Wayfinder Program Opens Endless Opportunities
“It was like I was in a world full of so many opportunities, but I didn’t have the key to open the door for those opportunities,” said Lexie Zuno, a student in Grand Rapids, Mich. “And the opportunities were through a glass door. You see them, and you hear about them, but you think, ‘Is it not for me?’”
After graduating from high school, Zuno felt stuck. “I grew up not knowing what life had for me. Going to school and seeing all of my peers report, on standardized testing, that their parents had higher than a high school diploma – some bachelor’s degrees, some master’s degrees – I would always sit and look and say, ‘What’s below a high school diploma?’ My parents didn’t have that.”
While Zuno was working as an aid at a local school, she met a woman named Anna, who asked her a simple question that would change the trajectory of her life.
“She was like, ‘Hey, what are you doing school-wise?’” said Zuno. “I looked at her like she was crazy. I’m like, ‘I can’t afford that. I can’t do that. I’m scraping by as it is.’”
Anna then told Zuno about a program that she had heard was starting up at Calvin University. “She said, ‘I think you’d be great for this program,’” recalled Zuno, and Anna brought her to visit Calvin’s campus.
“I had never been on a college campus before, and it was almost a surreal feeling,” said Zuno.
Shortly after her visit, Zuno met with Abbie Lipsker, director of continuing studies at Calvin, who told her about an application that was about to be sent out for the university’s Wayfinder program. The program is the state of Michigan’s first Clemente Course in the humanities, offering a transformative educational experience for adults facing economic and social barriers to higher education. It is offered off-campus in a neighboring ZIP code to the university, in direct partnership with several community organizations.
Zuno applied. And a couple of months later, she received a letter.
“That anticipation was quite agonizing,” said Zuno. “I ran home and showed my parents, and I’m like, ‘I made it into Calvin’s program.’ My mom cried. My dad was ecstatic for me.”
In June, Zuno started in the inaugural cohort of the Wayfinder program.
“These women I’m studying alongside – each of their individualized stories leaves me breathless,” said Zuno. “All of us were dealt our own cards – kind of a hard hand to play with, I’d say. But the perseverance in the room and the courage and the will to want to keep moving forward and break all of these generational curses down is so inspiring.”
Zuno said that for her part she’s no longer looking at opportunities through glass doors. She sees opportunities and now dreams about what might come next. She said she is also keenly aware that her journey will have ripple effects.
“I hope to continue my education here at Calvin and one day be able to help someone like me, you know, be an inspiration,” said Zuno. “I want to show adults that it’s never too late. You don’t have to follow the timeline that [people think] you need to graduate high school, go to college, get married, have kids. Everyone’s timeline is different.”
She knows she is paving a way for her family as well.
“Everyone that comes after me will have someone to look up to,” said Zuno about being a first-generation college student. “To be able to be that trailblazer is almost inspiring. It makes me not want to stop, it makes me want to reach my hand out to everyone who has a similar story and be like, ‘Hey, come with me; we’ve got this; we are going to learn together, and we are going to make this world a better place.’”
While Zuno credits the Wayfinder program for setting off a spark in her, she knows who set her on this path.
“Without God instilled in me, I feel like I would have felt like I was doomed, like there was no hope. He instilled this faith and hope in me that this [Wayfinder program] is for me,” said Zuno. On days that are difficult and it can seem easy to want to give up, she said, she’ll say “a quick prayer to the man upstairs – and all of a sudden . . . feel better.”
