NEWS

TRiO Program ‘an amazing gift’ to local student

Traci Rosenbaum
trosenbaum@greatfallstribune.com
UGF student Mary Jane Hensley uses the TRiO program on campus, which provides her support services as she works toward her bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

The road 59-year-old Mary Jane Hensley traveled to get here was a winding one. It began in Arizona in 1996 with a crash.

Riding in a truck with poor brakes, Hensley was in a triple rollover that left her pinned beneath another passenger inside a burning vehicle as the driver fled the scene.

“It took the Jaws of Life nine minutes to cut me and our worker out,” she recalled. “I had all this dead weight on me. My arm was pinned in the fly window… I kept screaming ‘Get this weight off me!’ It was horrible.”

The truck’s driver turned himself in the next day, but the damage had been done. Hensley, broke and physically debilitated, was homeless for the next four years.

“I slept in oleander bushes. I slept behind dumpsters, fold-out couches, safe houses, whatever was available,” Hensley said. “It was hard.”

While homeless, Hensley suffered physical and sexual assaults that led to addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I’ve had guns to my head, knives to my throat, my ribs kicked in. … One night I was standing behind a 7-Eleven, and I was praying to Jesus, and I said, ‘There’s just got to be a better way,’” she said. “Well, the better way was I became arrested and had to clean up.”

As she was trying to get back on track, Hensley’s road took another turn as the 2003 death of her daughter in a car crash brought her to Great Falls to help with her grandchildren.

“My father died four days into my detox, and my daughter died 18 months later, and here I am,” said Hensley, who has now been clean for 15 years.

After her son-in-law remarried, Hensley started to think about her education. Her daughter had graduated from the University of Great Falls, and Hensley’s path led her there, as well.


Thanks to TRiO’s help, Hensley graduates Saturday with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. She plans to continue at UGF for her master’s program and hopes to work with the homeless, using her unique experiences to help others find their road.

Director Matthew Hauk oversees the University of Great Falls’ Center for Academic Excellence, which provides student support services to first-generation, low-income and disabled students.

Because of her physical and mental health needs, Hensley contacted UGF’s Disability Services department, which pointed her in the direction of the TRiO Center.

The word “TRiO” refers to a number of programs (originally three, now eight), which include Student Support Services and Educational Opportunity Centers like the one on the University of Great Falls campus. Created under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, TRiO helps students overcome class, social and cultural barriers to higher education.

“With our grant, we work with first generation, low-income and disabled students, and the whole goal is to get them to graduate from college,” TRiO director Matthew Hauk said.

This includes homework help, tutoring, counseling, seminars, workshops and financial, personal and educational planning. TRiO also provides an on-campus Center for Academic Excellence for its students, giving them study space, computer and internet access and a community of peers to help them feel connected to their school.

“You come in as a first-generation student, and you don’t have the help from home or the knowledge of somebody that’s graduated with a four-year degree,” Hauk said. “When they come here, it’s kind of scary sometimes, so that’s part of our job to help them navigate the whole system.”

TRiO serves 230 students at UGF, which is about 20 percent of the school’s total enrollment.

Hensley calls the program “an amazing gift.”

As soon as she enrolled, TRiO set her up with the services such as audio books and back support for her disability, helped her financially with student loans, scholarships and grants and helped her academically with statistics and writing.

“College moves so fast that you have a hard time grasping all of it when you’re older like this,” Hensley said. “They’ve been my everything. I don’t think I could’ve done it without them.”

But done it she has.

Hensley currently maintains a 3.95 grade point average while taking 18 credits and participating in an internship through St. Vincent de Paul.

“In the beginning, I spent more time (in the Center for Academic Excellence) than I did at home,” Hensley said. “Now I’m spending more time independently, I’m getting my confidence up. I do come here to print out and have people look over some of the work that I’m doing if I do feel I’m having problems.”

“No matter how hard it is, I was taught you get up, you knock the dust off and you move forward,” Hensley said. “And if you see somebody else in the dust and you don’t walk by to help them up, it shows your character is no good. We all need help. There is some point in each and every one of our lives that we need to say ‘Hey, I can’t do this alone.’”

Reach Tribune Staff Writer Traci Rosenbaum at 791-1490. Follow her on Twitter @GFTrib_TRosenba.

UGF Commencement

When: 10 a.m. Saturday, May 7

Where: The McLaughlin Center at the University of Great Falls, 1301 20th St. S.