Massaro travels around country and back

By Cory Anatado
Collegian Staff
February 14, 2007

Three bright windows, four walls and a door make up Melinda Massaro’s office. The walls were decorated with pictures of her travels and far-off places.

“It’s a work in progress,” she said.

From Late Night La Salle Coordinator to Inter- national Education Coordinator, with a nice office comes great responsibility.

“I think my true passion is in international education.,”she said.

Massaro attended Buffalo State College, located in Buffalo, N.Y., and graduated with bachelor’s degrees in sociology and photography, and followed it up with a master’s degree in student personnel administration. While at Buffalo State as a sophomore, she became an Residential Assistant (RA) in the campus’s International Building.

She became the Residential Coordinator of the International Building at Buffalo State, then orchestrated a work placement opportunity in England the next year with the Manchester Metropolitan University in Manchester, England. After her time at MMU, she turned her sights to the rest of Europe, backpacking around the continent and often staying with friends she met while being an RA.

After graduation, she went overseas to Australia to backpack across the land. She wasn’t alone, however, as she met up with students who she worked with at Buffalo State.

While finishing her master’s degree, she became a teaching assistant for a Chinese professor who was starting the Center for Chinese Studies at Buffalo State. The professor asked if she was interested in going to China to research while finishing her master’s. She gleefully agreed.

She taught English in a small Chinese town. While there, she experienced culture shock and reoccurring sickness. The sickness was so bad at one point, she had to leave China and come back to the United States to get tested. The threat of SARS was too risky at the time to re-enter the country after she left, even though she didn’t have the sickness, so she stayed in the States.

She took a job as Community Coordinator (RC) at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs. Her duties were to look over the Residential Coordinators. To put her master’s to good use, however, she wanted a job in collegiate programming. She applied for the job at La Salle, where she became the new coordinator for the Late Night La Salle program.

“I honestly fell in love with the students here,” she said.

As International Education Coordinator for the Travel Abroad program, she oversees programs to Australia, Rome, Ireland and Mexico. For students who don’t want to go to any of those locales, she works with other universities to get students where they want or need to go.

Listening to Massaro talk about her goals for these trip, both for her students and for herself, one gets the impression that she is extremely passionate toward travel and international education, as well as La Salle as a whole.

“I’ve been to places where I didn’t click and places where I clicked, and here I felt like I really clicked,” she said.

antadoc1@lasalle.edu