Student leader emerges on new CAC campus

Socorro Carrillo is in the thick of things as an emerging student leader at Central Arizona College’s year-old Maricopa campus.

Once so dissatisfied with high school she transferred to online learning, today Socorro finds herself starting CAC’s Anime Club, writing for the college newspaper The Cactus, working part-time in the campus library, contributing as an unpaid intern in the college’s public relations office and heading the campus’ first Student Leadership Organization as president.

In March, the 18-year-old was named Student of the Month because of her contributions in getting the leadership organization started and for recently representing the campus at the annual Student Public Policy Forum in Washington, D.C.

Socorro began her student leadership experience at Sequoia Pathway Academy.  

When she finished her sophomore year at Maricopa High School, Socorro says she was dissatisfied with her experience and enrolled in Sequoia Choice for its online instruction program.

“I studied at home (online) for my junior year but got tired of being home all the time and not being around people,” Socorro says, adding she went to classes at Sequoia Pathway her senior year.

“When I first went to Sequoia, I wasn’t on track to graduate,” she says, adding she got involved in student leadership because she was advised it would be “a way to stand out.”

Carrillo ran for student government at Sequoia and was elected vice president. She then decided to take early enrollment classes at CAC along with her high school curriculum. She graduated in May with 12 college credits.

Megan Brown, student government college adviser at CAC, says Sorocco “has strong leadership skills, and with more time and opportunity these skills will become stronger.”

Socorro has the maturity to relate well to faculty and staff and also to her peers, Brown says. She is “driven” and articulate.

The young leader says CAC Maricopa campus students got the word out they wanted to form clubs and she found out which ones interested them.

***ADVERTISEMENT*** “Student clubs are an attempt to bring people together to foster communication and make friendships,” Socorro says. “(It’s a way) to build a sense of community at the college.”

Several students were interested in forming an Anime club, where they watch Japanese animation and then discuss each movie and the culture behind it.

“A lot of our clubs are under construction,” she says, adding the students plan to form an Honor Society, a DECA business club, a culinary club and a communications club by the end of the semester.

Socorro is working toward an associate in arts degree in liberal arts, which she plans to complete in December. She says she wants to attend a four-year, out-of-state university to earn a bachelor’s degree.

“I have always been interested in journalism,” she says. “I would like to earn a double major in new media and public administration.”

She says she hopes to go on to a career in political writing and do something like “anchor at CNN or write for the New Yorker magazine.”

“A number of people in the millennial generation don’t appreciate all the Republican-Democratic” banter in the news, she says. “I would like to see more independent voices in the media.”

Her experience helping to develop student organizations at CAC has been challenging since the age range on campus is so diverse, she says. It has been difficult at times getting students together to plan events. It has improved this semester.

“Student clubs may not have such an impact on any individual student but they impact the quality of student life on campus,” she says.