Andrew Smith came a long way to achieve success in the United States. Born in Siberia, he came to America when he was eight years old. He had been adopted from an orphanage. He graduated from Pelham Memorial High School, enlisted in the Air Force, and then started here at the college. He is the President of Alpha Beta Gamma, the college's business honors society, and represents the students on the college's Board of Trustees. Andrew hopes to transfer to a leading Business school - either Wharton, NYU’s Stern School of Business, or Cornell. He is pictured here at the college's Commencement ceremony during which he was honored for his 4.0 average.

Andrew Smith did not speak English when he came to this country from Eastern Europe. He learned the language, continued his studies, and went on to college. With support from the Westchester Community College faculty, he rose to the top of his ranks and delivered the valedictory address at commencement on May 17, 2007. The Business Administration student served as the student representative to the college's Board of Trustees and won a number of academic honors during his time at the college, including the curriculum award in his academic program. He's now deciding on which esteemed four-year institution to attend in the fall.

Actor/singer John Treacy Egan gave the keynote address at the May 2007 Honors Convocation. Speaking to dozens of students receiving awards for their academic work, the 1983 graduate inspired the crowd with stories of Broadway. Egan played Max Bialystock in The Producers and will have a featured role in Disney’s The Little Mermaid, which opens on Broadway in December, 2007.

Westchester Community College student Joshua Engelberg (South Nyack, NY) has been accepted into the prestigious Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). He is one of the college’s first Computer Science students to transfer to this esteemed four-year institution.

An exceptional student, Engelberg has a 4.0 grade point average and has impressed his Westchester Community College instructors. He also won the Computer Science Department’s curriculum award. Once he graduates later this month, he will join a number of other Computer Science students who have gone on to excellent four-year institutions. Two of his classmates are transferring to SUNY Binghamton (four were accepted last year), while other Computer Science students have recently gone on to SUNY Stonybrook (four students accepted last year), SUNY Albany, SUNY Buffalo, Rensselaer Polytechnic, Hunter College, CUNY, Brooklyn Polytechnic, Stevens Institute, New York Institute of Technology, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Georgia State University, SUNY Maritime, Western Connecticut State University, Embry-Riddle in Arizona, and University of Washington in Seattle.

In Westchester county, Computer Science students have transferred to such local institutions as Manhattan College, Iona College, and Pace University.

“We have a tremendous record of Computer Science students graduating and going on to four-year institutions,” says Westchester Community College Associate Professor and Curriculum Chair Elizabeth Branca. She attributes this to the strong connections between faculty members and students, and the Computer Science Department’s commitment to cutting edge technology.

Alexyia Smith of Mount Vernon was one of three members of the college's Mathematics Team to be recognized for their success in a national competition. The team was one of only three community college teams to be acknowledged at The Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications’ (COMAP) 23rd annual International Mathematical Contest in Math Modeling. The Westchester team’s entry ranking of “successful participant” was on a par with teams from Harvard, Princeton, Cal Tech, Columbia and Cornell. There were 949 teams which participated in the international competition, including many from the U.S. and China.

The three members, who worked with Assistant Professor Marvin Littman (Spring Valley), chose to solve a complex mathematical problem involving boarding and deboarding planes. Teams selecting this problem were also required to write a summary of their conclusions as if directed to an audience of airline executives, gate agents, and flight crews. Alexyia joined with Sohrab Saadat (Mount Kisco) and Brendan Kennedy (Mohegan Lake) in solving the problem.