San Mateo, CA; March 28, 2008—College of San Mateo Counselor and Professor Modesta Garcia received an award at the recent 2008 Harvard Alumni Association Leadership Conference, a worldwide event in Cambridge, Massachusetts, sponsored by Harvard University.

Prior to the evening’s award ceremony, she was feted at a celebratory luncheon at the Harvard Faculty Club hosted by Harvard University Professor Emeritus Charles Vert Willie and later posed for a photograph with Professor Willie and Harvard University student Yan Yan Mao.

The photo meant a great deal to Garcia, certainly because the two are close acquaintances of the CSM alumna. But there was something more: they represented three generations of Harvard/CSM mentoring.

After attending CSM, Garcia transferred as a Ford Foundation Scholar to Santa Clara University, and subsequently earned a master’s degree at Harvard University Graduate School of Education. There, Professor Willie mentored Garcia in the field of education and assisted her on a career path that included administrative and admissions positions at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, Santa Clara University, and Princeton University and finally led her back to CSM.

While at CSM, Garcia has inspired students she has counseled to dream big. Most recently, she counseled an outstanding concurrent enrollment student who took enough classes at CSM while in high school to graduate from the community college and her high school within a week. That student, Yan Yan Mao, was accepted into Harvard and is now in her second year.

In nominating Garcia for the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) “Outstanding Club and Special Interest Group Contribution Award,” HAA Regional Director Anne Knight wrote about how Garcia has served Harvard “in many ways and to an extraordinary degree in each of them.“

“It is noteworthy that while she could have stayed at Princeton or moved to another Ivy League school, she has elected to return to the community College of San Mateo, where she had first matriculated and from which she can now point the path to Harvard-as she regularly does!” added Knight.

“What Modesta has done for our master’s program (in education at Harvard) is unique and outstanding,“ said Professor Willie, who was a classmate of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Morehouse College. “She not only recommends students but follows through with the other people who had worked with her so she could send students to be mentored by them.  She deliberately cultivates us, not for her own benefit but for those she wants to help. I have mentored many of Modesta’s people.”

In 2003, Garcia was one of three inaugural recipients of the Harvard Graduate School of Education “Alumni of Color Achievement Award” for outstanding service and work in the areas of race, class, gender and identity. She also has served as president of both the Harvard alumni clubs in the area (San Francisco and Silicon Valley). Garcia was the first Latina to lead both alumni chapters.

With any questions for or to interview Garcia, please call 650.574.6190.

For a photograph of Garcia, Willie and Mao, please contact Mike Habeeb at 650.574.6442.

For more information about CSM, visit collegeofsanmateo.edu.