Dr. Stephanie Akunvabey’s mission as a lifelong educator is to “create springboards that catapult marginalized groups into places of sustained socioeconomic wellness and upward mobility.”
This personal mission is one she has adopted to guide her work as director of academic affairs at Brooklyn-based Kingsborough Community College.
In her role, Akunvabey serves as Kingsborough’s Core Team Leader for Achieving the Dream and she centers equity in much of the work and programming the institution does to support students.
“Student success is a given. Equity has not been,” Akunvabey says. “Nobody comes to college to fail. However, we have to consider who the higher education system at large was designed to serve – who was it designed to benefit, who was originally intended to be excluded from these spaces?”
“And so equity has to be explicit, whereas student success has always been explicit,” she says.
Under the City University of New York System, Kingsborough students benefit from the Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP), and Kingsborough complements that with its Learning Community programs, intrusive academic advising and other supports.
This year, the Aspen Institute recognized Kingsborough as a top ten finalist for the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence out of a pool of 1,000 community colleges. The institution is also an Achieving the Dream Leader College of Distinction for its programs and wraparound student supports.
