‘A launching pad for a better life.’ Modesto Junior College celebrated on 100th anniversary
Modesto Junior College’s first century of scholarship was celebrated Sunday in speech and song.
The Centennial Founders’ Day Celebration on the MJC East Campus Quad was held the same day of the year that students attended the college’s first courses in 1921. The gathering on a breezy afternoon included the singing of “Happy Birthday” and, because the MJC mascot is a pirate, a medley of “Pirates of Penzance” songs by the Concert Choir.
In opening remarks, MJC Foundation Executive Director George Boodrookas said Sunday’s event was the kickoff of a full year of celebration that will culminate in spring with the graduation of the college’s 100th class.
Teasing things to come, he said MJC will be “building a great big storybook this year” and seeks community participation. Everyone who’s taught or learned or otherwise passed through the college has a story to tell, Boodrookas said.
Selected to share his “MJC Story” on Sunday was Emmanuel “Manny” Escamilla, a 2013 graduate. He then attended UC Berkeley, earning a bachelor’s degree in religion with a minor in computer science, before earning a master’s in divinity from Harvard University.
Escamilla founded the CodeX Program, an ed-tech social enterprise focused on making tech education accessible to public schools in California’s Central Valley. He’s working toward a master’s degree in business administration at UC Davis and “most importantly,” Boodrookas said in introducing him, “he’s now back in Modesto, where he is among our leaders in the Latino community, making change right here ... to make a difference in the Central Valley.”
Escamilla, a South Modesto Partnerships board member, told the audience that his story “is no different than many others.” He grew up poor in south Modesto, living in a one-room trailer with his single mother, “who tried her best to make ends meet.”
Coming out of high school, it took him a bit of time to get his footing at the junior college, he said, but “MJC instilled hope in me that through hard work and education, this could be a launching pad for a better life.”
He knows there are many other students trying to figure things out, Escamilla said, and a beautiful thing about MJC is that it allows for failures on the path to success.
He reminded the crowd that a college is its people, and he thanked “all of the alumni who make this community vibrant, every professor who spends their extra time with students during office hours, and every employee who gives an extra smile in the mornings to administrators who manage this campus to the best of their abilities. This school is something that will live another hundred years and beyond.”
Among others who spoke Sunday was MJC President Santanu Bandyopadhyay. He noted that over its 100 years, MJC has had more than 750,000 graduates, who have gone on to excel in a variety of fields. “We have footballers and filmmakers, artists, we have activists, we have Olympians. ... And we are so proud that we could touch your life to help inspire you to reach your goals and your potential.”
The president’s remarks also looked to the future. Education “is assuming a different meaning altogether,” he said. Education, job skills training, industries and outreach to students all have “morphed in the last 16 months in post of this pandemic,” Bandyopadhyay said.
Educators are harnessing the power of technology to reach out to those in greatest need, he said. They have learned that unless they’re proactive and do reach out, “we may not be able to support them. And we renew our pledge at this time that we will continue to seek those students who need us the most (and) be committed to them, provide all the resources that they need in order to be successful in life and society.”
More information on MJC’s Centennial Celebration can be found at mjc.edu/100.
This story was originally published September 19, 2021 at 4:20 PM.
