Salvatore Casto Is the Brooklyn College Class of 2019 Valedictorian

He is the son of two first-generation college graduates, one of which is a City University of New York alumna; his mother was a graduate of Queens College in 1993. He was born in Rockville Centre and raised in nearby Seaford.

Casto credits his parents with providing an environment that emphasized intellect, humility, and drive. “My mother and father represent the self-motivation and love for life that is born out of sheer resiliency during uncertain times,” he said of his upbringing on Long Island. He also credits his younger sisters, Sophia and Isabella, as influences. “They navigate social terrains and pressures I will never know with strength and integrity.”

He attended Plainedge High School in North Massapequa where he was vice president of the National Honor Society and an ambassador to the Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership Foundation. He was attracted to Brooklyn College because of its comprehensive English department and distinguished faculty.

Casto has a 4.0 GPA and was named to the Dean’s List every semester he has attended Brooklyn College. Highlights of his academic accomplishments include work in a diverse range of endeavors. He was a member of the Honors Academy Scholars Program and often spoke at Scholars Open Houses. Casto also represented the Honors Academy at Middle States Commission on Higher Education events. He interned in the English Majors’ Counseling Office and worked as a writing tutor in the Learning Center. He has published poetry and prose in several issues of The Junction, Brooklyn College’s annual literary magazine created by English majors.

Chosen to speak at the 2018 Northeast Regional Honors Council Conference in Providence, Rhode Island, Casto presented a paper, “Easing into Empathy: A Proposed Introduction of Dramatic Texts to Increase Student Awareness,” which advocates the integration of contemporary plays into secondary school curricula. He recently presented his senior thesis on representations of adolescent identity in contemporary American drama at the 2019 National Conference of Undergraduate Research in Atlanta, Georgia.

Casto has been exceptionally active in the theater world, appearing in more than 70 regional, community, and off-Broadway productions in Long Island and Manhattan. He has appeared in both lead and ensemble roles in works ranging from musical comedies to Shakespearean tragedies. Since 2015, Casto has worked as the piano instructor at the Young Peoples’ Cultural Arts Workshop of Massapequa. He was the education and community outreach intern at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor in 2018. Last summer, he was named a Local Poet of East Hampton.

He aspires to become an English educator and arts administrator in a cultural organization and hopes to teach underrepresented genres and writers.

After receiving his bachelor of arts in English, Casto will take an academic gap year to pursue a position in either an arts organization, humanitarian effort, or political campaign. He will also apply for research fellowships and travel. In graduate school, he plans on studying education and public policy. Says Casto, “the Scholars Program at Brooklyn College gave me the platform to speak about my literacy advocacy at conferences and cemented my commitment to lifelong learning. I will be able to take the skills I acquired in college and pass it on to my peers and future generations.”