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Alumna Lupita Reyes-Garcia brings passion for social work to role as lecturer

By California State University, Bakersfield

November 29^th, 2023

Lupita Reyes-Garcia may never have earned a college degree if it wasn’t for California State University, Bakersfield.

Reyes-Garcia grew up in Lost Hills with her farmworker parents and four siblings. Her childhood was difficult, as her parents often struggled to provide for the family. Her father also suffered from a mental illness that added more strain to the family.

Reyes-Garcia was feeling overwhelmed and trapped by the time she reached high school. She was doubtful that a better life lay before her after graduation. Then she learned about a paid summer internship being offered at CSUB and took advantage of the opportunity. She got to experience a university campus for the first time and receive help applying to colleges and seeking financial aid.

“It was that program that changed my life. It exposed me to higher education,” she said. “I was a high school kid living life on the edge, about to be a statistic until this program came along. Without CSUB's community outreach, I would not have seen myself as college-bound, much less known what steps to take.”

Reyes didn’t end up enrolling immediately at CSUB after graduating high school. She instead attended CSU Long Beach, where she received her bachelor’s in sociology and a certificate in healthcare administration. She was the first woman in her family to graduate from a university.

“I needed to move away,” she said. “I felt that if I stayed in Kern County, I would be in a bad situation. The family experience was really affecting me.”

When she decided to pursue a master’s degree in social work several years later and was considering where she wanted to go, there was only one institution she kept coming back to.

“CSUB was a no-brainer,” she said. “I had a special space in my heart for it. I wanted to reconnect to the institution that started it all.”

Reyes-Garcia eventually graduated with her Master of Social Work (MSW) in 2014. Now, almost a decade later, she has returned to the university this fall as a lecturer in the Social Work Department.

“It’s fun and exciting, but it’s also daunting. I want to do a great job, but I’m still learning,” she said. “I want to help other students just like myself – first-generation Mexican American and Latinx students. I carry that role of being a first-generation student and a CSUB graduate with so much honor and pride. I’m trying to instill that pride in my students as well.”

'I felt compelled'

Reyes-Garcia’s interest in social work stems from witnessing her father struggle to receive help with his mental health. During her childhood, she and the rest of her family weren’t aware that he was having problems.

“We didn’t know that he had a mental health condition. We didn’t talk about it and we didn’t know how to recognize it. Sometimes he would just be very explosive, very erratic,” she said.

It became more obvious as he aged, however. His outbursts and struggles with hallucinations got so bad that her father eventually was unable to function properly and had to stop working. At that point, Reyes-Garcia was an adult and had to step in as one of his caretakers.

“That was when I learned we needed a different kind of help that doctors weren’t able to provide,” she said. “We really needed mental health support, but at that time in the early 1990s, it was hard to identify. It was hard to access those mental health resources.”

Not only were finding those resources difficult, but she said her father was often stigmatized for his illness.

“I witnessed everything he went through and how he was treated as less than a person,” she said. “There were not a lot of people who understood, who didn’t judge. This was a mental health disorder — he wasn’t a bad person.”

Reyes-Garcia was eventually able to get her dad on medication that she said really helped calm him and give him a better quality of life. It didn’t help for very long, however, as she said the years of untreated illness had already taken its toll on his body. He died at a young age from kidney failure.

Seeing what her father had gone through had a significant impact on Reyes-Garcia, who decided she wanted to go to graduate school to learn how to better support people like her dad who are struggling with their mental health.

“I felt compelled. I felt like I couldn’t turn my back on the conditions that I experienced,” she said. “If I could have the opportunity to bring to light the needs of people with mental health problems, especially in the Latino community, how could I not act?”

While attending CSUB, Reyes-Garcia was particularly interested in school-based social work. At the time, however, that type of job wasn’t found in Kern County schools.

“Schools had different intervention and support services but not by many licensed mental health professionals,” she said. “Social workers were already tackling mental health issues with children and teens, just not within school sites yet.”

That was already beginning to change when Reyes-Garcia graduated from CSUB. Universities were beginning to offer credential programs in school social work, including CSU Sacramento. In the summer of 2014, Reyes-Garcia participated in a six-week program there and was able to receive a Pupil Personnel Services credential in school social work.

“It was amazing,” she said. “You come out of grad school energized and ready to change the world, ready to get out there and make changes.”

Soon after obtaining her credential, Reyes-Garcia was hired as a behavioral health therapist for Clinica Sierra Vista, where she was able to work with K-12 special education students in their schools.

“I worked with the most vulnerable, low-income populations in the rural areas of Kern County – Lost Hills, Wasco, Shafter,” Reyes-Garcia said. “It was difficult but satisfying. It was definitely a growing and learning experience.”

She said it was sometimes challenging dealing with a large range of behaviors, needs and learning requirements.

“It’s always going to be dynamic. There’s always multiple factors you have to consider,” she said. “You have to be ready to engage and meet the clients where they’re at.”

