FLAGSTAFF, Ariz.—When Cassandra Brown thinks back on her days at Prescott High School in Arizona, the word she uses is “overstimulating.” Citing “typical teen drama stuff,” she struggled to focus on her coursework and—just three months shy of graduation—dropped out. Then came a GED, a series of odd jobs and, at age 21, a son. Seeking better opportunities, she earned an associate degree at a local community college with the hope of pursuing a career in psychology. But when a second son arrived in 2017, Brown chose to be a stay-at-home mom.
Higher education remained in the back of her mind, though, so at 29 she enrolled in an online program at Northern Arizona University (NAU) that gave her the flexibility to care for her children while her husband managed a tile store. What seemed a perfect arrangement, however, was quickly undone by the COVID-19 pandemic. Forced to care for her young son and help the older one with his online schooling, her grades took a dive, and the resulting academic probation put a stop to her financial aid. “I was thinking, ‘I just can’t do this,’” Brown recalled.
Enter NAU’s Jacks on Track program. The program, whose name is a nod to the university’s Lumberjack mascot, aims to bring back students who have left college anywhere from a semester to three years short of a degree. NAU is recruiting this untapped pool as part of an overall effort to boost college success, particularly for students who’ve typically been poorly served in higher education. “People would have probably gone their whole life without a degree because they were on academic probation or owed a couple of thousand dollars and so couldn’t register again,” said President José Luis Cruz Rivera. “But we fixed everything for them.”
Before she learned about Jacks on Track—and before the program learned about her—Brown had been frustrated. Several of her phone calls were transferred from one administrative department to another, with no one providing a clear solution. But then she got an email from JJ Boggs, assistant director for enrollment management and head of the Jacks on Track program. “JJ said: “Just tell me your story. Tell me what’s going on.’” Brown explained her predicament, and before long Boggs had her working out a new path to a degree with her financial aid restored.
Shifting the mission
Brown, now 33, is among hundreds of NAU students who are benefiting from a shift in mission and strategy at the 28,195-student public university that is based in
Flagstaff and has satellite campuses throughout the state.
Not long ago, NAU was focused intensively on its research imperative—hiring top scholars to compete with the flagship Arizona State University and other institutions. But university leaders realized that this approach, however worthy, was taking precedence over the effort to make NAU more affordable and welcoming, especially for first-generation students and students of color. A new commitment, Access2Excellence, has spawned several initiatives to improve affordability, completion, and teaching. The overall aim is to make the university an engine of economic mobility.
In Arizona, that mission is crucial. With a fast-growing technology sector driven in part by new microchip manufacturing plants, the state’s economy is booming: Its GDP grew by an annual rate of 3.2 percent in the first quarter of 2024, compared with 1.4 percent for the nation overall. Yet only about half of Arizona high school graduates even apply to college—a rate that’s among the lowest in the nation. “If you are a ninth-grader in Arizona today, and nothing changes, your likelihood of having a postsecondary degree by the year 2030 is 17 percent,” President Cruz Rivera said. “So we started to look very methodically at all of the obstacles that stood in the way.”
One barrier to enrollment was NAU’s list of admission requirements. To be assured admission, students needed at least 16 core courses in high school and a 3.0 grade point average—the same standards required by the University of Arizona and Arizona State University. But high schools serving tens of thousands of young Arizonans don’t offer all 16 courses, Cruz Rivera said. Students at these schools aren’t offered calculus, for instance, or a foreign language.
To boost opportunity for these disadvantaged students, NAU is engaged in a six-year pilot that sets the GPA standard at 2.75 and requires just 14 courses.
Affordability presented another obstacle to attending NAU, which has an average overall sticker price of $29,202 per year for in-state students and $44,464 for out-of-state students. By leveraging every public and philanthropic dollar and by shifting money from merit scholarships to need-based ones, the university will allow students whose families earn under $65,000 a year to attend tuition-free, starting in 2025.
NAU’s access policies benefit a disproportionate number of families of color, Native families, Hispanic and Latino families, and rural families. And at a time when other schools are seeing their enrollments drop, NAU’s policies have yielded two consecutive, record-breaking first-year classes—with no apparent decline in quality. According to Cruz Rivera: “The class of 2028 is the largest, most diverse, most academically accomplished we have had in 125 years.”
Third-year student Izabella Flores appreciates NAU, a designated Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI), for “getting” her and her culture and for making it possible for her to attend college in the first place. Flores, a member of a huge extended Hispanic family from Covina, California, is majoring in art education with a minor in disability studies. She comes from a family of teachers—including her mother, who recently earned her master’s degree, with certification as a special education teacher—and has family members with disabilities.
