The Bountiful Harvest
Finding the Courage to Persist at WWC

Jaime Rodriguez
WWC ’89
M.Phil., Columbia University
M.A., University of Wisconsin/Madison
Completing Ph.D., Columbia University

    Jaime is putting the final touches on the most important project of his academic life: His doctoral thesis on the transformation of a city in Mexico, and the profound pressures a city feels as people migrate from the country to an urban setting.
     While the work is scholarly, there is a parallel story that Jaime could write about his own life. His father came to the Walla Walla valley as a migrant laborer, and worked endlessly to earn enough money to reunite his family in the United States, a dream he eventually realized.
     “When my parents first settled in Walla Walla from Mexico, they had little except a burning desire to succeed and a drive to create a better life for their children,” says Jaime.
     It would ultimately become a dream sustained by hard work on the part of the whole family, Jaime included. The vision for education burned deeply in Jaime, but at times seemed beyond his grasp.
     “I wanted so much to attend Walla Walla College, but it seemed impossible financially,” recalls Jaime. “And then one day a professor came to my academy and said ‘Jaime, we want you to study with us.’ That gave me the encouragement to try.”
     Jaime landed a job at WWC and worked long hours, vacations, even weekends to pay for his schooling. At one point, when discouragement overtook him, men’s dean Walt Meske took him aside and told him his own life story, detailing his financial struggle to make it through college. It was the inspiration Jaime needed to believe that he, too, could do it. Today, he reflects warmly on the legacy of his years there. He is not unemotional about the many faculty and staff who believed in him and gave him the courage to keep going. He speaks fondly of the friendships gained, the outstanding teaching.
    “I have been in some of the nation's most prestigious schools,” he adds. “But they simply don’t compare with my years at Walla Walla College, where I received not only a strong education, but the inspiration to go out and make the world a better place.”