Montgomery County Community College provided Esther Chatterpaul-Taylor, Lansdale, the support and education she needed to achieve her goals and realize her dreams.
Chatterpaul-Taylor, a Trinidad and Tobago native, arrived to the United States as an eager 18-year-old, hoping for new opportunities and a better future. Instead, she worked menial jobs because she lacked a green card and married into an abusive relationship. After a difficult divorce left her without stable income, she moved to Montgomery County with her two daughters and enrolled in Human Services and Gerontology at the College.
Returning to school was challenging, but Chatterpaul-Taylor succeeded with the assistance of Act 101, a state-funded academic tutoring grant program.
“Time management was crucial for my success in my studies, and without Act 101’s direction, I would have remained a flustered, overwhelmed adult student trying to do too many things without sufficient tools,” she said.
Now that she completed her associate’s degree at MCCC in May 2011, Chatterpaul-Taylor feels her long-held dreams are finally coming true. She has been accepted at Gwynedd Mercy College, where she will start working toward a bachelor’s degree in Human Services.
“The most important aspect of my academic journey was the support of professors, tutors and faculty who went out of their way to aide my studies with direction, positive acknowledgements, reinforced structures of discipline and sincere care and affection,” she shared. “I felt very much surrounded by positive, caring and capable enablers, which allowed me to blossom and thrive in the new friendly waters of the College.”
Human Services is just one of more than 85 programs that students can complete at MCCC’s Central Campus, located at 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell, and one of more than 30 programs at MCCC’s West Campus, 101 College Drive, Pottstown. Registration is going on now for the fall semester, which begins on Aug. 31 and runs through Dec. 20.
New students can learn about the admissions and registration processes by visiting
www.mc3.edu/admissions or by calling 610-718-1800 (West Campus) or 215-641-6300 (Central Campus).
Returning students can register for classes online via WebAdvisor, by mail or in person at the College’s campuses. For more information, visit
www.mc3.edu/admissions/registration.
To learn more about MCCC and to see all the College has to offer, schedule a visit to one of our campuses. Visits can now be scheduled online at
www.mc3.edu/admissions/visiting.
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by Diane VanDyke
