First Latina President to Take Helm at Santa Ana College

Education has always been at the center of Rita M. Cepeda’s world.

Cepeda, named president of Santa Ana College on Monday, has worked for the state’s community college system for more than two decades. But even before that, the need to learn changed her life.

When she was growing up in Nicaragua, her father worried that she would not get the education he wanted her to have. So he moved 11-year-old Rita, her three sisters and brother to Long Beach in 1963.

“Education became the most important thing in my life,” said Cepeda, 46, “and it never stopped.”

Cepeda is the first Latina president of Santa Ana College, one of the oldest and largest community colleges in the state. For the last year, she has served as interim president of Mission College in Santa Clara. Her appointment comes nearly two years after previous president Eddie Hernandez Jr. left the job to become chancellor of the Rancho Santiago Community College District. Two previous searches for a new president were unsuccessful.

“Rita understands the mission and the purpose of a community college,” said John Didion, vice chancellor for human resources for the college district. “Good things come when you wait. Rita is really well-known in the state.”

Cepeda will start July 1. Her focus, she said, is on being more innovative about getting graduates into good jobs, in part by forging partnerships with area businesses.

“Community colleges are becoming an important part of economic development and vitality,” said Cepeda, who worked with high-tech companies like Intel and Sun Microsystems in the Silicon Valley to ensure Mission College students graduated with marketable skills.

Cepeda said she would like to do more of the same in Orange County, although she is also determined not to sacrifice the more traditional role of Santa Ana College as a gateway to four-year schools. Community colleges, she said, may be the most important link in California’s educational system.

“There is no better place to work if you want to have an impact in people’s lives,” Cepeda said. “Talk about transformational. Where else do you take someone who doesn’t have a high school diploma, who may not speak English as a first language and get them to the point where they can go to a University of California school?”

Cepeda said she hopes to have an impact in the larger community as well, focusing on bringing technology into the homes of the economically disadvantaged in an effort to make sure children from poor families do not fall even further behind.

And work with high-tech companies is close to her heart. As a girl, she dreamed of being an astronaut--and even now jokes with her daughters that when she dies she’ll find some way to have her ashes scattered in space.

“I’ve always had a fascination with science,” she said. “I think I went into a field where I can encourage that in others.”

Cepeda has a bachelor’s degree in communications disorders and a master’s in science from Cal State Long Beach. She is working on a doctorate in education from the University of Southern California.

Cepeda said her parents are thrilled she is coming home--although not surprised by her success.

“My father always had extraordinarily high expectations,” she said. “He always expected us to do well and I’d like to think I met some of his standards.”