2010

Iris Lucero is a Gender Studies major with a minor in Education. In addition to being a Ronald E. McNair Scholar, she works for the Center for Community College Partnerships (CCCP), an outreach program part of the UCLA Academic Advancement Program. As a peer mentor at West Los Angeles Community College (WLAC), the campus from which she transferred to UCLA, Iris motivates first-generation, low-income, underrepresented, and nontraditional community college students to consider transferring to a four-year university. This fall, she will begin a Master’s Program in the Division of Social Science and Comparative Education of the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. Her plans include pursuing a Ph.D. in Education to study private for-profit vocational institutions and their effects on communities of color. This spring Iris will be the first in her family to graduate from college and be admitted to graduate school.

Christine Diane Coe has been raising six children (five daughters and a son) singlehandedly as a committed homeschooler. She returned to school in 2006 after her youngest was born. In 2009 she completed a Creative Writing major at UCLA and won the May Merrill Literary Award. She was recently admitted to the graduate program in the Department of Theater Film and Television where she is concentrating on Screenwriting and Cinematography.