As Jaaliyah Rodriguez entered her senior year at Central Catholic High School in Lawrence, Mass., she wasn’t sure if she could attend college. She had a lot on her plate already.
Two years earlier, her mom had been hospitalized with Crohn’s disease. At home, it was Rodriguez who changed her colostomy bag and interacted with a team of travel nurses. As she balanced school with caretaking, she dreamed of becoming a gastrointestinal nurse herself.
“I wanted to give back to the people who gave to my mom,” she says.
Unlocking a world of possibility
Jaaliyah Rodriguez on Messina College campus. Photo: Tony Rinaldo
Rodriguez contemplated taking a gap year, then enrolling in college courses close to home. But when Boston College undergraduate admissions counselor Owen Grover visited Central Catholic to spotlight the new Messina College, she saw another path forward.
Messina offers a two-year associate’s degree program housed on BC’s Brookline Campus, formerly Pine Manor College. Launched in 2024, students have all the advantages of BC in a small, supportive setting. Unlike other associate’s degree programs, Messina is residential, and students can track directly into BC or another institution for a bachelor’s degree after graduation. The school enrolls 100 first-generation, high-financial-need students each year. At Messina, students choose from four pathways: applied data science, applied psychology and human development, business, or health sciences. Each major has a collaborating BC school; each class requires BC’s high level of scholarship.
Rodriguez recognized herself in Grover’s description of the ideal Messina student: motivated and persistent, with opportunity gaps that might make a college education seem unattainable.
“He explained how Messina is a two-year program for students who might not have the chance to show their full potential due to life circumstances,” she says. “I thought that it sounded like an awesome opportunity—a way for me to get into a school that could help my future.”
First-year Health Sciences students in discussion group. Photo: Tony Rinaldo
Rodriguez joined the inaugural class in 2024 and today she is in her second year in Messina’s health sciences program, where students can opt to focus either on nursing or public health. Her curriculum is designed by faculty from the Connell School of Nursing (CSON), and the core curriculum is identical to that of her fellow nursing undergraduates in BC’s four-year program.
“We’re leveraging the opportunity with one of the best undergraduate nursing programs in the country, ensuring that there’s direct alignment for students who want to pursue a health care career,”
—Erick Berrelleza, S.J.
Founding Dean, Messina College
Two campuses, one mission
The Messina mission harkens back to BC’s 19th-century origins as a college that welcomed Irish immigrants when Ivy League institutions were beyond reach. For founding Dean Erick Berrelleza, S.J., it is also personal. The child of Mexican immigrants, he was once a first-generation college student, too. He grasped the specific cultural, financial, and academic barriers that less advantaged students might confront at an elite university, and he understood that Messina’s curriculum needed to combine academic rigor with strong social support.
Messina College Dean Erick Berrelleza, S.J. Photo: Frank Curran
“When we thought about Messina’s mission—to serve first-generation students with high financial need—we designed a model that uniquely focuses on the students’ experience and provides the robust and holistic support that they need to succeed,” he explains. “In many ways, the mission at Messina is no different from the work that we do at the broader University: a transformative education that seeks to create citizens for the world who are aware of their gifts and where their contributions in the world might be.”
Genevieve Green (center) Photo: Tony Rinaldo
Genevieve Green makes that mission come alive as Messina’s associate director of student success. Coordinating with CSON and the other BC undergraduate schools, Green bridges the gap between Brookline and Chestnut Hill, overseeing Messina’s mentoring, academic support, and tutoring programs. The model encourages belonging: Messina students are scheduled into facilitated weekly group-study sessions with peer tutors. Counseling services are available for drop-ins, no appointments necessary. CSON’s Seacole Scholars, peer leaders from the Chestnut Hill Campus who are also first-generation students, visit Brookline to chat about navigating college life. If students choose to complete a bachelor’s degree at CSON after graduating from Messina, they are guaranteed campus housing.
