SAC Graduate Brenda Valdes Receives Full Scholarship to PhD Program at Stanford University

Four years after beginning her college career at San Antonio College, Brenda Valdes is now at Stanford University, starting a PhD program in education on a full scholarship. She plans to study the effect of social and cultural influences on the performance of students in high school and college.

It’s a subject that in many ways, she’s already an expert on, after overcoming many obstacles to achieve her academic goals.  

She dropped out of school to care for younger siblings in her native Mexico. No other family members had ever gone to college. Her husband did not want her to pursue an education, fearing that it would take too much time away from their three young children.

“I always dreamed about a college education, but at that point I thought, ‘well, I didn’t do it, but I hope my kids do,’” Valdes said.

After arriving in San Antonio in 2010, Valdes began studying English at Palo Alto College in 2011. While she focused on raising children, she took parenting classes and earned her GED.

The desire to go to college never went away.

“It was a fire that was always inside of me,” she said.

Her love of education started in kindergarten. Her father took a job as a school custodian in a nearby town. He had no car to commute, so the family was invited to live in unused classrooms at the school. They lived there for five years.

“For me it was the coolest thing ever, because when everyone went home, the school was our playground,” Valdes said. “We’d run in the halls, play basketball and climb fruit trees. I thought we were so privileged because we lived inside the school. I didn’t know we were practically homeless.”

When her father was able to afford a house in their hometown, the family moved back. Her younger siblings enrolled in a school near home, and Valdes continued to attend the school where her father worked, traveling with him each day.

After her parents divorced, Valdes left school in the ninth grade to care for her siblings.

“It was terrible for me. My siblings were happy – they’re happy in their lives – but for me, I always felt incomplete,” she said. “I felt like a disappointment to myself and to society even.”

That feeling motivated her to pursue her college dreams. When the COVID-19 pandemic shifted all classes online, she saw her opportunity to study at home while taking care of her family.

She applied to SAC and took the TSI, a test that measures college readiness.

She didn’t pass, but SAC staff reassured her that she could still go to college and enrolled her in remedial classes over the summer to prepare her for college-level work in the fall.

When the semester started, she was ready, though she was intimidated, especially as a non-native English speaker. She woke up every day at 4 a.m. to study and do homework before her children woke up.

“Every time I wrote something, I didn’t want people to know that I had very little vocabulary, that I wasn’t like them,” Valdes said.

She graduated from SAC in 2022 with a 3.94 GPA and delivered the commencement address at her graduation ceremony.

Her next goal was to earn a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA).

Soon after starting there, she attended a Mexican Independence Day party on campus and met the leader of UTSA Pathways, a one-year program that teaches undergraduate students to do research in preparation for graduate studies. She joined the program, which provided a stipend and a trip to Stanford University at the end of the year.

After getting a glimpse of graduate-level education, Valdes wanted to keep going after earning her bachelor’s degree in May 2023. She discussed it with her family.

“I told them I still want to go to school. I love being a student. I want to go as far as I can, as far as possible,” Valdes said. “I told them I believe when you’re Hispanic, you have to reach very high ground so you can be seen and really make changes.”

Her husband encouraged her to look at doctorate opportunities. It was a change from her early days at SAC, when she would hide to do homework because she didn’t want him to see her with her computer open.

Over the years, her experience helped him realize that he no longer wanted to be a truck driver, working long hours that took a toll on his physical and mental health. So, with her encouragement, he applied to SAC to major in engineering. 

While visiting Stanford with the UTSA Pathways program, she met with a professor who encouraged her to apply to a PhD program there. She applied and received a full-ride scholarship to pursue a doctorate in education.

Both Valdes and her husband will work on their studies from their campus apartment while their children attend schools close by. Valdes can picture herself as a university professor in psychology or education and, someday, possibly as the U.S. secretary of education.

As she reaches new heights, Valdes is grateful for the start she got at SAC, where she felt welcomed as a non-traditional, first-generation student who spoke English as a second language.

“SAC gave me the foundation for the student I am today,” Valdes said.

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