Alberto Lule is a community college success story. In 2018, he graduated with degrees in art and art history from Santa Barbara City College in California, U.S. He earned all As in his art classes and landed an internship at SBCC’s Atkinson Gallery, where he learned to curate exhibitions. He was honored as the student speaker at his commencement ceremony. 

Like so many students who enroll in community college, he had some challenges to overcome. Lule had served a 13-year prison term. 

“As soon as I got out, I realized the first thing I needed to do was get back into school,” he says. “It was the only way, I thought, to keep me from going back to prison. And for me, SBCC was redemption, my salvation.”