Marvin Martinez has lived the American dream and the immigrant’s dream. At nine years old, he came to the U.S. from El Salvador with his parents and four siblings, speaking only Spanish. “This was 1972, and it was a lot easier to travel around the world. It was a lot easier to come from Latin America to the United States and a lot easier to get documentation, like a green card,” says Martinez. 

His experience as an immigrant has informed his 36-year career in higher education, from amnesty program assistant in the mid-1980s to his current position as chancellor of the Rancho Santiago Community College System. 

Martinez’s entrée into community college leadership came when he was a senior at UCLA and his advisor encouraged him to apply for a research fellowship with California Tomorrow, studying the impact of immigrant students in the California public schools. “I said, ‘I'm an immigrant student, I think I know a little bit about that,’” says Martinez. It was 1987, and Congress had passed the Immigration and Reform Act the previous year. The IRCA introduced civil and criminal penalties to employers who knowingly hired undocumented immigrants or individuals unauthorized to work in the U.S. but also offered legalization, which led to lawful permanent residence and prospective naturalization for undocumented migrants who entered the country prior to 1982. 

Martinez researched and presented his findings within the K-12 community and at community colleges. The most extraordinary aspect of the experience, says Martinez, was the organization’s impressive board, which included the executive director of Radio Bilingue in Fresno, the executive director of MALDEF, and CEOs of Lucky Stores and Levi Strauss. “I learned a lot being part of that,” says Martinez. 

Following one of his many presentations, a woman from Cerritos College encouraged him to apply for an amnesty program assistant position. He did. For the next several years, Martinez frequently flew to DC to keep the money flowing to Cerritos’s amnesty program. In this position, he rubbed elbows with individuals like Richard Polanco, who eventually became a California state senator credited with starting the Legislative Latino Caucus. “He also brought a number of Latino legislators into the legislature back in the 1990s and from 2000 to 2010. He was a significant player,” says Martinez. Networking with such individuals familiarized Martinez with policy and taught him how to advocate at the state and federal levels. 

After his time at Cerritos College, Martinez became the first dean of business and industry at Santa Monica College, an institution known for transferring students to UCLA, USC, and Berkeley. He coordinated the Perkins Act fund, which supported career technical education programs at community colleges and the K-12 level. In addition, Martinez established the Academy of Entertainment and Technology program to train students with skills necessary in the entertainment industry. Students learned to work at “big time studios” that were immersed in new digital technologies. Like the individuals with whom he worked at Cerritos, his advisory board boasted some heavy hitters, like Dustin Hoffman, the board’s president, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, both of whom attended Santa Monica. 

Many of the academy’s students, Martinez points out, never matriculated. In this case, a positive as they were snapped up by the entertainment industry. “I can't blame the students. If somebody offers you a job where you're making $80,000, that's a lot of money for a 20-year-old,” says Martinez.

After working at the Los Angeles Community College District, where he was the vice chancellor for economic and workforce development, and Los Angeles Harbor College, Matinez landed at East Los Angeles College as its president. “I applied to go there because it serves a lot of long-standing Latino communities in Los Angeles,” says Martinez. 

Martinez arrived at East LA at a time when it had one of the highest enrollments in the state but transferred few students. His goal was to fix that. “At Santa Monica College, about 3,000 students applied per year to go to UCLA. Not all 3,000 get in, but at least 1,500 to 2,000 would get in. The problem at East LA College was that not many students were applying to transfer, maybe 300 to 400,” says Martinez.

To increase East LA’s transfer numbers, Martinez applied a strategy he used at Santa Monica: partnering with universities and high schools. “The key is getting more students to apply and really motivating them to create a partnership with the local universities,” says Martinez. He connected with UCLA’s chancellor, asking him to visit East LA College with his dean of admissions and his director of financial aid. “The chancellor was there for basically the whole day. We had a number of forums and discussions where we talked about students applying,” says Martinez. 

That visit blossomed into a three-year contractual partnership with UCLA. To pique students’ interest in UCLA, East LA students took classes each summer and lived in the dorms. “You take them to a place like UCLA and they live in the dorms and are basically a UCLA student. All they really need is motivation,” says Martinez. 

In his 36-year career in higher education, with 16 of those as a CEO, Martinez has witnessed significant change. The biggest is demographics. Early in his career, 70 to 80 percent of the enrollment at a community college would be students coming directly from high schools. That number has dwindled over time as the number of students at the K-12 level has declined. “People are having fewer kids. Kids are choosing to go to charter schools or private schools. So there's less school kids in the pipeline,” says Martinez. 

To compensate for the decline in high school enrollees and keep their numbers up, community colleges have pivoted and begun marketing to adults. “The number of working adults who want to come back to school has more than doubled. So, when you look at our enrollment numbers, almost half of our students are working adults who come from the continuing and adult education programs,” says Martinez. 

Community colleges seek enrollment balance through diversity. At Rancho, Martinez does this by offering dual enrollment through apprentice programs, which allow students to be sponsored by a union, like a carpenters’ union or a welders’ union. “You don’t have to leave your job to go to school,” says Martinez. Adult students in Rancho’s apprentice programs continue to draw a salary and retain their health benefits. “Today we have a little bit over 7,000 apprentices, sponsored by the trades,” says Martinez. 

Like countless Hispanics who immigrated to America with their parents searching for better opportunities, Martinez has lived the American dream. However, many El Salvadoran immigrants have never had the chance. “The California Community College system has a hundred and sixteen colleges. Of the 73 districts and all the colleges there are only two El Salvadoran presidents. The other president is at Santa Ana College. We definitely want more people from El Salvador, Central America, Latin America to go into education and going to community colleges. It’s important because our communities have changed,” says Martinez.