Social Justice & Community
Maria Rocha-Ruiz named UC Santa Cruz’s Sea Dubs Wavemaker
Maria Rocha-Ruiz has been named UC Santa Cruz’s Sea Dubs Wavemaker, honoring her leadership expanding educational opportunity and mentoring generations of students across the Central Coast.
Maria Rocha-Ruiz, assistant vice chancellor of educational partnerships and chief campus outreach officer at UC Santa Cruz, was selected as the campus’s 2026 Sea Dubs Wavemaker. Photo by Carolyn Lagattuta.
When Maria Rocha-Ruiz learned she had been selected as UC Santa Cruz’s Sea Dubs Wavemaker, she found herself reflecting on the distance between where she began and where she stands today.
“I can’t believe everything I’ve gone through to be where I am,” she said.
Each year during Women’s Empowerment Month, the Santa Cruz Warriors invite local organizations to nominate a woman whose leadership and daily work make a lasting impact on the community. One honoree from UC Santa Cruz is recognized on the court alongside nine other women from across Santa Cruz County.
This year, campus leadership selected Rocha-Ruiz, assistant vice chancellor of educational partnerships and chief campus outreach officer.
“It is difficult to imagine anyone with a more significant impact on our regional community than Maria,” said Richard Hughey, vice provost and dean of undergraduate education and global engagement, who nominated her.
For nearly 20 years, Maria Rocha-Ruiz has led transformative efforts across the Central Coast to expand educational opportunity and build stronger connections between schools, colleges, and communities. As head of the UC Santa Cruz Educational Partnership Center and a leader of the Central Coast K–16 Regional Collaborative, she oversees initiatives that support students from elementary school through college completion. Since joining UC Santa Cruz in 2006, she has helped secure more than $100 million in funding to strengthen college access and success in Monterey, Santa Cruz, and Santa Clara counties. Those investments have supported more than 100,000 pre-college students and helped shape the futures of families and communities across the region.
“I don’t see my job and my personal values as separate. They are one and the same.”
Maria Rocha-Ruiz
Her work is deeply grounded in her family and her personal experience. “I don’t see my job and my personal values as separate,” she said. “They are one and the same.”
Rocha-Ruiz grew up in Castroville in a migrant farmworking family and was the first in her extended family to graduate from high school and attend a four-year university. As a teenager, she believed college was for the rich and out of reach.
That impression shifted the summer before her senior year, when she participated in a four-week residential program at UC Santa Cruz for students from migrant families. There, she met college students from backgrounds like her own and realized, “Oh my God, this is possible.”
Even with that realization, convincing her family was complicated. No one in her family had gone to college, and relatives worried about her and urged her father not to let her go. Before he passed away, she asked him why he ultimately said yes. His answer was simple: he believed in her.
Rocha-Ruiz went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from UC Santa Cruz. She later completed a Master of Public Administration at the University of Southern California.
After her parents passed away, Rocha-Ruiz founded the Rocha Dream Foundation in their honor, pairing scholarships with sustained mentorship for students from backgrounds similar to her own. Through the foundation, she mentors students like UC Santa Cruz student Ruben Alvarez and works to make sure every student connected to her efforts feels seen, supported, and believed in, whether through personal mentorship or the programs she leads.
“I know from my experience that there is so much power in having just one person say, ‘I see you. I believe in you,’” Rocha-Ruiz said. “And I realized that’s what students need. They need someone who is there for them and sees in them the potential they may not be able to see in themselves yet.”
Over the years, former students have stayed in touch, sharing milestones. One wrote to tell her, “You were one of the first people who made an impact in my life. Thanks to people like you, my life was transformed forever, as well as my future generations.” Years later, that same student invited Rocha-Ruiz to her son’s law school graduation, explaining that because she had gone to college, she was able to support and encourage him along his own path.
Rocha-Ruiz sees the impact of her work as far more than a single acceptance letter. She sees it in how expectations shift within families over time, when younger siblings and extended family grow up assuming college is part of their future, and when one person’s opportunity transforms what an entire family believes is possible.
That is what it means to make waves across generations.
Recognizing UC Santa Cruz nominees
Several outstanding UC Santa Cruz faculty and staff were also nominated by campus leaders for the Sea Dubs Wavemaker recognition, including Elida Erickson, assistant vice chancellor for strategic initiatives and sustainability; Irena Polić, managing director of The Humanities Institute; Needhi Bhalla, professor of molecular, cell, and developmental biology; Stacy Philpott, professor of environmental studies and faculty director of the Center for Agroecology; Lucy Rojas, assistant vice chancellor and chief of staff for the Division of Student Affairs and Success; and Sri Kurniawan, professor of computational media and associate dean for research in Baskin Engineering.