Utah State Magazine Excerpt: Turning Grief Into Good

This is an excerpt from Utah State Magazine's Winter 2022 edition, out now. The full article is available on the magazine's website, utahstatemagazine.usu.edu.

The decision to enroll in college in her 40s wasn’t easy for Star Stevens.

But as a single mother, she knew she needed to do something following her divorce to elevate her salary enough to provide for her three children.

And the challenges to complete a degree in management information systems were immense. One of her children is autistic with a severe anxiety disorder, and in 2017 just as she was starting at Utah State University her fiancé died in a swimming accident. Then there were the financial constraints.

But as difficult as it was at times, Stevens was determined to not take out student loans to help pay for her education.

“Student loans in your 20s are crappy and it sucks, but you’ve got an additional 20 years to pay them off. Student loans at my age are totally different because you’re already at the age where people’s student loans should have been paid off.”

One particularly difficult year, she wasn’t sure how she could pay for school until a professor told her about the “Data Ninja” scholarship. Available to junior and senior students in the data analytics and information systems department with a GPA between 2.7 and 3.7, the $2,000 grant was created in honor of Julie Cook ‘14, a Huntsman School of Business graduate who died in a car accident in 2016.

Continue reading at Utah State Magazine.