With the 2025 fall semester beginning, LMC welcomed new staff, and Antoinette Corbin was hired as the Director for MESA. Her love for chemistry brought her here.
“Chemistry’s always been a passion,” said Corbin looking back on her memories in her own high school chemistry classroom. “We had some guest speakers come from Chevron, and they were women, and they were chemical engineers, and I was like, ‘That’s cool!’”
Since that moment, she’s dedicated herself to the study of chemistry.
“That was my dream, to be a chemical engineer,” Corbin said, but life has its way of changing plans. “As I’ve grown through my career, having a family, engineering is a hard degree to do with small children.”
Growing up in the Bay Area, she was always on the move. “I’m trying to think, so… I went to Yik So, in San Francisco, I went to Marina in San Francisco, and then I went to Bella Vista in Oakland.” She listed 8 schools she attended over her K-12 education. When asked why she attended so many, she said, “Something happened, and we ended up going to school in Oakland.” She continued, “and then my dad moved in with his mom, and so I went to school with him for a little bit, because I wanted to come back to San Francisco…” She continues, “When my mom moved from Walnut Creek back to the East Bay, I moved back home and went to school from there with her.”
After high school, she was still on the move.
“I left for school to go to UCSD, for freshman and sophomore year, like, right after high school…” she said. While in college, she realized how hard it would get. Corbin’s early college days were her most difficult.
“I think when I got to UCSD, I was not aware that I was not going to be the only one at the top,” she continues, “I think it was my first C. I told my mom I wanted to come back home. I was like, I can’t do this, I’m not getting good grades, I’m not used to getting C’s, this is crazy.”
She reflected on her choices and thought about how it would have been if she took a different route, “now I know, like, if I had to do it again… the only thing I’d probably change about schooling is I probably would have gone the community college route.”
She came back to the bay area after two years at UCSD, that’s when she met her husband who was in the military at the time, “I met him in October of 95…” they did long distance and once he finished his service they settled down and got married two years later. After 8 years they decided to part ways, “We were like, no, it’s not working and then I moved back to San Diego.” While Antionette was back in San Diego, she finished her degree. During her time in the Bay Area she was still pursuing her education, taking classes at community colleges as well as San Francisco State. Once she realized San Diego would put those credits towards her degree, she knew she had to go back.
Her love for teaching was her newfound dedication, “once I started volunteering in classrooms and seeing the lack of just African American teachers in general…” She knew what she wanted to pursue, “I need to be in school. I need… I need other brown students to see me doing stuff that they normally don’t see brown students doing.”
She completed 5 years at UCSD, graduating in 2007, then moved back to the Bay to be close to family. Getting her teaching credentials at UC Davis in 2010 and later found herself teaching high schoolers for almost 15 years. Life went by, her past found its way back to her when she and her ex-husband reconnected. She learned of his mother’s passing, and a year later, her dad would pass away: “His mom passed away, and he reached out. Her dad was her best friend, when he passed her life changed completely “It was hard. My dad was the homie. He was pretty much my best friend. He’s been my biggest cheerleader. No matter what I’ve done, he’s always been there to support and cheer me on and so…it was hard. It’s still hard.” She thinks positively, knowing she’s making him proud.
She taught her first college course last spring at Sacramento City College, and completed her master’s in chemistry online at a university in Ohio. She and her husband remarried, and life eventually brought her here to LMC. “I do like being in the classroom. Being the director now of the MESA program, I don’t get to do that as much, but I am looking forward to building relationships in a different way, through the MESA program.”
She wanted a change and knew LMC would be perfect. She loved how many students return to work on campus: “I want to be here making change with people who actually want to be in a space and help students like that.” Antoinette hopes to continue impacting her students, continuing to motivate them and continuing to push them to the next level, she ends with this “Always have a village…trust yourself…and learn yourself, if you learn yourself, and then you learn to trust yourself, and then you allow your village to support that of which you become, skys the limit.”
