"Sac State is No. 1! Stingers Up!" Students enjoy API College Day on March 29. (Sacramento State/Jessica Vernone) | More photosThey were Hornets for a day, and hopefully Hornets of the future.
About 800 students and teacher chaperones came to campus on Friday, March 29, for Sacramento State’s first Asian Pacific Islander College Day, an effort to encourage young people from those communities to consider attending the University.
“Look around at each other,” said Vice President for Student Affairs Ed Mills, addressing the crowd in the University Union Ballroom. “You are the future leaders of our country, the next CEOs, the next designers, the next computer programmers, the next business leaders. You are going to get to design your future, and that starts now.”
Students from throughout the region attended, learning about topics such as the admissions process and applying for financial aid. Many attendees are on track to be the first members of their families to attend college, said Chao Vang of Sac State’s Student Academic Success and Educational Equity Programs.
About 24 percent of Sac State students identify as API, designation that includes more than 20 different ethnic groups, Vang said.
Jessie Fuapau, a social sciences major at American River College (ARC), said she is considering transferring to Sac State and was attending the event to increase her comfort level about the University and learn more about academic life here.
Her friend, Sunshine Vang, studies nursing at ARC. She said she would be among the first in her family to earn a college degree, and also is considering Sac State.
“Getting a degree would mean a lot to me, and to my family,” Sunshine Vang said.
Students from Sacramento’s Hiram Johnson High School also were among API College Day attendees.
Pauline Brown, a college career technician at the school who was acting as a chaperone, said she saw the event as an important milestone for her students.
“It’s a way to let our students know that higher education is an option for them, and that they are not alone,” she said.
Brown and Jessica Gunning, a Hiram Johnson counselor, said their students “are not always encouraged” by family members and others to pursue higher education. The College Day gathering likely made the prospect less intimidating, they said.
“My guess is that 90 percent of our students would be first-generation” college attendees, Gunning said.
Sac State admissions counselor Amy Saldana pitched Sac State as a “large university with a small-campus feel” and touted its proliferation of trees, its sports teams and its faculty and curriculum as major selling points.
Mills taught the students President Robert S. Nelsen’s Sac State battle cry, and led them in a familiar chant.
“Sac State is Number One!” the young people shouted. “Stingers up!” – Cynthia Hubert