Scholar Stories
The First Engineer in the Family
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Cradle-2-Graduation StoriesGraduate
A first-generation university graduate, and the first in my family to become an engineer.
Lorenzo Vilches
B.S. Manufacturing Engineering · Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, June 2025
Count the cords in that photograph. Each one is a role he took on at a university he reached by a route almost nobody plans in advance: a certificate in automotive repair first, then an engineering degree.
Lorenzo Vilches finished a certificate in automotive repair, then entered engineering school at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. In June 2025, after a long road, he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in manufacturing engineering. He now works in the aerospace industry.
- Imagination Library
- Family Literacy
- TK Academy
- Learning Academy
- Scholarship, completed
- Graduate, completed
BASIC funded both ends of that: the certificate and the degree.
From the workshop to the factory floor
A vocational certificate is often treated as the end of a track rather than a point on one. Lorenzo used his as a starting position. Moving from a certificate program into an engineering degree at a university like Cal Poly is a genuinely difficult transfer, and BASIC’s stay-in-school awards exist precisely so that the second half of a route like that does not have to be paid for out of a part-time wage.
The support was not only financial. BASIC has written letters for him, advised him, and stayed in contact since he left high school — more than ten years of it.
In his own words
There’s a saying that “it takes a village”, and I cannot think of a more fitting representative to best embody this proverb than BASIC. They work for the youngest in elementary school learning to read and write, the teenagers piecing together their ideas of a future profession, and the adults working on and realizing their potential and goals.
The endeavors of BASIC’s members are the helping hands that reach out to lift us up, that steady us at our side along our journey, the hands at our back pushing us forward, and the hands that gesture toward the possibilities that exist ahead of us.
With their support, I went from being a student with only hopes and uncertainties towards a profession to now being a first-generation university graduate, and the first in my family to become an engineer.
Lorenzo Vilches
What the efforts of BASIC result in is creating opportunities for us to have a chance to succeed, making what would otherwise be unreachable become possible.Lorenzo Vilches
Lorenzo also appears on BASIC Salutes Its Graduates, alongside the other scholars honored in the series.
The hands at his back were local
Every award BASIC makes comes from the community it is made in. That is what turned a certificate into an engineering degree.