A Dynamic Mother-Son Duo Building Community

After her three sons graduated from high school in the Grand Rapids area, Linda Morfa Limonte decided it was time for her to fulfill a longheld dream: She went back to school. Her youngest son, Alan Vellenga, was dual-enrolled in an honors math program for high school students at Grand Rapids Community College (GRCC). Morfa Limonte joined her son at GRCC.

At GRCC mother and son were an unstoppable team—enrolling in an honors program together, distributing sleeping bags and food to the unhoused population of Grand Rapids, and advocating for better mental health services for GRCC students.

Four years later, Morfa Limonte and Vellenga are both LSA students, and they’re still excelling in their diverse, ambitious academic interests and making Michigan a better place, together.

Their path to LSA was not an easy one. As a freshman in high school, Vellenga and his father were in a serious car accident, and his father died. After the accident, Morfa Limonte was forced to retire early to care for her children. A few years later, when she was beginning her studies at GRCC, her marriage ended. And then, after a bad fall in which she broke her wrist, Morfa Limonte started her first semester at LSA in a mobility scooter.

Transfer student Morfa Limonte and Vellenga say that the challenges they experienced before arriving at LSA motivate their academic efforts and spark their initiative to help others. At LSA they’ve found an inspiring educational home and brought that service initiative to student government, where they have created supportive communities for other nontraditional students.

Mother and son share an understated tenaciousness. They’re humble, tough, hard working, and deeply curious. Japanese martial arts, Cuban history, Italian language, particle physics, and geology are just some of the passions they are pursuing—and excelling at—in LSA. Morfa Limonte won’t boast about her accomplishments, but she heaps praise on her son’s. And though Vellenga is quieter, his shy smile reveals that he is as proud of his mother as she is of him. The mother-son team remains unstoppable.

Bamboo Swords and Mountain Geology

Vellenga arrived at LSA first, in 2022. U-M had landed on his radar while he was still in high school and researching college-level Japanese language programs. He discovered the Residential College’s intensive Japanese program and made it his goal to attend one day.

During the summer of 2024, after building his skills in the RC’s intensive Japanese program, Vellenga studied in Hokkaido, Japan, with the Hokkaido International Foundation and did home stays with two different families, immersing himself in the language and culture. He practiced Kendo martial arts with one of his hosts, an elderly woman who did not go easy on him with her bamboo sword.

In the fall of 2024, while Vellenga was in his third year at LSA, Morfa Limonte was so impressed with his accomplishments that she followed him to LSA after earning an associate’s degree with high honors from GRCC.

She enrolled in the Bridges to Michigan program, which facilitates summer internships for transfer students, and was offered an opportunity to study at U-M’s Biological Field Station (UMBS) in Pellston, Michigan.

“I called Alan and said, ‘Hey, I’m going to UMBS this summer and U-M in the fall!’”

He ribbed her gently in response: “OK, mom, but what’s your back-up school?”

After returning to Ann Arbor from Japan, Vellenga continued to study Japanese through the RC and joined U-M’s Kendo club. He also dove into honors coursework in his major of physics, and worked that summer of 2025 as a student researcher with physics professor Scott Haselschwardt, running simulations of particle detectors.

Morfa Limonte has synthesized her interests in cultures, languages, and biological sciences with a major in anthropology, is preparing for research trips to Cuba and Italy, and is working toward her goals with mentor professors Ruth Behar and David Frye. Last summer, in 2025, she went to Camp Davis to study geology at the Rocky Mountain Field Station in Jackson, Wyoming.

Now at LSA, mother and son are both seniors. Vellenga never doubted his mom would succeed here.

Paying It Forward

Vellenga is the vice president of LSA student government, and Morfa Limonte serves as student government’s vice chair for UNITERS (which stands for Uniting Nontraditional, International, and Transfer students).

“When Alan invited me to run for a seat on student government, I told him I didn’t want to step on his feet,” Morfa Limonte says. But student government provided an opportunity for both to draw on their experiences to help others, so she accepted the invitation.

Currently they’re working to gather survey data on issues transfer students are experiencing, and meeting with students to face those challenges. Vellenga is his mom’s supervisor on the transfer student survey project, and meanwhile, she brings groups of transfer students together under the UNITERS umbrella.

“And of course, we’re also both first generation students,” she says.

“But you can’t graduate before me, or you’ll make me a liar about the first gen thing,” Vellenga, who is also a Kessler Scholar, says to his mom with a grin.

Mother and son, who both have severe ADHD and anxiety, focus many of their efforts in student government on supporting students with learning disabilities.

Vellenga serves on LSA’s Curriculum Committee, advocating from a student perspective on classes and guidelines, and pushing for reasonable testing accommodations. He’s working closely with Tim McKay—an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, professor of physics, astronomy, education, and associate dean for undergraduate education—on a series of high-credit interdisciplinary courses on significant issues like climate change and civic engagement.

“Having students think about the big problems our world faces in the context of college is really important right now,” Vellenga says.

Morfa Limonte is as proud of Vellenga’s academic accomplishments as she is of her son’s character.

“He’s such a compassionate young man,” she says, recalling a recent UNITERS meeting when she heard him comforting another student who had lost their father.

“After all that he’s been through, Alan could have played the victim. But he took his experiences and used them to help others,” she says.

In between courses in Italian, Latin American culture, and student government meetings, Morfa Limonte helps others too, by speaking with nontraditional student groups about imposter syndrome and loneliness.

“I did my time in the corporate world,” she says, “And now I want to use my experiences to pay it forward to others.” Morfa Limonte knows very well how much disability services, accommodations, and a supportive transfer student community make a difference for nontraditional students like her.

“I love to encourage other people,” she says. “I tell them, ‘You belong here and you can do it.’”

Photography by Doug Coombe