Being the first in her family to attend college is everything right now for Elizabeth Rodriguez. Her tears that instantly flow are proof when asked how her parents, sitting right next to her, might feel about her plans. Elizabeth’s father, Ignacio Rodriguez, reaches out for his daughter, wraps his arms around her and lets her know he’s proud.
Rodriguez’s father, mother Patricia Camarillo and younger brother Daniel were among about 150 people who attended a recent event to honor graduating high school students who completed TRIO ETS and PACE programs through Salt Lake Community College. The students’ successes in those programs means most will now attend SLCC on scholarship.
Each program emphasizes helping first-generation students and those from low-income families reach certain academic, career and personal goals throughout high school, college and beyond. TRIO’s ETS (Educational Talent Search) program works with students in eight middle and high schools in the Salt Lake City and Granite school districts. PACE (Partnership for Accessing College Education) at SLCC is a scholarship program that partners with West, East, Highland, Cottonwood and Kearns high schools and local businesses. Incoming freshmen at those schools commit to four-years of participation in the PACE program, with successful students receiving up to a six-semester scholarship to SLCC upon graduating high school.
A graduate of West High School, Rodriguez, 18, first heard about PACE when touring West before going there and seeing fliers then SLCC PACE advisor Mario Organista had laid out on a table. She picked up one, noticing right away the scholarship opportunity. “I knew I wanted to be something in my life,” Rodriguez said. “My parents made education a core value for me.” Along with her parents’ support in high school, she said Organista and others were heavily involved in making PACE work for her. “PACE was always there for me throughout my four years. They were always on me about grades, with emails, meetings, calling – they were always on top of it, with tutoring and even snacks. They were just there.”
Rodriguez is starting at SLCC in the Summer Bridge program, which helps acclimate new students to higher education, explore majors and career paths and earn college credit along the way. She hopes someday to be a surgeon or find cures for diseases.
Organista, who earlier this year moved over into the SLCC Development Office, raising money for various programs, including PACE, can attest to the hands-on involvement he had as a PACE advisor for almost five years. As their PACE advisor, students would come to him about almost everything. “Sometimes they just needed a safe space to talk about things,” he said. “Here (at SLCC) it will be another journey.” The plan, he added, is to continue expanding PACE and TRIO. “If we can do this in every high school, I think we will change a lot of lives.”
Chris Herrera is all about change right now. Turning 18 June 10. Graduate of Highland High School. Starting college at SLCC with Summer Bridge. And, if all goes as planned, the first in his family to be a college graduate. In high school, one of his areas of focus was working on cars. Now he’ll do that for college credit at SLCC.
“I found it’s a pretty short pathway to a job, and there are not a lot of general courses required for it,” said Herrera, who graduated from Highland with a near-perfect GPA. He knows he’s setting the academic pace for his two younger siblings. His mother, Anita Ibañez, wishes something like PACE had been around when she was in high school. “Because they give you all the help you need to figure out which direction to go and how to try different things,” said Ibañez, who works for a medical device manufacturer. “Nobody opened my eyes to a path early for me to be able to go to college.”
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