When Katherine Delgado claimed her diploma in 2010, the last thing on her mind was returning to The New School. Like many graduates, her thoughts instead raced to her future plans. Delgado was rushing to figure out whether she would stay or leave New York City and how to navigate the next chapter of her life with a mountain of student debt.
“The more I thought about what I wanted to do, nothing I wanted to do would pay me any money and I couldn’t have the luxury of having a job that didn’t pay me any money,” Delgado said.
Delgado now works as the joint academic coordinator of Lang and the NSSR. It was through her past experience with on-campus jobs as a student that she found the employment opportunity at The New School.
Delgado primarily stayed due to convenience but explained that after some time she felt more invested in the familiar place, concluding that a job at the New School would be better for her than a corporate job at another large institution.
Other alumni who return to work at The New School, like Delgado, realize the need for a stable source of income to remain in New York City and express similar initial motivations for convenience followed by a deeper involvement into the school community.
Stephanie Leone is the social media community manager in the Marketing & Communications department at The New School. Like Delgado, Leone explained the benefits to deciding to stay and manage the social media feeds of the university versus pursuing a career in her field of study.
“I knew that, while I wanted to work in literature and publishing, I would make jack shit money-wise so I was aware this would probably be a decent living,” Leone said.
Leone graduated in 2015 with a BA in Literature from Lang and a BFA in Communication Design from Parsons. She was hired in July 2015, almost immediately after she graduated.
Although the convenience of a job after graduation may entice alumni to stay, New School alumni turned employees eventually began to see their employment as an opportunity to enrich and improve the spaces they once walked as students and to change things for the better from their own former experiences.
During her time as a student, Leone felt an “ugly pervasive narrative” of competition and dissent between the colleges. She disagreed, being a vocal advocate for the university and the 2015 student commencement speaker.
“I really got in people’s faces about it. Like I would be in a Lang class and a Lang student would say something snide about Parsons and I would be like, ‘Wrong! That’s not true.’ and also, ‘Watch it. I’m a Parsons student,’” Leone said.
Since starting her position, Leone has made ending this narrative her goal as the social media community manager.
“I saw a need for someone to stop that narrative because the whole ‘lack of community’ thing is such bullshit to me,” Leone said.
Adrian Smith is another former student who always felt a lack in terms of animation at Parsons. Despite being an Illustration major, Smith would go lengths to take several unrelated art technology courses, which he believed would compensate and help him as an aspiring animator. By his time to graduate in 2013, he successfully produced two animated films.
In the fall of 2014, Smith was offered a position by a former faculty advisor to teach animation at Parsons, and he set out to develop his ideal course as if he was a Parsons student again.
“I designed the animation class to be a compact sized version of everything I would have thought essential for being an animator when I was a student at Parsons,” Smith said, who later returned to teach animation for two more semesters.
“I got this random email from Reading NYC and it just clicked for me. I need to make a class about Sekou and make this unfinished conversation that I wanted to have with [him] be the basis for this class,” Lewis said.
As he is not teaching this semester, Smith currently works as the design director at AOL.
Brian Lewis graduated in 2008 with a dual concentration in Literature and Education from Lang.
He currently works as the Senior Teacher and Manager of Education at Exalt, an organization which works to educate and inspire incarcerated youth.
When Lewis received an email regarding an alumni-taught freshman seminar program called Reading NYC, he decided to propose a course about one of his close mentors at Lang, Sekou Sundiata, who was considered one of the fathers of the spoken-word movement.
Sundiata passed away on July 18, 2007, during which Lewis was away on a study abroad trip in Ghana. When he learned of Sundiata’s passing through a fellow classmate’s email, Lewis found himself at a loss for words. Lewis spent the remainder of his trip coming to terms with the news, eventually learning of the opportunity to teach at The New School.
“I got this random email from Reading NYC and it just clicked for me. I need to make a class about Sekou and make this unfinished conversation that I wanted to have with [him] be the basis for this class,” Lewis said.
After several semesters, Lewis is now an adjunct faculty who is currently teaching in the Higher Education Opportunity Program, which provides “academic and financial support to young people who might not meet all traditional college admissions criteria,” at The New School.
These job opportunities at the university appear to provide the alumni a mixture of relief and nostalgia as they remember the times in which they too walked the familiar halls and buildings as students.
Lewis used to freestyle rap and do spoken word with other Jazz students in a crowded dorm room at the 12th Street building when he was a Lang freshman.
When he passes by the campus, whether it be what once was the 12th Street dorms or even the Lang courtyard, Lewis remembers sitting in on freestyle sessions, getting kicked out by security, and organizing protests around campus. He smiled as he described the same places that his students now dwell.
Despite the changes that may have happened over the eight years since he graduated, these memories help Lewis to engage with his students and the school community of which he once was a part.
Delgado also remembers her first impression of the university in New York City. Sixteen-years-old and from the opposite side of the country, she experienced the terror of a crowded L train on her ride to Union Square with a friend who attended NYU.
“[My friend] went to go work at Bobst Library and left me at Washington Square Park. And I sat on the bench with a muffin that I had. I was so overwhelmed and so sad. Then, there was this squirrel that got way too close to me while I was trying to eat my muffin. I was just sobbing.”
Delgado eventually found her closest group of friends in a freshman seminar at Lang. Though now as the joint academic coordinator, it is difficult to find time to engage with the students at Lang like she used to.
Despite this, however, Delgado still feels a connection to the current student body and hopes, as an alum, to represent some portion of that in the meetings and university plans that she overhears in the administrative offices.
“It’s like I never left,” Delgado said. “I’m always thinking about students. If there is ever a project going on, if there is something I hear of, that sounds like we’re not considering students, I’m going to go and tell somebody about it.”
Photos: Julia Himmel
Seung Won is the Video Editor for the New School Free Press and currently a senior at Lang majoring in Journalism+Design and minoring in Visual Studies. Born and raised in North Jersey, Seung Won has embraced and mastered the commute into the city, seamlessly weaving through crowds and covering miles of distance without breaking a sweat. When not in transit, Seung Won likes playing music on his guitar, sipping through several cups of coffee, and chillin’ with his cat on the weekends.
