Felix Malamud is a graduating senior in the Macaulay Honors program at Baruch, majoring in Finance with minors in Business Law and Interdisciplinary New York City Studies. Throughout his four years at Baruch and Macaulay, he was involved in several leadership roles across various organizations around campus and for the student community. He has worked as an Honors Program Ambassador, sharing his experiences with prospective students and families, and helping make the overall Baruch and Macaulay Honors experience more welcoming. Felix also served as a cohort member and Teaching Assistant for Baruch’s Financial Leadership Program, a highly specialized leadership and development program for Baruch students pursuing careers in the financial services industry. Additionally, he served as the Sports Editor of The Ticker, Baruch’s student-run weekly newspaper publication. Felix previously interned in various financial services firms, including an internship abroad. In August, he will be joining Scotiabank as a first-year analyst in the Global Capital Markets Rotational Analyst Program.
Caitlin Balagula is a Psychology major as well as a Political Science, English, and Film minor at Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College. Soon after graduation, she will serve as a Congressional Intern for the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C.
Midway through college, Caitlin learned that she is most passionate about cultivating healthy, just, sustainable, and humane food and agriculture policy. She began her journey in the field as a Policy Fellow for Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams. She then moved on to be a Policy Fellow for Slow Food USA. Most recently, she was a Legislative Intern for New York State Senator Alessandra Biaggi. Prior to her policy journey, she spent nearly two years at Talkspace, a mental telehealth company. She also served as a Student Researcher at New York University Rusk Rehabilitation’s Motor Recovery Research Lab and at Weill Cornell Medicine’s Program for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Studies.
PRESTIGIOUS TOP RANKING AWARDED TO MACAULAY HONORS COLLEGE Macaulay Honors scored a perfect 5.0 rating from Public University Honors for the fifth consecutive year, earning the college top ranking as one of nation’s seven best honors colleges. “The first thing we have to say about CUNY Macaulay Honors College is that we love the idea of a citywide university system that has the vision and persistence to support honors education across eight diverse campuses that, all told, have more than 115,000 undergraduate students. The second thing: Somehow, in these hard times, the MHC manages to offer students a superior honors education.”
BRIDGE SCHOLARS TRANSFER PROGRAM EXPANDS
Funded by a $200K grant from GS Humane Corp, Macaulay recruited a second cohort of Bridge Scholars in partnership with the College of Staten Island. This pilot initiative identifies high-achieving community college students and provides them with a pathway to honors education. As one clear sign of the program’s success, three Bridge Scholars fromthe first cohortgraduated more than a semester early, earning their bachelors degrees from Macaulay at Lehman College.
JUSTICE & EQUITY NETWORK ESTABLISHED
In partnership with the honors college at Arizona State University, Macaulay launched the Justice and Equity Honors Network, a certificate program that will engage honors students from both universities in an interdisciplinary exploration of issues related to justice and equity. To earn the certificate, students must complete at least 6 credits of coursework, participate in a weekly online synthesis session with their counterparts from ASU, and present their work at a culminating conference over the summer.
NEW PUBLIC EVENT SERIES LAUNCHED
The challenges of the pandemic inspired Macaulay to launch two new series of public events that would engage the broader Macaulay Honors community and showcase the talents & accomplishments of our students and alumni. @Macaulay Authors highlights writers from the Macaulay community (alumni, faculty, parents, students, staff). Inside Look @Macaulay gives viewers a chance to experience an upper level seminar, meet star faculty, and see the impressive work of our honors scholars.
$350K RAISED FOR STUDENT LAPTOPS
COVID not only forced changes in how we provide instruction to our students, it also required innovation in how we fund the honors enhancements that are core to the Macaulay experience. Faced with significant reductions in our tax levy funding, Macaulay launched a fundraising campaign to purchase laptops for all incoming students. Kicked off with a $100K challenge match from Foundation Chair Tony Meyer, the campaign has raised nearly $350K from over 300 donors, many of them first-time supporters.
RECORD-BREAKING APPLICATIONS FOR CLASS OF 2025
Online innovations drove Macaulay’s recruitment efforts to achieve a record-breaking 15% increase in applications. We quickly pivoted to expand our digital marketing efforts and create Open Houses delivered via Zoom that attracted more prospective students, from a greater range of high schools, and answered more of their questions than ever before. By the December 8th deadline, we received over 7,300 applications for just 520 available first-year seats. Our applicants came from over 900 high schools, with 30% of the students identifying as Black and/or Latinx.
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AWARD-WINNING STUDENTS
Macaulay Honors students continue to win an impressive number of scholarships and awards including Fulbrights, Jonas E. Salk Scholars, Jeanette K. Watson Fellows, Boren Fellows, and Salutatorians.
