May 31, 2007
She helps students reach their dreams
Mona Pitre-Collins once swore she would never be a teacher like most of the members of her family. But life had other ideas. She taught for several years, and every job since then has been centered around students.
These days Pitre-Collins is the director of the UW’s Undergraduate Scholarship Office, where she works with students to connect them to educational opportunities. About 60 percent of her work involves the most elite scholarships around — the Rhodes, the Truman, the Marshall, the Goldwater — and others like them. They’re scholarships for which a student must be nominated by his or her university, and thus a rigorous application process is necessary.
But Pitre-Collins says her work begins long before students start the application process. She spends a lot of time making presentations in classes and other settings, talking to students who come in the office and connecting with faculty members who mentor students.
“What I try to do is help students take a look at the things that they would like to do with their lives and consider how various programs could help them move toward that,” Pitre-Collins said.
It’s not unlike what she was doing in the classroom, back in the days she taught middle school science at Zion Preparatory Academy. It was a job she loved but burned out on. “You’re invested in the lives of these students and you think about them all the time,” is how she put it. Thinking she needed a break, she took a job with the Urban League, doing a parent involvement project that was grant-funded.
Then, just as the grant was running out, she had a chance to work at her alma mater, Seattle University, as an adviser in Minority Student Affairs. And that in turn led her to Olympic College in Bremerton, where she was director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs.
Through all these jobs, she was talking to students every day, trying to provide some guidance for them as they navigated through college. Now she’s doing the same thing for a more select group of UW students.
“Before I came, the executive secretary for the Truman Foundation visited the University,” Pitre-Collins said, “and he said, ‘You know, you folks have the ability to select and push forward students for the Truman and you haven’t done it. If you’re really interested in doing this, you need to have someone in an office who’s dedicated to doing just that work.'”
So the office was developed and staffed on a part-time basis. Pitre-Collins was hired in 2000 as the first full-time director, and two years ago Vega Subramaniam joined her as assistant director. Since Pitre-Collins’ arrival, the office has been very successful at working with students vying for select scholarships. There have been four Rhodes scholars, 20 Goldwaters, five Marshalls, three Trumans and many others.
Pitre-Collins doesn’t take full credit for that, pointing instead to other programs that had paved the way, such as the Undergraduate Research Program and the Carlson Center. “I came on board at a time when things were beginning to fall into place,” she said.
Still, she is passionate about her work, which can start as early as a student’s freshman year. An example is a seminar for freshmen and sophomores — called Making the Most of your UW Experience — that the office is currently revamping. It introduces students to the process of developing a plan of action for the future by forcing them to think seriously about their goals and what resources and people they need to connect with to achieve them. Once they’ve identified these, Pitre-Collins and her staff do all they can to help.
The satisfactions of the job are many.
“I get to meet fabulous faculty who are on the cutting edge of discovery, but who are willing to bring students along with them,” she said. “I get to meet students who have such naïve excitement about what’s possible, and as a result of that naivete, they just go out and do all kinds of things. I have the opportunity of working with really wonderful human beings who are concerned and work very deliberately to help open things up for students. It’s a great place to work.”
