Program gives students who didn’t finish college second chance

BY ERICA BREUNLIN THE COLORADO SUN

Natasha Gutierrez had covered a lot of rocky territory by the time she turned 23 and hit a personal low, addicted to heroin and meth and fed up with her life.

Five years later, Gutierrez now has gone 14 months without any drugs or alcohol and is determined to achieve a second semester with a perfect GPA where she is one year away from earning an associate’s degree in science.

“I knew that I wanted something di erent,” she said, “but my dilemma was, I want something di erent, but I’ve never seen it, so how do I know what I want if I’ve never seen it?” at program — known as Finish What You Started and o ered at 30 Colorado public colleges and universities — came out of the pandemic and gives people who have completed some college credit the money and help they may need to cross the nish line of their degree or certi cate. e program is backed by more than $46 million in federal funds under the American Rescue Plan Act through June 2026 and is overseen by the Colorado Opportunity Scholarship Initiative, a state division of the Colorado Department of Higher Education that provides funding and support to students pursuing education after high school. e pandemic dealt a blow to students who were already struggling nancially, leading some to take a timeout from school to work and provide for their families while others hesitated to move forward with remote classes that would have robbed them of a full college experience.

Her vision for her future has become sharper since she returned to college about two years after completing a semester of classes at a community college in Illinois. She is back in school at Otero College with help from a state program framed around second chances.

Education leaders and program coordinators call it a critical part of motivating more students who dropped out of school or pushed pause on their classes to resume coursework at a time more than 600,000 people in Colorado have some college credit but need more to graduate.

Despite their best intentions, students who drop out of school usually don’t come back on their own, said Angie Paccione, executive director of CDHE.

“We knew we had to provide an incentive and some resources and a pathway for them to come back, with no stigma either,” Paccione said.

“We wanted to entice them back … to say, you started this (and) it’s going to have great value for you,” Paccione said. “Let’s go ahead and help you nish it.”

At Otero College in La Junta, in southeast Colorado, 58 students signed on to complete their degree through the state program. Ten have graduated, nine students are set to graduate this spring and seven are on course to graduate this summer, according to Jane Wheeler, the success coordinator for the college’s program. e scholarships available are enough to persuade some students to come back, especially when higher education costs often stand in their way and they want to start advancing in their career and earning more money, Wheeler said.

Wheeler has watched as many students have veered away from higher education, often because of circumstances beyond their control. Some students struggled to make the leap from high school to the demands of college courses while others were pulled away by a job, a marriage, children or a move. And some simply foundered as they tried to adapt to online classes when COVID-19 hit, she said.

“We’ve had several students that came back just because it was going to mean an increase in their pay and perhaps even position,” Wheeler said. “So that nancial (bene t) has been a driving force for students to return to college.”

Otero College students who pick up where they left o can receive varying levels of scholarships based on credit hours and nancial need. For instance, a student pursuing 12-14 credit hours would net a $1,500 scholarship. at money can go toward tuition, books and living expenses. To be eligible for funding, students must have already completed some college credit, been out of school for at least two consecutive semesters and su ered economically during the pandemic.

Once back en route to their degree or certi cate, students in the program are required to stay in school, maintain a GPA of at least 2.0 and plot their next steps through a career vision board and graduation timeline. Many of them also take advantage of peer mentoring, meet with a student “success coach” who helps them narrow down careers that interest them and tap into student support services — including tutoring, an organization that brings together nontraditional students on campus and mental health visits with a therapist. Students can receive extra scholarship money when they commit time and energy to some of those academic services, Wheeler said. at message has been one that Gutierrez — who is in recovery from a 13-year battle with addiction — has embraced.

Some students who qualify for the Finish What You Started program take a little more coaxing, especially when they feel their chance at nishing their education has passed them by, she noted.

“It’s never too late to nish what they started,” Wheeler said, adding that students in their 50s and 60s have made their way back to campus.

“School is a huge thing for me because it gives me hope,” said Gutierrez, a 28-year-old single mother of two daughters, who currently stay with their grandmother in Pueblo. “I didn’t think that I’d be able to do anything, and then I’m exceeding my expectations of what I thought.”

Getting a second shot at her education has brightened her prospects of a promising future after a lifetime of trauma, including sexual abuse by a family member, the loss of her father and stepfather — who both died by suicide — and a relapse with drugs close to three years ago.

“I’m going to be able to enjoy the future, not just experience it, but enjoy it and be present in it,” said Gutierrez, who lives at Fort Lyon Supportive Residential Community, a transitional housing initiative run by the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. “And I feel really hopeful and excited and even empowered in some ways.”

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