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The people who had been paying for Luci Griffith’s
tuition at New Mexico Tech called her up just prior to the start of the
fall semester and told her they would no longer be able to foot the bill.
About the same time, the senior chemical engineering
major from Lake Orion, Michigan, learned that her scholarships also had
run out.
Thinking she had no where left to turn to, Luci was
on the verge of dropping out of New Mexico Tech . . . at least for that
semester, but maybe longer.
“It was such a stressful situation thinking that
suddenly I wouldn’t be able to continue school,” Luci says.
“It was awful.”
But when she went to clear her accounts at the Student
Accounts Office in Brown Hall, Student Accounts Specialist Gigi Ngo told
her that all was not lost: She still could apply for help from the President’s
Tuition Assistance Fund.
“To make a long story short, my application was
accepted, I got the money I needed to pay for my tuition, and I ended
up with a 4.0 G.P.A. for that fall semester,” Luci happily
recounts." It
was such a relief to know that my tuition would be paid for that semester,”
she continues. “Receiving this assistance also has kept me on track
for graduating next spring. It was so helpful.”
In addition, after successfully completing the fall
semester with such a high G.P.A., Luci applied for the local American
Association of University Women Scholarship and recently was named as
one of two undergraduates at Tech who will receive the prestigious non-renewable
scholarships during the upcoming academic year.
Luci currently serves as recording secretary for the
local chapter of Tau Beta Pi, the national engineering honor society,
and will soon assume the duties of corresponding secretary for that group.
She also works on-campus in the chemistry lab of the
New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources, conducting water and
soil analyses.
This summer, Luci will take part in an internship program
at Intel Corporation in Rio Rancho.
“Speaking from my own experience, I’d have
to say that it’s really great that New Mexico Tech has such an important
resource for its students to turn to when their financial situation gets
rough,” Luci relates.
“Having transferred to Tech from a much larger
university, I’ve always been favorably impressed with all the help
that’s available from all avenues on this campus,” she adds,
“from being able to talk to professors instead of TAs, to the informal
study groups that form to help everyone do better in class, to finding
alternative sources of financial assistance—it’s all part
of New Mexico Tech.” |
