For Cher Scarlett, the path to Orange Coast College’s 2026 Commencement stage was anything but ordinary. Through personal challenges and bold career pivots, she found a new purpose within OCC’s classrooms.
Now, as she prepares to take the podium as the Commencement Student Speaker, Scarlett’s journey serves as an inspiring example of resilience and hope. An honors student who overcame a year of homelessness and domestic trauma, she will deliver her address while celebrating an extraordinary achievement: earning five associate degrees.
Scarlett’s path to higher education is marked by academic resilience. A self-taught software engineer, she spent nearly two decades in the tech industry and rose to Principal Software Engineer at Apple. Yet despite her impressive credentials, she was ultimately shut out of the industry for lacking a formal college degree.
During this time, Scarlett’s personal life entered a critical crisis due to an escalating, life-threatening domestic abuse situation. Fleeing her home in Washington State, she drove south to Orange County with no money and nowhere to live, seeking safety and a fresh start.
Though she originally enrolled in online computer science courses through the Coast Community College District to check an educational box for tech employers, Scarlett faced housing instability during her first ten months at OCC. During this period, the OCC Basic Needs Office provided Scarlett with emergency food resources and connected her to vital campus support services.
Scarlett’s educational trajectory shifted entirely during her first visit to OCC’s physical campus. A navigation error led her past the OCC Planetarium, where the sight of the facility’s distinctive blue dome reignited a childhood passion for physics and astronomy — a dream she had abandoned after dropping out of high school at age 17. After wandering into the building, Planetarium staff and students welcomed her, convincing her to join the Astronomy Club and change her major.
"That’s when I became a Pirate," Scarlett said. "It made me feel like I belonged, and that I could do what I really wanted to do, instead of trying to force myself back into a career that had pushed me out."
Thriving within the OCC community, Scarlett went on to help plan the campus’s inaugural Hackathon event, competed in the NASA Community College Aerospace Scholars robotics competition, and worked as a public presenter at the Planetarium, teaching astronomy to local elementary school groups.
Through the OCC Honors Program, she blended her analytical skills with her love for the arts, completing advanced coursework that included writing creative poetry in Spanish.
When she takes the stage at the 2026 Commencement Ceremony, Scarlett will graduate with honors, holding five degrees: an Associate in Science (A.S.) in Astronomy, an Associate in Science for Transfer (A.S.-T.) in Physics, an A.S.-T. in Mathematics, an A.S. in Natural Sciences, and an Associate in Arts (A.A.) in Liberal Arts.
Following graduation, Scarlett plans to transfer to Wellesley College to major in astrophysics, dedicating her future to researching the universe's unanswered questions.