Now at Columbia University Dominican reflects on success at Brooklyn College

Lisa Del Sol ’16 was accepted into a prestigious Ph.D. program at Columbia University thanks to the firm academic grounding she received at Brooklyn College. Photo credit: Brooklyn College
Lisa Del Sol ’16 was accepted into a prestigious Ph.D. program at Columbia University thanks to the firm academic grounding she received at Brooklyn College. Photo credit: Brooklyn College

The Honors Academy. Phi Beta Kappa. The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship. The CUNY Pipeline Program Fellowship. Columbia University-bound. Name an accolade and it is likely that Lisa Del Sol ’16 is a recipient of it.

The accomplished graduate reflected upon all she has achieved at Brooklyn College—achievements that she says were attained with the help of an invested campus community.

“Crucial to my success as a student at Brooklyn College are the faculty who mentored me along the way,” Del Sol said. “I constantly think about what my trajectory would have been had I not gotten into BC. There would have been so many missed opportunities.”

Del Sol—who was born on the Caribbean island of Dominica and came to the United States with her mother when she was seven—double majored in English and Caribbean studies and double minored in sociology and Africana studies.

“One of Lisa’s greatest strengths is her intellectual curiosity,” said Assistant Professor Prudence D. Cumberbatch, who is coordinator of the college’s Women’s and Gender Studies Program and teaches in the Department of Africana Studies. “She is able to make connections across disciplinary boundaries and to make ideas her own. I see great things in her future.”

Del Sol transferred to Brooklyn College from the New York City College of Technology, where she was initially majoring in computer science, after one of her professors noticed her aptitude in English and told her about the high quality of the English program at BC.

“She said, ‘You’re really doing well in English; you’re very focused.’ And truthfully, when I first enrolled in the class, I wasn’t very interested in literature,” Del Sol confided. “But then we read James Baldwin and that changed everything for me.”

When she enrolled in her first English class at Brooklyn College, a course in modernism taught by Associate Professor Jason Frydman, the subject matter was so esoteric that she found herself floundering. She thought that perhaps she had made an error in judgment and that English might not be her strong suit.

“But I didn’t give up,” she said. “And Professor Frydman took a real interest in his students and what we were doing. And it was the comments I got back on my first paper, a horrible paper, that helped me. I never had anyone tell me that I was a terrible writer before. But having him tell me in such a constructive way made me a better writer.”

Emboldened by her growth, Del Sol took full advantage of every opportunity that came her way. Through the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship—and under the mentorship of Associate Professor of English Rosamond S. King, who is also director of the fellowship—she studied abroad in Brazil and South Africa, where she examined race and culture. She became an intern for Professor Roni Natov in the English Majors’ Counseling Office, where she helped produce the college’s undergraduate literary magazine, managed and produced content for the department blog and social media, and helped other students navigate the major.

She participated in the Undergraduate Research and Mentoring Program, a pilot program which pairs transfer students with faculty and together they collaborate on research funded by the Mellon Foundation. Del Sol worked with Professor James Davis on a comparative literature project examining author Patrick Chamoiseau’s use of language. In June, she presented her research, titled “Cultural Silencing Reproductions and Repetition of Cultural Trauma in the Work of Patrick Chamoiseau,” at a Caribbean Studies Association conference in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. In December, she will participate in an American Studies Association panel on gentrification in Denver, Colorado.

Del Sol began attending Columbia University this fall, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in English and comparative literature. At Columbia, she also works as a research assistant for a faculty member in her area of study.

“I want to be an educator. I feel that it is the ultimate way to give back,” Del Sol said. “I want to be able to do for other students what Professor Cumberbatch, Professor Davis, Professor Frydman, Professor King, and Professor Natov have done for me. It’s all for nothing if you can’t help someone else. You have to pull other people up.”

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14 Comments

  1. Anom
    September 14, 2016

    Great, push on Lisa. I suggest you first go work in corporate or real world then go back to teach…

  2. zandoli
    September 14, 2016

    With the name written as Del Sol (translated to mean “of the sun”), I thought she was from the Dominican Republic. I did not even think to connect the words to form Delsol.

  3. dno sucks
    September 14, 2016

    Lisa Delsol Congratulation to you and much more success. Your dear father must be smiling away he was always so positive of his daughter.. God bless you.

  4. Vellie Nicholas
    September 14, 2016

    Way to go, girl! That’s a lot of inspiration for the youngsters coming up. Go ahead…make and break your own records!!

  5. September 14, 2016

    I love when our island children remain focus and achieve. Reach for higher always.

  6. Strange
    September 14, 2016

    DNO isn’t the name written as Delsol? Why are they saying Del Sol?

    • fun&frolic
      September 14, 2016

      @Island Native

      This news is extracted from an article written by Brooklyn College. The spelling has nothing to do with DNO. Please write to Brooklyn College to inquire about their perceived spelling deficiencies.

      And since you apparently can’t figure things out for yourself, I’ve taken the liberty to include the mailing/telephone/email info for the college. Unfortunately, I will not write to them for you. You need to do some things for yourself. You know what they say about the brain — use it or lose it!

      Brooklyn College
      2900 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11210
      Tel: 718.951.5000
      http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/web/news/bcnews/bcnews_160913.php#sthash.tfHngfeA.dpuf

  7. Ecko
    September 14, 2016

    Congrats Lisa I am so proud of you . my Sister Rita congrats to you too

  8. Delvin Castro
    September 14, 2016

    Dominicans is loaded with honors and degrees but it has no effect on Dominica development.

    • Pedri King
      September 15, 2016

      My sister, Thelma,, got a masters from Oxford, came back to Dominica and no-one would give her a job. No one at all, especially in the government.

      Do you know what her degree thesis was entitled? It was ‘the prevention of fraud by governments of the Caribbean states and their allies’.

      Now

  9. oh Yes
    September 14, 2016

    Wow!

  10. September 14, 2016

    Why be so negative

  11. September 14, 2016

    Go girl go as high as the sky. The opportunity is there for you.

  12. Mama Zalousi
    September 14, 2016

    Wey, wey! The girl will come back to her island, get a job as a teacher and teach us how to speak English? That would be nice :)

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