The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Community college honors students visit Yale
MIDDLETOWN — Middlesex Community College Honors Program students took part in a field trip last week to Yale University in New Haven to learn about the Ivy League school.
Throughout the two-year, flexible program, MxCC honors students hone the leadership, academic and professional skills necessary for transfer, and such field trips provide an added benefit, according to the college.
Associate Professor of English Eva Jones, coordinator of the program, and an admissions tour guide from Yale led the 19 MxCC students on a private tour of the main campus, which included residence halls, the Yale Art Gallery, the Beinecke Library and main library.
“Honors students take their studies and leadership experiences beyond the confines of MxCC’s campus community,” Jones said in a prepared statement. “This helps them make a greater impact no matter where they go after graduation and/or transfer from MxCC. Nearly every trip we plan bears some academic and cultural component.” Most students in the program plan on transferring, so the tours are intended to help them when deciding on which colleges to apply to for admission, Jones said.
“While some of our honors students are interested in making application to Yale, Yale University’s rich history and abundant resources may come in handy to all of our students at some point in their future,” she added.
“I’m impressed by the sense of community and the way campus buildings and residence halls are situated,” Natasha Ramos, a criminal justice MxCC student from Meriden said in the release. “The residence halls face inward and encourage students from different majors to interact with each other,” she said. “Also, you can see that the students are just like us, making me wonder, maybe I have chance to go there one day.”
Business administration major Jeremy Boughton of Middlefield was inspired by the history of the school, he said in the release. “This was my first time visiting Yale. The architecture is beautiful. The experience gave me a feeling of what it might be like to live on a campus, as well as the motivation to keep my grades up,” he said.
The Yale field trip was made possible by the recent establishment of the Dr. Anna Wasescha Honors Program Fund, named in recognition of the former MxCC president who returned to her home state of Minnesota last May.
To learn about the program, visit http://mxcc.edu/ learningoptions /honors-program.