Out & About

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The New York Sun

No less an ideal than the pursuit of the American dream was celebrated Wednesday at the 41st anniversary gala of Metropolitan College of New York.


“Metropolitan College of New York is about transforming lives. Education opens up opportunity,” Mayor Bloomberg told guests, who joked that he was having a busy week. “I’m trying to keep my job,” the mayor said.


The president of the school, Stephen Greenwald, has certainly been keeping busy. Since he assumed the position in 1999, the school’s enrollment has increased 35%. The school is expanding its Lower Manhattan campus by 40%, building a dazzling entrance and lobby on Canal Street, in the hope of spurring economic development on the block. After September 11, 2001, most of the business on the street closed down.


With its famed “purpose-centered” curriculum, integrating the workplace and the classroom, the school is a gateway for thousands of ambitious men and women of diverse backgrounds. At campuses in Lower Manhattan, the Bronx, and Queens, students find and advance in careers in business, human services, education, and public administration.


Alumna Lori Jones-Dessalines, who earned both a bachelor’s and master’s at Metropolitan, came to the school on welfare, living in her childhood home and struggling to raise an autistic son.


“I realized education was the key to a new beginning,” Ms. Jones-Dessalines said. She is the founder and director of Achievers of New York, Incorporated, Math Center, which offers math tutoring to disadvantaged children.


“The school gives people who don’t have a chance a chance,” the school’s facilities manager, Angel Perez, said.


Hundreds of successful New Yorkers attended the event at the Grand Hyatt, among them the founder of Commerce Bank, Vernon Hill; New York’s secretary of state, Randy Daniels; the chief executive of M.R. Beal & Company, Bernard Beal; the director of human resources at Coney Island Hospital, Jerry Cammarata, and the deputy comptroller for public finance for New York City, Rita Sallis, who had the good sense to ignore the advice of her high school guidance counselors to become a hairdresser. Metropolitan College board members attending included Lance Wilson, John Rodgers, Henry Buhl, and Mildred Robbins Leet.


The event proceeds, $450,000, will fund scholarships for students. Meanwhile, the school is one year into a five-year $15 million capital campaign, which is financing an expansion of the Lower Manhattan campus.


agordon@nysun.com


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