Mel Mancheno Named Class of 2026 Salutatorian

Middlesex College gave Mel Mancheno freedom, time, and resources to study the body—and the mind.

“Counselors and [faculty] like Professor [Cristobal] Espinoza and Professor [Claire] Condie and classes like Research Methods and Social Psychology gave me the skills and mentorship to assert myself in the world,” said Mancheno. “I can look back at my foundation here and say I gained the skills and knowledge and the self-confidence I need in order to be whatever I want to be.”

The 20-year-old Dunellen resident is already many things: a voracious reader, curious, thoughtful, fan of good barbecue (it’s from their Florida roots), a powerlifter, writer, conversationalist, and questioner.

They also run their own non-profit devoted to issues connected to queer individuals and sit on the National Youth Advisory Council as an advocate for promoting teenage homelessness concerns.

They’re also the salutatorian of the 2026 graduating class of Middlesex College, an honor that surprised and pleased them greatly.

Mancheno attended multiple traditional high schools in Florida before getting their diploma through an online program called Palm Beach Virtual Franchise. By then, they’d already discovered a love of creative writing and had taken almost 50 college credits.

“I think that helped me get to know myself a lot more and let me branch into different academic disciplines that I have become very interested in,” Mancheno said. “Like gender studies and anthropology and understanding people in a variety of concepts and how they came to be. Not to neglect science either; I liked behavioral biology and stuff like that.”

They returned to New Jersey—Mancheno has an aunt nearby—and enrolled at Middlesex College in Fall 2024.

Although expressing that there are benefits to a traditional classroom setting with lectures and dialogue, Mancheno enjoyed the flexibility of the Middlesex College Honors Program. The opportunity to study psychology profiles similar to their own gave them a sense of closure in dealing with their individual realities.

“I was able to conduct research on issues that were close to my identity,” Mancheno said. “Being able to sit with people and their experiences through quantitative analysis through surveys and qualitative analysis through interviews and thematic analysis, I found it cathartic.”

Mancheno graduated after the Fall 2025 semester with their associate degree in psychology. Since then, they’ve spent time working, reading, and applying to colleges.

Mancheno was accepted into Princeton University, where they have committed to attending in the Fall. They also participated in the Princeton Transfer Scholars Initiative (TSI) over the Summer. The University had great appeal due to its specialized Human Diversity Lab.

“It’s a unique lab that studies queer and trans youth,” Mancheno said. “It’s controversial, but the work they are doing is incredibly important, because they are the ones providing data for today’s culture wars and political arguments, whether kids should be allowed to do this, and also about much more fundamental things.”

What does Mancheno want to be next? They laugh saying they know all this study and research won’t always pay the bills. They’re already thinking about grad school, while also thinking about the next topic that will intrigue their mind.

Wherever they wind up, Mancheno is sure they will look back at Middlesex College as a place where they were respected, challenged, and able to prosper. A comment by a recent alumnus really spoke to them.

“The quote was something like, thank you to my counselors and my professors and those here that helped me believe in where I could take myself, that the world was my oyster,” Mancheno said. “I think I have always believed in myself, but the sound of that, the idea of this community where you have a second chance at education, at life, at work—you can thrive here and go far.”