A sigh of relief for the nation on Thursday after hearing that Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin is awake and recovering following a cardiac arrest incident during Monday Night Football.
On Thursday, May 4, 2023, at the Shining Light on Generosity event, San Diego Mesa College debuted the naming of The Stand: The Pamela T. Luster Resource Center, in honor of former President Dr. Pamela T. Luster. Additionally, the event served as an intimate gathering that honored and recognized multiple donors who helped the Mesa College Resiliency Fund become a reality.
Sacramento, CA ---- This week, San Diego Mesa College Professor Dr. Veronica Gerace received the prestigious 2023 Regina Stanback Stroud Diversity Award from the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges (ASCCC). As the official voice of California community college faculty in academic and professional matters, the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges (ASCCC) is committed to equity, student learning and student success. The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges acts to empower faculty to engage in local and statewide dialog and take action for continued improvement of teaching, learning, and faculty participation in governance.
San Diego Mesa College student, Renee Smaldino, competed in the International Interior Design Association Southern California Chapter Student Design Charrette on March 11 at the HLW International Office in Santa Monica. Renee was nominated by Mesa College for a chance to win cash awards and move on to the Regional Student Charrette Competition in Arizona.
March 10, 2022
El Vuelo De Cata
The total straight-line flight distance from Santiago de Chile to San Diego, CA is 5,465 miles. For Catalina Henriquez, this distance shrinks or elongates, depending on her longing for home, or for seeing the faces of her grandparents Manuel and Orietta. The life of Cata, as she has been lovingly called, was completely transformed when she and her family moved to this coastal and border city in the United States in 2017.
Life isn’t linear though. It is seldom a straight-line of temporal, spatial, or even geographic distance. Life is like art, and according to Violeta Parra, another Chilena who left her home country to experience the world, art is like a flying bird, without a flight plan, that will never fly in straight line.
There comes a time, though, that an immigrant decides that home is not necessarily a birth country, but rather, wherever one goes and makes a living, and it feels like life has settled, at least momentarily. In 2019 I realized that my life was here, Cata assured me, in an interview we conducted through a Sunday Instagram video chat.
The sunlight illuminated her living room in her UC Berkeley dorm, as she recounted her academic journey from learning her first words in English at the San Diego College of Continuing Education, and taking her first courses across the street at San Diego Mesa College. The job that really helped her language skills was when she worked the cash register at Sprouts.
It was through her work ethic, not just from her meticulous completion of her course assignments at Mesa College, but from jobs ranging from dishwasher to hostess in restaurants that Cata prevailed. Do not expect Cata to glorify nor mythologize the working immigrant in this country though. As a UC Berkeley transfer student and a Sociology major, she learned the lesson of The Sociological Imagination by C. Wright Mills in her English 101X class not merely from an academic lens, but because she was living it in flesh and bone at the precise time she encountered it.
It all made sense to me, she recalls, the idea of how small social interactions can reflect a bigger picture of our society. The concepts of social mobility, segregation, redlining, racist structures, they all began to make sense in how I grew up. Where Cata was raised, mostly by her grandparents Manuel and Orietta, and very close to her cousin Benjamin, was a working-class barrio in the southern part of Santiago called Puente Alto.
Through sociological analysis, the struggles that her mother Carol faced as a teen mom from Puente Alto were finally understood in Cata’s mind. My mom had to do many things, she explained, juggling work, school, but always surrounded by books: she was always reading, growing, she had an unstoppable curiosity. She was a universitaria, which roughly translates to a university bound and/or university being.
Cata is now a universitaria of her own. Berkeley will bring its own challenges, as it is less diverse than Mesa and it is extremely privileged, she states. Looking back, and thinking what drove her growth, Cata reflects that it was her independent spirit, doing it all on her own, and not being afraid. She also stated that it takes a support network, in trusting others and in seeking help from others. She expects to graduate with a B.A. in Sociology and continue on her flight, letting her life dictate the course it will take.
Tags: Honors Program, #pathtomesacollege, #SDMesaCollege
Jennifer Nichols Kearns
Director of Communications
jnkearns@sdccd.edu
(619) 388-2759