Yvette Ghannam:  

Please read my story here Sometimes all one really needs is a mentor. Yvette PerezGhannam ’94, ’06, currently a bacteriologist for the Greenwich Health Department, received the guidance and support she needed at CCSU. Having been helped, she now tries to help others. As part of her job, Ghannam examines everything from bacteria in water samples to cholesterol in a patient’s blood. When she came to the United States from Puerto Rico, she could barely speak English and had little money. She worked in an entry-level position at the Henry Southern Laboratory in Bloomfield where she discovered her talent for microbiology. A co-worker, Senior Bacteriologist Hannah Sachs, “put me on the right track,” she says, pointing her to an undergraduate program at Central. Ghannam appreciated the importance of an education, but she says that “I needed influence” to help her along. Studying at Central, she was guided and encouraged by Professor of Teacher Education Justus Beach, Professors of Bimolecular Sciences Katherine Martin-Troy and James Mulrooney, and Ruthe Boyea, then the Director of the Women’s Center. According to Ghannam,...Expand for more