Melissa Cedeño

Melissa Cedeño has served as the director of the University at Albany’s Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) since December 2021. She is a Brooklyn native, a UAlbany EOP alum (‘94), proud parent of a UAlbany alum (‘15) and a longtime champion of educational access. 

Over the past two decades, Ms. Cedeño has developed and led multiple education programs, including founding new charter high schools in Brooklyn and Albany. She has been a teacher, principal, school dean and educational consultant, and taught writing at UAlbany’s EOP. Most recently she was managing director of family and community engagement of DREAM, a network of New York charter schools. 

Ms. Cedeño graduated from UAlbany in 1994 with a bachelor’s degree in English and went on to earn a master’s degree in English education from Teachers College at Columbia University in 1996. She completed the Simmons School of Management’s Strategic Leadership for Women Program and received the Redefined Principal Program Certificate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. 

She knows firsthand the transformational power EOP offers UAlbany students and is proud to return to a program that prepares so many to succeed academically, professionally and personally.