By Samantha Mocle

Melissa Melendez ’99 was an “A” student throughout high school in Lawrence, Massachusetts — yet, after the birth of her son, Raheem, in March of her senior year, she was told to apply for welfare instead of applying to college.

“They told me that I had ruined my opportunities, and I believed it,” she says.

Thanks to an advocate at the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA), Melendez learned about and applied to Lasell College’s Parent and Child Together (PACT) program, which ran from 1989 to 1999. Through PACT, single mothers attended classes in pursuit of a degree while their children went to the Barn or other local daycare programs. Designated housing allowed the families to live together with a social worker, in lieu of a traditional resident assistant, who provided life-skills training.

Though Melendez’s path might be considered nontraditional, she never felt like an outsider on campus.

“I felt engrained in the community. I started a club, hosted events, and never felt like a separate entity because I was there with my son,” she says. “It was a beautiful place to raise children.”

Melendez graduated with a bachelor’s degree in human services and a minor in adolescent psychology and worked for the Massachusetts Department of Children & Families for 10 years before earning a master’s degree in social work from Salem State. Years later, her journey has come full circle — she is now the principal of the ninth grade academy at Lawrence High School and encourages students like herself who have significant potential regardless of their circumstances.

“It is my why,” she says. “I didn’t think that I would become a principal, but I always knew that I wanted to work with teens so that they could see themselves in someone else doing the work.”

She is grateful to Lasell for providing her and her fellow PACT graduates with a framework for success and the resources to achieve it.

“Our lives were changed,” she says. “I wouldn’t be where I am today if I didn’t have the opportunities I had at Lasell.”

Image by Todd Dionne