Juanita Mendez manages the Eastview Campus and teaches
office administration classes there.

Growing up in Laredo, Texas, Juanita Mendez aspired to be a teacher. With eight children in the family, however, college was rarely, if ever, mentioned.

But the influence of Mendez’s high school friends prompted her to follow them to Laredo’s junior college. And when they talked about transferring to a four-year school, Mendez did, too.

She chose East Texas State – now Texas A&M University-Commerce – 600 miles from her home. Mendez picked the school because a cousin and uncle were students there, but “My parents didn’t understand why I had to go so far away.”

Her parents also did not have the money to send her to college. So Mendez applied for financial aid and took out student loans. She participated in work study programs and got a job working in a convenience store.

And, for the first time in her life, she experienced prejudice.

“We were a very, very small Mexican-American minority there,” she says. The college “was predominantly white and African-American.”

Many of those non-Hispanic students lived in her dorm but would not associate with her outside of that setting. It was a challenging experience, but Mendez stuck with it. She even passed up an opportunity to work for the state, an offer presented to her when she had one year left of school.

“I can’t believe it, but I did say, ‘You know what, I’m just going to go back and see if I can finish.’ ”

And she did.

Mendez graduated in 1978 with a double major in Business Education and Spanish. She returned to Laredo and worked in a school business office for two years. She got married, but stayed in Laredo to care for her ailing mother while her husband pursued his degree at the University of Texas-Austin.

After Mendez’s mother passed away, she joined her husband in Austin and got a job in the business office at Austin Community College. Now the campus manager at Eastview, Mendez continues to pursue her lifelong dream. She has been a member of ACC’s adjunct faculty for 25 years, teaching office administration classes.

Mendez, who is no longer married, has seen her siblings follow in their sister’s footsteps, each attending college in some form or another. Though it took one brother several years to finish, Mendez urges fellow Latinos to pursue their degree, no matter their age or how long it takes.

She is living proof of her own advice: “There is nothing that you cannot overcome.”

This profile appeared in the April edition of La Voz newspaper. It is part of an ongoing series spotlighting the Austin Community College District.