Campus Colleagues: Valeria Garcia-Lopez

Valeria Garcia-Lopez is one of UM-Dearborn's newest alums and also one of its newest staff members. Back in January, even before she had officially graduated with a degree in business administration (which she completed in three years), she had accepted an offer to work with the university's TRIOteam, which provides support to lower-income and first-generation students, as well as students with disabilities and those from at-risk backgrounds. TRIO has been a throughline of Garcia-Lopez's tenure at UM-Dearborn. As an undergraduate student, she participated in TRIO all three years, and during her senior year, she also worked as a program assistant for TRIO's student support services. Now, as a full-time staffer with TRIO's Upward Bound program, she works with high school students on STEM-focused programming, helping them prepare for their post-high school lives. Recently, we chatted with Garcia-Lopez about the impact TRIO had on her own life, what she likes best about her new job, and the most effective messages for getting young people interested in college.

TRIO helped her navigate as an undergrad
One of the most common challenges first-generation college students face is navigating the university bureaucracy. Simply put, if you don't have a parent, older sibling or mentor who's familiar with things like financial aid, how majors and minors work, and other mechanics of higher education, it falls on you to figure that out yourself. A big part of TRIO's mission is helping students work through these situations, and Garcia-Lopez remembers several pivotal moments where the program guided her through a tricky time. During her first year, when some scholarship numbers weren't adding up in her financial aid package, she reached out to TRIO Advisor and Counselor Rachel Leonard, who recommended she contact Dean of Students Amy Finley. Finley helped connect Garcia-Lopez with the right people in the financial aid office, who resolved the situation. "Also that year, right before finals week, I experienced the loss of a loved one, and I ended up having to leave the state to handle everything that needed to be handled," Garcia-Lopez recalls. "It was really stressful, and I remember texting Rachel at like 8 p.m. one night about how to email my professors." She sent Leonard a draft of her email to look over before she hit send. "Everything ended up working out. People were really understanding," she says. "But it helped me so much to have Rachel, to have that shoulder to lean on."

Showing young students new possibilities
Garcia-Lopez is now part of the TRIO staff and helps run the Upward Bound program as an outreach specialist. Upward Bound is a program within TRIO that helps STEM-focused high school students in much the same way that TRIO supports college students. Garcia-Lopez actually has two offices: One at the university and one at Robichaud High School in Dearborn Heights, UM-Dearborn's partner for the program, where she spends about three days a week. On the day-to-day, she's up to any number of things, including leading STEM-focused projects, organizing tours of science- and engineering-focused employers in the area, helping students with scholarship and college applications, and visiting big cities outside the region. Last year for example, they took students on a five-day cultural trip to Chicago. "Our goal is really to try to expose them to as much as possible," Garcia-Lopez says. "For some kids, it's their first time outside the region, or getting on a plane or on a train, or having a certain kind of food. We want to show them what's out there - all the possibilities both inside and outside Michigan. Because as they think about their next steps, maybe Michigan is a great fit for them, or maybe they'd like to try somewhere else."

Garcia-Lopez talks with Robichaud High School student Sabrina Cochran on Thursday, Sept. 25, 2025.

The biggest life changes since graduating
Garcia-Lopez says she's still kind of catching her breath after finishing her undergrad. She took classes during the summers and finished in three years, which meant she never really had a break. For a while, she says she was still reflexively logging into Canvas anytime she touched her laptop - and had to delete it from her phone - though the break will be short-lived, since she's starting an MBA program at UM-Dearborn in January. "It's weird for me to actually have some down time to focus on me, and what I need to do, what I want to do, and not just do homework," she says. "So I've been spending a lot of time with family." The transition from being a student worker to a full-time employee in the TRIO office has also been a little interesting. She said everyone has been super supportive, and she's actually grown closer with a lot of her colleagues. "But, like, Dean Finley, she was such an amazing friend and mentor to me as a student. Now she's my boss! So I may just have to edit a little bit to make sure I'm keeping things professional," she says.

Garcia-Lopez is on location at Robichaud High School three days a week, working with students in the Upward Bound program.

The best ways to reach young people
Garcia-Lopez's mission at Upward Bound is, fundamentally, to help prepare the young people she works with for their post-high school lives. Often, that involves college, but it doesn't have to. She says a lot of kids are really interested in trade schools, and she's more than happy to help them figure that out. She says young people are definitely a little more skeptical about the value of higher education these days, especially as costs have risen. In that environment, she doesn't think it's that helpful to simply be an evangelist for college. "At the end of the day, I can root for college all I want. But if someone is sure it's not right for them, I don't want to just try to convince them that it is. I know plenty of people who tried college, discovered it wasn't for them, and are still paying off debt," she says. Instead, she tries to make sure students have all the facts they need to make a good decision. For example, she wants them to know just how much the financial aid landscape has changed in recent years. "A lot of students assume college is going to cost them tens of thousands of dollars. But other than books and my transportation, I didn't pay a penny to go here," she says. "So I make sure they know about all the opportunitiesthat are out there, make sure they're checking all the right boxes on those applications. They might be the only ones applying for a scholarship, and then - guess what - that scholarship is theirs. Or, if you check that first-gen box, suddenly a whole world of opportunities opens up."

Garcia-Lopez talks with Robichaud High School students and sisters April Cochran and Sabrina Cochran after conducting a science experiment on Thursday, Sept. 25, 2025.

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Want to help support the TRIO program? Garcia-Lopez helped start the Office of TRIO Programs' Sponsorship Program, which helps TRIO continue to improve the opportunities available to students through your generous donations. In addition, if one of your co-workers has an interesting job or life outside their job, consider nominating them for our monthly Campus Colleagues feature. Photos by Matthew Stephens. Story by Lou Blouin

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