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Coming home for a "Dream" job

Alumna Hilda Nieblas hired to run Dreamers center

By California State University, Bakersfield

December 17^th, 2019

Hilda Nieblas, the daughter of farmworkers who never made it to high school, often felt “lost” as a student.

In high school, she didn’t really know what college was, let alone how to enroll or pay for it. When she got there, she didn’t know how to pick a major or keep up with the faster pace of a quarter system.

When she was getting ready to graduate from CSUB, a mentor had to explain what a “master’s degree” was.

And so it is with many “Dreamers,” young people brought to the United States without papers and now are fully assimilated here. They must navigate rules for gaining legal status, qualifying for financial aid and putting their degree to use.

That common experience makes Nieblas a great fit for her new role as coordinator of CSUB’s Multicultural Alliance and Gender Equity Center and, especially, the new Dreamers Resource Center.

The Dreamers center, which celebrated its opening Dec. 3, is an information hub and safe haven for students, faculty and staff grappling with immigration issues for themselves or family members.

It offers contracted legal services, academic advising, financial aid information and other support. It’s run by Nieblas and two graduate students.

“Today’s ribbon cutting sends a very clear message of what we value here at CSUB,” university President Lynnette Zelezny said at the center opening. “We value collaboration, we value our students and supporting them, and we value being an inclusive campus where all students feel they belong.”

CSUB President Lynnette Zelezny speaks at the opening of the Dreamers Resource Center.

For Nieblas, it’s a homecoming. She’s the oldest of four children born to parents who came to the United States seeking opportunity and raised their family in east Bakersfield.

Nieblas graduated from Foothill High School, Bakersfield College and CSUB before moving to the University of Mississippi to work and pursue her doctorate. She will finish her dissertation, which coincidentally is about undocumented students navigating higher ed, while running the two centers.

“CSUB is home, so it feels really good to be back,” Nieblas said.

New world of education

Nieblas, 30, has been in the shoes of many of the students she’s helping at the Dreamers center. Her parents came to the United States without documentation and there were immigration raids in the tight-knit apartment complexes where she grew up.

Nieblas (top left) and her younger siblings were Folklorico dancers together. In the back at right is her sister Nora. In front, left to right, is her sister Marlen and brother, José.

She didn’t know until later what ICE was, but she did know people were hurting after those raids and she and her community needed to help them.

“It was, ‘How do we move forward?’ Because obviously there was a lot of fear for some time after these things would happen,” she said.

Nieblas was the first in her family to go to high school. Its extra-curricular activities opened up new worlds to both her and her parents, who were “mind-blown” by the concept of staying after school for extra things such as Spanish Club, student government and tennis.

“Trying to explain trips to my parents—that was interesting,” she said, smiling. “I’d say, ‘Oh, we fundraised for this trip and so now we’re going.’ And they’d say, ‘What do you mean you’re going to go with a teacher two hours away from Bakersfield?’”

Nieblas felt lost when it came time to think about college. She had no idea what A through D requirements were. Google existed, but she didn’t have a computer at home.

“Eventually I was like, ‘Someone tell me what we’re doing here,’” she said.

With guidance from a student government advisor, Nieblas enrolled at Bakersfield College. It was as much as she could handle emotionally, logistically and financially.

“It’s like a game of Mario,” she said. “You become an expert at this level and then go on to the next one.”

Nieblas and her parents, José and Juana Nieblas, at her graduation from Bakersfield College in 2010

Not sure how to pick a major, she went with the subject of her first class: psychology. As she learned more and more about higher education, she passed it on to others in her community.

“It was the start of my student affairs career without me even knowing it,” she said.

Renegade to `Runner

Nieblas graduated from BC in 2010 and transferred to CSUB. She struggled academically now that she had to master material in 10 weeks rather than 16, and once again felt lost.

“Education was never just about me,” she said. “My parents had sacrificed everything so that I could have an opportunity to do this. And now I was just a failure.”

But Nieblas stuck it out. Getting involved in campus activities helped her find her footing. She joined an honors society for psychology students and, after an intimidating interview around a long conference table, was appointed Student Union programming chair.

