Vassar College has forged a partnership with Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health that will enable Vassar students to earn a master’s degree in public health a year after they graduate from Vassar.

During Vassar’s Fall Convocation ceremony, Lisa Collins, Professor of Art on the Sarah Gibson Blanding Chair and Professor of American and Africana Studies, gave the Convocation Address, and the Alumnae/i Association of Vassar College bestowed awards upon six distinguished alumnae/i.

Learning that setbacks are an integral part of research, about 60 Vassar students took part in projects this summer on the auspices of the Undergraduate Research Summer Institute (URSI) and Ford Scholars programs.

Vassar College has named Micah Kenfield, formerly Sustainability Programs Manager at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as its Director of Sustainability. Kenfield will start his new job July 22.

There are other challenges that are quite specific to Posse student-veterans. Registrar Colleen Mallet, who has taken on an entire array of extra tasks over the years to help the group, believes “Posse veterans are more accepted now on campus by the other students, who have become more sensitive.”

After graduating with Vassar’s class of 2017, Eduardo De La Torre returned home to Houston, where he is now founder of DVG Financial, a firm that provides low-cost loans and teaches financial literacy to discharged veterans, a group particularly vulnerable to predatory lenders during the often-protracted period when they are waiting for their Veterans Affairs benefits to begin.

Jeffrey Schneider, Associate Professor of German Studies, was so impressed by the student-veterans he had in his classes that he volunteered to be the faculty advisor to the Posse veterans of the class of 2022.

Six years in, the Vassar Veterans Posse program has had a profound impact on the lives of student-veterans—and on the College itself.