CSUSB alumnus Alberto Rendon: Finding his own path – and inspiring others to do the same

Alberto Rendon’s road back to Cal State San Bernardino didn’t follow a straight line. After earning two bachelor’s degrees in communication (public relations and mass communications) in 2016, he spent seven years in the workforce, then returned to pursue a Master of Arts in Communication & Media because, as he puts it, “I knew it's what I wanted to do.” He also knew he wanted his graduate work to reflect who he is: a lifelong fan of Pokémon and a devoted tabletop gamer.

Rendon designed a study that merged those worlds. His thesis — titled “Beyond the Dice Roll: Investigating gaming personas and social identity through Pokémon-inspired indie gameplay”—uses a custom game he built that blends Dungeons & Dragons mechanics with a Pokémon universe. In his version, players don’t control trainers; they are the Pokémon. Over roughly 14 sessions, they drew their characters, brought improvised props, and role-played choices in and out of combat. Rendon observed the sessions, conducted one-on-one and group interviews, and coded the resulting transcripts line-by-line to surface themes about identity, creativity, and community.

The work was rigorous, but it was also joyful — exactly what his mentors encouraged. Early in graduate school, faculty urged him to study something he’d be willing to live with for a year or two, not just a semester. That advice stuck. He crafted a project that was academically sound and unmistakably his. “Do something that you believe in,” Thomas Corrigan, professor of communication and media, advised him. Rendon did — and then some.

Coming back to school after a long break can be intimidating. Rendon expected to be behind. He wasn’t. Faculty leveled the playing field with refreshers and clear expectations so new grads, returning professionals, and everyone in between could hit stride together. He describes those first courses as equal parts reset and ramp-up, the kind that help you rebuild study habits and confidence at the same time.

He also found a campus designed for real life. As a full-time staff member working with the Pathways to Success grant, Rendon balanced a 40-hour workweek with graduate seminars that met in the evenings — typically 5:30-8:30 p.m., sometimes later — so working adults could participate fully. He carved out late-night hours to write, analyze interviews, and revise chapters, moving between his office and campus spaces to keep momentum.

The heart of his thesis is the way players construct themselves through play. By letting participants invent characters (from winged birds to hammer-wielding fighters) and even draw them, he watched people fuse personal interests, skills and humor into on-table identities. He documented spontaneous moments — like a bard using music to inspire the entire table of players to “jam”— and traced how group dynamics, risk-taking, and even character loss shaped the way players saw themselves and each other. The data set is hefty: dozens of pages of field notes plus 7.5 hours of interviews he read and re-read to code for themes before clustering them into broader insights.

Rendon’s research goal is partly scholarly and partly aspirational. He hopes his work shows other students — especially those who don’t see themselves in “traditional” topics — that their passions can be valid objects of study. And he says he hopes the creativity behind the project signals something to the companies that shaped his childhood: that there are fresh ways to think about worlds like Pokémon and how people inhabit them together.

His personal story underscores a larger truth about CSUSB. College isn’t a one-size-fits-all sprint from high school to diploma; it’s a lifelong resource that meets people where they are. Rendon arrived as a returning professional with a modest undergraduate GPA and a big idea. He left with a master’s degree, a finished thesis defense on the calendar, new research skills, and faculty mentors who opened doors to opportunities like a virtual reality internship in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania.

Through the internship, supported by CSUSB, Rendon worked with teams from both universities’ VR labs to explore immersive technologies and the future of digital interaction. The experience expanded his research beyond the gaming table and into the virtual world, where imagination, identity and communication continue to evolve in new ways.

Reflecting on his journey, Rendon says his time at Cal State San Bernardino reminded him that education can begin again at any point in life — and that curiosity has no age limit. “It’s a school for everybody, not just one particular kind of student,” he said. “If I can do it, you can do it too.”