Pollution motivates her to study renewable energy

Esmeralda Licea is a Lee College student who was set to attend University of Colima in Mexico before her family moved.

“We moved here from Mexico about three years ago. For my whole family it was like starting over because we didn’t have a house, my father didn’t have a great job and we didn’t speak English.

“The language has been the biggest challenge for all of us. I started going to an adult learning center program. I studied English, but I also studied math, history and all of that because I wanted to listen to the classes in English. Then I decided to go to college here.

“My major is chemistry. I would like to do research into new forms of renewable energy, so I probably will go for chemical engineering.

“I always was interested in chemistry. But when I moved here, I saw all of the refineries. I remember the first day I came here. It was at night, and the first thing I looked at was the sky. I couldn’t see the stars because of the pollution. Where I used to live, it was a very small town, and we didn’t have that much pollution. You could see the stars and we had this connection with nature. Then here, that seems to be a problem. So I thought, OK, I don’t like this. I started to do some research and get motivated about that. I started to think that I probably could do something to help.”

— Esmeralda Licea