Ryan Biggs ’22 (BFA)

The Albert Hadley Scholarship Helped this Veteran Stay In College While Raising His Infant

Ryan Biggs first discovered his interest in interiors when he was serving a tour of duty as a military translator on a submarine. At that time, he had 15-feet of personal space where he began to think about scale and maximizing tiny areas. After an honorable discharge, Biggs studied at the Culinary Institute of America, but found what he liked best about working in restaurants was the atmosphere created by design. When he found his way to NYSID, this spatial thinker knew he’d landed on what he wanted to do. When the first wave of COVID-19 hit New York in 2021, Biggs and his wife moved out of the city, into his sister-in-law’s home in a Boston suburb, so that their newborn baby would be less likely to be exposed. Gone were the paid internship opportunities Biggs hoped to pursue in New York.

Biggs and his family eventually moved back to New York and his wife returned to work full time, but her income wasn’t enough to keep them afloat and also pay for tuition. Biggs thought he would have to go back to work full-time instead of finishing his studies, but he submitted an application and received the Albert Hadley Scholarship. He said, “It’s a rare thing for a father to get to be in college and be at home to take care of his baby, but that’s what I was able to do, three days a week, thanks to this scholarship. I got to move my life forward and provide a better future for my family. I would not have been able to go to school full-time without this scholarship.”