3 minute read
The Chair and The Dean
Dear Colin Powell School Community,
This past May, we celebrated the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership at The City College of New York. A decade ago, we combined a small but fast growing campus-wide center focused on student leadership development and community engagement with our creative and vibrant division of social sciences. The new school was conceived as a central hub on CCNY’s campus to train and lift students to become leaders across sectors and in service to society. Our success would help to shift power and transform society — lofty ambitions, for sure, but beautifully aligned with the vision that has animated CCNY, the nation’s first “free academy”, for almost two centuries.
We made student success our highest priority. A decade into our work, there are signs that it’s all working. Today, the Colin Powell School is the largest student division of City College, having achieved record breaking enrollments semesterafter-semester. Our students reflect the remarkable diversity of New York City, and they are determined to make a difference for themselves, their families, and their communities. We have assembled a worldclass faculty, whose research tackles important societal problems and whose teaching positions our graduates for careers and active citizenship. We have developed an extraordinary professional staff, whose advice and mentorship ensure that our students have every tool and resource necessary to succeed. And the fulfillment of the vision set out for our school a decade ago is reflected in the growing accomplishments of our graduates — now almost 10,000 of them — who are making a difference in every sector of society.
In this very special anniversary edition of our annual report, we reflect on the past decade. We share profiles of some of our first graduates. We share reflections from some of our faculty and staff leaders, people who have been part of the Colin Powell School since its inception, including our founding Dean — and CCNY’s current President — Vince Boudreau. And as we always do in this report, we will share many of the highlights of the past year, including faculty, staff, student, and alumni accomplishments; new programs; and events.
Our mission comes directly from General Colin L. Powell, a 1958 graduate of CCNY who until his death in 2021 was the chairman of the Colin Powell School’s Board of Visitors and involved day-to-day in the school’s strategic direction and service to students. We miss him. As we celebrate a decade of accomplishment, we believe he would be proud of the difference we are making in the lives of our students and in the progress of the school that he loved very so.
Thank you for being a part of the Colin Powell School community. We could not succeed in our work without all of you. We hope you enjoy this look back, and we look forward to working together to make the next decade even better than our first one.
Best Wishes,
