Students on path to be first in family to earn degrees
Dineah Marie Peterson saw the envelope on her bed. The Gallup native didn’t want to open it, because she knew what it held inside — either her shot at a college degree or the possibility she might never get out of her hometown, let alone her home state.
But when she opened it, and the confetti fell out and she saw the note saying “Congratulations!”, she knew she hit the jackpot: The Davis New Mexico Scholarship chose her as one of 25 New Mexico high school seniors to receive an all-expenses-and-tuition scholarship to a fouryear college. She will attend Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis., this fall.
When Peterson told her parents, they cried. She didn’t, she said, because she doesn’t cry. She prefers to smile. And she was smiling when she joined the 24 other scholarship recipients Friday at a celebration at the Scottish Rite Center, where philanthropist Andrew Davis and Sam Ritter, director of the scholarship program, presented them with their scholarship diplomas.
Davis, who founded the scholarship program as part of the Shelby Cullom Davis Charitable Fund, told the students that the scholarship would give them “hope and promise for a better future … this must only be the beginning of what you can accomplish here.”
Since all the recipients are working to become the first in their families to earn a four-year college degree, he said they are “the first through this wall, the first to break the trail for others.”
The scholarships — part of a three-year, $11.6 million program that started as a pilot program in 2014-15 — cover tuition, room, board, books, travel expenses and money for the students to travel home twice a year to visit their parents, as well as a stipend for their parents to visit them at college at least once a year. So far, Ritter said, the retention rate of the 29 previous recipients of the scholarship is 100 percent.
Scholarship winners must attend one of six colleges that partner with the program: Lawrence University; Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles; St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas; Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas; the University of Denver or the University of Portland in Oregon.
Participating high schools, including Santa Fe Prep and New Mexico School for the Arts in Santa Fe, inform their students about the scholarship and encourage them to apply.
Before Friday’s celebration, Davis said that money alone will not get a first-generation college student through four years of higher education. “For students who have not had friends or family members who have gone to college for generations, the role modeling goes out the window, and it’s hard on them to go away from home for the first time,” he said. “You are talking about a family unit that has never experienced this before, ever. And that kind of success takes more than a check.”
He said the colleges involved with the program put extra effort into getting to know and support the students. Their families play a big role in supporting them as well, he told Friday’s assembly.
Stephanie Kirchhoffer understands that. She didn’t finish college many years ago. “I couldn’t finish,” she said. But when she heard that her son, Jason Duncan, a New Mexico School for the Arts senior, had received the scholarship, she immediately saw it as a “picture-book fairy tale with no part missing.
“It’s the best possible launching of your child going to college you could ever dream of,” she said. “I know he won’t lead my life of financial struggle.” Her son will attend Lawrence University to study biology and music.
Davis said he hopes these students will inspire others who never dreamed of going to college to find a way to do so. José A. Martinez, a 17-year-old Santa Fe Prep senior, said that’s exactly what he plans to do. He will be attending St. Edwards University in the fall, though he remains undecided about what to study. He comes from an immigrant family from Mexico and fears some people believe that Hispanics “never get anywhere.”
But he is going somewhere with the scholarship, he said.
“I want to make my mark,” he said. “In four years I am gonna feel like a success. I want to come back and help other students like me. I want to say, ‘You can do it.’ If you have the mindset, you can do it. And it doesn’t matter if people tell you, ‘You can’t,’ because you can.”