From Dual Enrollment to the Ivy League: Mariafernanda Herrera’s Journey

Mariafernanda Herrera is a CCP Dual Enrollment student at Parkway Center City Middle College and will be graduating from both high school and Community College of Philadelphia this spring, before attending Columbia University in the fall. And, she’ll be attending Columbia University on a full-ride scholarship, thanks to her hard work and dedication to her community thus far. Ultimately, Mariafernanda wants to work in a career that will allow her to help and serve as many people as she possibly can.

“I want to give back to my community and create businesses that help empower my community,” Mariafernanda said. “Especially underserved communities that don't have access to certain resources.” With this end goal in mind, Mariafernanda is planning to major in Economics at Columbia, and potentially double major in Political Science or Pre-law as well. “I want to go into Political Science because ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be the President of the United States,” Mariafernanda shared. With a double major, she can explore several of her interests.

Mariafernanda has already shown a fierce dedication to bettering her communities and even won a “Community Hero” award from the Philadelphia Phillies for doing so. “It all started when I founded my art club at Parkway,” Mariafernanda said. Starting the art club at her high school was Mariafernanda’s first experience in leadership. “And then, I founded a math tutoring club,” she said. After founding these two clubs, Mariafernanda started to look for opportunities to get involved outside of school. Eventually, she joined the Penn Rising Scholar Success Academy (PennRSSA) at University of Pennsylvania where she worked on two capstone projects, one that helped promote recycling across Northeast Philadelphia and another that helped support a water filtration system that helps underserved communities. Through all of these experiences is how Mariafernanada discovered her passion for economics. “I learned how to manage the economic side of it. And I learned that business and finance play a really big role in impacting a community,” she said.

Because of her involvement at CCP in addition to her extracurriculars at Parkway and through Penn, Mariafernanda feels ready to take on whatever opportunities come her way next. “I feel like [at] CCP, I learned so much...and CCP has prepared me, not only on an academic level, but on a personal level, because...I found myself through CCP.” Mariafernanda felt connected to her peers at CCP because they shared her passion for learning and growth. “I feel like CCP overall...gave me a purpose to continue because I was surrounded by people who also had that passion and that motivation to keep going,” she said.

CCP is proud to share this partnership with Parkway Center City Middle College and support students like Mariafernanda in fulfilling their dreams.