Travis Sider's TRiO SSS Success Story

Name: Travis Siders
Semester/Year started at WCC: Spring 2010
Semester/Year started at TRiO SSS: Spring 2010

How has TRiO SSS helped you?

I currently attend Windward Community College and I am pursuing a degree in Nursing. TRiO SSS and the wonderful staff have helped to encourage, motivate, and push me to do my best in school. The facility and the utilities that are available to the students are of great help and are very important to all of us in the program. The free printing, free lunch, and free tutoring helped me not only to succeed in my classes, but being a single parent of a daughter, I cannot afford to pay to print or even buy lunch.

When I was working off campus my grades began to slip. I was happy when I got offered a job as a peer tutor. Being able to work at school has helped me because they work around my schedule and my grades have improved noticeably. The program also offers grants to students and I am currently a recipient. In order to receive this grant, I must do community service. I run an open-lab for two hours each week helping other students with their homework and volunteer at the events that are held on campus.

Another way this great program has helped me to excel was the staff gave me guidance and mapped out my path towards a nursing degree. Roy Inouye has worked with me to get in touch with the right people at the different campuses and constantly checks to make sure I stay on the right track. Roy and the other staff members have shown their interest in helping and guiding all the TRiO participants as well. All in all I would have to say that if it was not for TRiO I would have dropped out of school and not been able to pursue my education to better myself and make a better life for my daughter and I.

TRiO has become a part of my family. I have come to know many of these people very well over my years here and we provide support to each other in any situation to succeed to our final goals of obtaining our degrees.

Mahalo,

Travis Siders