NYSID Pre-College Scholarships Transform Talent into Opportunity
Through its Pre-College Scholarship Fund, NYSID introduces high school students from communities traditionally underrepresented in design to the profession at a formative period in their lives. This year, major funding of Pre-College scholarships from ASID Florida South, The Decorators Club Education Fund, Angelo Donghia Foundation, Kravet, Inc, the Estate of Joseph Gruszczak, and Studio Designer has helped young people discover the skills and confidence to forge a path to interior design. We met up with students and educators at the culmination of the first session of Pre-College to gauge the program’s immediate impact.
Kravet Pipeline to Design scholars, Jared Joseph, Bradley Austin, Tygina Judah, Sadia Iqbal, and Josephine Soyigbe
On July 11, the 60 students enrolled in the first session of NYSID’s fun and diverse summer Pre-College program gathered in the College’s undergraduate student center to present final projects. Students chatted with new friends (in English and Spanish), tacked presentation boards to the wall, and added final flourishes. The students hailed from communities as close as Manhattan and as far away as Mumbai. They came from many different socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. Some were determined to study interior design in college, while others were trying their hand at the discipline for the first time. Each student started the two-week course with the same, standard footprint of an apartment, yet each project was as unique as the student who created it. “It’s always impressive to me to see what these students can accomplish with what we give them in a two-week course,” said NYSID’s Director of Pre-College, Francisco De Leon.
“This program was so much fun and totally different than what I expected it to be,” said Annavictoria Monaco, a NYSID Pre-College student from Miami and a recipient of an ASID South Florida scholarship and Angelo Donghia Foundation scholarship. “I thought we’d be working on a computer all day, and we did really challenging things like the floorplan, but we also got to know the city, see sources, and get materials from stores and inspiration from showrooms.”
Design is for Everyone
Contributing to the diversity and inclusivity of the design profession is part of NYSID’s values statement, and the Pre-College program is integral to the College’s strategy. With the help of its funders, NYSID is building an early exposure to interior design that feels welcoming and helps students from every background see themselves in the field. From reading an architect's scale, to drawing elevations, to pattern making, to understanding a color wheel, the lessons are hands-on and experiential. NYSID Pre-College instructors are practicing designers, and the guest speakers are powerful role models who include the renowned designers Jamie Drake and Leyden Lewis. De Leon says, “There is a misperception that Interior Design is a career only for privileged people. At NYSID Pre-College, we show our students that they belong here, they can do interior design, and there are people willing to make it happen for them. . .We show them this can be a highly-rewarding and satisfying career. We want kids to follow their hearts and do what they are interested in.”
Students visit the Kravet showroom in the D&D Building
An Evolving & Expanding Program
NYSID’s Pre-College program is an intense immersion into interior design that involves the practice of basic design skills, field trips to design firms, showrooms and museums, and exposure to role models. It’s offered at two levels: Pre-College I, in which students craft a residence; and Pre-College II, a hospitality design course that focuses on the design of a restaurant or hotel lobby. This year, NYSID offered three sessions of online Pre-College, and two sessions of in-person Pre-College (1: June 30-July 12 & 2: July 14-26).
In 2024, 117 students enrolled in NYSID Pre-College, the largest number in the history of the program. There were multiple reasons for the increase in enrollment. For the first time, NYSID partnered with Summer Springboard to provide a residential dorm experience as well as extracurricular and social support. Students stayed at the Fordham residence halls at Lincoln Center, and this opened the program up to students from distant countries and states who might not have felt comfortable staying in New York City on their own. Says Rebecca Perry, Summer Springboard’s Campus Director for NYSID, “Our goal is to create self awareness in young people so they can feel more confident in choosing a path for college or work.”
Another reason for the increase in enrollment was the robust support of Pre-College scholarships from NYSID’s funders. Forty-five students received scholarships for NYSID Pre-College tuition in the summer of 2024. Scholarships were granted to students in both the online and in-person programs. NYSID also partnered with the YWCA NYC to grant scholarships to their young members, and provide an extra breakout session taught by NYSID Instructor Randi Halpern onsite at the Y. In this session, the students created designs for actual rooms and offices of the YWCA NYC headquarters. Many of the students in the YWCA program were funded by The Decorators Club. In addition, six Kravet Pipeline to Design scholars came to the Pre-College program through NYSID and Kravet Inc.’s partnership with the Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club, a Bronx non-profit that provides enrichment and education for young people.
Sadia Iqbal
Amor Jones
Select Student Work & Experience From Session 1
Sadia Iqbal, who just graduated from high school in the Bronx, is a recipient of the Kravet Pipeline to Interior Design Scholarship. For her project, she envisioned an apartment for an intergenerational family. Her clients consisted of an elderly Aunt who was a traditional weaver and seamstress, a married couple, and a child to whom the elder passed on her craft. The backstory allowed Iqbal to indulge her passion for textiles, and her presentation was so lush with fabric and fur samples that she took her instructor Don Kossar’s advice to physically elevate the floorplan off the backdrop of the presentation board. Iqbal definitely plans to study design. She is already enrolled in a five-year BFA program at CUNY City College’s Spitzer School of Architecture. She has a passion for interior design and hopes to integrate what she learned into her studies and professional life. She said, “One of the greatest things about this program is the relationships. I got genuine help from my instructor, Don Kossar, and my peers helped me a lot.”