As close as Flores was to her family, she knew she wanted to go to college out of state. Living with her single mother in a low-income part of town, she said: ‘’I saw the people around me who were selling drugs, who were in gangs, and I didn’t want to associate with that. I knew that education was the only way out. And when I went to the NAU campus, I just fell in love with it. It felt like a true college town compared to back home.”
But how would she afford it? Her mother had lost her hospital job during the pandemic. Her father, who had emigrated from Mexico with only a fifth-grade education and was divorced from her mother, died when Flores was 16. But with NAU’s help, Flores applied for and received a number of need-based scholarships. That aid, along with a federal Pell Grant, covered virtually all of her tuition. “NAU is very generous when it comes to resources,” Flores said. She now also has a scholarship from the Arizona Teachers Academy, which forgives tuition loans in exchange for employment at Arizona public schools following graduation.
Still, Flores struggled to adjust to campus life. Because she had taken Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes in high school, academics weren’t the problem. The social interactions were. “The true college dorm life—dealing with neighbors, dealing with other people—it wasn’t something I was really prepared for,” she said. “There are so many people from different walks of life, different parts of the world. And the weather! I wasn’t prepared for the weather. The snow here is insane.”
Mainly, though, Flores missed her exceptionally close extended family. “It was a really difficult transition for me,” she said. “I wanted to drop out multiple, multiple times. Even last semester I was so close to leaving that I did the paperwork.”
Her advisors worked with her to make sure that didn’t happen, helping her find her community—in particular, a multicultural club called Hermanas United for Change, of which Flores is the incoming president.
“I found people with similar identities, who understand the family dynamic and how hard it is to be so far away,” she said. “I’m Mexican, and a lot of my friends are Mexican, and they understand that the family is everything, that families are so tight-knit that even a fourth cousin is still your cousin … so being so far away is just really hard.”
Flores is grateful to the university for understanding the importance of that heritage and how it has delayed her adjustment. “The school hosts so many events on campus, and if it weren’t for that I don’t think I would have found my friends,” she said.
And she’s found the financial assistance invaluable. Beyond the tuition, NAU provides funds for students who are unable to pay for regular meals, as well as those with housing problems, medical emergencies, and other pressing needs. “If it’s urgent that you go see your family and you don’t have the money, you just need to ask,” Flores said. “And that’s what I did. And that really helped, because without that I really wouldn’t be here.”
President Cruz Rivera, a former provost at the City University of New York (CUNY), knows the importance of having smooth connections and close alignment between community colleges and the four-year state system. In New York, universal transfer agreements made for a high-functioning pipeline. In Arizona, by contrast, there are 10 community college districts all run by different elected boards with no overriding coordinating council. This arrangement leads to dozens of different transfer agreements. So NAU stepped into the breach, creating the Arizona Attainment Alliance to streamline the pathway. The university now works with 10 community college districts on five major initiatives to connect community colleges to bachelor’s degrees and careers.
Further expanding access, the university also has adopted a universal admission policy, albeit a qualified one. “Either we admit you immediately, or you get a letter saying you have been admitted but the best way for you to become a Lumberjack is to get started in one of these community colleges,” Cruz Rivera explained. “And once you are ready, you will transfer automatically. You don’t have to apply again.” His main point: “There are zero letters of rejection for any student who applies.”
NAU piloted this policy this year with one community college. As a result, the community college enrolled 256 students it would not otherwise have received, Cruz Rivera said. The hope is that these students—many of whom already live in NAU dormitories—will transfer to the university.
Getting more Arizona high schoolers to buck the trend and actually apply for college also means meeting them at the secondary level, prompting them to prepare early on. To that end, NAU is launching a network with 21 high school superintendents to streamline dual enrollment, which allows high school students to earn college credit—or even an associate degree—at little or no cost. “Now that we have the community college pipeline, we want to get the 10th-grade students who will start taking college classes and making progress toward a degree at NAU,” Cruz Rivera said.
Cole Catron, a 21-year-old senior from Flagstaff, has taken advantage of all these pathways, along with considerable financial assistance. He’s on a fast track and is already looking toward a master’s degree—but it didn’t start that way.
For starters, Catron dropped out of high school at age 18. It was a COVID year, forcing him into isolation, complicating some existing health issues, and intensifying what he calls a “demotivating” case of senioritis. He hadn’t wanted to go to college anyway, even though he had picked up several college credits as a dual enrollment student. “I didn’t think college would be useful. There are such huge tradeoffs,” he said. “But one of the first concerns was how am I going to pay for it? So I thought I might as well just go to work and advance that way.”
He easily picked up a GED, however, and thanks in part to pressure from his single mother, quickly changed his mind. “I just figured (college) was the next thing to do,” he said. His dual enrollment credits allowed Catron to start as a sophomore at his local community college. He paid for it with need- and merit-based scholarships, including one from the Navajo Nation, of which he is a member.
