Sylvia Savala grew up in the town of Pinedale, California in the shadows of a father who served the Pinedale community as a member of the board of trustees of Pinedale Elementary. He was also a founding contributor to the Fresno Boys’ Club.

She said she learned the importance of social responsibility from how he prided himself on giving back to his community.

“His involvement had a profound impact on how I viewed my place in the world and engendered a desire to positively impact my community as well,” Savala said.

At the age of 10, she put what she learned from her father to use by helping kids in her neighborhood who were ridiculed and humiliated for not knowing English. Savala turned her garage into a school and taught them reading and math and even created report cards for them to take home.

Savala attended San Joaquin Memorial and Bullard High School. She said she felt isolated at Bullard High because she was one of five Latino students attending the high school at that time.

In the late 1960s Savala enrolled at Fresno City College where she became acquainted with students who were transferring to California State University, Fresno. She realized that the books were not difficult to her, and wanted to go to Fresno State and get a B.A.

Savala said her father said she could not go because she needed to help support the family.

“At that moment, I knew I couldn’t let anyone stop me from making my dream come true. I wanted to graduate with a B.A.,” Savala said. “I defied parental authority and continued my education at Fresno State.”

In 1970, she became a member of M.E.C.H.A. (a student organization that promotes higher education, culture, and history) where she said she became a warrior by helping demand that the administration at Fresno State meet student needs and that La Raza Studies Program remain intact, and they succeeded.

She said she also marched along with the farm workers and fellow students, demonstrating and picketing Safeway during a lettuce strike. According to Savala, ultimately many of the big lettuce growers rescinded their contracts with the teamsters and aligned themselves with United Farm Workers.

“Although I had not yet acquired a voice, it was rewarding knowing I was helping deter oppression,” said Savala. “While helping my Raza, I was also helping myself, simultaneously becoming empowered.”

Savala graduated with a B.A. in Spanish in 1975 and then decided she wanted to be an artist and began studying the arts.

She later taught art to the young and to the elderly at Arte Americas, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and to students in the outlying towns of the counties such as, Mendota and Parlier.

Savala said she evolved into a feminist artist and in 1995 exhibited her art at Fresno City Hall.

It was there that she experienced backlash from employees and residents for a sacrilegious art piece entitled, “Our Lady of the Pots and Pans,” an artwork of a woman crucified with pots and pans dangling from the cross and a broom leaning against the post. Savala said she was addressing women’s issues and celebrating their everyday life.

According to Savala, the art received so much attention and even made the local TV newscasts.

In 1999, she was asked to be part of an artist’s show, “Hecho En Califas: The Last Decade” that would travel throughout California. It was for that show that she received the “Senate Certificate of Recognition” for her contribution to changing the direction in Chicano Art.

In 2003, Savala decided she wanted to become a writer and enrolled in the MFA Creative Writing program with an emphasis on creative nonfiction at CSU Fresno. She graduated in 2007 and said she gained a tremendous amount of confidence in the process.

In 2010, Savala’s essay, “How Vanilla Runs” was published in an anthology, “Introduction to Mexican-American Studies” a textbook that is used at FCC and CSU Fresno La Raza Studies.

It was at this time that Savala decided to teach at the collegiate level at Madera Community College and at FCC. She endeavored to teach solely at Fresno City where she had history, and love for the campus.

“There were so many ‘Chicanitos’ that I could help guide, motivate and inspire here with my personal stories,” Savala said.

Savala said one of her proudest moments came was just last year when her best students announced he was going to drop out of my English 125 class because his parents had to return to Mexico.

“I told him, that he was at a crossroads, and that if he stayed, it would change his life for the better. Find a way,” Savala said she told him.

The student stayed and Savala recommended him for a scholarship, which he received. The student is now enrolled at Fresno State and recently visited to tell her he is aspiring to be a lawyer.

“I beamed with pride,” said Savala. “This is what teaching is all about to me, it makes it all worth it.”

In August, Savala started her new endeavor by forming the Adjuncts Alliance because she felt the adjuncts who needed a place to convene and fraternize.

She said the adjuncts that attended the first meeting were pleased, but as the weeks passed, she said made some disheartening discoveries regarding their low hourly pay rate compared to the hourly rate of the lowest paid full-time faculty.

Savala said she also discovered new awareness about student needs and the inability of adjuncts to meet them. She said she knew then that there was work to be done.

“It’s a calling, and it’s about self-respect,” Savala said. ”I have a voice, and it must be heard not just for my sake but for those who don’t.”

Savala said she learned that the key to making change happen is knowing what people can do when they put their minds together.

Savala said she hopes the 65 percent of professors that make up the Adjuncts Alliance show up to their next meeting on Jan. 22, 2016 at 4:30 p.m. in the OAB Room 181.

“Banding together has always worked; history has proven that,” Savala said. “Lift up your heads Adjuncts, and attend our meeting. Students are watching us.”