Claudio Mir Is Named Middlesex College’s 2024 Alumnus of the Year

“One of the things I’m thankful for Middlesex College is that it pushed us. It motivated me to work harder. I came out of Middlesex with that work ethic and all the tools that I needed,” said Claudio Mir.

Mir serves as senior program coordinator for the Collaborative Center for Community Engagement, Office of Diversity and Inclusion at Rutgers University, where he oversees the Advancing Community Development Program, which was co-developed with Johnson & Johnson.

Mir moved to the U.S. at the age of 22, trained as a professional actor at the National School of Theater in the Fine Arts Palace of Santo Domingo in his native Dominican Republic.

“Spanish was my mother language, and I knew that if I came [to the U.S.], I would not be able to work as an actor. Even though I spoke a little bit of English I could not act in English,” Mir said.

He would parlay his theatrical talents in other ways. For the first eight years of his life in the U.S., Mir worked for a social service agency in Trenton putting together plays about social issues like AIDS.

“It was in the middle of the AIDS epidemic and I was working with people infected with HIV, doing theater, teaching people how to prevent infection.”

He later accepted a research job at what was then the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ), where he collected data from members of the Latino population for a state HIV prevention project. But that grant-funded project lasted for only one year.

“I applied for unemployment benefits and someone said I could go back to school [tuition free] for approved study. I chose photography, and that’s how I ended up at Middlesex College,” he explained.

Mir needed to complete a year of remedial classes in his first year at Middlesex College.

“It took me three years to graduate because I had that year of remedial in English and math since I had not gone to school in the U.S. Once I did that, I was unstoppable.”

He credits the “rigor” of Middlesex College for helping him reach the next milestone in his educational journey – acceptance into and thriving at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.

“I actually put my portfolio together at Middlesex before I applied to Mason Gross School of the Arts,” he recalled, adding that a lot of people discouraged him from applying. “Even my friends were saying I was crazy for applying to Mason Gross.”

Proving the naysayers wrong, Mir was at the top of the list of students accepted to that competitive school. Once there, Mir says he was well-prepared.

“There was nothing they could throw at me that I didn’t have the discipline for or know how to tackle – from math to English to whatever, Middlesex got me ready.”

After graduating from Mason Gross, he worked at the Institute for Arts and Humanities Education as an artist-in-residence responsible for designing and implementing arts integrated curricula in various New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania schools.

While at that institute, Mir started a project with a dean at Rutgers – Community Artists in Residence and Training (CART) – which had him supervising 5-7 artists who were being trained to work in communities all around New Jersey.

When his position with the institute required him to move to Princeton, Mir accepted Rutgers’ offer to operate CART from the Rutgers’ side, allowing him to remain in New Brunswick.

“And that’s how I found myself working at Rutgers. After a year of being there, the CART program ended and I was offered another position working in a civic engagement/service learning program, placing students in community organizations. In 2007, we became the [current] Collaborative Center for Community Engagement, Office of Diversity and Inclusion.”

In addition to his associate degree in Professional and Commercial Photography, a B.F.A. in visual arts from the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Mir holds a M.F.A. in creative writing from Rutgers.

“After getting my master’s, I was able to teach. And I taught those community-based learning seminars for almost 10 years, from 2013-2022.”

As Mir prepares to join the College community in celebrating the accomplishments of the Class of 2024 at Commencement, he is looking back on his time on campus with gratitude.

“I was thinking about how Middlesex made me feel like I was part of a community and gave me all the tools I needed. Whether your objective is to go to a four-year school, to take a break, or go straight into the workforce, those tools I got at Middlesex.”

Mir will deliver his remarks to the Class of 2024 at Commencement on May 16, 2024 at Jersey Mike’s Arena at the Rutgers Athletic Center in Piscataway, New Jersey. For more information about the 2024 Commencement Ceremony, visit middlesexcollege.edu/commencement.