Rodolfo Hernandez and Genesis Codina are part of the first graduating cohort of UC Santa Barbara Promise Scholars — a group of high-achieving, low-income Californians selected for four-year scholarships to UCSB in a program created by the campus that is the first of its kind in the nation.
Rodolfo Hernandez is the eighth of nine siblings in his family. And on June 16, he’ll become the first among them to finish college. That he has reached this point — graduating from UC Santa Barbara — is impressive on its own. But on top of a bachelor of arts degree in sociology, a minor in applied psychology and designs on graduate school with the GPA to get there, Hernandez will walk away with something few other students can claim: zero debt. “It’s mind-blowing to me that I’m even here and graduating and it’s because of Promise Scholars,” said Hernandez, of Lawndale. “It’s been an amazing experience and I’m very, very grateful. My family and I are so thankful, and I feel very privileged to have experienced this. If it wasn’t for this program I probably wouldn’t have been here right now, and probably definitely wouldn’t be graduating.”
Among them was Genesis Codina, a first-generation college student who grew up in Pomona. She “applied to a lot of schools, and got in to a lot, too, including UCLA.” Then the packet from UC Santa Barbara arrived. “I read it and re-read it and was thinking, ‘Wait, what? Four years of tuition?’” recalled Codina, who will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in global studies and a minor in anthropology. “My mom said, ‘Genesis, do you realize what this is?’ I made my decision right then and there. I could have taken on loans somewhere else, but I didn’t want that burden on my shoulders. I want to go to graduate school so it’s amazing not having that debt and worry.”
The innovative program is the brainchild of Michael Miller, UC Santa Barbara’s assistant vice chancellor for enrollment services. Also longtime director of financial aid and scholarships for the campus, he said he conceived the idea for Promise Scholars from his frustration with “traditional financial aid models, which ask students to commit to a four-year education only knowing how they’re going to pay for one year of college. “We would bring low-income students and their parents to campus and essentially show them how they were going to pay for freshman year, and would always get the question, ‘What happens after that?’” Miller said. “I could never really tell them, and I really wrestled with that. You wouldn’t buy a car only knowing how to finance 25 percent of it, you wouldn’t buy a home that way. Why does higher ed do that?”
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News Date:
Monday, June 10, 2019
June 26, 2019 - 11:36am