Melissa Nova ’25

Biography

Melissa Nova ’25 serves as the first-generation and income-eligible (FGIE) coordinator at the Center for Student Success. As a proud Posse Scholar alum and former peer mentor, she brings years of mentorship, advocacy, and lived experience to her role as a first-generation Dominican American from Chicago’s West Side. Melissa holds a bachelor’s degree in law and society and graduated with highest honors in Africana studies. Her senior honors thesis, “I Am Because We Move: Somatic Abolitionism, Black Girlhood, and West African Dance as a Pedagogy of Refusal and Tool for Re-entry,” explores how West African dance traditions offer healing, identity reconstruction, and community care for formerly incarcerated Black girls and those criminalized within schools systems. Grounded in Black feminist theory, abolitionist pedagogy, and somatic abolitionism, her research reflects the same values she brings to supporting Oberlin students: care, access, and community.