Carrying Students Through to Commencement
Fostering Terp Success Program Celebrates 2025 Graduates
Zohneseh Fopenawoh '25 is one of 11 students graduating this week who are part of the Fostering Terp Success program, which offers resources and services to students who don’t have traditional family support. “The program really carried me through all my years of college,” she said.
Photos by Riley N. Sims
When Zohneseh Fopenawoh ’25 turned 18, she got an unwelcome birthday gift: a directive from her parent to move out and support herself.
The immigrant from Cameroon was a freshman at the University of Maryland then, and she began sleeping in her car or on friends' couches and living on food from UMD's Campus Pantry, even as she pursued a double major in criminology and criminal justice, and philosophy, politics and economics.
Now that she’s finished her degree, wearing the cap and gown this week “feels almost fake,” Fopenawoh said. “It feels like a dream to be graduating.”
She is among 11 students participating in commencement exercises thanks in part to Fostering Terp Success (FTS), a program of the Division of Student Affairs that launched in 2019 to help students who are experiencing homelessness, come from the foster system or otherwise lack traditional family support. FTS connects students with tuition waivers, funding for housing, campus jobs, mental health services, mentors and more. (There are 54 students in total who are part of FTS.)
“We create a safe space and we are here for students, unconditionally, to provide them with the love, care and support they need to keep pressing forward,” said Brian Watkins, assistant dean and director of essential needs services in UMD’s Division of Student Affairs. “I hope our students know … that they are succeeding not despite their circumstances but because their experiences have shaped them into the bold, brave and strong person they are.”
Here, three graduating Fostering Terp Success students share their stories.
Katie Baron ’25
The oldest of six children, Katie Baron had long helped her single mother care for her siblings, getting them dressed for school and watching them as they played. But Baron’s responsibilities reached new heights during her senior year of high school, when her mother decided to move the family from Columbia, Md., to Hagerstown, Md. Baron stayed behind.
“I was very committed to graduating and doing the things I needed to do to stay in Columbia,” said Baron. “I was left to figure things out myself.”
Supporting herself with a job at Panera Bread, Baron rented a room from a family she didn’t know and pushed through the last months of senior year, playing on her school’s volleyball team and participating in student government.
Her Spanish teacher, surprised she was the only student who’d chosen to attend class in-person during the pandemic, connected Baron to the high school liaison to Fostering Terp Success after learning where she was living and her plans to attend UMD. “I didn’t know that (the teacher) taking an interest in my situation would end up being the very thing I needed to push me through into college,” she said.
FTS helped her get a Homeless Youth Tuition Waiver, which covers the cost of tuition and fees. It also solved one of her biggest concerns: not having anywhere to go over breaks. “There’s nothing more isolating than seeing your friends’ parents carrying their suitcase into their car and knowing they have a home to go to,” said Baron. Temporary housing in the Leonardtown Community—and money to buy food and other essentials—made Baron feel more secure, she said.
One of Baron’s most valuable campus experiences was maintaining vehicles at Shuttle-UM. In high school, Baron had become a gearhead by necessity, since she couldn’t afford to take her car to the shop every time it had an issue, and during her time at Shuttle-UM, she honed her skills. She even started her own business: Tenacity Automotive, which offers mobile vehicle assistance for diagnostic services and minor repairs. She received funding from the Do Good Institute to create an automotive education workshop aimed at people often targeted by repair shop scams, like the elderly, women and young adults.
Baron also served as social media manager of the UnLocked Project, a UMD group created by students to support children of incarcerated parents. During the Spring 2025 semester, the group delivered 60 care packages to kids either living in shelters or with incarcerated parents. “Even though I was not directly affected by parental incarceration, I was still motivated to help others growing up in unconventional situations,” said Baron.
She completed a major in information science and minor in human development, and in the fall will return to UMD to pursue a master’s degree in supply chain management. Ultimately, she hopes to work at the intersection of transportation, logistics and technology.
Without being open about her home life and financial situation, Baron said, she likely wouldn’t be graduating. “There are probably so many people who are going through something like this and don’t know what resources are out there,” she said. “It’s not comfortable to talk about, but you can get a lot done by taking that step and putting your hand out and asking for help.”
