Indescribable Changes, Immeasurable Dividends

Daniel Sanabria

For Daniel Sanabria of Wylie, Texas, community college provided an affordable incubator for interests in sociology, political science and history. Those first two years of college-level study helped pave his way to SMU.
Sanabria received a Dallas-area Community College Scholarship from SMU in fall 2009. Each year the University awards 10 full-tuition scholarships to students from the Dallas, Tarrant or Collin County community college districts. To qualify, students must have 50 transferable credit hours and a minimum 3.7 GPA.
“Knowing that the University chose to invest in me has changed me in ways that I can’t even describe,” he says. “People have high expectations of me, and I want to exceed those expectations by making meaningful changes in the world.”
A desire to make a difference led him to anthropology. “The field is geared toward understanding a specific societal problem in its entirety to develop effective solutions,” says Sanabria, a junior. “I would like to focus on developing community leadership programs and a stronger, more effective system of education.”
The scholarship makes a well-rounded college experience possible, Sanabria
says. He’s president of the Dedman College Ambassadors, a new student organization with a goal of building a sense of community among professors, alumni and prospective students within the University’s largest school.
“SMU needs students like Daniel who are natural-born innovators,” says Mara Morhouse, Office of Recruitment and Scholarship in Dedman College. “By offering scholarships to these student leaders, we help alleviate the stress involved in paying for higher education, which makes the University a feasible option for our country’s best and brightest undergraduates.”
Scholarships generate immeasurable dividends, Sanabria says, and not only for the students who receive them. “A scholarship isn’t just for an individual; it’s an investment in every life the recipient touches.”
– Patricia Ward

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