The distance from Tegucigalpa, the capital city of the Republic of Honduras, to Saint Paul, the capital city of Minnesota, is approximately 2,200 miles by air or 3,033 miles if you choose to drive. But Cecia Flores Sanchez dreamed of studying for her master’s degree abroad long before receiving her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras.

Located in Tegucigalpa, the Universidad is 142 miles south of El Progreso, where Cecia grew up. That's far, but not quite as far as the University of Minnesota (U of M) where Cecia is currently pursuing a master's in Food Science in the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences.

There were stops in between. In 2022, Cecia moved to Miami to learn English, but didn’t feel she was making progress. That’s when a fellow Honduran recommended Minnesota—the state, the University, and the Minnesota English Language Program (MELP).

“When I visited the University that October, I fell in love with it,” Cecia says. “The high-quality education and everything I explored on the website made it a dream to study there. As I walked around the Food Science and Nutrition building, I could imagine myself as a graduate student.”

Her next step: improving her English language skills by participating in MELP’s Intensive English Language Program (IEP) during the spring and summer of 2023. That fall, Cecia became one of the inaugural recipients of the newly established MELP Scholarship, allowing her to continue her studies in the IEP an additional semester.

The MELP Scholarship is awarded to students who demonstrate strong academic performance and a clear vision of how studying with the program will contribute to their respective academic and professional goals. This scholarship helped Cecia to pursue the language skills she needed to showcase her dedication to and affinity for the food science field.

After just two months of volunteering in the University’s Ubbink Lab, she was hired as a research assistant and continued to work for the next seven months. In the final week of December 2023, Cecia was admitted to the master’s program in Food Science. Now she works as a research assistant under the direction of her advisor, Dr. George Annor.

“MELP’s Intensive English Language Program provided a great opportunity to learn English in an academic context,” she shares. “None of this would have been possible without the MELP Scholarship that I received last fall.”

CCAPS recently had the opportunity to speak with Cecia about her studies and her U of M experience.

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Originally published by the College of Continuing and Professional Studies