Dr. Walter "Wally" A. Orenstein

I chose CCNY because the tuition was free at the time and it had a great academic reputation. A lot of my friends were also attending there. I still have good friends from my time there. I was focused on chemistry. My major was pre-medicine, and I was in ROTC and in a military fraternity. I also made good friends there that I still keep in touch with today. My degree led me to my track of going into medicine, as I went to Albert Einstein College of Medicine. CCNY was a great knowledge base. It got me interested in helping people and it provided me a pathway to get into medical school and then move forward. CCNY made a major difference in my life. I made my career in vaccinology and optimizing disease prevention. One of my heroes turned to be Jonas Salk, the person who invented the original polio vaccine. It was great to meet him and be honored by a fellow alumnus who made such a major impact on polio.