Former Trustee has been named Fulbright Scholar

Dr. Cassandra St. Vil, former National Officer and Trustee of Omega Phi Beta was recently featured in Buffalo State College’s newsletter talking about her professional achievements and her Fulbright Scholar grant which she was awarded this year. The article, titled From Teenage Troublemaker to Fulbright Scholar details her academic journey:

As a teenager, Cassandra St. Vil, ’05 was a troublemaker who ran away from home. She graduated from high school with just a 72.5 average. Yet she has received a full merit-based scholarship to earn her third master’s degree, this one from Harvard University.

Dr. St. Vil may have been a typical teenager at home but it did not stop her from being recognized for achievements in service and character! In June 2001 she received the Triple C Award for “character, commitment and courage,” from former Attorney General Elliot Spitzer’s as well as an award for academic excellence in English; and was honored with the YMCA’s Teen of the Year Award, a citywide recognition for work with the Vanderbilt YMCA’s Leaders Club in Corona.

She has been a member of the US Peace Corps and taken various assignments around the World in education and social work. Her experiences led her to write a book titled “The Push for African-Centered Education: An Educator’s Guide“. Dr. St. Vil describes the purpose of her book is essentially two-fold:

The first attempt is to explain what every one, globally, seems to have accepted as norm in the general distortion of Black identity and the histories and cultures of Black peoples.

The second aim being an offering of a worthy resort, at least in the United States’ context, of how we can respond to this ongoing misrepresentation in our school systems by proposing a new academic model centering Black uplift.

Dr. Cassandra St. Vil joined Omega Phi Beta in Spring 2002 via our Mu Chapter. She has remained an active member of the Sorority  in addition to serving in various National Leadership roles. In 2008 she was one of the team members who conceptualized the Ray of Hope Walk to End Violence Against Women. She has been a strong supporter of the Walk ever since.