A Community of Success for McCombs Scholars

Business School Program Builds the Bonds and Offers the Support that Help Students Reach their Goals

Since 2016, more than 1,000 incoming first-year students have been named McCombs Success Scholars (MSS) and have received extra support to help them through their first two years of business school. The program has earned glowing praise from students for building a community to help them thrive, as well as the support of corporations and other donors.

“Right out of the gate,” says Joaquin Guajardo, a marketing senior from Brownsville, “MSS paired me up with a mentor who was extremely knowledgeable and pointed me in the right direction whenever I had any questions.

“By having access to his knowledge about McCombs and the UT campus, I was able to hit the ground running during my freshman year by joining organizations and engaging in events around campus.” Guajardo says he was even able to obtain an internship during his first year by attending the McCombs Executive Mentorship Dinner, where his participation was sponsored by MSS.

Kirsten Mapps, a management senior from Grand Prairie, and Ali Armstrong, a supply chain management senior from Houston, also applaud MSS. “This program has had the greatest impact on my college experience at UT,” Armstrong says. “I have met some of my best friends in it, and I’m confident these relationships will last past graduation.”

“Truth be told, there is no one way to sum up all that MSS has done for me,” Mapps says. “This program gave me my best friend, multiple mentors, and an entire team of people who believe in me and are truly invested in my success. MSS has been my home for nearly four years, and I am forever indebted.”

Origins and goals

The MSS program was created eight years ago under McCombs Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Programs Arthur Allert. Lovelys Powell, now the director of academic advising and student success, worked on recruiting the first cohort of 77 and hiring the first peer mentors. 

MSS has sponsorships with Deloitte, PwC, and IBM to provide programming for students. During the McCombs Success Scholars in NYC program, students spend May learning about investment banking and visiting major players such as Blackstone Inc., Morgan Stanley, and Apollo Global Management.

Now, Jay Guevara, assistant director of the program, picks the scholars. “Each year, I go through admitted McCombs students to select our next cohort. We aim to have a cohort of 130-140 incoming students. This number is pretty much us at capacity, because of where we are with staff support and resources.”

Guevara says he focuses on students who are the first in their family to attend college and who also have high financial need. “We may also look at students who come from small towns that do not normally send students to UT. So, we are trying to find the students who would benefit most from the program’s resources.”

MSS is set up to fully support the first two years of a student’s experience at McCombs, Guevara says, but it tries to assist students during their entire time in college.

After the 130-140 students are selected, they are then divided into smaller groups of 16 who attend workshops with their assigned academic adviser. Those groups are split up even further into batches of four or five students with a peer mentor. These mentors are juniors or seniors who are part of MSS and who sign up to help students for a full academic year. “This system allows a student to be connected to multiple folks to feel a sense of community on a variety of levels in MSS,” Guevara says.

The program’s goals have stayed mostly the same since the beginning: supporting first-generation students and those with high financial need, he says, to ensure they find a home at McCombs and graduate on time. Over the years, MSS students have exceeded their expected graduation rates, Guevara says. It was estimated that only 62% of the first cohort would graduate in four years; the final figure was 79%, he says.

Student Gratitude

When Mapps, then a high school senior, got the email saying she had been accepted into the program, she didn’t know what to make of it. There’s a shared story, she says, among some of the older students in the program that Guevara’s old invitation email looked like a scam. “Nonetheless, taking a chance on that email ended up being one of the best choices I could’ve made,” she says.

“Nobody in my family had ever gone to college, and it was obviously my first shot at it too. We had no idea what a program like MSS could offer, and I wasn’t fully aware of the challenges the program was designed to address,” Mapps says. “With that being said, I think that speaks to the fact that I was exactly the type of student that needed to be part of MSS. Had I known what the program would mean to me then, there’s no way I would’ve been able to contain my gratitude.”

For Joaquin Guajardo, the MSS program helped ease his family’s fears. “My parents were extremely hesitant to let me go and pursue higher education outside of my hometown,” he says. “My acceptance into MSS gave them the confidence that their son would be a part of a school and community where they are valued and supported. Now in my senior year at UT Austin, my parents are extremely grateful to the MSS program for helping shape the person I am today.”

Cycle of Success

Guevara first came to UT in 2005 as a first-generation, high-financial-need student. He was also in a support program during his first two years at the University. “This position lets me support students that were just like me,” he says, “and it is awesome to be able to provide that support.”

He has been MSS assistant director since 2019, and he has noticed a change among students. ”Our incoming classes are more eager to jump in on activities and opportunities, that they are really engaged and want to do everything.”

For him, the program’s biggest moment materializes during the spring. “I would say it comes every May, when I get to see students that I met during orientation finally walk that stage during McCombs graduation. To see the whole student life cycle and to know that I had a part in that bring a lot of joy.”