Alumni Profile - Johanna Fernandez, DDC 1988
Johanna Fernández, Ph.D.
Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics High School, 1986-1988
Charterhouse School, Sixth Form, London, England, 1988-1989
Brown University, B.A., American Studies and Literature, 1989-1993
Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, M.A., Ph.D. in History, 1994-2004
“Without DDC, I would not have [gotten into] college and I certainly would not have gotten into Brown [University].”
Johanna grew up in the Bronx and transferred to the Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics during her junior year of high school. She learned about Double Discovery when a counselor on staff went to her English class and gave a presentation about DDC’s Career Beginnings program. (It ran from 1986-1990. Participants received paid summer internships and college advisement during the school year.)
“Before DDC I had absolutely no idea of the process through which I might land on a college campus. My parents are immigrants from the Dominican Republic who gave me a sense growing up that education was important…They didn’t have the tools nor were they connected to the networks that were necessary to shepherd their child through the college application process.”
“[Double Discovery] proceeded to walk me through and educated me about the college application process,” she adds.
“What was critical for me about DDC, was first that I was introduced to a series of counselors who believed in me 100 percent and for them, there was no question that I was college material even despite of the fact that I was terribly underdeveloped as a result of my experience in public schools in the poorest neighborhoods in the Bronx and Manhattan,” Johanna remembers.
“All of the counselors had a profound impact on me because they took me seriously. They challenged me. They read my college essays and critiqued them thoroughly. The individual attention that I got was key to the process. I remember that one of the counselors read my essay numerous times. I was itemizing my experiences rather than fleshing them out and analyzing them for the admissions committee of who I was. They challenged and stretched me in a way that helped me beyond the college essay and their care and critique of my writing was important even during my college years,” remembers Johanna.
“What was critical was being part of a cohort of students who together began to explore what it meant to be college bound. I wasn’t alone and that made it easier for me to travel the college road,” she recalls.
“We had workshops after school about the college process, trips to college campuses, a trip to a horseback riding camp, and some two-three day retreats with workshops. That was a lot a fun. There was a lot of learning that happened with peers and counselors and that simulated the college experience. It was this immersion in the college experience that was critical to addressing the fears and insecurities that this kid from the Bronx might have about college, which was a foreign process,” she says.
“Without DDC I would not have [gotten into] college and I certainly would not have gotten into Brown…My SAT score was hugely improved and I was told by Brown admission people, that the jump in my SAT scores grabbed their attention about me as a candidate,” remembers the 1988 graduate.
“We need more programs like Double Discovery. It’s one of the unsung heroes of the post-civil rights era in terms of addressing the educational crisis in our public schools and literally changing the lives of people one at a time,” she says..
“It demystifies the process for poor Black and Latino students. When you go through this transformation, your life changes utterly and completely,” adds the 1988 graduate.
Today, Johanna is a professor of History at Baruch College and is writing a book on the Young Lords Party of the 1960s. The group was the Puerto Rican counterpart to the Black Panther Party. It will be published by Princeton University Press in 2015.
By Vanessa Arredondo
Photo: Courtesy of Johanna Fernández, Ph.D.