Melanie Valladares is a proud Cuban American student pursuing an associate in arts in engineering at Hillsborough Community College Dale Mabry Campus.
Born in Havana, Cuba, she moved to the U.S. at the age of three. She graduated from Leto High School in 2019 and enrolled at HCC that fall, after already having taken classes at the College as a dual-enrolled student.
After graduating from high school, Melanie had no major in mind, and she didn’t know what future she wanted to build for herself.
“As I compared myself to my peers, I convinced myself I wasn’t good enough and that I would be rejected by universities if I applied. Because of that, I didn’t even bother to send out any applications.”
“At HCC, I got in touch with advisors who offered me great advice and found myself connecting with all the right people who have been helping me get ahead as a student.”
After attending the Women’s Conference of Florida through HCC’s Honor’s Program, Melanie started to see her future more clearly.
“I met women who had similar stories as me, who didn’t feel like they were confident enough or qualified to achieve the goals they had set for themselves. Hearing their stories made it clear to me that success wasn’t impossible.”
Melanie represents a small percentage of Latinx females pursuing higher education in the field of STEM.
Through an HCC advisor, she was introduced to HCC biotechnology professor, Dr. Debarati Ghosh, who at the time was conducting her doctoral research focused on minorities in STEM programs and careers.
After further networking, Melanie was introduced to Dr. Sarina Ergas, the Director of Graduate Studies at the University of South Florida Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Sheyla Chero-Osorio, a Peruvian international graduate student at USF.
This past summer, Melanie worked alongside them both as an undergraduate researcher on an environmental engineering research project titled “Implementation of Carbon Removal Wastewater Pretreatment to Promote Mainstream Anammox Activity” as part of USF’s Summer Undergraduate Environmental Research Symposium.
From the abstract, “The overall goal of this project is to promote an effective pretreatment for new sustainable technologies to lessen the energy needed in conventional BNR to divert to other energy-deficient sectors.”
Melanie says she will continue working on the research project throughout the fall and possibly through 2022.
As she reflects on working as an undergraduate researcher at USF, having a part-time job and being enrolled at HCC full-time, she says, “How do I stay on top of it all? Honestly, I have no idea,” she laughed.
“Growing up, education was really put in the spotlight for me. I grew up in a single-parent household where I saw my mother working three jobs and going to school at night to learn English. I know the struggles she endured to raise me by herself. Education was always set as my priority because in my experience, in this country, you can’t get anywhere without some type of education.
It’s been difficult, but my future is something I’m willing to make time for.”
From HCC, Melanie would like to thank Dr. Debarati Ghosh and Dr. Don Soash, and from USF she would like to thank her mentors, Dr. Sarina Ergas and Sheyla Chero-Osorio, for all playing a huge role in her journey to finding her place out in the professional world.
As a word of advice to other women or minorities who want to pursue STEM, she says, “Don’t let your grades or an SAT or ACT score determine the rest of your life. A number on a piece of paper doesn’t determine how intelligent you are or what you’re capable of doing. Actions speak louder than words and they speak louder than numbers, and that’s coming from a math major,” she laughed.
“Something I’ve learned along the way is to say yes to every opportunity that comes your way. No matter how small, take it and run; you’ll figure out the logistics later. You never know what doors are opening if you don’t take the chance.”
Looking towards the future, she plans to pursue her master’s degree in environmental engineering. She has her heart set on applying to the University of Florida, the University of South Florida and Florida State University.