Poverty isn’t some abstract idea to Dr. Desireé Vega. She’s experienced it firsthand. Growing up in Brooklyn and Queens as one of three Puerto Rican children, Vega and her parents were oft en transient, moving from place to place in an effort to make financial ends meet College wasn’t readily considered an option either, until her high school math teacher and track coach, Tim Connor, encouraged her to apply.
“I knew I needed to get away from the struggle so that I could be successful,” says Vega, who enrolled at Binghamton University, several hours north of New York City. “School was the way out from me; from the struggle and generational poverty I witnessed in my family.”
Initially, Vega thought that she wanted to be an accountant. But that career aspiration was short-lived.
“During my first semester, I took a microeconomics course and, after not doing well, I quickly realized this was not how I wanted to spend the next four years,” she says, adding that she eventually found her passion in a psychology course.
Her involvement in campus life was enhanced by her work at an autism and learning disabilities clinic. It was through this work that she began thinking about her career trajectory.
“I really wanted to work with this type of at-risk population,” says Vega, whose involvement with the Ronald E. McNair Post-baccalaureate Achievement Program ensured that she would go on to pursue a graduate degree.
She began researching graduate programs, but The Ohio State University (OSU)’s school psychology program caught her attention, though she had never ventured to the Buckeye state before.
