Bridgett Madden and her daughter, Celena Luccioni, come from a long line of educators. Madden’s grandparents were educators. Her father was an engineer at the NASA Langley Research Center. He and her mother stressed the value of education.
So, it should come as no surprise college “was definitely something that was not up for debate,” Madden said. “I didn’t even know there was a choice.”
Said Luccioni: “We had to go, and I gladly went.”
The two are also part of another family tradition: attending Virginia Peninsula Community College, known as Thomas Nelson Community College during their college days. Madden didn’t have a specific college in mind after graduating from Bethel High School. She and her sister enrolled at VPCC, with their father driving them to the Hampton Campus. She earned two associate degrees, one in Business Administration and the other in Science. She was in the College’s “2 Plus 2” program, putting her on track for acceptance to a four-year institution, and eventually transferred to Christopher Newport University.
“It was seamless,” she said of the transition.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in biology from CNU, she went off to Old Dominion University, where she earned a master’s degree in education. She is a Career Technical Education teacher with Hampton City Schools.
Luccioni, who graduated from Grafton High School, said the College was her first choice. She also was in the “2 Plus 2” program. After obtaining her Associate Degree in Social Science, she transferred to Old Dominion, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology. She is an English as a Second Language teacher for Newport News Public Schools.
The two had the opportunity to work together at VPCC’s STEM camp last month. They created a PowerPoint presentation detailing the week’s schedule and activities, a rubric explaining how the students would be graded, and lesson plans for the instructors.
The camp was a collaboration among VPCC, Madden and JarMarcus King, the chief operations officer for J&F Alliance Group, Inc. The goal was to promote artificial intelligence and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) programs. During the school year, King visited Madden’s classroom to demonstrate virtual reality headsets.
A bonus for Madden and Luccioni was a third-generation family member, Luccioni’s daughter, Sophia, tagged along. One of the students included her in a video, and another allowed her to participate in an experiment with robots.
“That was really cool,” Luccioni said. “And that’s something I can say that made a huge difference in my upbringing because my mom brought me to college with her. I got exposure at such a young age to science because I remember walking around her biology classes.”
Madden knew that exposure would benefit Luccioni, even if it was over her head.
“I knew Celena would pick up at least something out of it,” Madden said.
She did, and it wasn’t tied directly to academics.
“I’ll never forget that experience. Having that exposure at such a young age, I still remember that,” Lucciano said.
It won’t be a surprise if Sophia winds up at VPCC, also.
“She wants to go here,” Luccioni said. “She’s like, ‘Mom, I want to go here.’ And I’m like, ‘of course.’ It’s the family way.”
Madden and Luccioni said the College prepared them for four-year institutions.
“So many of my friends had gone directly into four-year universities and that culture shock they experienced and that freedom … a lot of them ended up leaving, failing out, or transferring back into the community college system because they couldn’t handle the first two years of college,” Luccioni said. “By the time I got to Old Dominion, I was a seasoned veteran, and the coursework I was prepped for, and I breezed right through it. I did (phenomenally) at Old Dominion.”
Madden, whose son has taken classes on the academic side and will be taking Workforce Development classes in the fall, stressed the financial benefits.
“This is affordable,” she said, adding she worked with someone who flunked out of a four-year school in his sophomore year and still was $80,000 in debt.
That is hard to overcome.
“You’re never going to catch up with someone who had their college paid off,” she said. “That starting line is going to be different.”
Both also recall a nurturing environment at the College, especially for single moms, as they were/are.
“This place has nurtured my ambitions,” Madden said. “It did challenge me to grow and it gave me confidence to keep on going. It was such a caring thing. And then by the time they let you out of the nest, you could fly.”
Luccioni also recalled challenging but caring professors who knew many of their students had jobs and other responsibilities.
“The professors knew real-world applications to all this,” she said. “It was a lot of support, and we didn’t get lost in the classroom sizes. I loved how small the classrooms were.”
Those benefits included getting to know their professors and classmates. All of which made for a great learning environment and experience for a mother and daughter, and probably a granddaughter.
“It’s in our blood,” Luccioni said of education, but could also be talking about VPCC. “It’s like we came full circle.”