Thirteen UNM Students Awarded the Collin Smith-Levin Achievement Award

The Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico Stu­dent Sup­port Services-TRiO Pro­gram recently awarded 13 stu­dents the Collin Smith-Levin Achieve­ment award which pro­vides fed­eral grant aid for students.

The fol­low­ing awardees are all Pell grant recip­i­ents cur­rently enrolled as full-time stu­dents at UNM: Mayra Alvarado, Tatiana Burkes, Gabriel Cha­con, Tracy Cha­con, Cuong Dinh, Natalie Her­nan­dez, Amy Leyva, Oscar Munoz, John Pham, Tiffany Pineda, Ali­son Rodriguez, Ellen Scott and Greg Soliz.  

“All of the stu­dents have shown great com­mit­ment to their edu­ca­tion and the SSS pro­gram,” said Dawn BlueSky-Hill, SSS pro­gram specialist.

Alvardo plans to use the award to pay for tuition, class fees, text­books and other edu­ca­tional expenses. “I am the first in my fam­ily to attend col­lege, and mak­ing the tran­si­tion from high school to col­lege was a dif­fi­cult task because my par­ents have lim­ited knowl­edge of col­lege,” she said.

SSS-TRiO is Chacon’s home away from home, his “sup­port to lean on when things get hard,” and he needs advice.

“A total of $10,000 was awarded at the end of the 2011-12 aca­d­e­mic year and this award enables SSS par­tic­i­pants to con­tinue their edu­ca­tion at UNM while keep­ing loans at a minimum,” BlueSky-Hill said. 

“The award really helps,” Cha­con said, “because when I am less stressed about bills, I am able to bet­ter con­cen­trate on the tasks at hand such as home­work and quizzes, which can be stress­ful in themselves.

UNM Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices –TRiO was estab­lished by the U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion in 1965 to pro­vide sup­port­ive ser­vices for indi­vid­u­als from first-generation back­grounds to encour­age stu­dents to earn their bachelor’s degree. SSS is designed to moti­vate and sup­port stu­dents in pur­suit of their col­lege degree with ser­vices includ­ing aca­d­e­mic advise­ment, tutoring/mentoring and cul­tural activities.  

For more infor­ma­tion on the pro­gram, con­tact BlueSky-Hill at 277‑3230 or visit Stu­dent Sup­port Services-TRiO.