Dear Commons Community,

The Daily News has an article  about one of Lehman College’s graduates, Leah Fredman, 29, who like so many CUNY students combine family, work and higher education into incredibly busy days.  Those of us who have had the pleasure to work, teach and study at CUNY know Leah’s story well. The persistence of CUNY students is well documented (see Paul Attewell and David Lavin’s Passing the Torch).  Leah credits a lot of her success to Lehman’s child care center:

“When a pregnant Leah Fredman was overcome with exhaustion, juggling college and a small child, she would slip into a campus office and take a nap on the floor.

“I would just sneak in there for an afternoon, lock the door, sleep for an hour, wake up and go on with my daily life,” she said with a laugh.

All the hard work paid off.

Fredman graduated this month with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Lehman College at the top of her class, accumulating a perfect 4.0 grade-point average and earning honors for best research paper. The petite mom says it wouldn’t have been possible without the school’s childcare center, in which her 3-year-old son is enrolled.

“There’s no way I could have graduated without this place,” Fredman said in one of the center’s brightly-lit classrooms, with toys strewn on the rugs and artwork decorating the walls.”

Her toddler, Noam, raced around the room shaking a rattle while the newest addition to the family, 4-month-old Aiden, was cooing on his mother’s lap. “

Leah and her husband, Aron Wolinetz are indeed a CUNY family.  Fredman, 29, will be teaching a psychology course at Lehman in the fall while she applies to Ph.D programs. Wolinetz, 34, is pursuing a doctorate in computer science at the CUNY Graduate Center. The couple moved to Riverdale from Israel about four years ago.

What a great story!  CUNY is fortunate to have the Leahs of the world as our students.

Tony