I’m elated to share that we continue to welcome increasingly diverse cohorts of students
across the campus in each of our academic units. Today, I’d like to highlight one
of those students—Valerie Valerie, one of our newly admitted students in the College of Nursing.
Ms. Valerie moved to the United States from the Dominican Republic when she was 19
years old, and a few short months later enlisted in the United States Army in search
of greater opportunities. She served for six years as an active duty enlisted Soldier,
conducting electronic communication equipment repair for helicopters. It was during
her active duty that she began taking college classes in pursuit of her nursing degree.
At the end of her active-duty enlistment, she joined the New York Army National Guard.
During her time in the National Guard, she completed her Bachelor of Science in Nursing
at Long Island University—graduating Magna Cum Laude in 2009, and later being commissioned
as an Army Nurse in 2015.
An Iraq War Veteran, Ms. Valerie has served in uniform for 21 years and has been deployed
to the Middle East three times in service of this country. She has also been a nurse
for more than a decade, and currently works as a fulltime staff nurse at NYPH Alexander
Cohen Hospital for Women and Newborns, as well as a Commissioned Officer Army Nurse
Captain in the New York National Guard.
Ms. Valerie is now currently pursuing her MS-Family Nurse Practitioner degree here
at Downstate, and has ambitions of pursuing her Doctor of Nursing Practice degree
thereafter to, “become the best provider that I can be. I believe in always giving the best part of
myself to everything that I do, that I may never feel that I didn't do all that I
can.”
I’d like to extend a warm Downstate welcome to Ms. Valerie Valerie. Thank you for
choosing to pursue your education at Downstate, thank you for your commitment to your
profession, and thank you for the sacrifices you’ve made to serve and protect this
country.
CONGRATULATIONS to our incredible honor society scholars and THANK YOU to Lori Escallier, Ph.D., RN, CPNP-PC, FAAN, Dean of the College of Nursing, for her leadership, as well as Kathleen Bratby, Ed.D., RN, Clinical Associate Professor and Director of the Advanced Level MS in Nursing Track
and Faculty Advisor for Downstate’s Sigma Theta Tau chapter, for working to guide
the curiosity, work, and ambitions of our honor society scholars in ways that continue
to elevate the standards of excellence in nursing, both here at Downstate and beyond.
Aliye Mosaad, MPH, DrPH Epidemiology student, was a significant contributor to the development of the
United Nations’ 
Ayanna Besson, MPH, DrPH Epidemiology student, also contributed significantly to the day appearing as
a guest speaker in the second segment of the webinar. She developed and presented,
"Nutrition Education, Health, and Inequalities in Access to Nutritious Food." In her presentation, Ms. Besson spoke to SPH's evaluation of the 
