As the daughter of Salinas Valley ag workers and an active FFA member at Soledad High
School, Angelita Cisneros-Aguilar was clear about her career goal, but not quite ready
to commit to a four-year university when she graduated in 2018.
As she said in a winter 2020 Hartnell College TV commercial, she now knows where she’s headed, and she knows she can get there.
Cisneros-Aguilar will graduate May 29 from Hartnell, Cum Laude, with a double major in agricultural production and plant science. She will pursue her bachelor’s in crop science at Chico State University.
She is the youngest of five children, with two sisters and two brothers, and the first in her family to go to college. Her parents, both born in Mexico, are mother Maria Aide Aguilar, a cooler employee for Growers Express in Gonzales, and father Miguel Cisneros-Garcia, a tractor driver for Dole Food Co.
“Going to a two-year community college was a little bit better for me financially,” Cisneros-Aguilar said, “and it has given me more time to think about what I want to do with my degree and what industry I want to go into in ag.”
She has made good use of those two years, serving as an Ag Ambassador for Hartnell, assisting as a student worker with Career Prep and Placement Services on the Alisal Campus and completing a 2019 summer research internship with the University of California Cooperative Extension. She also represented the Alisal Campus as a senator in the Associated Students of Hartnell College.
During the UC internship, Cisneros-Aguilar said, “I was mostly doing photo samples and plant tissue samples to collect data and analyze them to let growers know what variety of plant to use and what fertilizer to use more of less of.”
She has received six scholarships since graduating from high school, including as a participant in the Women’s Education and Leadership Institute (WELI) at Hartnell and from the Andrew & Phyllis D’Arrigo Endowment to the Hartnell College Foundation. She is a member of the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society.
As Cisneros-Aguilar prepares for online classes at Chico State this fall, she also reflects on what made Hartnell such an important step in her educational and career journey.
“When you go to the classroom, you just feel so welcome,” she said. “All the students are there because they want to be there, and they are really focused on their goals. The professors are always willing to help you out, and if you struggle they reach out to you – and it’s awesome.
“Everyone around you just feels so welcoming and helpful, and it makes me feel that I’m part of the Hartnell community.”