Transfer to NAU was seamless—all of his community college credits were accepted—and brought more need- and merit-based aid.
With his financial worries behind him, Catron says he has benefited from undergraduate research opportunities in computer science and business, as well as his professors’ thoughtful advice about graduate schools and careers. Though he has been on campus only two years, he feels fully a part of the NAU community—in part because of his participation in the Native American Cultural Center.
With 22 federally recognized tribes in Arizona and the Hopi and Navajo nations close by, Native Americans make up about 6 percent of NAU’s student population. The university is a federally designated Hispanic-Serving Institution with a student population that is 26 percent Hispanic, but colleges that serve Native students have no official designation. Still, the numbers are not what the university would like them to be. Enrollment, retention, and graduation rates for Indigenous students “are not anything to be proud of,” Cruz Rivera said— at NAU or elsewhere. In 2022, just 17 percent of Native adults in the United States held a bachelor’s degree.
To address this, the university’s strategic plan targets Native populations with strategies designed to significantly bolster their access and success. Most important: It guarantees free tuition and fees, regardless of family income, for members of Arizona’s federally recognized tribes. Catron did not tap into this scholarship because his other aid fully covered his costs. With significant philanthropic support, the university has attracted its largest-ever class of Native students, a population that has been growing by double digits year after year.
For the enrollment jump, administrators also credit learning communities in residence halls, as well as more robust programming offered by the Native American Cultural Center, where tribal elders offer guidance to students like Catron. “We’re really focused on this piece because, from a cultural perspective and the DNA of our university, if we’re not doing right by our Indigenous students, we’re not doing right by anybody,” Cruz Rivera said.
Jason Watchman, 39, says NAU is doing right by him. The son of a single mother and a member of the Navajo Nation, Watchman moved frequently as a child and attended 10 schools before graduating from high school in 2002. They included a tribal school in the early years and a religious boarding school, which he particularly disliked. Throughout his educational journey, though, he learned to love and excel in math.
‘Numbers in front of me’
“When I was younger, I would get into trouble a lot, and these Christian schools would discipline you by isolating you and having you stare at the wall for hours,” Watchman said. “But luckily for me, there were numbers in front of me that I played with in my mind. So that gave me something to do.”
A four-year college still didn’t feel right, so after high school, Watchman went on to earn an associate degree in automotive engineering. Though he loved working on cars, he still felt unsettled. “I was just being an immature kid, running around and having fun,” he said. In 2007 he joined the Army and spent 15 months in a combat brigade in Afghanistan before being medically discharged.
An otherwise satisfying experience at the two-year Yavapai College in Prescott was clouded by the breakup of his marriage, which made him a single father. But the community college experience made for a smooth transfer to NAU, where Watchman at first majored in sociology so he could help fellow veterans. When he realized that the veterans’ stories could trigger disturbing memories of his own deployment, he switched to biology with a certificate in wildlife conservation.
COVID slowed Watchman’s progress; he struggled to take courses online while caring for his preschool-aged son. Resulting course failures muddled his eligibility for federal GI Bill benefits, and he stopped out. But NAU met him where he was, providing both academic and financial counseling and accommodations for the complications of his life. Again, Jacks on Track leader JJ Boggs made the difference, Watchman said. “JJ is the only one who knows what I have been through, and she is always there for me—not just academically, but for anything. She gave me all the encouragement that I didn’t even know I needed.”
Watchman is scheduled to graduate in the spring of 2026. While he finishes his degree program, he is helping students with administrative tasks at the college’s Veteran Success Center, working to smooth the college path for others who have served. “One of my goals is to help with outreach, to make sure that (student veterans) are not isolated the way I was, because I literally just went to school, did what I had to do, and came home and did nothing else.”
Catron, meanwhile, will enter an NAU master’s program next fall, studying business analytics and looking forward to using his data analysis skills in the public policy field.
Flores, for her part, is on track to graduate in 2025 with a certification to teach any K-12 grade. While she still misses her family and finds it difficult to return to campus every time she visits home, she feels far more independent than she did three years ago, even as her relatives stay top of mind: “I’m not doing this just for myself,” she said, “but for my family and for all the people back home who are supporting me.”
And Cassandra Brown? She continues to juggle a full course load while mothering two young boys with exceptionally busy sports schedules. With a bachelor’s degree in strategic leadership due to be conferred in December, she hopes to work in human resources management or a related field. But first, she says, she is going to take a break.
“My plan is to focus on finding a job that is in line with our schedule for our children and our lives,” she said. “But I’m planning on taking off a couple of months just to kind of live in the glory that I did this.”
