he had the opportunity of working with Jean-Claude Van Itallie, an American Screenplay writer. Along with two more LaGuardia students, he was able to go to Jean-Cloude’s foundation, Shantigar, and produce different video content for Tea with Demons, one of Jean Cloud’s most recent books. He plans to transfer in Fall 2019 to NYU and pursue his bachelor’s degree in Film and Video Production. He truly believes that the way we all can improve our own lives is by sharing each others stories. This way individuals realize they are not alone and they can relate to other people’s stories. He believes that by sharing our experiences, knowledge, and essentially by being humans we can all have a more friendly and enjoyable life.
Josselyn Velasquex is an Hispanic student at LaGuardia Community College who was born in Peru and moved to New York city in 2013. Motivated by her love for math and science, and the lack representation of women in STEM majors, she decided to pursue a career in Mechanical Engineering. For the last year, she has been a Student Technology Mentor, where she is able to help freshman students with their eportfolio, which is an online platform. Thanks to her excellent academic progress, she joined Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society, which recognizes the leadership and intellectual achievement of their members. As part of her general education pathways, Josselyn took a Latin American Literature class where she met her mentor, Prof. Luis Henao. He recommended that she apply to the LaGuardia Mellon Humanities Scholar Program to enrich her knowledge about humanities. Moved by the topics touched in her Spanish class about land, cultures and belonging, she developed a project where she focuses on the connection between dances and culture.
Abel Villamar was born and raised in Guayaquil, Ecuador. He is a current student at LaGuardia Community College, majoring in Latin American studies. Abel came to the United States in 2014. His experience as an immigrant has allowed him to personally feel the barriers of language and culture, but at the same time presented him with an opportunity to foster new ideas in a completely different language. Writing poetry is one of his passions. The creative opportunities that poetry offers has allowed him to explore the creation of a multilingual and multicultural space for the development of art, in which he presents poetry as the genesis of a new communication process, with complex linguistic, cultural, and ideological facets.
Looking to find his path and alter his future after incarceration, Matthew Wilson applied for a program called the Prison-2-College-Pipeline where he earned 18 credits before he was released from the custody of New York State Department of Corrections on October 31st, 2016. Impressing his professor and founder of the Prison-2-College-Pipeline, Wilson applied and was accepted to the Justice-in-Education Initiative for the Spring of 2017, and enrolled at LaGuardia Community College.His scholarly excellence earned him a recommendation to the LaGuardia Honors Society and the LaGuardia Honors Internship Program. Through this program, he was selected for an internship with NBC Universal, where he serves as a production assistant with the tri-state Channel 4 News. In Fall 2018, Wilson was also invited to intern at Shantigar, an arts and meditation retreat founded by playwright Jean Claude van Itallie to promote a sense of clarity and focus so that artists can create meaningful artistic content. As a mentor and college assistant with the CUNY Fatherhood Academy, Wilson also works with young fathers who want to gain a High School Equivalency diploma. Through this work, he motivates individuals to enroll in college by providing insights from his experiences, while creating an outlet for young men to tell their own stories. Wilson is now creating a docu-series with some of the young fathers he works with, allowing their voices to be heard. A creative artist and storyteller, Wilson has written the story line for a three-part graphic novel saga titled Swords of Fortune, which he co-illustrated with writer and artist Miguel Williams. Wilson aspires to be a writer and filmmaker who touches on the social issues that are often overlooked in media and society, and plans to graduate in Spring 2019 to embark on a new journey of academic success.
