Everyone is a first-generation student at this new Massachusetts college

Editor’s note: This article has been updated from its original version to clarify the agreement terms between Pine Manor College and Boston College.

To Messina College student Ryan Pina, going to college isn’t something he wants to do just for himself. It’s something he wants to achieve for his entire family — something to make them proud.

“My mom is an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, so she came here for opportunity and to give her kids an opportunity. So I wanted to make the most out of that and I want to make her happy,” said 17-year-old Pina, who attended the Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter Public School in Boston.

Pina’s outlook is similar to many of the incoming class of students at the newly formed Messina College, a two-year associate degree program born out of Boston College. The college serves first-generation high-financial-need students at the former Pine Manor College campus in Brookline.

The college opened its doors in July to its inaugural class of 110 students. The summer classes are intended to help students adjust to the expectations of higher education and allow them to take fewer classes during the academic year.

Messina College’s formation comes about amid a tumultuous time in higher education.

As the price tag of colleges mounts, many colleges and universities are facing downward enrollment trends in part because of declining birth rates — meaning fewer people are applying to and enrolling in college.

Hampshire College, Brandeis University and Emerson College have announced financial issues stemming from low enrollment — resulting in cuts and layoffs. Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy announced it would be closing its doors due to “significant financial headwinds.”

From 2014 to 2022, 24 colleges and universities in the Commonwealth closed, merged or wound down operations, according to the state Department of Higher Education.

“It’s not every day that a new school is being founded, right?” said Erick Berrelleza, Messina’s founding dean. “More often than not, we see schools being shuttered.”

Higher education has also been in the public eye for conflicts on campus including over antisemitism and the war in Gaza. Some of this controversy has led to the resignations of presidents at Harvard, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania.

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Nearly 300 students applied to the Messina College and 117 were accepted. The college expects to have an undergraduate population of around 200 students on its Brookline campus once the second class begins in a year. The application process for the second cohort begins this fall.

The first class of students come largely from Greater Boston, Framingham, Worcester, Lawrence, Lowell, Brockton, Fall River and Springfield. Ten students are from out of state.

Most students take on a $2,000 loan and are offered a campus job to help pay for their education. Boston College meets the full demonstrated need of all its undergraduate students, including Messina College students.

For Pina, the financial aid offered through Boston College was one of the deciding factors in choosing the institution.

“No matter what school I got into ... I had to put my family first and this school — it helped me and my family out so much,” Pina said.

‘I’m not alone’

On a Thursday morning in August, as some students sit in classrooms, cricket and construction noises softly rumble as Boston College continues to tinker with its new campus.

Bright orange ladders and construction vehicles are scattered throughout parts of campus, contrasting with the elegant architecture of buildings. The Great Hall, formerly known as the Dane Estate, awaits visitors who make it past the security booth.

The purple and orange mansion — replete with rounded towers, stone columns and intricate window dormers — is now home to administrative offices, a small library and workroom and a couple of classrooms. Peeking out of a corner, there’s a piano. If you look hard enough at the floor-to-ceiling carved wood walls, there are concealed doors leading to hidden safes that now hold office supplies.

Seventeen-year-old Messina College student Stacy Jean said she can’t help but compare the mansion with a building from Harry Potter’s Hogwarts.

Now The Great Hall and Messina’s campus is becoming a place she can call home.

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Jean said being surrounded by first-generation students and administrators has made her feel supported.

“That gave me a sense of, oh wow, I’m not alone in this journey — that there’s other people that understand what I’m going through too, and they have my back to support me,” said Jean, who attended TechBoston Academy.

Jean said the professors take their time to get to know the students and learn all of their names within the second day of being there.

• Read more: ‘They just won’t come’: Here’s what higher ed leaders fear from FAFSA delay

The gradual transition into college during the summer is something Jean said has allowed her and other first-generation Messina students to grasp being in college without it “blowing up in your face.”

Pina agreed, saying he knew Messina was unique upon his first visit.

“They knew my name as soon as I walked in. And it was surprising. It’s like they took their time out of their day to know who I am personally,” Pina said, adding that “those little things just do so much to a person.”

A focus on underrepresented students

The mission and environment at Messina College is a big draw to low-income, first-generation students across the state and beyond.

Max George, Boston Collegiate Charter School’s director of college programming, said Messina College’s timing was perfect following the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2023 ruling against the use of affirmative action in higher education.

Affirmative action was created to increase access for underrepresented people by allowing institutions to consider the race or ethnicity of an applicant in the admissions process. Following the decision, colleges and universities can no longer consider those factors for student admissions.

“We definitely had students who, going through the application process, were kind of shook by that [decision]. Not in the sense that it caused them to doubt their preparation or the quality of their application, but it just kind of seemed almost like a statement against their right to belong,” George said.

Three students out of around a 60-person class at Boston Collegiate Charter School committed to Messina, George said. Around 90% of graduating students committed to college, with most attending four-year institutions.

Messina’s formation showed many students at Boston Collegiate Charter School — most of whom come from low-income families where few attended college — that higher education still cares about diversity, George said.

