March 25, 2022
Hartnell College provides customized support to 1,000 first generation and low-income students thanks to $7 million in newly awarded or renewed five-year grants. Hartnell is among only three California community colleges to garner that much funding from federal TRIO programs. For program directors Manuel Bersamin and Cesar Velazquez, what matters most is the end goal: helping students graduate from high school, aspire to college and obtain a degree.
“In seeking these grants, that was always in the back of our mind: We wanted to make
sure that the TRIO pipeline is set up so it’s a handoff from high school all the way
to graduation,” said Velazquez, who since 2017 has guided two pre-college programs
called Upward Bound. They annually accept applications from 120 students at Alisal,
Everett Alvarez, Rancho San Juan and North Salinas high schools and prepare them through
academic support, counseling, mentoring and help with financial aid and other applications. 
The original TRIO program at Hartnell was established in 2006 and continues to provide proactive counseling, tutoring, university tours and more to students recruited from every high school in the Hartnell district. Parents also participate in bilingual workshops. It received two five-year grants in August 2020, totaling $2.65 million, allowing it to serve 300 students, with increased focus on south Monterey County and English-language learners. The two TRIO/Upward Bound grant renewals in August 2022 will total $2.98 million. Hartnell’s newest TRIO program, established with a grant awarded in August 2021, is called TRIO/Talent Search and will identify and assist 600 students with college potential. Hartnell received $1.37 million to begin serving students at Everett Alvarez, Rancho San Juan and North Salinas high.
Bersamin, who leads Hartnell’s TRIO SSS, said the programs’ expanded scope will build upon staff’s rapport with students and is especially timely because of the pandemic. Both he and Velazquez and their teams had to convert their in-person work to a fully online mode for 15 months.
“One phenomenon of distance education is that students got more direction during quarantine, and when they came back to in-person learning, they still needed that hand-holding,” Bersamin said. “We will help them learn to walk independently again.”