BARATUNDE THURSTON TO ADDRESS CLASS OF 2021
Acclaimed activist-writer Baratunde Thurston will deliver the Commencement addressto the graduating Class of 2021 on June 3rd. Thurston’s podcast series We’re Having A Moment was critically reviewed as “the most important podcasts of 2020” by CNET. Often humorous but always sharply insightful, his observations on race, civics, and society will provide Macaulay’s newest graduates with a timely reflection on the challenges and opportunities that await them.
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Miriam Fried is an Anthropology major, and has minors in Art History and Business & Liberal Arts Honors. During her junior and senior years, Miriam served as president of the QC Anthro Society, the only anthropology club at Queens College. In recognition of her academic and leadership achievements, she has received prestigious awards from the QC Anthropology Department, including the Most Promising Student Award, and the Service Award. She is also a recipient of the Brownstein/McDermott Scholarship in the Humanities, and the Raymond Taylor QC Scholars Endowment Fund.
To complement her coursework, Miriam has amassed valuable experience outside the classroom. In Summer 2018, she joined an archaeological excavation at the site of Khirbet el-Rai in Israel. In Summer 2019, she interned in the North American Archaeology Lab at the American Museum of Natural History. Coronavirus-permitting, she will rejoin the lab in Summer 2020. Miriam is excited to begin her doctoral studies in Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center; she was accepted for Fall 2020 with a Graduate Center Fellowship.
Ashley Lum is a History major and Anthropology minor. Currently, she works as a curatorial and education intern at the Lehman College Art Gallery where she started in the Fall of 2018. She was the co-president of Macaulay Art Tank, a student arts initiative that showcases student creativity every spring at the Macaulay building. In 2019-2020, she served as the senior Lehman representative on the Scholars Council and a member of the Student Life Committee. She is also a recipient of the Benjamin A. Gilman scholarship and Meyers Scholarship which funded her summer study abroad program in Greece.
During her undergraduate career, she was inducted into Phi Alpha Theta (2018) and Phi Beta Kappa (2019), academic honors societies for history and the liberal arts & sciences respectively. She will be attending the CUNY Graduate Center as a student of the History Ph.D. program with a five-year tuition fellowship and a first-year stipend from the History Department in the Fall of 2020.
Katherine Dorovitsine is a graduating senior in the Macaulay program at Baruch, studying Finance with minors in International Business and New York City Studies. She was a member of the Macaulay Business Club for nearly 3 years, and later collaborated with a few friends to start the Macaulay Innovation Club, which aimed to give students with an interest in entrepreneurship, an environment in which they could brainstorm with likeminded individuals. At Baruch, she has worked as an Honors Program Ambassador, where she served as a resource to prospective students and families looking to familiarize themselves with Baruch and the honors program. She also worked as a first-year seminar peer mentor for a group of Macaulay students. In the past two summers, Katherine had the opportunity to intern at Goldman Sachs where she collaborated with the firm and Macaulay to conduct an interview of a Macaulay/Baruch alumna, which was later published on the Macaulay Honors College website. In August, she will be joining Goldman Sachs as a first-year analyst within Prime Brokerage.
Jessica Jiang is a Business Administration and Communications double major with minors in Business Law, and Television and Radio, and a concentration in Marketing. During her time as an undergraduate, she participated in The Lorraine Laighold Summer Leadership Academy in 2018. She became Director of Marketing for Macaulay Service Initiative early 2018 maintaining their Instagram and Facebook pages.
She landed a winter internship with Citi Ventures in January 2018, through Break Through Tech New York. In Fall 2019, she interned at NBCUniversal as their Market Research Intern, learning Nielsen applications and more about the entertainment industry. She is a finalist for the International Radio & Television Society Foundation (IRTS) Summer Fellowship. Upon graduation, she hopes to continue paving her way through the entertainment industry and obtain a Masters of Science in Business Analytics.
Natalia Sandor is a Business Management major with a minor in English Writing. Currently, she is the owner of Sand Bars Handcrafted, an ice cream sandwich company she founded in 2017. She also was the founder and president of the Sustainable Student Organization and sat on CSI’s Sustainability Committee. In 2018, she was selected to go on the Macaulay Service Trip to Puerto Rico to help with post Hurricane Maria recovery.
As a student, Natalia held internships at: Omnibuild Construction doing risk management, Warby Parker running a technical team, The Department of Economic Development working on a project team and at The Office for the Associate Vice Chancellor at CUNY running social media for the Women in Technology initiative (WiTNY). She also participated in the WiTNY summer guild at Microsoft and was a dedicated member and captain of the women’s soccer team at CSI. More recently, she participated in RLab at ShoP Architects where she built out an augmented reality application. After graduation, Natalia plans to run her business while working on a second start up.
