Alison Holst
After spending the summer in Washington as a Hudson Institute Fellow, Alison Holst, a member of The City College of New York’s Class of 2026, will move 5,000 miles east at the end of August to start her 11-month Fulbright Scholarship.
The latest CCNY student to earn this coveted scholarship, Holst will serve as an English teaching assistant at Geo Milev English Language School in Ruse, a northeastern Bulgarian city of 121,000 people across the Danube River from Giurgiu, Romania.
“I’ve never been to eastern Europe,” she said. “I think it will be a growth experience.”
A 2026 Moynihan Public Service Fellow and Honors Legal Studies Fellow in the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership, Holst is graduating with a 3.99 GPA.
“I’m really excited to work with young people,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to be a teacher.”
A political theory student whose senior thesis focused on the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Holst looks forward to developing her students’ civic engagement skills by coaching the school’s team in the BEST Foundation’s Bulgarian speech and debate tournaments.
Holst also aims to do more than just teach basic English grammar to her Bulgarian students; she plans to introduce them to English literature, as well.
“Alison is among the finest students I have taught at CCNY, and she ranks in the very top percentile of the hundreds of students I have taught across three continents,” said Professor and Chair of Political Science Carlo Invernizzi Accetti. “She represents the very best of what City College can offer—and what it can aspire to cultivate in its students.”
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Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided a high-quality and affordable education to generations of New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. CCNY embraces its position at the forefront of social change. It is ranked #1 by the Harvard-based Opportunity Insights out of 369 selective public colleges in the United States on the overall mobility index. This measure reflects both access and outcomes, representing the likelihood that a student at CCNY can move up two or more income quintiles. Education research organization Degree Choices ranks CCNY #1 nationally among universities for economic return on investment. In addition, the Center for World University Rankings places CCNY in the top 1.8% of universities worldwide in terms of academic excellence. Labor analytics firm Lightcast puts at $3.2 billion CCNY’s annual economic impact on the regional economy (5 boroughs and 5 adjacent counties) and quantifies the “for dollar” return on investment to students, taxpayers, and society. At City College, more than 16,500 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in eight schools and divisions, driven by significant funded research, creativity, and scholarship. In 2023, CCNY launched its most expansive fundraising campaign ever. The campaign, titled “Doing Remarkable Things Together,” seeks to bring the College’s Foundation to more than $1 billion in total assets in support of the College's mission. CCNY is as diverse, dynamic, and visionary as New York City itself. View CCNY Media Kit.
Syd Steinhardt
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