Isaac Salazar nonetheless remembers the staffers on the community-based clinic that helped him navigate New York Metropolis’s complexities when he got here from Mexico 10 years in the past.
It’s what impressed him to return to high school and pursue social work, formally graduating in August from Hunter Faculty.
Final yr, he acquired one other lifeline: he was awarded a scholarship often known as the CUNY Social Work Fellows, a Metropolis Council program that covers tuition and different charges for college kids pursuing masters of social work levels for a lot of much-needed jobs in behavioral well being at metropolis companies and nonprofits contracted by means of the town.
“I was so relieved mainly because, at the time, I was working outside of school, outside of the internship, because I had to pay for my tuition,” Salazar, now 29, informed THE CITY. He labored as a care coordinator at Borough of Manhattan Neighborhood Faculty whereas getting his masters, along with an internship at Mt. Sinai.
“So just knowing the financial aspect — a huge percentage of it — would be covered made me so relieved because it helped me to focus more on my studies.”
Salazar is one among greater than 100 college students to this point in its first yr throughout 4 Metropolis College of New York faculties — Hunter, Lehman, the Faculty of Staten Island and York — to profit from the social work scholarship program because it launched final yr, which is funded with $2 million in the newest finances.
The pilot program was designed to fulfill an important want, as demand for behavioral well being staff within the metropolis is predicted to develop by “more than 25%” over the subsequent 5 years, in keeping with the Mayor’s Workplace of Neighborhood Psychological Well being.
And it comes as many human companies nonprofits have vacant positions and excessive turnover, in keeping with the Heart for an City Future. Even the town’s Well being Division has had staffing challenges.
Salazar started work final month as a employees care coordinator at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Harlem, working with Spanish-speakers just like the form of assist he acquired when he first arrived within the states.
His scholarship — which is restricted to CUNY college students working inside a metropolis company or at a nonprofit group contracted by the town — inspired him much more to do the work he likes to do.
“It just made me feel seen and represented in such a complex system,” he mentioned.
Speaker Adrienne Adams, who has launched different scholarship packages to assist Metropolis College college students, like CUNY Reconnect, mentioned her hope is this system continues to develop.
“I just always believe that CUNY has been so underutilized by the city, undervalued by the city, when we have the pipeline to do so much more than we’ve previously done,” she informed THE CITY in an interview.
“What better place to look than our CUNY schools that have our experts right there at the ready to do this work.”
Robyn Brown-Manning, the senior affiliate dean of college and educational affairs and a doctoral lecturer at Hunter Faculty, mentioned her college students’ experiences are vastly totally different to these and her classmates when she attended the college within the Nineteen Seventies.
Tuition was free by means of 1976, when Brown-Manning acquired her masters. Now, it’s upwards of $7,000 for in-state college students per yr — and double that for out-of-state residents. Many college students right this moment additionally work full time whereas attending college and doing required internships.
“They have a lot of compassion and energy and commitment to the work, but there are real financial factors,” she mentioned of her college students.
Kendra Hardy, who has labored in social work for almost 20 years, was reluctant to pursue a masters diploma primarily due to the monetary burden, she mentioned.
Throughout the pandemic, one other city-funded program supplied to pay half of her tuition, and he or she enrolled at York Faculty in Jamaica. The Council’s program paid for her most up-to-date semester, in addition to the charges to take obligatory exams.
Kendra Hardy at York Faculty in Queens, Aug. 26 2025. Credit score: Alex Krales/THE CITY
“The possibilities are literally endless in terms of the types of areas you can work with,” Hardy, 46, informed THE CITY. For the final 15 years she’s labored at a nonprofit offering obligatory case administration for senior residents to obtain meals at house, and he or she not too long ago acquired a promotion at work following commencement.
“You can work with any population and almost any agency you can think of — they’re always looking for social workers,” she mentioned.
Nisali Silva, 26, took night courses on the Faculty of Staten Island after her 9-to-5 working at a nonprofit that gives workforce coaching and different companies to younger folks. She additionally interned as an operator on the nationwide mental-health 988 hotline.
When she discovered she was awarded the scholarship, “it was really a big lift off of my shoulders, paying for grad school out of pocket.”
“It was a release for me that all the work and effort… it felt worth it to me to be able to get something as huge as that,” she mentioned.
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