Where You Want to Be

With the right support, student Alondra Serrano takes a big leap

Her long black hair pulled back tight into a bun, the young student, scalpel in hand, stared down at the laboratory table as still as the expired creatures pinned to her team’s dissection tray, a freshwater clam with its guts exposed and an earthworm about to suffer the same fate.  

“I’ve never done any of this before,” she said, explaining her hesitation. “I’ve never dissected anything. I’m learning something that I’ve never seen.” 

As a student last fall in General Zoology, Alondra Serrano saw a lot she’d never seen and learned even more, about herself as well as biology, her new major. A year ago, Serrano was three semesters deep into her HCC education and about halfway to an associate’s degree in business administration, which she chose because it could be completed entirely online. 

“I started during the pandemic,” she said, “and I have a daughter, so coming to campus wasn’t a choice for me. I didn’t have anybody to take care of her, and daycare’s pretty expensive. My husband works. One income is not a lot, but we didn’t qualify for a voucher. At that point, all I could do was take online classes, so business seemed like the perfect match for me.” 

And then… 

In the summer of 2022, HCC opened the Itsy Bitsy Child Watch, a free service for student-parents who need care for their children while they are on campus and in class. For many current and would-be HCC students, the earth shook with new possibilities.

Suddenly free from the bonds of stay-at-home motherhood, Serrano enrolled in an on-campus summer course to fulfill a lab science requirement. She chose STEM Explorations, a free program offered through the college’s STEM Starter Academy. The class provides an overview of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) and, through hands-on classwork, lectures, and field trips, exposes students to specific STEM subjects, such as robotics, environmental science, geology, statistics, and marine biology.

“STEM Starter Academy reminded me of the passion that I had for science,” said Serrano, who had been an honors student at Paulo Freire Social Justice Charter School in Holyoke. “I remembered how great it was to be in a classroom and learning my favorite subject of always, which is biology.”

Serrano was one of the first HCC students to sign up for the child watch program. Her daughter, Anna, turned 2 in December. 

“They take great care of her,” Serrano said. “When she started, she barely talked. Now she talks a lot. She’s very social – not like me. She loves drawing. She likes to play and talk to everybody.” 

STEM Starter Academy did more for Serrano than remind her of her love for biology. It showed her what an education and career in STEM could offer.  

Two moments from that summer stand out. One was a field trip to Boston’s New England Aquarium, a place she’d never been. Her eyes light up with the memory. “I always wanted to go,” she said. “My daughter was with me. She just kept pointing at the fishes and the turtles.”

The second, also a class trip, was an excursion to a biology lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where researchers were using zebrafish to study neural pathways in hopes of developing therapies for people prone to seizures.  

“Oh, I loved that one,” Serrano said. “It was my favorite. That actually helped me decide that I wanted to be in the biology field. It was very – how you say it? – inspiring, because I got to see the equipment and all the technology that was used to support the research.”

Melissa Paciulli, a STEM advisor and one of the field trip organizers, could see the spark as the idea revealed itself. 

“She left with a big smile on her face, like, oh, wow, this is awesome; this is what I want to do,” said Paciulli. 

During the summer course, Serrano was also introduced to HCC’s STEM Scholars Program and learned that if she changed her major to biology, she would be eligible to apply a scholarship from the National Science Foundation, which is available to STEM students at HCC through a competitive application process. If awarded, she would have all her college expenses covered, including tuition and fees. 

To do that, though, she would have to give up most of the credits she’d earned as a business major and essentially start over. 

“I find her fearless in that sense, taking that leap of faith, being open to letting people guide her in that decision,” said Irma Medina, coordinator of the Pathways transfer program and one of Serrano’s many HCC advisors. “For a lot of students, that is scary, the unknown of it, especially science and where that might lead, and, more importantly, how it relates to financial aid, which is often limited.” 

By the time she returned for the fall 2022 semester, Serrano had made the leap and been rewarded. She started the new academic year as an HCC STEM scholar.   

“When I found out, it was crazy, because I’m the first in my family to go to college,” she said. “I’m the first to get a scholarship. I come from a low-income family. It was all very impacting on me because I didn’t think I would ever be able to go to college. The scholarship gave me the courage to see something else in me.”

Born in Puerto Rico, Serrano grew up living mostly with her mother, who, she said, struggled to maintain a stable home life for her and her sisters. Often homeless, they moved back and forth between Puerto Rico and western Massachusetts, often staying with relatives. “I was always like one year there, one year here,” she said. “It was really hard because I couldn’t catch both languages. My Spanish isn’t that great. But neither is my English. I’m a little bit of both.”

Nevertheless, she graduated high school with a GPA of 3.9, even though there were times she had thought of dropping out, times when members of her own family urged her to drop out. But for one teacher – always available for a hug – and her boyfriend, José, now her husband, she probably would have. “I’ve known him since I was 14,” she said. “He has been my most support. He said, you’re not dropping out. Those two kept me going.”

When it came time for college, she and José struck a deal. She would go first. He would support her with his job as a machine operator. Then it would be his turn. Her unexpected pregnancy didn’t foil their plans. But Serrano felt obligated to pursue a degree she knew would quickly produce income, and she was already making some money at home selling clothes online. 

“Because we had a baby at an early age, we had to figure out how to get where we want to be,” she said. “I went for business because I wanted to open my own business.”

Last summer, she sat at the proverbial crossroads. “I was like, this is the time for me to decide,” she said. “I could stay with the business degree, but I didn’t feel happy where I was.”

Business classes were easy for her, said Serrano, who had regularly made the Dean’s List. As someone who struggles with math, though, science, she knew, would be more challenging.  

“When I was first coming to college, people in my family were like, ‘you’re not going to make it, you think it’s easy?’ she said. “Well, I’m the kind of person that thinks it’s not about it being easy. It’s about how far are you willing to go in life? I’m willing to go far and make my life be successful because I don’t want the history that I had as a child to repeat in my adulthood. The only way I can do that is working hard. And it’s not always about working hard, but also working smart. Smart decisions bring you to where you are in life on the good path.”

HCC, she said, was a smart decision. Choosing STEM was another.  

“I feel like I’m breaking the poverty cycle in my life,” she said. “Just being here in college is changing my life every day.”

For the fall 2022 semester, Serrano took four classes, two online and two in person. Each week, Monday through Thursday, while she attended her English and zoology classes on campus, Serrano dropped her daughter off at Itsy Bitsy Child Watch on the first floor of the Marieb Building. So far, HCC is one of only two community colleges in Massachusetts to offer a free child watch service for its students. She can’t imagine life without it now.

“If there was no daycare,” Serrano said, “I could not come to school.”  

Besides the financial benefits of being a STEM Scholar, Serrano also became part of a learning community that incorporates mentoring, undergraduate research opportunities, honors coursework, community service, and internships. 

“That feeling of belonging is so important when you talk about STEM success,” said HCC math professor Ileana Vasu, coordinator of the HCC STEM Scholars program. “We’re a really close family and very proud of our STEM community mentors and students.” 

Serrano is happy to be part of it. 

“I have so many people guiding me,” she said. “It’s awesome to have people that want to help you succeed and show you ways to succeed. I feel like I’m fulfilling my full potential in life, in my personal life, in my education life, and it’s great. It’s more than great.”  

So far so good. She passed all her fall semester classes – three A’s and a B.