Amor Jones, a recipient of a scholarship from the Estate of Joseph Gruszczak and a general Pre-College Fund Scholarship, is a rising sophomore from Englewood, New Jersey, who attends Columbia Prep in New York City. She originally thought she might do a business program this summer, but really wanted to try something in art, and her guidance counselor suggested interior design. For her final project at NYSID, she envisioned an apartment for a newly married couple, a husband and wife with contrasting tastes. Her challenge was to balance the bold color preferences of the husband, with the wife’s orientation toward minimalism and neutral tones of white and cream. Says Jones, “The most important takeaway from this program was learning how to draft, how to draw the different types of doors, and, for example, to understand that shading like this means that a wall goes floor to ceiling. It’s empowering to look at a floor plan now and realize, hey, I know how to read that.” Jones says Pre-College was her “first taste of interior design,” and that now she is interested in pursuing further education in interior design or architecture.
Annavictoria Monaco, a rising junior from Miami and a recipient of an ASID South Florida scholarship and Angelo Donghia Foundation scholarship, says she “most definitely wants to become an interior designer” and that she “will be applying to NYSID.” Monaco stayed in the dorms at Fordham through Summer Springboard, and she says, “I got to live the whole college, city experience.” She says what she loved about the NYSID Pre-College is that, “It didn’t feel like school; it felt like a life experience.” She loved the exposure to design and architecture firms (such as David Scott Interiors, Cullman Kravis, and COOKFOX) and was hugely inspired by the trip to the Decoration & Design building, where she sourced many of the materials for her final project, from dark chocolate wood flooring to leather samples for upholstering furniture. The client she envisioned for her final project was a model who loved to entertain, and she took care to create a floorplan that reflected her theoretical client’s needs, from an extra long couch for guests, to an outsized closet.
Ayanah Reliford
Josephine Soyigbe
Ayanah Reliford, a recipient of a scholarship from The Decorators Club and a rising senior who attends the public High School of Fashion Industries in NYC, imagined her client was a 26-year-old surfer who spends her professional life in New York City, so she designed a refuge for her at the beach. She wanted her design to feel “chill.” She sourced a sample of a plush bedroom carpet that graduates from blues, to beiges, to yellows, bringing the natural palate of the seashore into her design. She found gauzy beige curtains by Otis Textiles. Reliford says she got a lot out of the program’s many field trips, but for her, the most impactful part of the program were the foundational design skills. “The most important things I learned in this program were to use a three-sided ruler and scale properly, to make sure my lines of my floorplan were straight and my furniture was balanced and in proportion.” Reliford says, “I know, 100 percent, that interior design is what I want to study in college. NYSID is my dream school. My goal in Pre-College has been to build my portfolio and get good enough to qualify for a college scholarship.” Reliford stayed in the dorms through Summer Springboard and said, “I think the experience helped me get ready for college life.”
Josephine Soyigbe, a rising senior from the Bronx, is a recipient of the Kravet Pipeline to Interior Design Scholarship. Josephine returned to the program for a second year in a row because she found the program interesting and wanted more experience in interior design and architecture as she considers career directions. Her father is a tailor, and she says she has spent much of her childhood “helping my dad with stuff, like stitches and making shirts and pants.” She likes to make things, she says. The client she envisioned for her final project was a model with a passion for clothing, who wanted a retreat from the city near the forest. Soyigbe picked materials and a color scheme that reflected the natural world of the forest, and oriented the traffic pattern of her floor plan toward views of the trees outside. She says, “The most important thing I learned in this course is to create balance with the furniture, so people don’t walk into your space and feel lost. The balance makes them feel more comfortable the moment they walk in.”
NYSID’s Funders Make a Truly Unique Experience Possible
Students who received financial aid to NYSID Pre-College hail from all over the country, and in some cases, the world. There were students from Georgia, Ohio, and even a Ukrainian refugee currently living in Florida (second session). Francisco De Leon, Director of NYSID Pre-College, believes that this diversity of place and background “brings so many points of view to the program, and makes for a richer educational context for all.” He adds, “We’re extremely grateful to our funders, who have made a huge impact on the program and on young peoples’ lives.”
Addressing the students at the final presentation, Ellen Fisher, Dean and VP of Academic Affairs for NYSID, said, “I was really blown away by your projects. . .Thousands of students have started with the same footprint, yet each of your projects was totally unique. Design transcends all stereotypes: it's for people of every persuasion, gender, and background. Drawing, art, and design are what we have in common. We are all connected by our love of design.”
NYSID Pre-College Scholarships change lives and bring diverse perspectives to the profession.
To find out how to support NYSID’s Pre-College Scholarship Fund, reach out to NYSID’s Director of Development Joy Cooper at joy.cooper@nysid.edu, or make a donation here.
To inquire about applying for a Pre-College scholarship, reach out to the Pre-College office at precollege@nysid.edu.
In recent years, major support for NYSID’s Pre-College Fund has been provided by the ASID South Florida Chapter, Brian McCarthy, Bunny Williams, Charlotte Moss, Cullman & Kravis, The Decorators Club Education Fund, Donghia Foundation, Jamie Drake, James Druckman/New York Design Center, the estate of Joseph Gruszczak, John Rosselli & Associates, Kaleidoscope Project, Kravet Inc., Studio Designer, and other donors.