May 9, 2024 - Lansdowne, VA — Today, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation has announced Husna Ayoubi of San Diego Mesa College, as one 60 community college students selected to receive the Cooke Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship.
Second-year student Zora Williams is using her voice to bring more mental health and nutrition programming to San Diego Mesa College. Williams was elected president of the college’s Associated Students (AS) for the 2024-2025 academic year and serves as the college’s student representative on the San Diego Community College District Board of Trustees.
Sometimes, you hear a story that makes you want to know more. Kevin Gonzalez has such a story. The last time this story was updated, San Diego Mesa College student Kevin Gonzalez was a 15 year-old heading off to Massachusetts to complete his high school education. In the ensuing years, he has travelled to the other side of the world, built houses, but remained in close contact with his Mesa College professors and connections he made while on campus.
The San Diego Community College District has appointed four new student trustees for the upcoming academic year. Dalia Ramirez (San Diego City College), Zora Williams (San Diego Mesa College), Hailey Hua (San Diego Miramar College), and Haydee Zuniga (San Diego College of Continuing Education), will be sworn in during the June 20 SDCCD Board of Trustees meeting.
February 19, 2016
San Diego Mesa College scholar and Poway resident, Daniel Rodriguez, whose 14 years in the Marines Corps included tours of Iraq and Afghanistan, has been awarded a free postsecondary education at Wesleyan University in Connecticut through the nonprofit Posse Foundation’s Veterans Program.
The Posse Veterans Program identifies and supports military veterans interested in pursuing bachelor’s degrees at top colleges and universities. It evolved from the Posse Foundation, which was established in 1989 to identify public high school students with extraordinary academic and leadership potential that can be overlooked by traditional college selection processes and prepares them for admission to the nation’s top universities.
“I’m super excited, this is a great opportunity,” said Rodriguez, 33, who credited Mesa College for his success.
“I had nothing but support at Mesa since the first day I stepped on campus,” he said. “But the most impressive thing for me was the Veterans Center. Everybody welcomed me with open arms, and I’ve been there virtually every day.”
Juan David Ortiz-Romero, president of the Student Veterans Organization at Mesa College, said Rodriguez’s experience at the Veterans Resource Center is typical.
“The Veterans Resource Center here is a place for us to come to relax, decompress, and find support and get mentoring to help you succeed,” he said. “It’s kind of like a clubhouse.”
Rodriguez, a single father of a 9-year-old girl, will be studying film when he enrolls at Wesleyan University this fall with a cohort of nine others in the Posse Veterans Program. His goal is to become a film director.
His journey has included a wealth of challenges.
Born and raised in Union City, N.J., Rodriguez said he turned to drugs as a youth in a fatherless home and barely managed to graduate from high school. “I found myself living in subway stations, sleeping on park benches, going from house to house, just trying to survive,” Rodriguez said. “I was either going to end up in jail or dead.”
His life began to change after signing up for the Marines. His 14 years in the service included three combat tours of Iraq and Afghanistan, two tours on naval ships, along with stops in Korea, Japan and the Philippines.
Rodriguez’s final stop was at Camp Pendleton, where he was assigned to the 1st Intelligence Battalion. When he left the Corps in December of 2014, he scouted colleges in the region and quickly settled on Mesa College.
“I went to several colleges, but when I was at Mesa, it felt more like a college experience,” Rodriguez said. “The Veterans Center, though, is what sold me on the campus.”
Rodriguez enrolled at Mesa College in the spring of 2015 and has a 4.0 GPA since arriving. It was at the Mesa College Veterans Resource Center that Rodriguez heard about the Posse Veterans Program and submitted his application. The program, which is looking for leaders in their places of work, communities, and/or families who demonstrate strong academic potential.
Rodriguez made it to the final round of applicants, attended a group interview, and met representatives from participating colleges. Upon being selected to take part in the program, he spent a one‐month, pre‐collegiate training program in New York during winter break, during which participants focus on leadership development, academic excellence and team building.
Rodriguez is planning to leave for Wesleyan University in June.
Tags: Scholarship, Students, Awards, Veterans
Jennifer Nichols Kearns
Director of Communications
jnkearns@sdccd.edu
(619) 388-2759
May 9, 2024 - Lansdowne, VA — Today, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation has announced Husna Ayoubi of San Diego Mesa College, as one 60 community college students selected to receive the Cooke Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship.
San Diego, CA. — On Wednesday, May 26th, San Diego Mesa College will honor the scholarship winners during their 30th Annual Scholarship Awards Ceremony on campus. 236 scholarships worth nearly $160,000 total, will be awarded to 168 students – with many students winning multiple awards.
March 18, 2022 - San Diego Mesa College has been accepted into the 2022 cohort of 52 California Community Colleges to utilize the Military Articulation Platform (MAP), which allows student veterans to maximize academic credits for prior learning acquired through their military service. MAP is an online system that matches college courses to American Council on Education (ACE) Military Guide recommendations. Articulation decisions for Mesa College courses will ultimately be made with input from faculty, evaluators, and articulation officers. Once Mesa College is fully integrated into the cloud-based system, students with military experience will be able to upload their joint services transcripts into MAP and find out which credits they can receive for courses they took and occupations they held while in the military. In effect, MAP will streamline the process of earning college credits for prior military training.
Second-year student Zora Williams is using her voice to bring more mental health and nutrition programming to San Diego Mesa College. Williams was elected president of the college’s Associated Students (AS) for the 2024-2025 academic year and serves as the college’s student representative on the San Diego Community College District Board of Trustees.
Sometimes, you hear a story that makes you want to know more. Kevin Gonzalez has such a story. The last time this story was updated, San Diego Mesa College student Kevin Gonzalez was a 15 year-old heading off to Massachusetts to complete his high school education. In the ensuing years, he has travelled to the other side of the world, built houses, but remained in close contact with his Mesa College professors and connections he made while on campus.
The San Diego Community College District has appointed four new student trustees for the upcoming academic year. Dalia Ramirez (San Diego City College), Zora Williams (San Diego Mesa College), Hailey Hua (San Diego Miramar College), and Haydee Zuniga (San Diego College of Continuing Education), will be sworn in during the June 20 SDCCD Board of Trustees meeting.
