Hi my name is April Harris-Snyder. I am the Center Director of Lackawanna College in Hazleton. The Lackawanna College Hazleton Center is a great place for students to gain upper mobility in their lives.
Hi my name is Ashley Perez and I am the enrollment specialist and academic advisor. My role at the Hazleton Center is to enroll students and assist in guiding them throughout their development with us to make sure that they are able to achieve the goal they have set for themselves.
The most important goal that I had for the center was to create a Hispanic serving institution. A lot of our students that come here are first generation immigrants so a lot of times its the first time that anybody in their family has ever gone to college. So we tend to focus on what are the needs within the Hazelton community and because of that our ESL program tends to play a really big part in being that bridge, and just meeting that gap that there is sometimes with individuals who have English as a second language.
We are the first one in the state to offer to a ESL to Customer Service Certification. That program has just been remarkable. The students take 10 weeks of English language that then specifically targets the language in the customer service program so that they can float into that seamlessly, get a word certification, and then make themselves more marketable in the job field.
But we also have a really neat contact with certain organizations as the Dominican house and as well as the Hazleton integration project, and we have been able to actually have students do certain externships with them in such a way that they can give back to the community and kind of just develop themselves even more in the professional field.
I want all of our students that come to Lackawanna Hazleton Center to know that we care about them and we’re here for them, from beginning to end. Their successes are our successes so when they do really well, we feel like we do well in exchange. For us to be able to give them that support and that guidance, it is extremely rewarding to see that it helps them truly become who they have wanted to be.