The CUNY Graduate School of Journalism welcomed its second class, in August--more than doubling the student body of the nation’s newest graduate journalism program.

Some 50 students, from as close as Manhattan and as far away as Nigeria, make up the class of 2008. They join the inaugural class of 50 as the graduate school embarks on its second full year. "We're thrilled that this great group of new students has decided to join us," said Dean Stephen B. Shepard. "Their presence will make our growing program even stronger."

Several of our new students are graduates of a CUNY college, including the Macaulay Honors College. A few more hail from one of the SUNY campuses--Albany, Stony Brook, Binghamton, Purchase. The rest are from colleges all over the country: Cornell, Bryn Mawr, Tulane, Michigan, Wisconsin, Mount Holyoke, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, to name just a few.

About 40 percent of the incoming students are minority group members, and there are four international students among the new class, representing Canada, Nigeria and Northern Ireland. Two-thirds of incoming students are women. The average age of the new students is 27--about the same as the inaugural class.

The new students' backgrounds, befitting CUNY and the city, are varied. There's a Washington Heights native who attended Wesleyan and studied law at The Ohio State University--now she's coming home to learn the tools of interactive and broadcast journalism that will allow her to tell stories that need to be told.

There's a former professional dancer and NYU drama student who sought refuge in the corporate world before she was bitten by the journalism bug. There's a 37-year-old mother of two who recently graduated from Lehman College and wants to hone the skills she began to develop while editing her college paper.

There's a University of San Diego grad, who worked as a Wild Land Firefighter for the US Forest Service, a bookseller and contractor for a California construction company before cutting his journalistic teeth as a news assistant for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

The one thing all have in common is a desire to become journalists. And already, just three weeks into the semester, they have fanned out across New York City to cover its distinctive and colorful neighborhoods.

This is just the beginning of what promises to be a challenging and intensive three-semester program, which will teach them the core values of journalism and the storytelling technology skills necessary to prepare them for careers in the fast-changing multi-media age.

Like the school’s now veteran class of 2007, the incoming class is attending class in the School's state-of-the-art facility in Times Square under the guidance of an impressive faculty that includes many seasoned and award-winning journalists.

The new students also benefit from the experience and presence of their pioneering classmates, who, after completing a required summer internship, have entered their final semester and are starting job hunts. "The current students will be passing the torch to the incoming class," Shepard said. "It's the beginning of what will be a wonderful alumni network."