GALESBURG — When his family moved to Galesburg in the summer of 2019, Jose Agudelo Ramirez knew little English and had a limited knowledge of the world outside of his hometown of Cali, Colombia.

 

Less than three years later, he’s an award-winning leader and graduate of Carl Sandburg College with his sights set on attending one of the premier engineering schools in the United States. The resources available to him at Sandburg, he said, are what helped put him in a position to succeed.

 

“I thought it was a pretty good idea to join the community college,” said Agudelo, who received his Associate in Science at Sandburg’s 54^th annual Commencement on Wednesday. “So I came here and thought it was a really cool experience.”

 

Agudelo’s parents, Luis Agudelo and Victoria Ramirez, came to the US hoping for a better education for their two sons. But prior to enrolling at Sandburg in the 2019 fall semester, Agudelo had taken just a few English lessons back home.

 

“At first it was hard. I had to learn the language so fast,” Agudelo said. “When I started writing essays, it was a total mess. It was scary. Socializing was harder than understanding the classes. There are a lot of different expressions and sayings, which I didn't know.”

 

Determined to succeed, he spent time in Sandburg’s Tutoring Center and joined the College’s TRIO Student Support Services program. TRIO SSS is a federally funded program that assists first-generation college students as they work toward earning a bachelor’s degree. 

 

“For me, this is a huge campus,” Agudelo said. “There are many offices, and I didn’t know any of them and what they do. I could use a lot of things here, but I didn't know how to access them.”

 

Being part of TRIO helped change that. He took part in the program’s Lunch & Learn sessions, attended workshops and had staff members available to assist him at any point in his time at Sandburg. By the time the next school year came around, Agudelo had been invited to become a peer mentor within the program. Now he was the one giving advice to others in the position he had just been in.

 

“I knew pretty well how things looked from their perspective. Sometimes things seem pretty grim, but you have to keep being consistent, which is the most important part,” Agudelo said. “It’s more experience-based advice. It’s not always a straightforward answer. You have to take into account their work-life balance and how they relate with their families so you can better understand and help them improve.”

 

His work earned him Sandburg’s 2022 TRIO Achiever Award, and he thrived in other areas at the College as well. Agudelo was a member of Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society, Men of Distinction, the Hispanic-Latino Student Association and took classes in the College’s honors program. He made the dean’s list in four previous semesters and graduated with highest honors (for students with a 3.90-4.0 GPA).

 

Agudelo plans to transfer to a four-year school this fall and major in electrical engineering. He’s already been accepted to Southern Illinois University Carbondale and has hopes of getting into Purdue University after sending in his final transcripts from Sandburg’s spring semester.

 

“It’s been a great experience. I’ve been thinking about it a lot,” Agudelo said of his time at Sandburg. “Job-wise, I still have a ways to go, but in terms of how I got it done and the circumstances (in which) I came here, it means that I made it through it and accomplished a lot of things. It means I’m ready for what comes next.”