Kingsborough Expands Support for Immigrant Students with Launch of New RISE Center

RISE will provide coordinated and centralized academic, career, financial, legal, and mental health support for immigrant students and their families

Kingsborough Community College (KCC) celebrated the opening of its new Resources for Immigrant Student Success in Education (RISE) Center with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Sept. 28, drawing approximately 150 students, faculty, staff, administrators and supporters from across the City University of New York (CUNY) and the Brooklyn community to the College’s International Hall of Flags.

“We know in this particular moment in our country, in our city, that circumstances are such that immigrants do not feel as safe as they might have at other points in our history,” Kingsborough President Suri Duitch said in her remarks. “So it is especially incumbent upon us to both create a safe space where students know that they are welcome and always feel a sense of community, but also to be more coordinated and more strategic in how we deploy resources to make it even more likely that students will be successful, that they will stay in school, and that they will move on to the next steps in their educational and professional journeys.”

The RISE Center will offer free, one-on-one, coordinated support to Kingsborough’s immigrant students and their families through a single, trusted and visible point of access. The effort expands on the legal immigrant services previously offered to students through the New Americans Center (NAC) by adding academic planning, financial aid and scholarship opportunities, emergency resources, leadership development, career preparation and connections to community-based resources.

“This will be a collective space where our immigrant students can find a sense of belonging with their peers, but also receive support from our immigration lawyer, receive financial support to help them find unconventional internships, paid entrepreneur experiences, and really have supportive mental health groups that we are curating directly towards the immigrant and undocumented student experience,” said Natasha Edwards, KCC’s dean of Student Affairs. “We are really trying to identify what barriers our undocumented students are experiencing and then focusing on removing those barriers.”

One of the RISE Center’s goals, Edwards said, is to increase KCC’s undocumented student fall-to-fall persistence rate, or the share of students who remain enrolled in college, from 66.7 percent to 70 percent. The persistence rate among all other student groups is a collective 71 percent, according to fall 2024 to fall 2025 data.

With the addition of the RISE Center, Kingsborough joins five other CUNY colleges —Brooklyn, John Jay, Hunter, City and LaGuardia — in establishing immigrant student success centers with an informed, dedicated staff who understand the nuances of the immigrant student experience and can provide them with holistic, wraparound support.

Among those speaking at the event, along with Duitch, were Borough President Antonio Reynoso, two guests from CUNY — Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Denise Maybank and Director for Undocumented and Immigrant Student Programs Cynthia Carvajal — and a Kingsborough student, Aijammal Sharshenova, who plans on becoming a physical therapy assistant major this fall.

“Every immigrant Brooklynite deserves support as they navigate building a life here, and students are no exception. The RISE Center meets Kingsborough’s large immigrant student population right on campus and connects them with the legal and financial resources that make higher education possible, regardless of status,” said Reynoso. “I commend Kingsborough Community College and President Duitch for investing in resources that reflect the diversity of the college and this borough and look forward to seeing students from all walks of life thrive with the RISE Center’s support.”

New RISE Center Director

The RISE Center will be supported by a full-time director, Gavin Ireland, a Jamaican-born immigrant himself, who graduated from Kingsborough as an international student. Before leading the RISE Center, Ireland served in various leadership roles, including as director of international student affairs. As RISE Center director, he will lead programs and services that support international, immigrant, undocumented, refugee, asylum-seeking and mixed-status students while advancing institutional efforts focused on access, retention, belonging and student achievement.

The RISE Center will also be supported by Kingsborough’s part-time immigration attorney, Erick Myssura, who has provided legal and referral services to Kingsborough students and their families for more than a decade.

An Initiative Across CUNY to Support Immigrant Students

RISE staff will work closely with CUNY’s Office of Undocumented and Immigrant Student Programs for guidance and support and will foster relationships outside of CUNY as well with Brooklyn-based community organizations.

CUNY's Director for Undocumented and Immigrant Student Programs Cynthia Carvajal, once herself an undocumented student in California, launched CUNY’s first immigrant student support center at John Jay in 2019 and was its first director. Brooklyn College opened the doors to its immigrant student support center later that year.

“Now we're seeing [a center] here at a two-year college. So that's really going to change how students are able to navigate their trajectory within Brooklyn,” she said in her remarks, referring to the continuity in immigrant student services between Brooklyn’s community college and one of the borough’s senior colleges.

She called the opening of the RISE Center “an incredibly important moment for Kingsborough.”

In her role, Carvajal oversees the expansion of immigrant student support centers across CUNY campuses. She has active support from the faculty and staff union, the Professional Staff Congress’ (PSC’s) Immigrant Solidarity Working Group (ISWG), led by Professor Robert Cowan at KCC. The ISWG launched a signature campaign to urge CUNY to open immigrant student success centers at each of its campuses, said PSC Secretary Andrea Vásquez at the event.

“The PSC is very actively helping to establish this and pushing for it, so we’re delighted that they’re serving students in this way,” she said.

The RISE Center is open to students daily, Monday through Friday.

Learn more at kbcc.cuny.edu/immigrantsuccess.