Cresencio Davila's day starts at 6 a.m., when his 4-month-old son wakes up hungry. He and his wife rush to feed and dress the kids.
Besides the baby, they have a 5-year-old and a 3-year-old. Davila scarfs down some Raisin Bran or a soy shake and rushes to work as a manager at FranklinCovey, a business products and consulting company.
About 5 p.m., Davila gets off work, grabs a burger from McDonald's and battles the traffic from North Star Mall to the South Side, where he takes a full load of classes at San Antonio's Texas A&M University-Kingsville System Center.
When he finally pulls into his driveway about 10 p.m., the kids are already tucked into bed. Within hours, the sun has sneaked up behind him again, and the cycle repeats.
This weekend made it worth all the work.
On Sunday, Davila was among 200 graduates to walk the stage at Municipal Auditorium and receive his bachelor's degree from the seed campus for the future Texas A&M-San Antonio. In another boost for grads, last week Texas lawmakers passed a bill that would unlock $40 million in tuition revenue bonds to build a permanent campus and let the new university declare its independence from the Kingsville campus.
“If I look back 10 years ago, I would never imagine my life to be where I am right now,” said Davila, who is student body president. “My education has really put me in a different place. It has allowed me to see a different future.”
Though many have dismissed lawmakers' efforts to build a new university on the South Side as pork barrel politics, Davila said the campus is opening doors for underserved students.
Since 2000, the system center has turned out 1,770 graduates, a good number of them working parents such as Davila. Of the 1,648 students enrolled, two-thirds are Hispanic and 70 percent are women. Nearly half receive Pell grants, which means they are low-income.
The campus offers only upper-division courses; most students start out at one of five Alamo Colleges, mostly Palo Alto College just down the road.
Davila started three years ago, when the center was still located in a cluster of portables at Palo Alto. He ran for student government because he wanted to be part of the foundation of the new university. He knows the struggles of kids on the poor side of town; he's lived it.
Born to a teen mother on the West Side, Davila was raised by a grandmother who loved him dearly but did not understand the importance of a college education. He did well in school until his senior year, when he stopped going to class and started arguing with administrators. He lost focus for a few years, taking a few college classes and working dead-end jobs.
One day, the words of two encouraging high school teachers echoing in his head, Davila decided to go back to school.
Like many of his peers, he didn't have time to mess around, and this campus's graduation rate of 70 percent rivals that of some selective research universities. With an accounting degree in hand, Davila hopes to attend law school at St. Mary's University and start his own business. Down the road, he'd like to go into politics.
“There are a lot of kids struggling,” Davila said. “It's not that they weren't smart, they just didn't have that goal in mind. Helping them get there would be a wonderful opportunity.”
