Aug. 4, 2021
Samantha Avina chose Hartnell College because she wanted to stay home in Salinas and get to know her baby sister before heading off to complete a four-year degree. She will start this fall at the University of California, Davis, studying managerial economics.
But Avina’s brief time at Hartnell, culminating this May in Associate Degrees for Transfer in business and economics, turned out to be about much more than suddenly not being an only child at age 18.
This first-generation college student and daughter of Mexican immigrants has found her career passion, received guidance from a community mentor and helped launch a new home education venture called Seeds4STEM, originated by former Hartnell dean Shannon Bliss.
“Everything came really quickly,” Avina said.
She has found each door of opportunity leading to another — and keeps walking through them.
The first door was more like an epiphany, when Avina discovered her affinity for business by taking an Introduction to Business class at Hartnell during the summer of 2019, after graduating from Salinas High School. She’d originally planned to become a teacher, having loved her experience working with children as a YMCA volunteer.
The next door was Hartnell’s Salinas Valley Promise program, which provides two years
of free tuition, textbook support and a professional mentor. Based on a matching quiz,
Avina was paired with a volunteer mentor who she’d previously met through the Rotary
Interact club at Salinas High – Linda Fosler, executive director of CASA Monterey
County, a nonprofit that assists children in foster care.
They clicked, meeting monthly for lunch or coffee and continuing via Zoom during the pandemic. Avina said Fosler helped her see how studying business could support her ambition to eventually lead a nonprofit organization – “to give back to the community, just in a different way.” She also has become a mentor herself, helping first-year students in the Promise program.
Yet another door presented itself this past winter, when accounting instructor Travis Williams told his students about the opportunity to join entrepreneurial teams during a Techstars Startup Weekend Monterey Bay, hosted in February by the Institute for Innovation & Economic Development at Cal State Monterey Bay.
Williams said that typically only a couple students step forward, and Avina was one of them.
“She definitely showed initiative, because it wasn’t going to help her in my class,” he said. “It was just something that she could learn from as a student and as a business major.”
During the weekend competition at CSUMB, where Williams served as a mentor, Avina joined a student team to help develop a business pitch by former dean Bliss, who directed Hartnell’s programs in science, engineering, math and technology from 2013-20.
Her newly incorporated – and COVID-inspired – company seeks to enter the $4 billion “STEM toy” market with curriculum and kits parents
can use to organize at-home STEM “clubs” for third- through eighth-graders, with online
support from college student “near peers,” possibly aspiring teachers.
Not only did Seeds4STEM place second that weekend at CSUMB, it also went on to win the Social Venture Division during the final round of the program’s Startup Challenge on May 7.
Bliss said she values Avina’s contributions and has elected to keep her involved as a paid intern this summer, including managing social media and work to obtain grants and other funding for the fledgling company.
“She’s been working really hard, and I don’t think we’d have got here if we hadn’t had this collaboration,” Bliss said.
In turn, Avina is grateful for the opportunity. "Its been really nice to have this experience and being able to learn what goes into creating a non-profit," she said.
In addition to her own self-motivation, Avina has repeatedly benefited from a readiness to use Hartnell’s many resources for students. That includes picking the brains of faculty during office hours and making frequent use of tutoring at the Panther Learning Lab, which she swears by.
For example, when challenged by a computer science class she described as one of her hardest classes, she said, “I finished with an A, but I was in that tutoring center two or three times a week.”
Avina said she felt very welcomed and supported at Hartnell, both by faculty and by her fellow students.
“If you needed help with anything, they were right there to help you right away,” she said.
She also is convinced her decision to begin college at Hartnell was the right one, for many reasons.
“The time I spent at Hartnell became more meaningful because it allowed me to get to know my sister and be there through all her firsts,” Avina said. “I am incredibly appreciative that I have had the opportunity to make many memories with her these past two years.”