A New Wilmington mother and daughter will graduate together Saturday from Westminster College.

Melissa Sanchez will earn her bachelor’s degree in elementary education, while her mother, Debbie Sanchez, will graduate with a communication studies degree and a minor in writing.

Melissa Sanchez chose the more traditional route to a college degree, entering Westminster upon graduation from Wilmington High School to pursue a lifelong desire to be a teacher.

“I always loved to play school with my teddy bears,” Melissa Sanchez said. “In third grade, I knew I wanted to be an educator. The teacher, Debbie McEwen, was only with us from the end of August until December, when she passed away, but she motivated and inspired me to do my best.

“She always believed in us and encouraged us to keep trying. I want to motivate, encourage and teach young children, and make a difference in someone’s life, as she did in my life.”

Debbie Sanchez’s journey to complete her college education took a little longer.

Following graduation from high school in 1978, she entered Davis & Elkins College. A year later, she married her husband, Cesareo. The couple moved to Venezuela, where they lived for more than 10 years and where Melissa and her older brother, Alex, were born.

“I almost went to Slippery Rock University in the early 1990s,” Debbie Sanchez of West Neshannock Avenue said. “But that was when our daughter, Karina, was born, so my education went on hold again.”

Debbie Sanchez, who is the secretary in Westminster’s Department of Political Science and Sociology, started working at the college in 2001. About a year later, she asked Carol Yova, then-director of Westminster’s Lifelong Learning Program, about class offerings.

“She tossed me into a Saturday morning class that had already started,” Debbie Sanchez said. “The next thing I knew, I was on my way.”

Originally a history major at Davis & Elkins, Debbie Sanchez started out as an English major at Westminster “because it is what I know I was meant to study.” Along the way, she kept taking communications classes because they were interesting and because they fit her schedule .

“Before I knew it, I was just a capstone away from a communication studies degree, so I became a double major,” she explained. “I had accumulated enough credits to graduate, but if I kept the English major I would not be done for a few more semesters. I made the extremely hard decision to drop the English major, but kept the writing minor.”

Melissa Sanchez believes it has been an advantage to be at the same school as her mother.

“If something was stressing me out,” she said, “I could always go to her office, talk about it and feel calmer.”

As for post-graduation plans, Melissa Sanchez is applying for teaching positions, working for Westminster’s Education Department for the summer and continuing in her position at Shenango Presbyterian SeniorCare, where she has been employed for six years.