Evelyn Cardenas finds opportunity, success and support at Kirkwood; next steps at U of Iowa
She came to a community college for a new start, to press the Reset button on her career. She wanted credentials to match the experience and wisdom already gained, to find new avenues of opportunity. She wanted positives to bolster hopes and make up for a stalled employment situation brought on by recession and job loss.
She did all those things, by many accounts in magnificent fashion. Those accomplishments were only the beginning. She gained new friendships, found occasions for leadership and earned academic honors. She earned financial rewards to continue her studies that made her nearly, literally one in a million. She also developed a faculty and staff fan club—and finished her studies just shy of $20,000 richer in scholarships.
Evelyn Cardenas completed her studies with honors at Kirkwood Community College in early August, and now embraces more classes at the University of Iowa’s Tippie School of Business. She will walk the halls of the Pappajohn building with the knowledge that she holds some of the most prestigious scholarship awards available to any college student in America: A Carver Scholar award, plus a Pearson Prize, given to only 20 students in the U.S. each year.
Her soft-spoken demeanor is tempered with a firm style and direct conversations that focus her approaches to subjects and problems. School work must share life balance with the demands of a home she shares in West Liberty, Iowa with her husband, Eddy and two children.
In addition to the roles of wife, mother and student, Cardenas is also an active community volunteer. She has given of her time to raise funds for school and community projects, the latest equipment and improvements to the West Liberty school playground. She is also a registered notary public and has also helped her Spanish-speaking neighbors fill out employment applications and other forms.
The hopeful, sunny future Cardenas now embraces might seem far away from the struggles she knew three decades ago in a tough north Chicago tenement she recalls as filled with “graffiti, gangs and drugs.” Despite the needs she faced in her early years, pride trumped her surroundings. “I have experienced poverty firsthand, and have cheated its grasp,” she said.
Cardenas also saw and experienced the value of education early in life. Her early school success was rewarded by acceptance at Lane Technical College Prep High School in Chicago, often cited in “Best in America” listings by various magazines and journals. The bright young student was spurred by her opportunities there and began college after graduation.
But the trials of life were to put a hold on her lofty plans. The new student was also a new mother, and her toddler son developed a life-threatening illness during her first semester of college studies in 1994. Prompt medical treatments saved one-year-old Jason Cardenas, but the extended recovery time forced Evelyn to set her college studies aside and focus on care for Jason at their home. Her husband became the sole provider for the young family.
The financial needs of her young family led Evelyn to work outside the home. She found a job with an engineering company she says valued her “natural abilities to lead with creativity.” The job was solid and gave her opportunities for financial and career advancement for more than a decade. Her job survived the sale of the company, but the economic downturn of 2008 caused her position to switch to a temporary role. Evelyn could sense the uncertainty in her situation and started school part-time. Her instincts proved true, as her temp job was cut a few months later.
Evelyn Cardenas and her husband, Eddy decided the time was right to focus her college studies. Cardenas chose to look to Kirkwood to revive her educational goals. She took her few accumulated college credits and applied them toward a Kirkwood associate’s degree, taking classes at the Iowa City Campus. She also made plans to continue on at The University of Iowa when she completed her two-year degree.
Her Kirkwood instructors are quick to use words like “articulate,” “humble” and “gracious” to describe her contributions to the campus atmosphere on Lower Muscatine Road in Iowa City. Mathematics Professor Doug Gustafson was one of Cardenas’s early instructors and became a mentor during her time at Kirkwood.
“Evelyn always juggled her many roles in her family, community and school with great style and expertise. I watched her balance a pretty challenging course load while organizing two back-to-back fundraisers for a new playground back in West Liberty. She was in my Business Calculus class, and most students will tell you that course is no cakewalk! Evelyn simply nailed one of those exams while she ran those fundraisers and kept up with her other classes, too. I just had to shake my head in disbelief! Evelyn is one of the best students I have had the pleasure of teaching, simple as that,” Gustafson said.
With her Kirkwood studies reaching an end, it was also Gustafson who encouraged Cardenas to pursue scholarships to help her next steps at U of I. She recalls a visit with him in the spring of 2010 that became prophetic.
“I was talking with Doug in the Kirkwood student commons last semester, and told him that the financial challenges of going on to the U of I were pretty big,” she recalls. “We talked about ideas for financing my education, and he suggested to keep applying for scholarships and to not give up. The last thing he said to me was, ‘Evelyn, I bet your luck is about to change.’”
In a matter of weeks, it was true. Cardenas heard in early June that she was awarded $5,200 from the Roy Carver Trust, one of the preeminent scholarship awards for Iowa college students. Just days after that, she also heard that she had received a “top-tier” Pearson Prize for Higher Education, a $10,000 award made by the international educational information firm. The cascade of good news continued a few weeks later when Cardenas received a national Hispanic Student Scholarship Fund award of $2,500.
Together, the awards will assure her financial security as she embraces the role of third-year student in the Tippie School of Business. With her additional support, Cardenas plans to pursue two undergraduate degrees, in business administration with emphasis in marketing, and another degree in international business.
A side benefit of the Pearson Prize was an expense-paid trip to Boston, Mass. in early August to officially accept the award, plus attend educational seminars with top company executives. It was there that she got an “added gift” to her already heady awards for 2010.
“While I was in Boston they told us that the Pearson Prize for Higher Education generated ten thousand entries. That was amazing to me! They chose 10 university and 10 community college winners. To know that I was chosen from all those entries shocked me. That was when the value of the scholarship became more than monetary to me,” Cardenas said.
Back at the Kirkwood Iowa City Campus, Doug Gustafson nods his head knowingly when he hears of her observation.
“I was recently reading The Chronicle of Higher Education. They noted that last year there were more than 19 million students in U.S. colleges and universities. It’s approaching 20 million students a year,” he said. “Now consider Evelyn was one of 20 Pearson Prize winners. With all the rest we know about her, I can easily, mathematically tell you she has earned the status of ‘one in a million’ for us in Iowa. Evelyn Cardenas is going to enjoy a lot of success. I’m confident of that.”