{"id":34982,"date":"2026-08-21T14:23:56","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T18:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/necc.edu\/newsroom\/?p=34982"},"modified":"2026-08-21T14:28:38","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T18:28:38","slug":"student-finds-success-through-supportive-faculty-programming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/necc.edu\/newsroom\/2026\/08\/21\/student-finds-success-through-supportive-faculty-programming\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Finds Success Through Supportive Faculty & Programming"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three years ago, NECC Business Transfer<\/a> student Engely Geraldino didn’t know the American school system, didn’t know Northern Essex Community College, and didn’t speak the language of her new home with full confidence. Today, she’s an 18-year-old Early College<\/a> graduate, an NECC Fifth Year Scholar, a recently recognized honoree at the Lawrence Partnership’s Student Recognition Awards, and a community health worker.<\/p>\n

Ask her how she got there, and she doesn’t lead with her grades or her job title. She leads with the people. \"student<\/a><\/p>\n

Geraldino moved to the United States from the Dominican Republic in 2023, arriving as a 15-year-old at Lawrence High School with, in her words, “no idea about anything.” Her path to NECC began with a single class and an English teacher who quickly became more like a mentor. “She saw me actively learning … from scratch,” Geraldino said. “She saw potential in me.”<\/p>\n

That teacher encouraged her to apply to NECC’s Early College program, which lets local high school students take two college-level courses per semester alongside their high school work. Geraldino didn’t fully understand what she was signing up for until after she’d already taken the placement assessment, trusting her new mentor with full confidence. “I went back to her and said, ‘Have you lost your mind?'” she said, laughing. “She just looked at me with the calmest face and said, ‘You’re going to do great.'”<\/p>\n

That leap of faith paid off. Her first two Early College classes \u2014 English Composition and Writing Fusion \u2014 introduced her to college-level writing and to a professor who pushed her to write with the same voice she used to speak. She still remembers the hook of her first essay, asking readers to imagine waking up somewhere entirely unfamiliar, drawn from her own experience of starting over in a new country. “I got to narrate my whole life,” she said.<\/p>\n

When Geraldino graduated from Lawrence High School, choosing NECC<\/a> to continue her education felt less like a decision and more like a return. “It was just natural for me to keep going here,” she said. That path was made possible in part by NECC’s Fifth Year Scholarship, awarded to students who complete a set number of courses with a strong GPA and choose to continue at the college.<\/p>\n

At NECC, Geraldino found a network of mentors who shaped both her coursework and her confidence. She points to Professor Julie Pierce<\/a>, her introductory business instructor, whose classroom “felt like a friendly space.” In accounting, Professor Sheila Muller<\/a> noticed when Geraldino was overwhelmed, balancing coursework with a job and other responsibilities, and built her a customized study plan on the spot. “She would teach like it was a \u2018fun\u2019 subject,” Geraldino remembered. “I started to actually like accounting because of the way she taught.”<\/p>\n

That same web of support extended into her job search through NECC’s Career Services<\/a>. Told by others repeatedly that she was aiming too high for a recent high school graduate with no experience, Geraldino found an ally in advisor Sandra “Sandy” Rochon<\/a>, who pushed back on that narrative. “She told me I deserved to dream big,” Geraldino said. Still, the search wasn’t easy \u2014 after a wave of applications in December, she faced weekly rejections for weeks, “and you start doubting yourself,” she said. Through it all, Rochon stayed in her corner until she received the perfect offer early this summer. Geraldino now works as a community health worker with the Greater Lawrence Family Health Center where she maintains her own office space\u2014something she still is in awe of months later. \u201cObviously, Sandy was the first person I sent a picture of my office to,\u201d Geraldino said. \u201cIt\u2019s just more than I ever prayed for.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Geraldino, support isn’t only encouragement \u2014 it’s also accountability. “I’d say, ‘I’ll do it later.’ And they would come and say, ‘Why are you going to do it later? What if later never comes?'” she said. She described walking into Rochon’s office simply to say she was tired. “They know when I’m tired. They know when I’m struggling. They know when I’ve been studying for weeks to understand something that took someone else two minutes.”<\/p>\n

Geraldino also credits her mentors with teaching her to bring people back into the process, even when she’d disappear into her own work for weeks at a time. “I want them to see the process of what we’re doing together,” she said. That philosophy shaped how she thinks about success itself. “If your success cannot give someone else a chair at the table, that’s just access,” she said. “Success is having people grow with you \u2014 teaching people things that took you a long time to learn, so they don’t have to go through the same struggle you went through.”<\/p>\n

In June, Geraldino was honored at the Lawrence Partnership’s Student Recognition Awards, the first event of its kind she invited people to. “It wasn’t just the ceremony,” she said. “It was what it meant to me, and the people who saw me.”<\/p>\n

Without that network of support, Geraldino said, achievement curdles into exhaustion. “If you don’t have that support, it becomes a burden. You’re just achieving, just doing, just staying there. And at some point, you get burnt out.” But when the push comes from people who know you, the same work feels different, she said. “Someone looking after you, following up with you \u2014 that’s love, too. It is so necessary.”<\/p>\n

Three years after arriving in a country where little was familiar, Geraldino has built something bigger than a r\u00e9sum\u00e9. She’s built a community that saw her potential before she could see it herself \u2014 and she’s determined to do the same for whoever comes next.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three years ago, NECC Business Transfer student Engely Geraldino didn’t know the American school system, didn’t know Northern Essex Community College, and didn’t speak the language of her new home […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":201,"featured_media":34993,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14,15,17,19,20,757],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-headlines","category-programs","category-stories","category-students","category-students-alumni"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStudent Finds Success Through Supportive Faculty & Programming - NECC News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/necc.edu\/newsroom\/2026\/08\/21\/student-finds-success-through-supportive-faculty-programming\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Student Finds Success Through Supportive Faculty & Programming - 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