Cal Poly has many proud legacy families with both parents and children receiving the same Learn by Doing education, but during different decades. The Lopez family has a more unique experience.

Ernest Lopez, his mother Lorraine, and his wife Brenda all received their master's degrees from Cal Poly's Educational Leadership and Administration Program (ELAP) within Cal Poly's Graduate School of Education, with Ernest graduating in 2019 and Lorraine and Brenda in 2020.

All three are from Corcoran, a small rural town that's a two hour drive from San Luis Obispo in the San Joaquin Valley. Lifelong friends, Brenda and Ernest graduated from Corcoran High School in 2008. A little more than 20 years earlier, Lorraine had graduated from the same high school, headed to Cal Poly on a J.G. Boswell scholarship to study architecture.

Unfortunately, during the spring of her freshman year, Lorraine was forced to withdraw due to personal reasons at home. She made it a goal to return to Cal Poly someday and finish what she started.

"If you're going try something, sometimes that means you may not be successful, but you keep trying until you succeed,” Lorraine said. “My entire life has been Learn by Doing. Be open to change and new opportunities and then jump in and do it."

His mother, Ernest said, always spoke highly of Cal Poly, but more than that, she emphasized the importance of education to Ernest and his siblings. Those lessons paid off and Ernest completed his undergrad studies at University of California, Santa Cruz in 2013.

My entire life has been Learn by Doing. Be open to change and new opportunities and then jump in and do it.

Lorraine Lopez

Educational Leadership and Administration ’20

Inspired by seeing her son graduate, Lorraine decided to go back to school and started classes at the local community college.She eventually transferred to University of California, San Diego and, almost three decades after she first started college, received her bachelor’s degree in 2018.

“I want people to know that it’s not just high school seniors who graduate and go to college,” Ernest said. “Education is open to anyone at any time.”

Because of the importance of higher education and the cost that comes along with it, Ernest explained that his family a created a co-operative system based on equity to “send one and then the next person” on for more advanced degrees.

Ernest graduated in 2013 and Lorraine began her studies at UC San Diego in the fall of 2015. Brenda had stayed in the area after her graduation from UC San Diego and it was while his mother was attending college in San Diego that Ernest and Brenda reconnected. They were married in the 2019. 

True to the plan, once Lorraine graduated with her bachelor's Ernest applied to the Cal Poly ELAP program and was accepted.

"As I talked with my son about what he was learning, I really liked what I was hearing," said Lorraine. "It's an 11-month program, and I saw that as a working individual, he was able to attend classes a couple weekends a month on Fridays and Saturdays to get his degree."

I want people to know that it’s not just high school seniors who graduate and go to college. Education is open to anyone at any time.

Ernest Lopez

Educational Leadership and Administration ’19

After seeing Ernest’s success with the program, Lorraine and Brenda decided to apply and both graduated this past spring of 2020.

"For me, having started a program in the 1980s and not completing it, getting my masters from Cal Poly really took me full circle of something I always wanted for myself: to be an alumni of Cal Poly," Lorraine said. "I was ecstatic."

Ernest, Lorraine and Brenda are the first members of their family to earn both undergraduate and graduate degrees. They’re especially proud that their entire educations were the products of the public education system (K-12, Community College, CSU, and UC). Ernest is currently a student equity coordinator at the College of the Sequoias in Visalia, Calif. and is passionate about promoting higher education, especially in his hometown of Corcoran and the surrounding areas.

As for the future, Lorraine believes they will all continue being lifelong learners.

"I want to work in education, specifically higher education. I believe education is not just something for yourself, but is about reaching back and bringing others along with you,” she said. “We all want to make a difference in our community."