Avoiding a ‘sink-or-swim’ mentality

Messina College’s founding dean Berrelleza said there is a “hidden curriculum” that exists in higher education.

The “curriculum” encompasses the norms, values and experiences that first-generation students often don’t have access to because their family didn’t attend college.

He wants to break down those barriers at Messina College.

“No one called us first-gen students when I was going through college. And there weren’t very many resources at that time — I’m talking 20 years ago — it was sort of a sink-or-swim model, I like to say, where you were thrown into the large population and it was sort of assumed that you would sort of acclimate, adapt to the new environment,” Berrelleza said.

• Read more: As free community college becomes a reality in Mass. some are excited, others have concerns.

Beyond running events and having a community of administrators and students who are first-generation, the college has also implemented programs to reinforce study habits with the students and a mentorship program in the fall for Messina students to be paired with Boston College peers.

In addition to the mentorship program, the college is attempting to build a relationship between its Brookline and Chestnut Hill campuses by providing a shuttle bus system between the two and allowing Messina College students to take some classes at Boston College.

Boston College agreed to assume the debts of Pine Manor College after Pine Manor College integrated with Boston College in 2020. Boston College also put up $50 million of its endowment to create the Pine Manor Institute for Student Success, which includes Messina College.

The initiative also includes a summer program for middle and high school students and academic support for those students and Messina College students.

While other two-year programs in higher education often have a significant first-generation population, Berrelleza points to Messina’s distinctiveness in investing solely in the population.

Berrelleza said Messina is also unique because there is a smaller student body, students must be traditionally college-aged, the program is born out of a selective Jesuit liberal arts college and it requires students to live on campus.

“Why I think the residential component is important is it’s going to increase our success for these students,” Berrelleza said, adding that the residential model allows students to focus more on their schoolwork and balance their work with socializing.

Because of these differences, Berrelleza said community colleges — which recently became universally free — shouldn’t be seen as competition for community colleges.

“They carry the lion’s share of providing access to higher education,” Berrelleza said.

Messina College also diverges from other programs in that it narrowly limits the majors a student can choose from.

Messina students can pick from four majors: data science, general business, health sciences, and applied psychology and human development. Each of the majors are popular at Boston College’s Chestnut Hill campus and are in-demand workforce areas, according to Berrelleza.

Each major also offers a seamless transition into one of Boston College’s undergraduate programs such as their schools of management, nursing, education and arts and sciences.

• Read more: Why marginalized students are landing one of Boston’s best museum internships

“I see that as our primary goal — that we’re a pathway program for bachelor’s completion,” Berrelleza said.

At the end of the second year, if students maintain a 3.4 GPA or higher, they can enroll in Boston College as residential students. Students can also live off-campus by joining the Woods College program which allows students to take classes part-time or during the night while working.

Messina is also working to partner with other state and private colleges to expand students’ options for transferring.

‘We’re here for the long-term’

Messina College biology professor Antonio Serrato-Capuchina said there is a range of how prepared students are when coming to Messina.

Serrato-Capuchina said he understands the responsibility of assigning grades to students dependent on a certain GPA to advance out of Messina to receive a four-year degree. At the same time, he said he won’t change grades with that in mind.

He wants to use the 3.4 GPA goal point as a motivator for students.

“Any worry about lowering the standards, it would only hurt us in the long term. And we’re here for the long term,” he said.

Serrato-Capuchina has been using his story to motivate and connect with students. He came to the United States at 12 years old from Mexico and worked full-time to help his family during his senior year of high school and into college.

While he was one of the top students in his high school, he said he chose to go to community college because he needed to continue to work to support his family. He was the first in his family to go to college and later obtained his doctorate degree.

Serrato-Capuchina said the opportunity to teach at Messina is unique because it allows him to connect his mission of supporting marginalized students to his profession of working in science.

“Students interact better when they feel like they’re somewhat understood,” Serrato-Capuchina said.

Looking ahead

For Pina and Jean, the goal of their time at Messina College is to transfer to Boston College.

Pina said he wants to transfer to Boston College for entrepreneurship.

He has big plans: from becoming a real estate agent to investing in stocks and bonds to opening a restaurant in Miami featuring his favorite foods from childhood.

“I’ve always loved food growing up — like a lot — so it’s been easy for me to think of ideas. Sometimes I write down in my notes what I would want on my menu or what I want to name it,” Pina said.

Pina is looking forward to the required credit-bearing internship program during his second year at Messina.

“I’ve never done an internship before so that’s something I really want to look into and do something more in the business realm of things and just see what I like and what I don’t like,” Pina said.

Jean, a health sciences major, wants to help others like she has been at Messina College.

She hopes to transfer to Boston College to become a veterinary anesthesiologist.

”I feel like education is really important. And I feel like college, it’s a resource. It’s like, why ignore the opportunity that you have to learn something new and learn from other people’s experiences? So you might as well go to college, attend, learn the things that they’re trying to teach you, and use that for the greater good,” Jean said.