Verrazzano School

The Verrazzano Honors Program, unique to the College of Staten Island, serves over 300 motivated, high-achieving students and supports their academic and social development. This selective program challenges students academically and provides them with opportunities to extract all they can from their college experience. This includes attending professional development workshops, committing to community service, attending extracurricular activities that expose them to new ideas and perspectives, and completing a capstone project that highlights what they have learned at CSI.

Verrazzano students come from all the public and private high schools on Staten Island, and we recruit from all the boroughs, upstate New York, and New Jersey. They are significantly involved in clubs, sports, extracurricular activities, and much more. They are largely working class, but still find time to give back; from 2015-2020, they completed almost 20,000 community service hours working with schools, hospitals, libraries, and a variety of non-profit organizations in the New York City area. Almost 80% of students in the program graduated in four years—over 4% graduate in fewer than four years. And nearly 70% graduate at least cum laude.

We hope to raise $7,000 to support student internships in community service, professional development, and social media; fund unique extracurricular trips to explore New York City; and to continue offering our fun-team building orientation for all new students.