In the summer of 1976, before starting her freshman year, Valerie Lewis-Mosley, BC ’79, was walking through the halls of the Connell School of Nursing (CSON) on a tour for incoming black nursing students. Mary Dineen, then-dean of Nursing, spoke to the students individually about coming to Boston College. Ambitious from a young age, Lewis-Mosley asked Dineen about the honors program, because it would allow her to minor in the humanities.

The dean looked at Lewis-Mosley and said, “‘You have some mighty lofty goals don’t you. You just need to be focusing on being able to keep a C to stay in the nursing program,’” recalled Lewis-Mosley.

“Then I said to her, clear as day, ‘My name is Valerie D. Lewis,  I suggest that maybe you read my academic transcript from the high school I came from, and you will understand that a C is really not something that I aspire to,’” she said, chuckling.

Now retired from clinical practice at the New York Hospital-Weill Cornell University Medical Center, Lewis-Mosley came to Chestnut Hill from an all-girls Catholic high school, which inspired her tenacious disposition. When it came time to apply to colleges, her academic adviser guided her toward BC for the Black Talent Program (BTP), a program designed to attract students of color, which grew into the Options Through Education (OTE). The support system and dynamic of the BTP as well as the ability the program gave her to form a community on campus were some of the main reasons why Lewis-Mosley chose BC.