“We create systems that are more seamless for our students, so they don’t have to hunt down the support they need.
“This is all heart here, across campuses. Everyone is excited about the opportunity to build something.”
—Genevieve Green
Associate Director of Student Success
Messina College
Rodriguez remembers feeling nervous stepping onto campus—and daunted by the 3.4 GPA necessary to enter BC as a junior. Before she came to Messina, she lacked academic role models; now she has several. She recalls the intensity of an anatomy class with Messina Assistant Professor of the Practice Antonio Serrato-Capuchina, who is also a Messina academic advisor. He was committed to her success.
“He wanted us to make sure that we knew we were supported. He didn’t just teach something and then move on. He gained personal connections with us, and he’s still someone we can talk to about anything that’s troubling us,” she says. “That’s really different from any high school or even college. I feel like, in other colleges, it might be a bigger class, and you might get lost in the shuffle a little bit. Here, professors know you personally. This made it easier for me to be calm and know that, no matter what path I go through, I’ll succeed.”
Antonio-Serrato Capuchina teaches three students in his Anatomy and Physiology Lab at Messina College. Photo: Caitlin Cunningham
Intellectual rigor and wrap-around support
Amy Alvarez, First-year writing seminar Photo: Caitlin Cunningham
Some of Rodriguez’s most memorable moments have unfolded in the classroom. In a writing seminar with Messina Associate Professor of the Practice Amy Alvarez, she felt she could open up about her past, and she felt she was seen holistically, in true BC tradition.
“She connects with you. She reads your writing, and she makes sure that you feel validated,” Rodriguez says. “I was writing about Central Catholic and private schools, where I felt like I didn’t fit in as well as I could have. I never felt judged. She validated my feelings, although not everyone might understand them.”
Colleen Simonelli with a student
At Messina, the academics, small class sizes, and faculty mentorship are identical to the student experience in Chestnut Hill. Green works closely with Colleen Simonelli, CSON’s associate dean for student services and professor of the practice, to keep connections between the two schools strong.
“I’m really keen to make sure that they feel very much a part of the community and that sense of belonging that we really pride ourselves on in the School of Nursing,” Simonelli says. “Messina College is providing an additional avenue to increase the health care workforce with a strong Jesuit foundation in the liberal arts and the rigor of the Connell School curriculum.”
To that end, second-year Messina students take classes such as pharmacology and nutrition alongside their CSON nursing classmates and complete clinicals alongside their peers during their sophomore spring semester. Some classes, however, are intentionally spread out. For example, because chemistry and anatomy are both taxing courses, Messina students take one during the school year and another over the summer, a thoughtful design tweak that boosts confidence.
“Their success in chemistry provides them with the confidence to perform better in anatomy. Helping them build the self-efficacy to succeed is incredibly valuable. The students say, ‘OK, I can handle this,’” Simonelli says.
Transforming the health care landscape
After Messina, students are uniquely positioned to help alleviate the shortage of U.S. health care professionals and reduce the burden on the U.S. health care system. To that end, they can complete a bachelor’s degree at Boston College or transfer to a school with a BC partnership agreement, such as Regis College, University of Massachusetts Lowell, and Albertus Magnus College, among others. Or they can begin a career as an emergency room technician or as a nursing, medical, or patient care assistant.
“Regardless of pathway, these students will care for some of the most vulnerable people in our communities and do it with a unique cultural competency and humility,” Green says. “And they deserve this opportunity. They’ve earned it.”
Rodriguez is now on her way to earning a nursing degree, and she’s eager to share Messina’s mission with students back home in Lawrence, where she was once uncertain if she’d ever attend college.
“I wish people knew how unique an opportunity and a community this is. When you come to a place like Messina, you have a family, even if you don’t know everyone,” she says. “People genuinely care about you. They want to see you succeed. Messina is about people, connections, personal relationships, and joy. Everyone here has a passion for helping students, and you see that every day.”
Messina College students on Brookline campus Photo: Frank Curran