How one immigrant’s decades-long academic career spanned from ESL classes to a master’s degree in counseling
When Fabian Mendoza first arrived in the United States, the 18-year immediately went to work in the fields, picking apples, grapes, cherries, asparagus, and onions.
For the teen, who’d relocated to the states with his family in hopes of pursuing an education beyond the ninth grade, it wasn’t enough.
Mendoza soon enrolled in a community college in Washington, where he obtained his GED. It was the start of a long academic trajectory that saw him first conquering English as a second language classes and culminated in earning a master’s degree in counseling.
That long-term educational pursuit started at Allan Hancock College (AHC) in 2001 where Mendoza enrolled after relocating to California. He wanted to graduate college, but at the time didn’t speak English.
“It wasn’t until I started seeing in me what others had seen for so long that I was able to discover my true potential.”
Fabian Mendoza, Graduate, Allan Hancock College
“I started taking English as a second language classes in preparation to take credit courses that would help me to obtain my degree,” he says. “The teachers were beyond helpful. We sang songs in English that would help us conjugate verbs.”
They also practiced phonetics to help with pronunciation, an exercise that helped Mendoza advance at a faster pace.
The eager and studious Mendoza says he believed that the sky was the limit when it came to education. In 2008, he enrolled in citizenship classes at AHC and became a U.S. citizen in 2009.
Mendoza finally graduated from AHC in 2017, 16 years after starting his journey at the college. Looking back, he says, the ESL and citizenship classes he completed there were the foundation to everything that came next.
“The teachers I had were the most caring, empathetic, and best role models I could ever ask for,” he says.
After graduation, Mendoza started working at Allan Hancock College as an office service tech. There, he realized that he also wanted to purse a bachelor’s degree.
“I wanted to be in a position where I had more student contact, and where I could help students in a different capacity,” Mendoza says. “One counselor in the career center department at Allan Hancock guided me through the process of obtaining my bachelor’s.”
He started working on the degree in 2019 and graduated in 2021 with a degree in business administration from the University of Laverne. Shortly after, Mendoza was hired to work as an outreach specialist in AHC’s counseling department where he worked with high school seniors.
“It was very rewarding and this is when I first saw the possibility to have the type of job I could only hope or dream of, to become a counselor myself,” Mendoza says.
He next set out to receive a master’s degree in counseling with a focus on pupil personnel services. By spring 2024 he had graduated from the University of Massachusetts Global—an accomplishment he once deemed nearly impossible.
“My instructors along the way played a huge part in my career,” he says. “I grew up with imposter syndrome, and never thought I could do something or was worthy of more. It wasn’t until I started seeing in me what others had seen for so long that I was able to discover my true potential.”
Eventually, Mendoza would like to work as a principal at a K-12 school. In the meantime, he’s gaining invaluable experience working as a counselor at El Camino Junior High in Santa Maria, collaborating with staff at AHC to encourage a “college-forward culture” by getting teens to start thinking about college.
“Having a college present [in student lives] at a junior high level instead of starting in high school allows them to see that the possibility to continue with postsecondary education is not just a dream,” he says.
For more information on Allan Hancock College visit https://www.hancockcollege.edu
Written by Brett Callwood
| Regions | Classes & Topics |
|---|---|
| South Coast California | English as a Second Language – High School |
