When lifelong Albany resident Joan Dembinski decided she wanted to go to culinary school at the age of 71 after retiring from a 50-year career in pharmaceutical research, she contacted SUNY Schenectady. The school asked her how many credits she hoped to take. She wanted to get the degree.
“I said, ‘Do you take old people? I want to be a chef,’” Dembinski, now 88, recalled with a glimmer in her eyes.
She became the school’s “star pupil” and was a near-perfect student, earning all A’s except for an A- in cake decorating, said Susan Hatalsky, who taught the course at the time…