The chances that Ben Gentile would one day graduate college with honors seemed pretty unlikely 25 years ago, when, as a member of the gang the Adams Boys, he knocked heads with such tough crews as the Chingalings and Rock Steady in the Belmont section of the Bronx. Even more remote was the notion that his life goal would one day be to get a doctorate in religious studies and teach at a college like Mount Saint Vincent.

“Most of the guys that I ran with, about 20 of them, are either dead or in jail right now,” says Gentile, now 42 and halfway through a master’s degree in religion at Drew University. “Only about three of them aren’t.”

At the age of 30, Gentile decided he would enroll at the College. With a full-time job and sometimes as many as three jobs, Gentile took eight and a half years to complete his bachelor’s degree—a double major in history and religious studies.

“Early on, I don’t know how I would have handled it had people at the Mount not been so welcoming,” he says. “They did a terrific job of making adult students feel like they belonged.”

Well along the path to his doctorate, Gentile now wants to provide the same level of support to college students interested in religion.

“Religion is often marginalized at institutions of higher education in this country,” he says. “I want to be there for those kids.”