Boricua College is a

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college A college (Latin: ''collegium'') is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university, an institution offering ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

designed to serve the educational needs of

Puerto Ricans Puerto Ricans ( es, Puertorriqueños; or boricuas) are the people of Puerto Rico, the inhabitants, and citizens of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and their descendants. Overview The culture held in common by most Puerto Ricans is referred t ...

and other

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in the United States. It was founded by Victor G. Alicea and several others.

Faculty

The school employs a largely bilingual faculty and staff of 130 full-time and 100 part-time members. According to its Self Study Report (2014) to the

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools The Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools (Middle States Association or MSA) was a voluntary, peer-based, non-profit association that performed peer evaluation and regional educational accreditation, accreditation of public and priva ...

, in fall 2012-13 it had 59.5 full-time faculty and 25 part-time adjunct faculty. Over 90% are Latinos. It serves a student population of 1,200.

Campuses

Boricua College Tower, Bronx IMG 3279 HLG

The college has four campuses: in

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, Washington Heights,

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; North Williamsburg,

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; East Williamsburg, Brooklyn; and

the Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

Accreditation

Boricua College is accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. In the spring of 2014 the Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC/CAEP) evaluated Boricua College's Audit Brief and recommended it "above standard" for TEAC's three quality principles: Candidate Learning, Faculty Learning, and Capacity and Commitment of the institution. TEAC/CAEP met and accepted the recommendation and accredited, for the maximum allowable of seven years (spring 2014 to spring 2021), the college's Bachelor of Science degree program in Childhood Education that included the Generic Studies Liberal Arts and Sciences core curriculum program, and the Masters in Science degree program in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). This national achievement complements the authorization of these programs by the New York State Education Department and the State Certification of the graduates.

Student body and graduation

The college is regarded as "nontraditional" because of its competency-based model of education, emphasizing the importance of critical thinking skills and clarification of values and increasing students' capacity for self-reflection. Its student body is 79% adult (over 25 years old with family responsibilities) which puts it in the nontraditional category. In his book ''Access to Freedom'', James Hall considered Boricua College as a nontraditional college. Hall explains that these colleges cater to adult, working students who may take much longer than the six years taken by traditional students to graduate. Boricua College's graduation rate is given by the

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(a resource generally used by US Department of Education's office of statistics) to be 54% among first-time college students who entered in 2006 and graduated in 2012. When students who transfer out to other colleges are taken into account, that positive completion rate is given by the National Center as 69%. Further, during the last 10 years the college's education department has program completers who pass the New York State certification examinations at more than the required 80% rate.

Notable alumni

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, former

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and Assistant

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. *Robert Torres (stage name

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), Hip Hop artist and author

Notable visitors

In January 2000 President

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...

visited the Brooklyn campus at its Graham Avenue learning center to inaugurate a Small Business Association at the college. Boricua was one of the two colleges the president visited that were not for commencement purposes during his eight years at the White House.

References

External links

Boricua College
{{coord, 40.82276, -73.91149, type:edu_globe:earth_region:US-NY, display=title Universities and colleges in New York City Educational institutions established in 1974 Universities and colleges in Brooklyn Universities and colleges in Manhattan Universities and colleges in the Bronx Liberal arts colleges in New York City 1974 establishments in New York City