When Melanie Montoya entered Santiago Canyon College in the fall of 2018, she wasn’t sure where her higher education journey would take her. Coming from a high school experience that admittedly wasn’t filled with much success, she hoped that community college would give her the chance to start over and rewrite that path.
Today, having earned an associate degree from SCC and bachelor’s degrees in English and ethnic studies from San Francisco State, Montoya is currently completing her master’s degree in English at Cal State Long Beach.
Additionally, under the guidance of a CSULB professor, Montoya is one step closer to her goal of becoming a college professor herself as she teaches a freshman composition class this semester. She has also returned to SCC as an embedded tutor for English courses — opportunities she credits to the experience she had while at SCC.
“For the first time, I really felt like I was being supported, and school became this place for me where I felt like I actually belonged,” Montoya said of her time at SCC. “I wasn’t just trying to get to the next goal post of finishing this class and graduating, but I really started to enjoy my time there.”
With a lifelong love of reading and writing, and as a first-generation college student who learned English as a second language, Montoya began envisioning a future teaching English to others. Inspired by her SCC professors, she took something she once saw as a weakness and turned it into a strength.
“English is not my first language, and I’d always seen that as kind of a deficit,” Montoya said. “But a lot of my (SCC) professors challenged that way of thinking and instead made me see English and my experience with ESL as something that could be positive and actually an advantage.”
One of the professors who brought the classroom to life for Montoya was SCC English professor Nidzara Pecenkovic, whose student-centered approach to teaching connected with Montoya in a way she had never experienced in high school.
Now, Montoya serves as an embedded tutor in Pecenkovic’s English 101 course.
“At SCC, it was a very different learning community,” Montoya said. “Especially in my English courses. … I wasn’t just being taught by Nidzara, but I was being taught by my classmates. … There was a joy in learning that I hadn’t felt in a really long time, even in classes where I struggled. The professors really try to make things collaborative and get students as engaged as they can. That was beneficial for me.”
Another connection Montoya made while at SCC was with English professor Sara Gonzalez. As her first exposure to a Latina English teacher, Gonzalez not only provided important representation for Montoya, but she inspired her career path.
“I had never pictured myself teaching in a college classroom, but when I met Sara, she gave me so much guidance and support … that I started thinking I would like to come back and teach at community college,” Montoya said.
It was Gonzalez who recommended that Montoya pursue the master’s program at CSULB, where she is currently gaining invaluable classroom experience.
“My time at SCC made me super interested in education because it really challenged me,” Montoya said. “Both Nidzara and Sara have given me so many opportunities that I wouldn’t have had before.”
By choosing to pursue teaching, Montoya gained access to SCC’s Pathways to Teaching Program, a resource for students interested in becoming teachers. The program provides specialized advising, workshops and campus field trips to help students successfully transfer to a four-year institution and earn their teaching credential. It was that program’s support that led her to San Francisco State.
“The community and support I found at SCC while I was a student was really impactful to my education and my overall career goals and plans,” Montoya said.
During her time at SCC, Montoya also received significant support from her family, including her twin sister, Millie, who completed her bachelor’s degree at UC Santa Cruz and currently works in the Transfer Student Center at UCI. The sisters attended SCC at the same time and shared similar positive experiences.
“We both had such a special time there together,” Montoya said. “We both enrolled at the same time and were able to take some classes together, so that was a really fun experience for us.”
As she completes her master’s degree this December with a specialization in 19th-century English literature, Montoya hopes to return to her alma mater as a professor and pay forward the opportunities she received to the next generation of SCC students.
“I had such a special experience of going to community college, and I think SCC has such a great culture,” Montoya said. “All of the professors I had when I went to SCC were super welcoming and caring and passionate, and I would love to be a part of that community.”