President La-Perla Morales
Dr. La Perla-Morales is the sixth president of Middlesex County College, a continuation of her distinguished 35-year commitment to higher education as both a teacher and an administrator.
Before her appointment, in January 2005, she was provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at New York City College of Technology, dean of instruction at Nassau Community College, associate dean for academic affairs at Bloomfield College, dean of continuing education and community services at Union County College, assistant director of fundamental and continuing education services at Montclair State University and education program specialist with the New Jersey State Education Department. Among her diverse teaching experience in both English and Spanish, Dr. La Perla-Morales was a Peace Corps volunteer in Bogotá, Colombia where she taught beginning and intermediate English and phonetics courses to university undergraduates and English teachers.
As president of Middlesex, Dr. La Perla-Morales is an active member of the civic community, holding numerous key positions in state and local organizations. She serves on the boards of New Brunswick Tomorrow, New Jersey ACE-NET, the New Jersey Community Colleges Consortium for Workforce Development, the New Jersey Technology Council and the United Way of Central Jersey. Dr. La Perla-Morales was recently appointed by Governor Jon Corzine to serve on the Board of the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority (HESAA). She is also a member of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education Committee on Substantive Change, the Essex County College Engineering Technologies Advisory Committee, and New Brunswick Tomorrow’s Education Task Force.
Dr. La Perla-Morales earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at the State University of New York, College at Oneonta where she majored in education with a concentration in Spanish. She earned a Master of Arts degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and Doctorate in Education in Higher and Adult Education both at Teachers College of Columbia University.
Her writings have been widely published in academic journals and she has been recognized as an outstanding academic by many professional and community associations.
