Guiding the way

At first glance, a first-year freshman and a non-traditional student with a family returning to campus may not appear to have much in common. But a mentorship program facilitated through NMSU’s Student Success Center provides the support needed for each student to be successful. 

The Student Success Center partners with five funded programs, the Chase Foundation Mentor Program, Los Alamos National Lab Foundation Scholars Program, Daniels Fund Boundless Opportunity Scholars Program, Simon Scholars Mentoring Program and Daniels Scholar Success Program, to assist the scholarship recipients.

The mentoring partnership not only includes advancement strategies that provide financial funding and peer mentoring, but also programming to address the academic, career, personal and social success of the program scholars. 

The Daniels Fund Boundless Opportunity Scholars Program helped Cody Womack ’18 ’20, a Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, native, return to NMSU to finish the degree he had previously attempted twice. 

“It was the big key that helped me find my success to go into school and ultimately helping me graduate. It helped me build a support network that I wasn’t doing on my own,” he says.  

In addition to the scholarship, Womack believes a significant benefit of the mentorship program is having someone available to answer questions and then connect students to campus resources. 

“I wasn’t even doing a Scholar Dollar$ application before I started, but the mentor said you need to be doing this,” Womack recalls. “They helped connect me to financial resources multiple times. That was the biggest barrier I was going through, and it really eased a lot of my stress to allow me to be successful.” 

For Sara Hipps ’25 returning to college set an example for her three children, one of whom just completed their freshman year at NMSU. 

“I have an 18-year-old who is the whole reason that I’m here,” she says. “I kept going because I wanted to show that it’s possible if you have a break in your education, you can always go back.” 

As a Daniels Fund Boundless Opportunity scholar, Hipps appreciates the mentorship she’s received, which includes guidance from Yvonne Franco, academic success support center coordinator at NMSU.  

“She’s an endless resource. She’s easy to talk to and she’s non-judgmental, everything that I want to be as a social worker, she’s already embodied that,” says Hipps, who begins the NMSU Master of Social Work program in summer 2025.  

As a non-traditional student, Hipps thought the workshops might not pertain to her, but she was happy to have met other social work students and to learn new financial tools. 

“I appreciate that it’s not only a scholarship, but they are also building a little community of us as well,” says Hipps, a Brazito, New Mexico, native. 

Today, Womack shares lessons from the mentorship program with current NMSU students as a College of Arts and Sciences academic success coordinator. 

“I always tell my students the support network is not going to be one person or one key that someone gives you that opens up everything,” he says. “It’s a collection of different things that different people within that program provide and all those building blocks help get you to the successful spot.”