STEM SITE Lite

Jesus Iniguez participated in our initial STEM Summer Intensive Transfer Experience funded by the Jack Kent Cooke Founded and lead by one of CCCP's coordinators, Asena Filihia, who developed the curriculum. He participated in additional programs for CCCP scholars, transferred to UCLA from Los Angeles Mission College, completed his BS in Chemistry and PhD. 

Jesus has been very dedicated to encouraging underrepresented students to engage and succeed in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields. His active outreach participation and leadership skills promote a diverse, impartial, and inclusive academic environment in not only UCLA but extended communities as well. Amongst numerous awards and distinctions, he was selected by the UCLA Academic Senate for the prestigious 2019 Graduate Student Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award which is given to just one graduate student each year. 

Jesus intentionally has returned to LAMC to encourage and nurture STEM's next generation of scholars.

Bio n/a

Marilyn Martinez identifies as a low-income first-generation transfer student of color from Glendale, California. She is the proud daughter and sister of a Mexican immigrant family from Guerrero and Puebla Mexico. After high school, Marilyn didn’t apply to a single four-year university. Instead, she attended Pasadena City College, where she would graduate with three associates and administration honors. She would serve as an international peer mentor, a CCCP scholar, and internal vice president of Alpha Gamma Sigma. Then, she would transfer to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as a Regents Scholarship Recipient, where she would double major in Sociology and Chicana and Chicano Studies. She would go on to graduate with triple honors including Summa Cum Laude, Sociology Departmental Honors, and College Honors. During her time at UCLA, she would serve as a Bruin Ambassador for the admissions office, an AAP Academic Peer Counselor, an AAP research assistant, and the Regents Scholar Society Transfer Affirars Director. She would also conduct a year-long research project on undocumented garment workers in Los Angeles. After graduating from UCLA Marilyn went on to accept a full-time position as the CCCP Program Coordinator for Pasadena City College. This upcoming fall, Marilyn will also be starting her Master of Education in Postsecondary Administration and Student Affairs (PASA) at the University of Southern California (USC). She is excited to continue her passion for increasing admission and retention in higher education for historically underrepresented people. 

Tram Nguyen currently serves as an Assistant Director of Transfer Recruitment at UCLA, her alma mater after transferring in one year from Orange Coast College back in 2019. Upon graduating from UCLA with a BA in English and a minor in Education Studies as a first-generation college student in 2021, she joined Undergraduate Admission and has worked there ever since. This past May, Tram earned her M.Ed in Enrollment Management and Policy from USC. For fun, she loves spending quality time with her loved ones, watching k-dramas and documentaries, and traveling. 

Santiago Bernal is currently the Assistant Director for UCLA’s Center for Community College Partnerships. Born in El Salvador, he immigrated at the beginning of the civil war to the US in 1980 to join his mother who one by one brought her three children. He entered UCLA directly from high school in the engineering department but in his first year, he realized he had a passion for language and literature, switching to English as a major with a concentration in world literature. As a undergrad student activist, he co-founded the Latin American Student Association (LASA) and La Familia (queer Latinx organization) amongst other organizations. Working at UCLA’s Undergraduate Admission, Santi established the Student Transfer and Opportunities Mentoring Program (STOMP) while co-founding/editing a queer LA magazine completely in Spanish. 

In his current position, he oversees the peer mentoring and scholar cohort programs grounded on transfer-positive, equity-minded, research-based frameworks and filtered through a racial critical lens. Additionally, he has served in numerous local and state-wide community college/transfer advisory boards and a national transfer policy board.

For the last twenty years, Santi has also worked on a weekly limited-basis at Pasadena City College’s Transfer Center as an advisor and to develop culturally affirming practices and programs such as the Chicanx/Latinx Advancing in the Values of Education (CLAVE) program and the now annual Latinx Grad. In addition, he has launched a number of programs that focus on the transfer educational pipeline for undocumented students, men of color, queer, transgendered, Black, Indigenous, people of color;

formerly incarcerated and system impacted communities and veteran students. Based on his transfer and racial equity work, he has been invited to present in the US, The Netherlands and Hong Kong on transfer policies and research-based practices to achieve equity. Most recently, he co-authored the book Power to the Transfer: Critical Race Theory and a Transfer Receptive Culture which focuses on the responsibility of baccalaureate-granting institutions for the success of transfer students of color. And he loves music!