Kavel McLean's family helps buoy her, both in Brooklyn and at Cornell

By Susan Lang

When Kavel McLean, a native of Jamaica, was accepted to Cornell, she didn't know anything about the university. She had simply been following her guidance counselor's advice.

Senior Kavel McLean expects about 30 family members and friends for Commencement this weekend. Nicola Kountoupes/University Photography

In fact, she said, "I didn't know anything much about colleges at all, just what I'd heard on TV and what I heard from friends. I really didn't know. But everyone raved about Cornell being Ivy League and a great school, so that my mom, who didn't want me to leave home for college, finally said she thought it would be OK."

"Mom" was a single mother (now remarried) and home health aide in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, who emigrated from Jamaica, while McLean, then age 6, stayed with family friends until her mother could bring her and her sister along, when she was 10. Now, as perhaps the first college graduate in her family, McLean's next challenge is to host the more than 30 family members and family friends coming from Canada, Jamaica, Florida and New York City to see her graduate. "I have the proudest mom ever," she said.

Having lived half her life in Jamaica and her high school years in a Brooklyn neighborhood heavily populated with Caribbean immigrants, McLean said she had little experience with white people, or indeed with other Americans, since all her high school friends and acquaintances were immigrants like herself.

A human development major in the College of Human Ecology with a concentration in Africana studies, McLean came to Cornell through New York State's Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP or EOP), which gives students who have good potential but are educationally or economically disadvantaged, a chance to attend Cornell by covering their tuition, room and board. The program also offers a six-week pre-freshman acclimatization to Cornell, which provided McLean with tips on how to cope with the workload and the unfamiliar social culture. And McLean admits that her first two years were a struggle.

But once she learned the ropes, McLean soared. Having been on stage singing at her church in Jamaica since age 6, she joined Pamoja-Ni Gospel Choir, a Cornell gospel group, and Baraka Kwa Wimbu, an all-female a cappella gospel chorus.

She became a Cornell Tradition scholar her junior year, which committed her to performing 75 hours of community service and 250 hours of paid work each academic year. Her community service included serving as house manager of Wari House, a housing cooperative for minority women, in which she lived during her four years here. She also served as president of Wanawake Wa Wari, a group dedicated to educating Cornell students about the experiences of women of the African Diaspora, through art shows, networking dinners and HIV-AIDs information workshops. She also served as the co-chair of the Festival of Black Gospel at Cornell and, through the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Trumansburg, as an assistant Sabbath school teacher, young adult leader and a drill instructor with the Ithaca Lakers Pathfinders Club.

As a Cornell student mentor and summer employee with the Committee on Special Educational Projects (COSEP) in Cornell's Office of Minority Educational Affairs, she has worked for the prefreshman summer program she once attended. And since her freshman year, she has held a part-time job as a peer adviser for the College of Human Ecology.

"The College of Human Ecology and Cornell have really prepared me for the world," McLean said. In the fall she hopes to start work as a counselor in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where her mother now lives.

"I feel like I have had so many varied experiences here that have given me a lot of self confidence that I am truly prepared for life," she said.