Zohneseh Fopenawoh ’25
When Zohneseh Fopenawoh arrived in the United States in 2011, she and her family were ready for a new life. In Cameroon, they were part of the English-speaking minority that for decades have had tense relations with the French-speaking majority. When Fopenawoh’s mother won a visa lottery, she and her husband took Zohneseh and her three siblings, and left the Central African country for Maryland.
But their new life was not all they’d hoped for. Fopenawoh felt out of place in their Prince George’s County neighborhood, where kids mocked her British-inflected English and hyper-pigmented skin. Life at home was hard, too. Her mother worked long hours as a certified nursing assistant, and her parents upheld strict academic expectations.
When Fopenawoh turned 18 and her father insisted she take full financial responsibility for herself, she recalled, “I had to decide: Do I drop out of school and work full-time to be able to afford rent in College Park, or do I just continue school and sacrifice my shelter for some time? I chose to do the latter.”
Soon, a professor to whom she’d grown close told her about Fostering Terp Success, a moment that changed her entire trajectory. She began to work with then-case manager Jamila Aswad, who “offered a listening ear, was very sympathetic and showed me an immense amount of love that was foreign to me,” said Fopenawoh. Through FTS, she received a Homeless Youth Tuition Waiver and stable housing in Leonardtown. The program also connected her with mental health services at the University Health Center, a mentor, and a job in the Office of Rights and Responsibilities.
Most of all, through FTS, Fopenawoh found a community. “I was very isolated. As a commuter student,I had no friends, no connections. This program gave me that,” she said. “They celebrate every single thing. If you say, ‘I had a good day,’ they’re like, ‘Well, let’s have a party.’ That is something I’ve never had.”
This summer, Fopenawoh will study human trafficking in Costa Rica. Next year, she'll complete her master’s degree in international relations at UMD, which she began this year through the 4+1 program; she hopes to eventually go to law school.
“The program really carried me through all my years of college with the support of my mentor, with the job they provided me, with the consistency of them constantly checking in,” she said. “It’s all thanks to them that I’m graduating.”
Remi Ryan ’25
Remi Ryan grew up in a wealthy community on the Jersey Shore, but her life was different from many of her neighbors’ and classmates’. The only child of a single mother who worked as a nanny, Ryan didn’t have the boats or beach houses that many of her peers did. During her freshman year of high school, Ryan and her mom had no home at all and bounced from place to place.
She focused on schoolwork, determined to get into college and have a fresh start. UMD represented the best of all worlds: out of New Jersey, but close enough that she wouldn’t have to pay for plane tickets back home, and a place that would allow her to cheer in the stands at football games while still concentrating on academics. When she got into FIRE (the First-Year Innovation and Research Experience), she was excited to research fertility science because her mother had struggled with fertility.
But money continued to be a source of stress. “I was applying for every possible emergency scholarship,” Ryan said. “I almost dropped out a bunch of times because of finances.”
Compounding her struggles, she was struck by a car in 2023 while crossing Baltimore Avenue. She suffered a brain bleed and broken collarbone, and has permanent hearing loss and tinnitus in her right ear as a result of the accident. Ryan was forced to drop out for the semester to recover from her injuries.
Not long after the collision, Ryan learned about Fostering Terp Success, and credits it with helping her get back on her feet. An EMT with the College Park Volunteer Fire Department, Ryan loved living in the fire station for two summers but knew she wouldn’t be able to keep up with her academics while working nearly 60 hours a week on overnight shifts.
Through FTS, Ryan was able to afford other housing and to scale back her work schedule so she could devote more time to her major in public health science and minor in humanities, health and medicine. “I can’t even put into words how much I appreciated that,” she said.
Throughout college, Ryan also worked in hospitals as an emergency department technician, hooking up IVs, drawing blood from patients or running EKGs. Now, she’s applying to graduate school to become a physician assistant; she hopes to continue working in emergency medicine.
“Everyone who’s a part of FTS are just amazing people, and without them I don’t know if I’d still be in college,” Ryan said. “They all have hearts of gold and want the best for other people.”
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