Sandra Serrano, from CCNY's Center for Worker Education, is the winner of a $10,000 Women’s Forum Education Fund fellowship.
Sandra Serrano is the latest undergraduate from The City College of New York’s Division of Interdisciplinary Studies at the Center for Worker Education (CWE) awarded a $10,000 Women’s Forum Education Fund fellowship. The awards are given to high-potential women, age 35 and over, whose education and lives have been disrupted by extreme adversity. They recognize extraordinary and often heroic efforts in overcoming adversity in restructuring lives for success.
A senior pursuing a BA degree with a concentration in urban studies and public administration, Serrano is the third CWE student in a row named a Women’s Forum Fellow.
“I was born into misfortune, the daughter of heroin addicts,” Serrano described her difficult upbringing in the South Bronx. She was legally declared an orphan at age 13 and put out by her grandmother at 16.
Still, Serrano persevered. She earned a high school diploma at 18, and after bearing a son at 21, and spending time in a homeless shelter, enrolled in BMCC. Her educational odyssey was buoyed by her son’s grandmother, Janet, who took her in and provided childcare.
Serrano graduated from BMCC and continued her studies at CWE. A program coordinator for the Cancer Research Department at Mount Sinai Hospital’s Icahn School of Medicine, she will dedicate her CWE degree to Janet, who died of cancer in 2018.
Serrano’s short-term goal is to run a half marathon. Her long-term goal is to obtain a master's degree in public administration.
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