SAC毕业生Brenda Valdes获得斯坦福大学博士项目全额奖学金

在圣安东尼奥学院开始她的大学生涯四年后, Brenda Valdes is now at Stanford University, starting a PhD program in education on a full scholarship. 她计划研究社会和文化影响对高中和大学学生表现的影响.

It’s a subject that in many ways, she’s already an expert on, after overcoming many obstacles to achieve her academic goals.  

她辍学到家乡墨西哥照顾年幼的兄弟姐妹. No other family members had ever gone to college. Her husband did not want her to pursue an education, 担心这会占用他们三个年幼的孩子太多的时间.

“I always dreamed about a college education, but at that point I thought, ‘well, I didn’t do it, but I hope my kids do,’” Valdes said.

2010年来到圣安东尼奥后，瓦尔德斯于2011年开始在帕洛阿尔托学院学习英语. 当她专注于抚养孩子时，她参加了育儿课程，并获得了普通教育水平证书.

The desire to go to college never went away.

“It was a fire that was always inside of me,” she said.

Her love of education started in kindergarten. Her father took a job as a school custodian in a nearby town. 他没有车上下班，所以他的家人被邀请住在学校的闲置教室里. They lived there for five years.

“For me it was the coolest thing ever, because when everyone went home, the school was our playground,” Valdes said. “We’d run in the halls, play basketball and climb fruit trees. 我以为我们住在学校里很幸运. I didn’t know we were practically homeless.”

当她父亲有能力在家乡买房子时，全家搬了回去. Her younger siblings enrolled in a school near home, 瓦尔德斯继续在她父亲工作的学校上学, traveling with him each day.

父母离婚后，巴尔德斯在九年级时离开学校照顾她的兄弟姐妹.

“It was terrible for me. 我的兄弟姐妹们很开心——他们的生活很开心——但对我来说, I always felt incomplete,” she said. “I felt like a disappointment to myself and to society even.”

That feeling motivated her to pursue her college dreams. When the COVID-19 pandemic shifted all classes online, 她看到了在照顾家人的同时在家学习的机会.

她申请了SAC，并参加了TSI考试，这是一项衡量大学准备情况的考试.

She didn’t pass, 但SAC的工作人员向她保证，她仍然可以上大学，并在夏季为她报名了补习班，为秋季的大学水平作业做准备.

When the semester started, she was ready, though she was intimidated, especially as a non-native English speaker. She woke up every day at 4 a.m. to study and do homework before her children woke up.

“Every time I wrote something, I didn’t want people to know that I had very little vocabulary, that I wasn’t like them,” Valdes said.

She graduated from SAC in 2022 with a 3.她的平均成绩是94分，并在毕业典礼上发表了演讲.

她的下一个目标是在德克萨斯大学圣安东尼奥分校获得心理学学士学位。.

Soon after starting there, 她参加了校园里的墨西哥独立日派对，并会见了UTSA Pathways的负责人, 一个为期一年的课程，教本科生做研究，为研究生学习做准备. She joined the program, 提供津贴和年底去斯坦福大学的旅行.

After getting a glimpse of graduate-level education, 瓦尔德斯想在2023年5月获得学士学位后继续深造. She discussed it with her family.

“I told them I still want to go to school. I love being a student. I want to go as far as I can, as far as possible,” Valdes said. “I told them I believe when you’re Hispanic, 你必须到达很高的地方，这样你才能被看到，才能真正做出改变.”

Her husband encouraged her to look at doctorate opportunities. It was a change from her early days at SAC, 她会躲起来做作业，因为她不想让他看到她开着电脑.

Over the years, 她的经历让他意识到，他不再想成为一名卡车司机, 长时间的工作损害了他的身心健康. 因此，在她的鼓励下，他申请了SAC的工程专业. 

While visiting Stanford with the UTSA Pathways program, 她遇到了一位教授，这位教授鼓励她申请那里的博士课程. 她申请并获得了全额奖学金，攻读教育学博士学位.

瓦尔德斯和她的丈夫都将在他们的校园公寓里学习，而他们的孩子则在附近的学校上学. 瓦尔德斯可以把自己想象成心理学或教育学的大学教授, someday, possibly as the U.S. secretary of education.

As she reaches new heights, Valdes is grateful for the start she got at SAC, where she felt welcomed as a non-traditional, 第一代以英语为第二语言的学生.

“SAC给了我今天的学生基础，”巴尔德斯说.

-SAC-