A Degree and a Graduation 60 Years in the Making

Lois Livreri

By Kenna Caprio

May 8, 2026 — In 1966, Lois Livreri left Hunter College after her junior year to get married. In 2026, she will graduate from Fairleigh Dickinson University with her bachelor’s degree in individualized studies.

“A career wasn’t really the most important thing for me at the time — I thought I would eventually be a stay-at-home mom when I had children,” Livreri says. But that didn’t happen.

In the meantime, to save money, her husband suggested she find a job and quit school. She found a clerical position at a brokerage firm on Wall Street. Within six years, she had her children, divorced her first husband and started to work full-time in the operations department of a brokerage firm in New Jersey. And she had ambitions — even if her coworkers and bosses didn’t believe in her.

“In 1977, I approached the head of the sales department and told him I wanted to go into sales. His response was ‘we don’t have women brokers!’” She didn’t back down. Eventually, she was allowed to take the Series 7 exam which would qualify her to be a stockbroker. “After a lot of studying and juggling being a single mother, I took the exam and passed. At the office Christmas party, the boss took me aside and said, ‘if I thought you were going to pass it, I would never have let you take it!’ I began my new career as a stockbroker, without any encouragement or help from management,” says Livreri. “But I persevered and showed them that I could be effective, honest and as it turned out, very good at sales. In fact, the boss did a complete 180 — he backed me and said, ‘the best people to hire are single mothers.’ Thirty-five years later, after achieving the title of first vice president, I retired. But, in the back of my mind, I always regretted not having finished college.”

At one time, she had considered night school at Montclair State University, but decided against it, as she was raising her children and had just remarried.

“My clients, my colleagues and my friends never knew that I didn’t finish my undergraduate degree. We would talk about where we were when we found out about President John F. Kennedy’s assassination (in a philosophy class at college), or what our major was (psychology), but no one ever outright asked me when I graduated, or what my degree was in. They just assumed,” says Livreri.

“Years later, on the way home from my daughter’s college graduation, I began to cry. My husband asked me why — ‘Chana (Livreri’s daughter) has a degree, Mark (Livreri’s son) has one and is in law school, you have a degree and a law degree. I’m the only one in the family without a degree.’ It bothered me for many years.”

Another chance would come, but Livreri didn’t know it at the time.

In 2024, Bruce Peabody, professor of government and politics and director of the Florham Institute for Lifelong Learning (FILL), visited a 55+ community in Florham Park, N.J., to talk about the FILL program. Livreri was in the audience.

“He casually mentioned that FDU could offer degrees to those who wanted to complete their college education. A spark was lit! I proceeded to contact the admissions department, got my transcripts from Hunter forwarded, and I was accepted into the online program where I would get a Bachelor of Arts in Individualized Studies,” she says.

The online program really appealed to her, allowing her to work at her own speed and to rest her foot, which she’d recently had surgery on.

In her first semester, Fall 2024, she took two classes and found the workload and assignments manageable. “Not only did I get an A in each course, but I realized I could handle another class. So, in the Spring 2025, I took three. Again, I got an A in each.” She took two more in Fall 2025, earning As again, and now is completing her final three courses.

“The most difficult challenge was learning terminology and acclimating to the computer. I had no idea what a scholarly source was, nor what peer review meant,” says Livreri.
“I made a trip to the Florham Campus library, made friends with Eleanor Friedl, a research and instruction librarian, who was an enormous help to me and I learned.”

As graduation day approaches, Livreri says, “my years of experience and views on many things have helped in my assignments. My favorite part of this whole odyssey has been my realization that I can do anything if I put my mind to it.”

She plans to attend the 2026 graduation ceremony at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J.

“My family and friends are as proud of me as I am of myself. My daughter has insisted on throwing a party!”