NEW YORK, May 27, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The 2014 Commencement Valedictorian for Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York (BMCC/CUNY) will be Business Administration major Cindy Salazar.
She will join 3,200 other graduates on Friday, May 30 in The Theater at Madison Square Garden, 33 rd Street at 7 th Avenue in Manhattan. Doors will open at
9:30 a.m. for graduates, and
10:00 a.m. for guests.
Cindy Salazar, whose father and mother emigrated to the U.S. from Mexico and the Dominican Republic, respectively, grew up in East Elmhurst, Queens. Her sister Aimie—they are the first in their family to earn college degrees—graduated from CUNY's Macaulay Honors College last year and is now interning for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
At BMCC, Cindy Salazar has been a Peer Achievement Leader and a volunteer in the "Each One Reach One" program. She participated in the Goldman Sachs Leadership Program, the Leaders in Investment Banking workshop, the Basics of Financial Literacy workshop at the Macaulay Honors College, and the Citigroup/BMCC internship program.
Off campus, she has been a Board of Elections poll worker, and a volunteer in the Jackson Heights Rehabilitation Center.
At an early age, Salazar began accompanying her father, who was a sales rep for a fashion design company, on customer rounds. Since then, he has built his own business and she has contributed design ideas and helped grow the business. "It's become something I am passionate about," she says. After graduating from BMCC with a degree in Business Administration, she will pursue a bachelor's degree in Fashion Merchandising Management at FIT and eventually hopes to earn an MBA in finance.
Joining Valedictorian Cindy Salazar on the commencement stage will be BMCC Special Honoree and recipient of the Presidential Award, NYS Assembly Member and Chair of the NYS Assembly Higher Education Committee, Deborah J. Glick.
Now serving her 11th term in the State Assembly of New York, Deborah Glick has focused on civil rights, reproductive freedom, health care, lesbian and gay rights, the environment, housing, higher education, social justice, and funding for the arts.
The BMCC 2014 graduating class is significant in that many of them began at the college in Fall 2012, just as Fiterman Hall—a campus building destroyed on 9/11 and eventually rebuilt—opened its doors..
"Fiterman Hall stands as a testament to the belief the graduates of BMCC are worthy of the best education possible—from the quality of the curricula, to the excellence of the faculty, to the integrity of the buildings themselves," says BMCC President Antonio Pérez.
Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) is part of the City University of New York (CUNY) and enrolls over 25,000 degree-seeking and 11,000 Continuing Education students a year, awarding Associate Degrees in 33 fields.
http://www.bmcc.cuny.edu
A photo accompanying this release is available at:
http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=25586
Barry Rosen 212-346-8501
