When Rafael Alvarez started his freshman year at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, the kid from Encanto was entering a whole new universe, even though he was less than two hours away from his San Diego home.
It was 1982, and the first-generation college student was attending one of the most prestigious science and engineering schools in the country. After being the only Latino among Patrick Henry High School’s 13 valedictorians, Alvarez had landed in yet another place he could not have imagined in a million years.
And that was a problem.
“I’m there. I’m riding my bike to the gym and I’m wearing my bandana and my tank top. I’m wearing my basketball shorts with my boxers showing underneath. You know, there were very few people who looked like me at Harvey Mudd.
“And that schedule! Are you kidding me?” Alvarez said of his first-semester line-up , which included advanced calculus, chemistry and computer programming. It also included his first-ever physics class, where Alvarez received a major wake-up call after failing the first exam.
“It was a tough. I had a high degree of knowledge, but I didn’t have all of the strategies. But where I grew up, you don’t back down from a fight. That is the mentality there, and I carried that mentality to Harvey Mudd and beyond.”
Alvarez graduated in 1986 with a bachelor’s in engineering. He went on to get a master’s in electrical engineering at USC, followed by a job in TRW Inc.’s aerospace division. And since 2000, Alvarez has been the director of San Diego City College’s Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement program, which provides academic for students in STEM majors.
Like Alvarez, many of his MESA participants are first-generation college students struggling to navigate the stressful demands of campus life. Fortunately, the young man who took on physics and won is there to share the spirit and common-sense wisdom that made his academic triumphs possible.
“Our students are fighting challenges that are not just academic. There are work challenges and personal challenges,” said the 57-year-old Alvarez, who now lives in Allied Gardens with his wife, Josie, whom he met while he was in college.
“When I talk to the kids, I talk about the culture iceberg. (In college), there is a surface culture, but there is also a deep culture. And unless someone tells you about it, it’s not visible. I tell them, ‘There is nothing wrong with you. You have strengths and great potential, but you just have gaps.'”
Established more than 40 years ago, the California Community College MESA program provides a full slate of resources — tutoring, a dedicated space for studying, free textbooks and other supplies — to underserved STEM students who want to transfer to a four-year institution. And at City College, MESA students also get Alvarez’s “Turning on the Lights: Using Learning Culture to Increase Student Success.”
Both a new book and a website, “Turning on the Lights” is Alvarez’s guide to understanding the culture of higher education and developing the skills, habits and philosophies that students need to survive and thrive in the classroom and in life. And as Alvarez found out, many of his MESA students didn’t know what they were missing until he showed them.
Alvarez was inspired to develop the program by a 2005 study of first-generation college students by Kathleen L. Byrd and Ginger Macdonald. In the study, Byrd and Macdonald identified 10 factors the helped determine success for these students. For Alvarez, it was factor No. 10 — “Understanding the college system, college standards and the culture of college” — that provided his No. 1 lightbulb moment.
As someone who managed to level his own college playing field through discipline, grit and a stubborn refusal to let physics beat him, Alvarez succeeded out of instinct. But if you had asked his younger self how he’d done it, he would not have been able to tell you.
He knows the answers now. And with “Turning on the Lights,” he hopes to help many generations of students develop the learning mindset that will help them understand learning culture and make it work for them.
In “Turning on the Lights” — which is being used by teachers at Lincoln and Garfield high schools and at UC San Diego and UC Santa Barbara — Alvarez talks about the importance of commitment, ability and asking for help. He tells students why they need to introduce themselves to their professors and how to be their own best advocates. He tackles time management, focus and other invaluable study skills.
Perhaps most importantly, Alvarez likes to talk about the freedom that comes with education. The freedom to do the thing you want to do and get paid for it. The freedom to ride your bike across a college campus wearing whatever you want to wear and knowing you belong there. The freedom to define yourself and your future.
The freedom to turn on the lights and let them blaze.
“I have seen the takeaway already,” said Alvarez, whose MESA students have gone on to study at such institutions as UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, Johns Hopkins University and Georgia Tech. “These kids own it, and it is impacting future generations.
“It’s breaking the cycle. How amazing is that?”
