16-05-2025
40 years in, Santa Fe Community College renews aim to graduate students
The first time Joanna Johnston arrived on Santa Fe Community College's campus, she wasn't sure where to find the front door.
It was about 2012, and Johnston was interested in pursuing higher education — but busy with a full-time job and hesitant. As a first-generation college student, she wasn't sure how to get started.
"I left, and I came back, and then I left. I was too scared to ask how to even enroll," Johnston recalled. "My journey here took a very long time."
After more than a decade of effort, Johnston, 43, will graduate Saturday with an associate degree in human services.
Johnston said her experience epitomizes what's so special about Santa Fe Community College, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year: College staff are committed to ensuring students not only make it through the door but chart a path toward success — a focus that will persist, said college President Becky Rowley.
"Once I committed to my education, SFCC really committed to me back," Johnston said.
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Joanna Johnston helps stock the shelves of SFCC's Campus Cupboard, which provides free snacks and meals to students, faculty and staff, on Monday. After more than a decade of effort, Johnston, 43, will graduate Saturday with an associate degree in human services.
A focus on student support
Andrew Lovato has been at Santa Fe Community College since its earliest years.
Since the 1980s, he has taught classes on public speaking and guitar, among other subjects. Lovato estimated he has taught more than 1,000 students to play the guitar and listened to several thousand more student speeches.
When Lovato first started teaching at the college, it had no campus. Instead, he taught classes across the city, including in portables at Santa Fe High School and borrowed classrooms at New Mexico School for the Deaf.
Since its earliest days, though, Lovato said the college has grown into "an integral part of Santa Fe."
"It reaches so many segments of our city's population, everything from high school students taking supplementary courses ... to senior citizens," Lovato said.
He added, "Every possible generation and segment of our city has probably had some kind of connection with the community college."
The college's role is "really multifaceted," Rowley said. For some, it provides a great fitness center or continuing education options geared toward personal enrichment, such as art and music classes.
But the college's "central role" is to meet the region's workforce needs, Rowley said. Members of this year's graduating class, which includes nearly 550 students ranging in age from 16 to 84, are likely to fill some much-needed jobs.
SFCC data shows this year's most popular associate degrees are in early childhood education and nursing, and the most popular certificates are in early childhood development, community health work and phlebotomy — drawing blood.
But to ensure Santa Fe has the workforce it needs, students have to graduate.
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Estevan Roybal-Anaya, degree audit technician, shakes hands with Alexandra Romero as graduates practice receiving their diplomas during a Thursday rehearsal at the Santa Fe Community College.
The Opportunity Scholarship helps get students in the door. It pays for up to 100% of tuition for New Mexico residents at two- and four-year public colleges pursuing higher education later in life. That has increased first-time college enrollment in the state, but it's still tough for the state's institutions to keep students in college after they enroll.
Only about half the students who start pursuing a bachelor's degree in New Mexico finish it, according to analysis by the Legislative Finance Committee. Just three out of 10 graduate in four years.
As such, student retention — not just student enrollment — has become "a much more visible priority" throughout the state, Rowley said.
"The way that we're measured by the Legislature is really helping students get into the workforce ... have better jobs and meet the training and education needs in Santa Fe and the surrounding area," she said.
Attached to SFCC's $68 million allocation for fiscal year 2026 are several performance measures, including requirements that 35% of first-time, full-time students complete an academic program within 150% of standard graduation time and 60% of first-time, full-time freshmen be retained to the third semester.
That means maintaining student support services, making sure students have access to tutoring, counseling, a food pantry and other resources on campus. In recent years, SFCC has focused in particular on better supporting the roughly 40% of SFCC students who are also parents.
The college is now implementing online tools to help better identify students struggling in class and connect them with resources, Rowley added.
"We have to prioritize all the kinds of outreach that we can do in terms of connecting with students in their classes really early on," the college president said. "You can't wait until a student has not shown up for six weeks or not turned in a bunch of assignments."
As Rowley looks toward the college's future, she plans to focus on programs that will allow students to get in, get out and get better opportunities that add value to Santa Fe and surrounding communities. Rowley sees growth opportunities in the college's nursing program and the trades, particularly green technologies.
"Our students are coming to us wanting to get into the workforce as quickly as they can, and so we're trying to provide those opportunities for them," she said.
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Joanna Johnston, student resource coordinator at the Student Wellness Center, cuts out gold stars Monday to decorate her cap for her graduation ceremony Saturday at Santa Fe Community College.
'A way through this'
Johnston's college education restarted with renewed focus in fall 2018 — six years after her first time on SFCC's campus.
She still didn't know what her final career destination would be, but a love of writing pushed her to pursue a certificate in creative writing, a longtime goal.
And as she grew more and more involved on campus, the path to success in college became clearer and clearer, Johnston said.
"Once I became immersed in the kind of culture here, I found people who were willing to help me," she said.
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Joanna Johnston's graduation cap features her cats Kitty Kitty and Rune.
She connected with TRIO Student Support Services, which offered academic coaching and mentorship. She found the Student Accessibility Services for disability accommodations. She relearned study skills, constructed a schedule that worked for her and signed up for tutoring when necessary.
One day as Johnston visited SFCC's Campus Cupboard and Exchange — an on-site food pantry with meals, snacks, cookware and hygiene products available at no cost to students — another student recommended she apply to be a student ambassador and work at the Campus Cupboard.
The job cemented an existing interest in helping her community, Johnston said. After meeting with the head of the human services program, she declared the major. After graduation, she plans to continue her education at New Mexico Highlands University's Facundo Valdez School of Social Work, with a long-term goal of becoming a licensed clinical social worker.
But Johnston's career as an SFCC worker continued long after her ambassadorship. She spent about nine months as a student worker in the college's Student Wellness Center before applying for her current position as the student resource coordinator, where she helps connect students with housing, transportation, food, legal assistance and other essentials they need to attend college.
"Working in this area has really made me realize how passionate I am about access to basic needs," Johnston said.
For the past year or so, Johnston has been providing exactly the kind of assistance that helped her continue to pursue her degree.
So when she offers students encouragement: "I have been there. There is a way through this. I know this because I've done it." Johnston means it.
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Elberta Rosetta, who will be receiving a degree in phlebotomy from Santa Fe Community College, shows her 2-year-old daughter, Adelaida, her graduation cap, which said, 'I wanted to give up but then I remembered who was watching.' She was participating in a graduation rehearsal Thursday in preparation for Saturday's event. 'Everything is for her. I want her to see her mom graduate. I want to encourage her,' Rosetta said of her daughter.