However, Reyes-Garcia said it was also rewarding to serve as a voice for these students and see them go on to do better in school after working with them.

“When you first meet a student, everyone’s worried about them. They’re failing their classes and having behavioral breakdowns,” she said. “But after you work with them and school staff tell you they’re doing better, it feels really good, especially when you see their faces brighten.”

'A new spark'

In 2017, Reyes-Garcia was able to bring the knowledge and skills she learned from her work at Clinica Sierra Vista to the Kern High School District (KHSD), where she was finally able to achieve her goal of being a school social worker.

“It was exciting, because this was what I was looking for — this was my dream,” she said.

At the time, school social work was still in its infancy in the district and there weren’t very many of those positions in schools. Reyes-Garcia found herself serving as a social worker for two school sites, Highland and East high schools, and soon became overwhelmed with students in need of mental health care.

“There’s a very high need for mental health support in schools,” she said. “I was coming in and getting bombarded. It was a revolving door of referrals and self-referrals. It was constant triage and being split between these sites, while at same time we’re trying to educate school staff on what our role is and develop structure.”

KHSD was committed to supporting students and soon hired enough school social workers to be able to have at least one per school site. After her second year, Reyes-Garcia settled at Shafter High, where she spent the remainder of her time at KHSD before joining CSUB this year.

“The work was extremely difficult, but you have that rich satisfaction that lives were saved,” she said. “School social workers are saving lives, but it’s hard. You don’t come out unscathed — you go through trauma yourself. When you go home you can’t talk about anything due to confidentiality. It becomes a lot to carry.”

After working several years as a school social worker, Reyes-Garcia said she knew she needed to make a change to help preserve her mental health.

“I realized I was feeling burnout, emotional and physical exhaustion. I needed to a new spark, and this opportunity presented itself,” she said.

Ever since graduating from CSUB, Reyes-Garcia had stayed in touch with her mentor and now-retired social work lecturer Bob Mejia. He had long wanted her to come work at CSUB in the Social Work Department and often informed her of open positions.

“I’ve always been impressed with her from the start,” Mejia said. “She’s bright, she’s inquisitive. She engages very well and has this sense of curiosity that compels her to want to learn more and know more.”

Mejia hoped that he could one day convince Reyes-Garcia to return to CSUB as a faculty member, not only because he felt she was talented but because she could also serve as a role model for students.

“If you take a look at the student body, nearly 70 percent are [Latinx] and the majority are female,” he said. “I felt it was necessary to have someone on faculty that students could look up to and see themselves being guided by someone who understands them, who understands their language and culture.”

Reyes-Garcia said she wasn’t initially interested in coming to CSUB because she felt fulfilled with her work for KHSD. Those feelings began to change after a few years, however.

“At first, I didn’t feel like it was the right moment or that I was adequately prepared. I was also part of setting the groundwork for school social work in the district and was really focused on that,” she said. “Once that was settled and we had a robust program, I felt like finally I was in a good place. I had hit a level of expertise where now I have enough I can offer to guide others.”

While Mejia no longer works at CSUB, he is thrilled that Reyes-Garcia finally decided to join the department and believes she will be a strong asset for the university.

“I’m extremely proud that she’s on the faculty. She will serve as an excellent role model for our students,” he said. “I’m very proud of what she’s done with her career, and I think she’s really going to be a benefit not just to the department but the entire School of Social Sciences and Education.”

Building a bright future

Reyes-Garcia hasn’t wasted any time at CSUB. Besides teaching classes, she is also spearheading an effort to develop a Pupil Personnel Services credential at the university like the one she completed at Sacramento State that will give MSW majors an opportunity to specialize in school social work.

The intention of the program, which is still in the early stages, is for it to run concurrently with the MSW program so that students interested in the credential can complete the requirements for the credential and the degree at the same time.

“After COVID-19, there is a greater need of school-based mental health than ever before,” Reyes-Garcia said. “We want to make this easy and accessible to students so we can continue to fulfill the needs of the community.”

Fellow Social Work Lecturer Alejandro Leon, who previously supervised Reyes-Garcia when she was doing an internship at Clinica Sierra Vista while pursuing her master’s at CSUB, said he is happy that she has joined the department and decided to tackle this challenge.

“You can see she still has that passion for social work and she’s translating that to helping her students,” he said. “I think it’s amazing she’s doing this. This is a huge undertaking, and she just hit the ground running. It really speaks to her wanting to give back to the students and the community.”

Reyes-Garcia said she has enjoyed teaching and that it’s been a very rewarding experience for her.

“It’s definitely a new craft, but it’s something I want to master,” she said. “I’ve enjoyed the engagement of my students. I can see how in the learning environment students can create an energy of their own, and that has been amazing to experience. Now that I am teaching, I look forward to seeing what our future social workers are going to bring to our field. I want to help them fulfill their dreams.”