For Sarah Soucie, the road to graduation was filled with a few detours, U-turns, and a lot of elbow grease.
DMACC’s Auto Technology program marked the fourth time she enrolled in college – and the first time it stuck.
Originally from San Antonio, Texas, Sarah moved to Iowa several years ago. She tried pre-med, early childhood education, and paralegal studies, but none of those career paths felt quite right.
“I’ve tried college so many times… I think there’s a part of my brain that thought this was just going to be like those times,” Sarah said.
It wasn’t.
On May 7th, 2025, Sarah walked across a commencement stage for the very first time at age 29, earning not one but two degrees: an Associate of Applied Science in Automotive Technology and a credential from the Honda PACT program.
And her eight-year-old son, Isaac, was there to see it.
The unexpected journey began a few years ago when Sarah's car broke down. Skeptical of being upsold by a mechanic, she turned to her brother Joshua for help.
As he worked, Sarah hovered nearby, asking questions throughout the entire repair. She remembers the moment Joshua looked up and said, “You know you could do this, if you wanted to.”
It hadn’t occurred to her before.
“There was some satisfaction at the end of it,” Sarah said. “A car I couldn’t drive before was now running. I’ve always loved puzzles, and working on cars just felt like a 3D puzzle that made sense.”
With encouragement from her brother and fiancé, Sarah enrolled in DMACC’s Automotive Technology program in January 2023.
Sarah quickly found nothing but encouragement and respect from her instructors.“I was worried I wouldn’t be taken seriously because I’m a girl,” she said. “But I’ve never once felt that from any of my instructors. They’ve always had my back.”
That support helped Sarah thrive. She landed an internship at Smart Honda in Clive while still a student and has been promised a full-time position as a line technician this summer after graduation.
While walking through the Honda dealership lobby one day, a little girl came up to Sarah and asked, wide-eyed, “do you work on the cars?!”
“That was always my goal,” Sarah said. “To show that you can be very much a girly girl like me – I’m probably wearing glitter somewhere on my body five out of seven days a week – and still work on cars.”
Sarah’s biggest dream is to one day open her own independent auto repair shop with evening classes for high school girls to learn basic car maintenance, like how to change a tire or check their engine oil, before driving off to college.
That desire to empower others comes from remembering what it felt like to be completely new, surrounded by unfamiliar tools and terminology, overwhelmed by the steep learning curve of the first foundational semester in the Auto Technology program.
That’s why she’s teaming up with Automotive Program Chair Jerry Burns to propose a student-alumni mentorship program to offer new students connections, support and opportunities to see the variety of job options in the career field.
Meanwhile, she’s showing her son what persistence looks like.
When Sarah started in the Auto Tech program, it was just a few months after Isaac began kindergarten.
“I wanted to show my son, not that a degree is everything, but that it’s possible,” Sarah said.
At the 2025 Metro Commencement Ceremony, Isaac sat in the crowd alongside Sarah’s fiancé and relatives who flew in from Texas. Just one person was missing from Sarah’s fan club.
Sarah’s mother, who passed away shortly before her second semester at DMACC, had always been her biggest cheerleader.
“She would brag about me like I was the coolest thing ever,” Sarah said of her mom.
Fifteen minutes after her mother’s passing, it rained in San Antonio – the clouds suddenly parting, dropping a downpour – for the first time after a 56-day drought.
Since, Sarah’s always felt her mother’s presence in the rain.
At commencement, storm cloud earrings dangled under her graduation cap and her mother’s ring hung from a chain around her neck.
As the ceremony was underway at Wells Fargo Arena, it began to rain in downtown Des Moines.
“I didn’t expect to get here. But now that I’m here, it feels incredible, surreal,” Sarah said.
Bear Trails highlights unique journeys of DMACC students, alumni, faculty, and staff, celebrating their diverse experiences and inspiring paths. Have a story idea? Contact Savannah Eadens, Public Relations & Communications Specialist, at sjeadens@dmacc.edu or 515-675-3275.