Students Honored for Community Service, Leadership, Astronomy

Four outstanding University of La Verne students received prestigious fellowships and scholarships for their community service and student leadership in the spring.

Maribel Hernandez

Maribel Hernandez received the Newman Civic Fellows Award, which honors “inspiring college student leaders” who are creating positive changes in their communities.

Hernandez, a business major, is the Director of Community Involvement for the University’s Latino Student Forum. She is also the Freshman Ambassador of the Associated Students of the University of La Verne.

She credits her parents – immigrants from Mexico – with teaching her the value of helping others in the community.

“My parents instilled in me the importance of community through their own acts of generosity and service,” Hernandez said. “I saw it exemplified in their lives and they helped me to develop it in mine.”

Joshua Serrano

Computer science and physics major Joshua Serrano received a $750 Kepler Scholarship during an April awards ceremony for his extensive involvement in the astronomy programs at University of La Verne and Mt. San Antonio College.

“I was surprised but very happy to receive this scholarship,” said Serrano. “All of the other students who applied are all very highly-qualified, so it could have been any one of us.”

The 21-year-old is an intern in the planetary science division at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. He has been working with JPL scientists on the Cassini Mission. This summer, he will be promoted to an academic part-time position, where he will work on a proposed NASA project planned for 2020.

“JPL does a really good job of putting students with cutting-edge scientists,” he said.

After graduation, Serrano plans to attend graduate school to study astrophysics.

Mariela Martinez and Carlos Yanes

Mariela Martinez and Carlos Yanes have been accepted into the California Campus Compact’s Community Engagement Student Fellowship program, which provides funding for four-month, 50-hour community service projects on campus. They both received $500 scholarships.

“I was really hoping to get this because I have always wanted to do something like this,” said Martinez, a political science major minoring in interfaith studies.

Martinez has pledged to raise awareness and help for refugees living locally who fled Syria, Vietnam, Iraq and Syria. She plans to spend a month focusing on refugees from each country. She will air a documentary on the subject and host a community event aimed at welcoming the refugees.

“What they have had to go through – fleeing their home countries, not for economic reasons but to escape violence – it really touches home for me,” she said.

The 21-year-old is the daughter of immigrant parents who fled the crime-ridden Mexican town of Juarez when Martinez was 7 years old.

She said she has always had a passion for helping others, and attributes much of her plan to the guidance and inspiration she has received during classes at University of La Verne.

“The University of La Verne is so centered around community service and activism, which has really inspired me to do so much more, and on an international level that I wasn’t aware of before,” she said.