CUNY Chancellor Matos Rodríguez Celebrates Latest Cohort of Student Researchers Supported by CUNY’s Trailblazing SEEK Program

The Country's First State-Funded Student Opportunity Program, SEEK Has Expanded Into Research Support at Six CUNY Colleges

CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez attended a symposium Monday to meet undergraduate students from six CUNY colleges who were presenting research projects in social sciences, humanities and STEM. The two-year research initiative for high-performing studentsis part of the Percy Ellis Sutton Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge (SEEK) program, a state-funded student support initiative that dates to 1965 and benefits from the support of the New York State Legislature, championed by Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins.

One of SEEK's newest initiatives, called the Innovative Career Opportunity and Research Program, or ICORP, brings research experience and graduate school preparation to up to 150 undergraduate SEEK scholars across multiple CUNY senior colleges. It began in February 2023 at Brooklyn College, Hunter College, John Jay College, Medgar Evers College and York College and this spring expanded to begin recruiting students from Lehman College.

"I am so proud of how SEEK, an iconic support program for students facing academic and financial challenges, continues to serve its participants by adapting to the times," said CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez."Today its students are doing high-level research and making plans to attend graduate school - the program fully embodies CUNY's historic mission in action, and proves that someone's past does not necessarily determine their future. I'm grateful to Gov. Hochul and the state legislature for their continued support of this transformational program."

Students begin the research program during their junior year and focus on completing a research project on a humanities, social science or STEM topic of their choosing. During their senior year, students who are interested in attending graduate school receive personalized, one-on-one help from research assistants and faculty advisors during the application process. The graduate school acceptance rate for students in the program is 90%.

"I've certainly reaped the benefits from ICORP, which gave me the tools and the skills to even consider grad school as a possibility, and I want to tell other students who are considering ICORP, 'give yourself the best shot at your future,' " said Alex Segundo, Hunter '24,who was part of the program's inaugural cohort and will attend graduate school at New York University in the fall.

Crystal Adote, John Jay '24,is another member of the inaugural cohort and will attend graduate school at Brooklyn College in the fall. "I am so grateful for the extra support team I had through ICORP, and when I received my grad school acceptances, I was so excited to let them know that their help and support got me to where I was," she said.

A Pioneering Program

SEEK is one of the country's most successful programs of its kind: Over the last five decades, it has helped hundreds of thousands of CUNY students whose income falls below the federal poverty level and who would have not qualified academically for admission to attend the college of their choice.

In 1965, at a time when Black and Hispanic students represented less than five percent enrollment in the CUNY system, City College started a pilot program and admitted 113 minority students who, based on their academic records, would have not otherwise qualified for admission. They also gave them a variety of resources, such as individualized courses taught by specially trained teachers, to help them succeed.

One year later, a coalition of activists and politicians successfully pushed to turn the pilot into law as the first state-funded opportunity program, which they named Project SEEK, for "Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge." Advocates included New York State Assembly Member Percy Sutton and 1972 presidential candidate and Brooklyn College alumna Shirley Chisholm, who later became the first Black woman elected to Congress.

SEEK has served an average of 9,000 CUNY students annually since it began, and today provides a comprehensive mix of resources that include academic support, financial assistance, counseling and advising, and career guidance. Since 1990, more than 50,000 associate and bachelor's degrees have been earned by SEEK students. College Discovery, a similar program for community college students, began in 1964 and is funded by New York City. SEEK students have a six-year graduation rate that is five percent higher than their peers from similar backgrounds.

Hundreds of SEEK students have graduated magna and summa cum laude and many have won prestigious accolades such as Fulbright Awards, the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, the NYU MacCracken Fellowship and the Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Graduate Fellowship. SEEK alumni include retired New York Supreme Court Justice Lottie Wilkins; the late Oscar Hijuelos, who was the first Latino to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction; and Elias Alcantara, who served under President Obama as senior associate director of intergovernmental affairs.

Studies affirm the programs' success in closing both income and academic gaps. In a widely reported study at Stanford University, researchers found that students who were enrolled in SEEK during the early 2000s earned on average $4,000 more annually than non-SEEK students from wealthier backgrounds. They also earned roughly the same as those who began college with stronger academic records and came from similar economic circumstances.

The City University of New Yorkis the nation's largest urban public university, a transformative engine of social mobility that is a critical component of the lifeblood of New York City. Founded in 1847 as the nation's first free public institution of higher education, CUNY today has seven community colleges, 11 senior colleges and seven graduate or professional institutions spread across New York City's five boroughs, serving more than 233,000 undergraduate and graduate students and awarding 50,000 degrees each year. CUNY's mix of quality and affordability propels almost six times as many low-income students into the middle class and beyond as all the Ivy League colleges combined. More than 80 percent of the University's graduates stay in New York, contributing to all aspects of the city's economic, civic and cultural life and diversifying the city's workforce in every sector. CUNY's graduates and faculty have received many prestigious honors, including 13 Nobel Prizes and 26 MacArthur "genius grants." The University's historic mission continues to this day: provide a first-rate public education to all students, regardless of means or background. To learn more about CUNY, visit https://www.cuny.edu.

###

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.