Ensuring academic success for students with disabilities. Helping students of color discover the power of the arts. Raising on-campus awareness of incidents involving bias.
These are just a few of the issues eight Colorado State University students are trying to address as part of the Puksta Scholars Program, a scholarship program supported by the Puksta Foundation that empowers Colorado students to become catalysts for positive change in the community.
Selected in their first year at CSU, Puksta Scholars spend the remainder of their college career working on their own Puksta Civic Engagement Project, which they design to address a major social issue. This includes areas such as education, the environment, homelessness, immigration, and race and gender, among other issues.
The eight students shared the progress of their projects with Puksta Foundation leadership, supporters and friends during a showcase at the Nancy Richardson Design Center on the CSU campus Feb. 20.
Puksta adviser Sam Desta, senior coordinator for CSU’s Collaborative for Student Achievement, said the scholars dedicate six to eight hours a week to work on their projects and meet twice a month as a group to discuss progress and collaborate.
“The scholars are incredibly passionate about the projects they’re working on and want to make a difference,” Desta said. “And for most of them, it really ties back to something within their lives.”
Making a change
Puksta Scholars Jada Johnson, Dom Baca and Deborah Ilangikwa give updates on their Civic Engagement Projects during a showcase event at the Nancy Richardson Design Center on Feb. 20.
In high school, Puksta Scholar and CSU junior Dom Baca said he noticed how many of his peers in Lakewood fell victim to the school-to-prison pipeline.
In his first year at CSU, Baca took a class where he learned about restorative practices, which works to improve and repair relationships by bringing people together to understand their differences.
Baca said the stars aligned when a friend asked him to attend the Puksta Scholars Showcase his first year, where he discovered how he could create a program to use restorative practices in high schools to address this issue.
“I found out about all of the amazing work the other scholars were doing, and I really wanted to be a part of it,” said Baca, a junior majoring in art, with a concentration in graphic design and electronic art.
Since then, Baca said his project has most recently evolved to use restorative practices to combat incidents of bias on CSU’s campus, a proposal that he submitted to CSU’s Race, Bias, and Equity Initiative.
“The Puksta Scholars Program gives me an opportunity and an avenue to express my passion for social justice while being able to make a difference in communities that need it,” he said. “It’s an opportunity for me to grow as a person while being able to give back my community.”
For Baca, he said he hopes to one day open his own graphic design firm and bridge his design skills with his social justice passion to create a company that expresses his values through visual arts.
Beyond college
The Puksta Foundation’s NiChel Mulstay (far left), director of Development and Community Outreach, and John Mulstay (far right), executive director, pose for a photo after the annual Puksta Scholars Showcase at CSU.
Since the first Puksta Scholars came to CSU in 2006, many have gone on to continue their commitment to civic engagement and social justice.
For his civic engagement project, CSU and Puksta alumnus Eduardo Hernandez created an after-school mentoring program to help low-income middle school students understand the power of education.
Hernandez, who graduated in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in social work, said he uses many of the lessons he learned from his project now as a third-grade teacher for Denver Public Schools.
“I have learned you have to come into a community and support them in the way that they need,” he said. “It’s a partnership. You work with them and ask them what they need. It’s something that I use with my students, their parents and the community.”
The Puksta Scholars Program was established by the late Harry and Eva Puksta who built a successful construction business in Denver and wanted to do something to help Colorado students attend college.
Since then, the program has graduated more than 265 scholars across the state and awarded more than $3.8 million in scholarships. According to the Puksta Foundation, scholars contributed more than 6,500 hours in 2019 to projects that promote social change.
Hernandez said that, for a graduate like him, the program was invaluable, giving him opportunities to develop his professional skills and experiences he never could have imagined. It’s the reason he made the hourlong drive from metro Denver to his alma mater to see the Puksta Scholars Showcase.
“If it wasn’t for Puksta, I wouldn’t be a third-grade teacher right now,” he said. “It really affected my professional life.”
Meet the CSU Puksta Scholars
Fernanda Alarcon
Major: Psychology
Year: Sophomore
Hometown: Denver
Civic Engagement Project
Combating Oppression Through Mental Health
“I have personally seen and experienced the lack of access Latinx communities have toward mental health services. But once I got to college, I realized that undocumented Latinx college students face different struggles that affect their mental health differently. … I was inspired to create my Puksta project because I saw that my community was lacking an important resource.”
Leo Andrade
Major: Apparel and Merchandising
Year: Junior
Hometown: Lakewood, Colorado
Civic Engagement Project
Branching Out: Helping Historically Underrepresented Youth in the Arts and Technology
“I want to help minority and low-income students attain the resources and skills required to be prepared for a higher education in art-related fields.”
Dom Baca
Major: Art
Year: Junior
Hometown: Lakewood, Colorado
Civic Engagement Project
Using Restorative Practices to Combat Incidents of Bias
“Restorative practices is about bringing everyone together to get an understanding of where everyone is coming from to build community and educate the offenders. I truly believe if we implement these practices, we can have a better tomorrow.”
Deborah Ilangikwa
Major: International Studies
Year: Senior
Hometown: Democratic Republic of the Congo and Aurora, Colorado
Civic Engagement Project
Define Your Success
“My Puksta Project is to work with students who are learning English at Fort Morgan High school. My personal experience inspired me to choose this project. I wanted to go to college, but I didn’t know how to because since my English wasn’t good enough.”
Jada Johnson
Major: Political Science and Ethnic Studies
Year: Junior
Hometown: Denver
Civic Engagement Project
Our Belief in Peace Projects: Liberating From Limiting Beliefs
“I was really inspired by the role of beliefs and belief systems in influencing collective social action, and I really wanted to see how I could make the largest, most sustainable change that I can. I think that starts by understanding people’s beliefs and belief systems.”
Dominica A. Manlove
Major: Health and Exercise Science
Year: Senior
Hometown: Aurora, Colorado
Civic Engagement Project
Be Yourself and Own It!
A Movement Designed to Defeat the Perception of Beauty and Spotlight the Uniqueness in Being Different and Yourself
“Society’s ideologies influence us to believe that we are not beautiful in our own skin if we do not fit a criterion. The objective is to promote self-love and natural beauty for both men and women from different backgrounds to use.”
Dulce Olmedo
Major: Human Development and Family Studies
Year: Sophomore
Hometown: Basalt, Colorado
Civic Engagement Project
Raising Awareness On-Campus For Incidents of Bias
“My project is an intervention tool for raising campus awareness on incidents of bias. I saw the need for some kind of educational program or some kind of way to reduce these incidents and educate the population on what an incident of bias is.”
Sabrina Pribyl
Major: Statistics
Year: Senior
Hometown: Golden, Colorado
Civic Engagement Project
Puppy Pals
“We tutor grade school students with disabilities, and we tutor them with service animals for the purpose of trying to make tutoring a more comfortable environment. So the whole goal of the program is to really inspire students and empower them.”