Student Ben Steward prepares medicinal plants in the family drying room (photo by NASHCO).
SIERRA T. remembers being pregnant, hot, stressed and late for her Portland State commencement in 2017. She barely made it through the crowds at the MODA Center in time to walk in the ceremony with her classmates.
She never guessed it would take another four and a half years for her to officially graduate.
On that warm Sunday in June, she had a toddler on one hip, a baby due in September, and her entire family there to celebrate. She thought she could easily finish up her last few classes in the fall.
But that turned out to be nearly impossible with a newborn, and she kept putting it off. One year turned into two, then three and four. She marked the time with her son’s birthdays, vowing to complete her degree before he turned five.
She marked the time with her son’s birthdays, vowing to complete her degree before he turned five.
“Having kids and being a young mother definitely hindered my timeline, but it was always a goal that I had,” Sierra said. (She prefers not to use her last name for privacy reasons.) “I think it’s important as a person of color to have a degree, and for me it was something I had to do.”
Her experience shows how hard it can be for students to come back to college after a long absence and how meaningful a college degree can be—no matter how long it takes to finish.
Sometimes all it takes is a little extra support. That’s why Portland State is expanding scholarships and emergency hardship funds to clear the way for students like Sierra to return and graduate.
Sierra T. '21 at PSU's Urban Plaza (photo by NASHCO).WHEN SIERRA decided to go back to PSU in 2021, she had a major obstacle: She couldn’t register for classes because she still owed PSU $1,500, money she didn’t have in her tight family budget.
Her advisor told her about the Robert Mercer College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Last Mile award, a last-resort funding source to help students pay for their final credits and graduate. The fund is made up of mostly small donations in honor of Robert Mercer, a retired assistant dean who created it in 2013. Since then, the award has helped 71 students finish their degrees.
Sierra was relieved when she learned the award would cover her debt and remaining classes. It was “a huge, huge blessing,” she said.
She was nervous about juggling the demands of school, family and her new full-time job as an operations manager, working in local government. But she did it, finally receiving her degree in December.
“I really just powered through,” she said. “It was hard, but it was something I had to do. There was no second chance. Someone else was paying for me to finish. It was all or nothing.”
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ Robert Mercer Last Mile fund and others like it are “tremendous tools,” said Carol Gabrielli, the college’s director of student success.
She has seen an uptick in financial need from students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Job losses, health problems, family caregiving and other challenges have stretched their already thin resources.
“Many students are calling me out of enormous desperation—a Hail Mary of sorts—and this award catapults them into a whole other dimension of possibility,” she said. “It really transforms their lives.”
PSU is building on the success of the Last Mile fund with a strategic investment of $1 million in a new Finish Line project for students throughout the University who are at risk of not graduating during the pandemic.
The need is so great that a record number of students applied for emergency funds during the 2020-21 school year, and donors stepped up to help. The Portland State University Foundation gave out more than $600,000 in hardship funds to 726 students for housing, food, medical care, transportation and other immediate needs.
Ben Steward at home with his wife and daughters (photo by NASHCO).TWO PSU scholarships are helping Ben Steward, 38, graduate this spring with a bachelor’s degree in Indigenous Nations and Native American Studies.
After high school, he worked in the medical field for 12 years, bringing health and dental services to Indigenous villages in isolated, rural areas of Alaska. He had great relationships with the people he met, but he felt a little bit like an outsider, he said.
The experience drove him to reconnect with his own tribe in Southern Oregon, the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians. He ultimately wanted to work for his tribe, but he needed a bachelor’s degree.
He heard about PSU’s Indigenous Nations Studies program and transferred in 2020, after finishing his associate’s degree online.
He achieved his employment goal faster than expected last year, when his tribe hired him as its cultural programs coordinator, based in Roseburg. He’s finishing his degree remotely from there. In his new job, he designs and leads classes and events to preserve his tribe’s language and culture for its 2,400 citizens.
“It really takes an active focus to maintain those things in today’s world,” he said. “The language has been so close to getting lost. And if they go away, they are gone. That’s a big drive for me.”
His scholarships help him focus more on his studies, spend more time with his wife and daughters, and worry less about paying his bills.
“I don’t think I would be this close to graduation if not for the help I received,” he said. “The financial support has been easily one of the most important factors in my success, without a doubt. Every penny has been appreciated.”
Student Kim Kinnaman at the Robertson Life Sciences Building (photo by So-Min Kang).KIMBERLY KINNAMAN almost gave up on her childhood dream of becoming a surgeon after a teenage pregnancy and an unhappy marriage.
Scholarships not only made it possible for her to keep going, but also helped steel her resolve.
“It feels like people can see how hard you’re trying,” she said. “It’s support when you don’t think you have support anywhere else. It’s the difference between dropping out and keeping on going.”
It feels like people can see how hard you’re trying. It’s support when you don’t think you have support anywhere else.
Kinnaman, 31, has wanted to be a surgeon since she was nine years old, when she had back surgery for scoliosis at Shriners Children’s Hospital in Portland. She never felt scared in the hospital, and she’s been fascinated with medicine ever since. She remembers getting an anatomy book one year for Christmas and spending hours reading it and drawing intricate pictures of the human heart, because she thought it was so beautiful.
But as she grew up, she lost hope for that future. Her parents didn’t go to college, and it wasn’t common in her community near Medford.
She had her first baby when she was 17 and a senior in high school. She had her second when she was 20. Their father was 40 and her boss at her summer job when she met him. She didn’t want to be with him, but ended up marrying him anyway, because she thought it was expected of her.
For the next eight years, she tried to figure out how to leave her marriage and go to college. She enrolled in Rogue Community College for the first time when she was 19, but her husband didn’t support her, she didn’t have child care and her grades weren’t as high as she wanted, so she dropped out.
“I had convinced myself this was my life,” she said. “This was the choice I had made. I was stuck with it.”
Then a therapist helped her see she could make a new choice. In 2019, she went back to college, divorced her husband and moved out of their three-bedroom house and into her parents’ kitchen with her two children.
Her husband told her she would find herself incompetent in college. She proved him wrong, getting almost all A’s.
When a friend introduced her at school as “Kim, the future surgeon,” she started to believe it was true.
When a friend introduced her at school as ‘Kim, the future surgeon,’ she started to believe it was true.
In early 2020, her ex-husband told her he was dying of cancer and asked her to take care of him in hospice. She did it for her children, because he was their dad and they loved him. He died in May 2020.
She transferred to PSU in fall 2021 with help from the Nancy Ryles Scholarship, an award for students returning to college. The scholarship was created in memory of Nancy Ryles, an Oregon politician who died of brain cancer in 1990 at age 52. She attended college but didn’t graduate and wanted to help other women finish their degrees.
The students who apply for the scholarship are “so incredibly determined,” said Martha DeLong, a member of the scholarship steering committee.
Like Kinnaman, many applicants have children, and they want to set a good example for them.
“They’ve gone through some very tough times in many cases,” DeLong said. “When they leave school, it’s because they don’t believe in themselves. By the time they apply, they realize they can do this, and many want to demonstrate to their kids that they can do it, too.”
Kinnaman moved into a one-bedroom apartment near PSU with her two children, now 13 and 11. She’s taking a heavy load of classes and getting good grades.
She hopes to go to medical school at Oregon Health & Science University and someday start her own scholarship.
“I want to help other people realize their dreams,” she said. “It doesn’t stop with me.”
If you’d like to support PSU students returning to school later in life like the ones profiled here, consider giving to the President’s Equal Access Scholarship Fund.