ALUM PROFILE
From soldier to engineer: alum finds his niche

Marcos Garcia went straight from rural Santa Paula High School into the army in 1993. His parents, both laborers, wanted him to immediately help support the family and discouraged him from going to college. Although he was a top student who took college prep classes, none of his counselors encouraged him to go on to higher education.

So Garcia enrolled in the military to help his family and keep the door open for college. After his service, where he fought in Desert Storm, Garcia enrolled in Ventura College, then transferred to UC Santa Barbara where he finally earned his degree in mechanical engineering last June.

Today Garcia is a product development engineer at Inovati, a leading high-tech protective coatings company. He says his academic success was due in large part to his participation in MESA at Ventura College and UCSB.

“During my first year at Ventura College, I found MESA by accident,” he recalls. “I was exposed to MESA alumni in industry who told me what it was like to be an engineer. This was very helpful in my career planning.”

In addition, MESA staff at Ventura College and UCSB aided Garcia in landing industry internships. For a year and a half, Garcia was a logistics engineer at the Naval Air Warfare Center at Point Mugu troubleshooting naval weapons systems. He also held internships at the California Nanosystems Institute and served as a student researcher at UCSB.

MESA encouraged Garcia to exercise his leadership capabilities. He founded the student chapter of theSociety of Hispanic Professional Engineers at Ventura College and served as its first president. At UCSB, he was co-chair of Los Ingenieros, the SHPE affiliate, during the 2004–2005 academic year.

Garcia won National Science Foundation scholarships in 2003 and 2004. He was also awarded SHPE scholarships in 2002 and 2003. In addition, he was an Edison Scholar and a Chevron Scholar award recipient, each for two years.

Garcia had a smooth transition from community college into the engineering program at UCSB. Bob Cota, the UCSB MESA Center Director, developed a mentoring relationship with Garcia while he was still at Ventura College and helped him make the shift. Garcia credits MESA with helping him through rough academic times at UCSB.

“MESA counselors stayed on top of me when my grades were slipping,” he says. It was very helpful that MESA provided study groups with graduate engineering student as tutors.”

Cota gives Garcia high marks both as a scholar and a mentor. “Marcos acted as a mentor to other students at Ventura College,” Cota remembers. “He became the lead person to involve MESA students at Ventura College in Robo-Challenge, a robotics competition sponsored by the UCSB MESA Center.”

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