Thirty-five district middle school students who completed their first college studies were celebrated on Saturday as the second cohort of Newark Public Schools’ M2C, or Middle School to College Program. The program is run through a partnership with Essex County College. It provided students in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades with the opportunity to study biology, chemistry, algebra, and geometry on the college level, three afternoons a week. On Saturday mornings, the students worked on building their own businesses, incorporating the skills they learned during weekly sessions to create innovative businesses. The students’ businesses were presented at a special student business expo on Saturday.