An Institute for Retired Learning (IRP) student Mireya Perez received recognition for her writing, when she was awarded a writing residency at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont for this coming June. She will use the residency to work on a novel-in-progress, Home Leave, about a latina girl, Reyna, who grows up both in her native Colombia and in the United States.

Mireya became a student in New School's IRP program in 2008 upon her retirement from the College of New Rochelle.