From Santa Barbara City College to Google

How SBCC’s Support Programs and Faculty Helped Electrical Engineer Edith De La Rosa Achieve Her Dream

Credit: Mauricio Jovel

Branded Content Presented by Santa Barbara City College Office of Communications

When Edith De La Rosa’s parents immigrated from Zacatecas, Mexico, in 1990, hoping to give their children a better life, they emphasized the value of education. But having never attended college themselves, they weren’t sure how to help their kids get there. “I grew up with this idea of ‘go to school,’ but I didn’t know what that process looked like,” De La Rosa shared, calling in from the Bay Area, where she lives and works at Google as a Machine Learning Systems Hardware Engineer.

De La Rosa’s parents settled in Santa Barbara, where she attended Santa Barbara High School. It wasn’t until her senior year, when classmates started receiving college acceptance letters, that she realized she was already behind. When she asked her counselor if she could still apply, she was hit with a harsh reality: The deadline had passed. “I was so bummed out,” she admitted. “I was like, ‘I wish I would have known about this sooner.’”

Just as she had started to accept that college wasn’t in the cards, everything changed when she attended an assembly where Adolfo Corral of Santa Barbara City College’s Running Start program was speaking. Corral informed students that through SBCC, they could apply to a six-week summer bridge program that would teach them everything they needed to know about college and help them navigate their educational journeys. “I was like, ‘I need to be in this,’” she recalled.

Running Start gave her the tools — and the confidence — to enroll at SBCC in the fall of 2009, where she initially declared a major in criminal justice. But a few semesters later, her interest in math caught the attention of her career counselor, Sabrina Barajas, who encouraged her to explore a STEM path through SBCC’s Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA) program.

De La Rosa met with Virginia Estrella, then the MESA program director. “I told her that I liked math,” De La Rosa recalled. “But I don’t know what engineering is. I’m very interested in learning what engineering is.” Estrella suggested that she try a summer internship at UCLA, where she could participate in a robotics competition. De La Rosa applied and got accepted.

That summer at UCLA lit a fire. While implementing sensors for the robot, she realized she wanted to know more. Once home, she adjusted her academic plan and switched to the electrical engineering track. Through the MESA program, she began securing summer internships, one after the next — one summer she interned at the University of Virginia, another at UC Berkeley.

Throughout her time at SBCC, De La Rosa leaned on Corral for support. He was the first person she turned to after failing a math test — an experience that shook her confidence. She remembers leaving two pages blank on the exam because she ran out of time. “Maybe I’m not as suited for engineering as I thought I would be,” she worried. Corral encouraged her to talk to her math teacher, who advised her to work on time management. She applied the advice and aced the next test.

That experience taught her two things: the importance of asking for help, and that failure isn’t the end-all and be-all. “Your biggest resources are the people around you,” she mused, “You just never know how they may be able to help you.”

Corrall “was kinda like the college dad” to De La Rosa and her peers. She said she might not be where she is today without his guidance and support. So, when she received the news of his unexpected death in 2020, she was devastated, but she knew that his impact was undoubtedly still alive. “He was like an angel,” she recalled.

Corral was the one who nominated De La Rosa to represent SBCC in Washington, D.C., when they won the 2013 Aspen Award, a community college excellence award. It was a surreal experience, she said. Here she was, a daughter of two immigrants, representing her school in the same room as Dr. Jill Biden. “I was going toward her to shake her hand,” De La Rosa recalled, “and she just gives me a hug.” After the ceremony, when she returned home, she received a letter from Dr. Biden thanking her for coming.

After five years at SBCC, she transferred to Cal Poly in 2014, where she studied electrical engineering. She secured an internship at Texas Instruments, a semiconductor company, in her first year there. Before she graduated in 2017, she received a full-time job offer at Texas Instruments right out of college. She then worked for a Silicon Valley start-up that went public. In August 2024, she started at Google.

Needless to say, her parents are proud.

De La Rosa still can’t believe how far she’s come. Now engaged, she recently joked with her fiancé about getting married on the lawn at SBCC. He’s not so sure — but whether or not they tie the knot there, she says the school will always hold a special place in her heart. Simply put, “I love SBCC,” she said.

This article was paid for by Santa Barbara City College. For more information on Santa Barbara City College and the hundreds of programs they offer, visit sbcc.edu or (805) 965-0581. If you are an SBCC alumni please join SBCC Alumni Connect at sbccfoundation.org/alumni.