Contact: Darren
Johnson, Director of Communications
(631) 421-2244, ext. 383,
djohnson@tourolaw.edu
May 29, 2005
Students Took Many Different Paths;
Celebrate Common, Difficult Achievement
209 Touro Graduates and 209 Unique Stories
at 23nd Annual Commencement
Huntington, N.Y. –
Two hundred and nine students with 209 unique stories will share
a common triumph at Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law
Center’s 23nd Annual Commencement at 3 p.m. on
Sunday, May 29, at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, in New
York City.
Commencement speaker is Kenneth Standard, President of the New
York Bar Association. Spencer Horn, president of Touro’s Student
Bar Association, will also address the graduates as Class
Orator. Valedictorian is Jill Beier. Part-time valedictorian is
Deborah Hill. Salutatorians are Michael Wise (full-time) and
Myra Berman (part-time).
Surviving through law school is grueling enough, but several of
Sunday’s graduates took even more difficult paths on their way
toward their degrees. Here are some of their stories.
The Students
and Their Stories
 Erin
Fidelo, 30, of Mount
Sinai had wanted to go to college since she was a young child.
Voted the “most likely to succeed” in class and dating a
football star, everything seemed to be going as planned until,
at age 16, she found out she was pregnant. This led to her
eventually moving in with the father. Very quickly, everything
unraveled.
“The relationship I was in ended up
being very abusive,” she said, “to the point where I had to move
to a domestic violence shelter to escape.”
Slowly, she regained her confidence
and went on to receive her undergraduate degree as a working,
single mom. She majored in criminal justice so that she could
help other women like herself. Then she enrolled in Touro’s
flexible four-year, evening program. Now, after using Touro’s
externship program to land a position with the Suffolk County
District Attorney Office’s Domestic Violence Bureau, she hopes
to make domestic-violence work – fighting for victims like her –
into a legal career. She is seeking grant money to set up a
mentoring and legal advocacy clinic for pregnant and parenting
teenagers. Graduating magna cum laude on Sunday, Ms.
Fidelo was honored with two prestigious Faculty Fellowships
during her years at Touro. Ms. Fidelo’s children include Jared,
13, Andrew, 7, Nicholas, 4, and Ella, 18 months.
 This
weekend, Donna Manvich of East Northport is fulfilling a
dream that began 30 years ago, when she was a junior in college
– that she was going to be a lawyer. But that was before her
marriage, before the birth of her two children and before she
was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1983.
Almost immediately after being accepted by law schools in
California, where she worked for United Farm Workers, Ms.
Manvich met and married her husband, Isaac. The young couple
started a family right away, and any desire to pursue the study
of law quickly gave way to the demands of motherhood. Four years
later, after the birth of her second child, Ms. Manvich began to
experience an increasing variety of unexplained symptoms.
Ms. Manvich and her family had already relocated to Long Island
when the diagnosis of MS was finally confirmed. Although the
disease was slowly progressing, Ms. Manvich received a master’s
degree in Philosophy from SUNY-Stony Brook in 1991 and went on
to start her own copyright and permissions company, earning her
the award of “MS Person of the Year on Long Island” in 1996. By
now the dream of attending law school seemed farther away than
ever as she worked full time and was dealing with the continued
progression of her disease.
“Then four years ago, I just woke up and said, ‘It’s now or
never,’ ” she recalled. “Touro had a convenient, four-year,
night program and Associate Dean Ken Rosenblum and the school
made themselves very accommodating for me. …
“Actually, I’m not happy that my classes are over, because they
were a very nurturing experience for me. Touro gave me a
platform that helped me believe I could do anything I wanted and
I could succeed, and I did.”
Although school is over and she is preparing for the bar exam in
July, Ms. Manvich will continue to work through Touro’s pro bono
Elder Law Clinic on behalf of two of her clients there. She
plans to practice in the field of elder law upon her admission
to the bar.
On paper, Kathryn Andreolli, of Amityville, may seem like
any other high achieving Touro student. She will graduate with
honors on Sunday, earning her J.D. from Touro’s traditional
three-year program. However, not long ago, her goal of being a
lawyer seemed like a fading dream.
“I quickly fell in with the wrong crowd and had a baby when I
was 16,” she said. “I had always wanted to go to law school, but
it was hard to convince people that I had a chance. A principal
even told me that I was hopeless.”
She attended Brentwood Schools and didn’t feel the support
system was there for her to realize her dream. “I had no SATs,
no prep courses, no inspiration.”
She worked her way through community college, and then earned a
business degree from NYIT, honing her grades. Touro Law School
offered her Merit and Diversity scholarships and upped her
awards as her grades matched her tremendous potential. She hopes
to land a job with the Suffolk County District Attorney’s
Office. She also hopes to some day go back to Brentwood and
establish a program for pregnant students who sometimes fall
through the cracks.
Her daughter, Monique, is now 11. Ms. Andreolli even learned
some practical skills: “Through my work at Touro, I was able to
learn how to establish paternity and get the child support I’m
owed.”
Changes at
Touro Law School
Suffolk County’s only law school is currently undertaking a bold
strategic plan that includes a cutting-edge new curriculum and a
move to a new home in Central Islip by fall 2006, adjacent to
and working with state and federal courts. The new campus will
stress hands-on legal education, expanding learning from the
classroom and textbooks into real courtrooms. The total cost of
the project is expected to be approximately $33 million. This
modern, 180,000-square-foot law campus will be the first of its
kind anywhere and a national model. It will also be a
cornerstone in an effort to revitalize Central Islip.
Touro Law School, with a student body of over 750, welcomed a
record-setting entering class this past year. Selectivity and
test scores for the 25-year-old institution are at all-time
highs, defying national downward trends for law schools.
For more information about Touro’s full- and part-time academic
programs, call (631) 421-2244.
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