MHSA Scholarship Student Tammy Montgomery

Tammy Montgomery walked by Amador College Connect for five months before getting the courage to go in to inquire about taking online college courses. She had lost her home in Calaveras County in the Butte Fire, was in temporary housing with no computer and the one online class she had taken when working on an A.A. degree two decades earlier had not been a positive experience. One year later, Montgomery is the recipient of two scholarships and is halfway through a certificate in Human Services at Coastline Community College. She is in the Amador Behavioral Health Department’s Mental Health Services Act (MHSA) scholarship program and in May she received the Re-entry Scholarship from the American Association of University Women (AAUW). She plans to use the AAUW award to finance a B.A. degree through Arizona State University Online. Montgomery explains her impetus for studying Human Services, “to give back to my home community of Calaveras and to Amador County. Each of these counties has given me so much support when I needed help.” Montgomery has supplemented her academic work with over 200 hours of training on such topics as the Adverse Childhood Experiences study (ACES), Peer-to-Peer counseling, Wellness Recovery Action Planning (WRAP) and Court-Appointed Special Advocate training (CASA). As a person who has experienced great personal loss, Montgomery aspires to help others in need in our community. Her longstanding ambition has been to counsel adults and children who have experienced loss. Montgomery eagerly anticipates taking advantage of even more courses and training through Amador College Connect as the means to help herself, her family and her community.