UCLA Transfer Student Lakeisha Jackson: For a mom with two teenagers, UC was the next step in career and curiosity

For as long as she can remember, Lakeisha Jackson has loved school, and her unwavering passion for learning has seen her through good times and bad. Jackson’s parents struggled with many challenges while she was growing up, and eventually her siblings were separated in foster care. This rough start caused many challenges, but she returned time and again to education as a source of strength and resilience.

In 2007, Jackson gave birth to her first child. “Since then I’ve become a mother, going back to school,” she laughs. She started with an associate’s degree in health care billing, then earned an associate’s degree in health care delivery, and then began working as a nurse’s aide. A single mother, Jackson often had to put her education on the back burner to make ends meet, especially after the birth of her second child. Through it all, she kept up the drumbeat of college credits, slowly but surely moving toward her goal of becoming a nurse.

Jackson met and married her husband when her youngest son was 5 years old. She balanced family responsibilities with day jobs and 12-hour night shifts in intensive care, medical surgery, mental health and even on the front lines of COVID-19. “It was a lot, but I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything,” she reflects. But when her marriage became abusive, Jackson was forced to flee with her children to a domestic violence shelter. From the shelter, she began working to reclaim her sense of liberation and empowerment—and her dream of graduating from a four-year university. During that difficult time, she earned four more degrees — AA in Health Care, Social Sciences and Behavior, Natural Sciences and Mathematics, and Arts and Humanities — and decided it was time to apply to University of California.

“When I found out that UC Santa Barbara had chosen me, my heart skipped a beat,” Jackson recalls. However, she was worried that she couldn’t afford UC. After spending so many years at a community college, she received a federal Pell Grant. But a cousin who attended UCLA encouraged her: “There are so many opportunities at UCLA, so many resources and scholarships, you’ll be fine.” With that assurance, Jackson asked for help and found herself surrounded by support. In addition to financial aid from the University of California, she received help from Guardian Scholars, a program for former foster children, and additional assistance for student parents, including on-campus family housing. And a paid summer program for transfer students gave her a jump start in her new life at UC Santa Barbara. “Since I’ve been here, it’s been a ripple effect and I’ve been surrounded by amazing people,” she says. “It’s just a great feeling — good things are coming my way.”

what’s next Jackson is determined to make the most of her time at UC Santa Barbara. From there, she plans to pursue graduate school and become a psychiatric nurse with an emphasis on mental health education and domestic violence advocacy.