Though they are a generation apart, Mount St. Mary's College 2004 graduates, Isabel Huey, 50, and Perla Rodriguez, 23, take pride in their mutual accomplishment: they are each the first of their siblings to graduate from a four-year college.

And, in Huey's case, she managed to do it before her three children as well.

Interviewed May 2 at MSMC's Chalon campus, where Rodriguez majored in political science and Huey finished a B.A. degree in liberal arts through the school's weekend college, the two women say their time was well spent at the Mount.

"It's nurturing and at the same time it empowers you," said Rodriguez, who grew up in Boyle Heights and attended Santa Isabel Church. The third and youngest child of Mexican immigrants, Rodriguez had been floundering at a community college after graduating along with 800 classmates from Roosevelt High School.

Her brother happened to meet an MSMC admissions counselor who suggested that Rodriguez transfer to the college on the hill in Brentwood. After receiving a financial package of loans and grants, Rodriguez became a full-time student resident. She worked in campus ministry and lived in the same dorm-apartment all four years.

"It's easy to make friends here; we get more personal attention from the professors and the administrators," Rodriguez said. She said her confidence has grown through her experiences such as participating in model UN, traveling to Europe with her art class and becoming a member of MSMC's new community-service-oriented sorority, Theta Alpha Sigma.

"The enthusiasm that the teachers have here is so contagious," added Huey, a parishioner at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Santa Clarita. Huey, who received a community college A.A. degree before she was married, was prompted to finish her life-long dream of a college education after her husband heard a radio advertisement for MSMC's weekend college.

Huey credits the support of her family --- including Lee, her husband of 28 years, and her three children, aged 20, 18 and 14 --- for her success.

But it hasn't been easy. Huey's oldest daughter, Jennifer, has suffered from nephrotic syndrome since the age of 18 months, requiring two kidney transplants. Currently, Jenny is on dialysis awaiting a third transplant due to the recent failure of the transplanted kidney she received as a teenager. Her father donated her first transplanted kidney.

"Everyone encounters struggles, setbacks and failures, and they learn to work around them," Huey wrote in a recent essay on why she returned to college. "I refused to let adversity derail my dream, my private aspiration for a college degree. I simply took an alternate route and adjusted my timetable."

Huey has made the dean's list every semester since enrolling at MSMC in the summer of 2001. "This is the most wonderful place in the whole world," said Huey, a high school graduate of St. Mary's Academy in Inglewood. "I wear my Catholic education with pride." She said she particularly enjoyed learning the diverse stories of her fellow women classmates as well as the triumphs of women throughout history presented in her classes.

"My education from the Mount has furnished me with the confidence to believe in myself and the realization that dreams are worth pursuing," declared Huey. "Personally, this has been the most rewarding experience that life will bring, second only to having a loving family."

Huey and Rodriguez will be among 347 graduating students participating in the Chalon Campus baccalaureate ceremony May 15 at 4:30 p.m. Commencement speaker will be Val Zavala, KCET-TV vice president of news and public affairs and an MSMC board trustee. The graduate ceremony will be held May 17 at the Doheny Campus.