Kristin Cangemi '09

Kristin Cangemi ’09 is exactly the kind of student who finds success at University College—smart, experienced, and determined. Thirteen years after graduating from Valley Stream High School and pursuing a career in the financial industry, Ms. Cangemi earned her bachelor’s degree in literature from University College and is working on her master’s in secondary education at Adelphi’s Ruth S. Ammon School of Education.

After high school, Ms. Cangemi entered Wagner College as a theatre major. “The school had high expectations, higher than I had for myself…and I don’t think I was ready to compete,” she says.

Deciding to withdraw from college, Ms. Cangemi got a job on Wall Street as a sales assistant at Lehman Brothers. “It ended up being something that I loved…I got sucked into the financial world,” she says. In April 2002, she decided to leave the company, preferring to live and work on Long Island. For the next five years, she worked as a sales assistant at Great Eastern Securities, a smaller brokerage firm. Since 2007, she has worked at Rossetti & Associates, Woodbury, New York.

Ms. Cangemi found out about University College and decided to go back to school largely because of the influence of her good friend Kristen Puccio, who was getting her master’s degree in ESL and was also working in Adelphi’s Office of University Admissions. “Teaching was something that was always in the back of my head… but I was scared because I thought I was going to have to start over. When I spoke to a representative from University College, they said the timeline to graduation was two years and it was—I was able to get transfer credits and life experience credits too,” says Ms. Cangemi.

Scheduling was a big part of Ms. Cangemi’s success at University College. She was able to earn her degree, taking two or three classes a semester plus summer classes, and continue working full time. “They don’t set up their classes until 6:45 p.m. and it makes it possible to go home to eat. You don’t have to rush.”

Ms. Cangemi still keeps in touch with her professors from University College, stating “It was the professors that kept me going. There was never a time that I needed something that they wouldn’t offer me. You never went into something blind. I can’t say enough about them. They were unbelievable.”