Nieblas started the Dance Marathon at CSUB, a 12-hour, overnight dance-a-thon that raises money for the Lauren Small Children’s Center at Bakersfield Memorial Hospital.

Nieblas, fifth from the left in the back row, poses with some of her fellow Dance Marathoners after the event its first year at CSUB.

Then she won a runoff for Associated Students Inc. vice president of programming and worked to voice student concerns, increase collaboration among organizations and otherwise “change the world,” as she saw it.

“Hilda was very energetic, charismatic. Students responded to her,” said Student Union & Organizational Governance Director E.J. Callahan. “Hilda said, ‘We’re doing this’ and she’d have 20 or 30 students behind her ready to go.”

Again without noticing it, Nieblas had developed an even stronger passion for student affairs. And so after earning her psychology degree in 2012, started pursuing her master’s in public administration.

But first, Callahan had to explain to her what a master’s degree was. There are so many people on campus like that who have helped her, and she’s grateful.

“The people at CSUB who really, truly adopted me, put me under their wing. They changed my life forever,” Nieblas said.

Nieblas served as ASI president while working on her MPA . Under her presidency, the campus created the `Runners’ Up’ hand sign that’s often flashed at sporting events, activities and photo shoots, Callahan said.

Nieblas (second to left) with fellow members of the CSUB Student Union Board along with their advisor (to Nieblas’ right), Emily Callahan. Callahan and her husband, E.J., are among Nieblas’ many mentors at CSUB.

Nieblas’ graduate thesis was on the historical context of student government. It started out as an exploration of the history behind, and importance of, student government and then grew to show the power of simple campus interactions on student success.

Some call them “lollipop moments.”

“A lollipop moment could be a student assistant coming to your office and you asking them how they are doing,” Nieblas explained. “And then it develops into a bigger relationship to the point where one of the reasons they are retained to the university is that conversation.”

One of the most important mentors in Nieblas’ life was Jack Brigham, a beloved Bakersfield College professor who “did everything he could to help guide me from the moment he met me at BC,” she says.

An even higher education

After earning her MPA in 2014, Nieblas worked as a CSUB campus programming coordinator developing ways to promote school spirit and involvement. Then she was a community director at undergraduate and graduate residence halls.

Nieblas applied and was accepted to several doctorate programs and picked Ole Miss. After attending and working at a Hispanic-serving institution for so long, she wanted a completely different experience.

“I packed up four bags, two backpacks and two carry-ons and was like, ‘Here we go!’”

Nieblas on the campus of the University of Mississippi, where she studied for her doctorate degree and learned what it’s like to be an “other” at school.

Nieblas was one of about 600 Latinos on a campus of 23,000 students, and while studying worked in the Department of Student Housing. She learned how it feels to be an “other,” and how it can affect one’s schooling.

She stayed at Ole Miss after her classes ended, working and crafting her dissertation on “Undocumented Students: Navigating the Higher Education Sector.” That’s when she saw the CSUB job she has now open up.

“I read it and was like, ‘Oh Mylanta.’ It spelled out what I was doing in my free time and what I was researching,” Nieblas said.

She got the job, which Nieblas says is “to see students succeed – period.”

Big dreams

One of those students is CSUB senior Valeria Veliz, whose parents brought her to the United States from Sinaloa, Mexico, when she was 3. Her mother had been robbed and assaulted in the notoriously violent region.

Students gather at the Dreamers Resource Center. — Students helped celebrate the opening of the Dreamers Resource Center at CSUB on Dec. 3.

Veliz’s status is protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allows some people in the country illegally to receive renewable, two-year deferred action from deportation and become eligible for a work permit.

It’s a double-edged sword, Veliz said, because the government has all her information.

“They can take me whenever they want,” she said.

That’s why she’s grateful for the Dreamers Resource Center, where she can get help with those stresses and figuring out what jobs she can do after graduation.

Veliz is a senior majoring in child, adolescent and family studies.

“Having the Dreamers Resource Center, it means the world to me,” she told the audience at its grand opening. “…The center brings that sense of support and acknowledgement to all of our students.”