Katherine Triunfel Rodriguez
Criminal Justice
Hostos Student Ambassador
Katherine Triunfel Rodriguez was born in Santiago, Dominican Republic on March 26, 1992. Katherine attended grade school and high school in her country. After finishing her high school studies and graduating with a 4.0 GPA, Katherine applied to enroll in one of the most distinguished universities in Dominican Republic, Pontificia Universidad Catolica Madre y Maestra (PUCMM), to pursue her career in Medicine. At the age of 16, after being accepted to (PUCMM), Katherine changed her mind and decided to move to New York to begin a new life.
Katherine enrolled at Hostos Community College in the spring of 2009. She was challenged every day due to the language barrier that she faced. As the months progressed and thanks to the remedial courses that she was taking, she began to read, speak, and understand English. Once Katherine began to feel familiar with the new environment and the new people, she decided to engage in different extracurricular activities that were going to help her to become a better person and a better leader.
During spring of 2010, Katherine joined the Student Leadership Academy’s Student Ambassador Program after being a participant at the Winter Workshop Series in January of that year. Throughout this period she has participated in a series of workshops to develop her public speaking, conflict resolution and team building skills. Katherine has also provided the local community with more than 180 hours of community service during this past year. She has offered her service off campus, by serving in food at soup kitchens and planting trees in a local park. She has also assisted on campus, assisting during Registration, conducting campus tours and providing guidance at Admissions Seminars.
Katherine was a participant of the Hostos Student Leadership Academy’s fall 2010 Debate Competition on the topic of the values explored in The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. She also served as a Delegate at the 2010 National Model United Nations Conference in Washington, D.C., where she represented Ghana, West Africa with 7 other students and served on The Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND).
Katherine has attended the CUNY Emerging Leaders Conference in 2010 and 2011 and she has also been a part of the 2011 College of Staten Island Leadership Conference: One World, Many Differences. Katherine is a member of the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society and has a GPA of 3.7.
Katherine has served as both the Secretary and the Vice President of the Newspaper Club, and she has just been elected to serves as the Vice President and Chair of the Senate for fall 2011. Katherine is the winner of the Bronx CUNY Scholarship and she has been chosen as the CUNY Leadership Award Winner for 2011 from Hostos Community College.
When Katherine graduates, her goal is to transfer to John Jay College to pursue her Bachelor’s Degree in Criminal Justice, and at the same time she wants to become a police officer. After obtaining her Bachelor’s Degree Katherine plans to go to Law School and study to become a defense attorney.
Katherine Triunfel has been elected by the Hostos Community College Student Body to serve as the Vice-President of the Student Government Association for the Fall 2011-Spring 2012 school year.
Katherine Triunfel has been selected as a Sadie Nash 2011-2012 Ella Leadership Fellow. For more information about the Sadie Nash Leadership Project, please visit:
http://www.sadienash.org/programs_ella.htm