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Natasha Bartley is near the home stretch of obtaining her master’s degree in Urban Studies at SLU. An employee of the city Department of Transportation for a decade, Bartley enrolled to boost her climb up the job ladder. She’s focused on getting that diploma in hand and seeing it enhance her career. She’s gained something […]

College athletes bring in millions of dollars of revenue to their schools, but only in recent years have legal authorities opened the door to viewing them as college “employees” rather than students. SLU Assistant Professor of Labor Studies Cameron Black, however, has found that Black college athletes involved in 20th-century protest movements often were managed […]

The transportation industry has seen rapid technological change over the past decade, much of which has been enabled by the advancement and integration of artificial intelligence (AI) – from route planning and dispatch to autonomous vehicle technology. Research has shown how simpler technologies like electronic monitoring systems and transit scheduling algorithms have been destabilizing for […]

Two SLU alumni have been recognized in CUNY’s inaugural 50 Under 50 alumni list, which celebrates exceptional graduates who have made significant strides in their respective fields over the past year. The inaugural group of honorees includes trailblazers, leaders, and innovators who are shaping the future and contributing to the University’s enduring legacy.

For Kerwin Simon, the chaos of Covid led to clarity around his academic and professional pursuits. “For those of us who work in healthcare, Covid was one of the saddest times,” Kerwin says. “We were putting bodies into trailers outside the hospital. A doctor said to me, ‘it’s tragic that all these people are ultimately dying of things that can be controlled, like diabetes and high blood pressure.

“To get from there to here, it is about persistence, yes, but it is also about the support I’ve gotten along the way,” says Koffi Bentum, who graduated from SLU with a Bachelor of Arts in 2021, and speaks very highly of the networking, academic support and flexibility he found at SLU – not to mention the school’s mission, which is grounded in social justice and public service.

Eugene Patron’s enthusiasm and positivity about his CUNY SLU experience shines brightly. “What I learned in the program was spot on!” he says. He received the Advanced Certificate in Leading Change in Healthcare Systems in 2022. “Each week we talked about how to apply what we were learning at work.

Steamfitting – and union membership – are in Brian Hunt’s blood. Raised in a union family, his father was a steamfitter. After an early career stint working in finance, Brian was considering going back to school when he got the call to start the Local 638 Steamfitters five-year Apprenticeship program. He started on August 1, 2007 – and that was it. “I love it,” says Brian.

For Pedro Freire (Class of 2022, MALS) the journey has been long from South America to Connecticut to CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies (SLU) to California—and often arduous. But now he can see how all his experiences, good and bad, have brought him here, to the University of California Riverside Ph.D. program in ethnic studies.

The semester has taken off with some strong partnership with the Community and Worker Ownership Project. In early September we presented at the US Federation of Worker Coops at an in-person conference in Philadelphia where we partnered with many to explore the ways and reasons to pursue unionized cooperatives.