The next stop on my recent New York tour was Marist College in Poughkeepsie, right on the banks of the Hudson River. The campus is truly gorgeous. The grounds are immaculately kept and the interiors of the buildings are beautiful and modern. Marist began as a seminary over 100 years ago and maintained its Catholic identity for a number of years but has not been Catholic in quite some time. However, the core values of the Marist brothers remain: excellence in education, sense of community and commitment to service. Academically, Marist values putting theory into practice. This is reflected in the many academic offerings. Although liberal arts are very good here, some of the preprofessional programs are outstanding. For example, there is a School of Computer Science and Mathematics with majors in Computing Technology and Cybersecurity with a Security Operations Center that gives students hands-on access to practice hacking, prevent breaches and conduct research with faculty. The School of Management has the traditional majors but also a major in Public and Nonprofit Management, which I think is very interesting. The School of Communication and the Arts is known for its fashion program but also has great programs in Digital Media Communications and Fine Arts. Marist also has a campus in Florence, Italy where students can spend one year or even four. Some majors specific to that campus include Conservation Studies, Art History and Interior Design. I find it interesting that more than half of Marist's faculty are adjunct, but so many of them have tremendous experience working in their field and are in fact still active professionally that this makes sense. Marist got a new president just over a year ago: Kevin Weinman. He was formerly the CFO of Amherst College and was with Dartmouth before that. I love the fact that he invites students to schedule 15-minute meetings with him about anything they want to talk about! Lastly, Marist College is very generous with merit scholarships; they're awarded to 60% of students in packages of up to $25,000. I was very, very impressed with Marist and intend to put it on a lot more lists going forward.