When my father helped me move to New York to begin my graduate studies at SIPA, we took a walk across the main campus, a rare moment alone for the two of us.

He quizzed me, history teacher that he had been, on the names engraved above Butler Library. When I failed to get a perfect score, he grumbled about the money that had been wasted in my undergraduate years. He then got uncharacteristically quiet. When I asked him what was wrong, he sighed and said he had always wanted to go to Teacher's College.

Feeling guilty and at the same time exceptionally fortunate about being able to attend Columbia (because of my parents sacrifices), I remembered that my father's dream of going away to college ended when his own father passed away while he was still in high school. My father still became a teacher - the kind with a legacy. The kind that decades after his retirement, former students still remember him as the teacher who changed their lives.

I vowed at that moment to do as well as I possibly could and make him and my mother proud -- and not to give my father any reason to think I wasted my graduate years! I work in education now as an advocate for better programs. I like to think it's the continuation of my father's (and mother's) good work.