Kathryn Sanchez has long known that she wanted a career devoted to helping others. But the path toward that career has not always been straightforward for the Silver City native.
When Sanchez started at WNMU as a young adult, her “heart wasn’t in it,” she said. After taking time away from higher education to work as a title clerk and to start a family, she decided to return to the university to pursue a bachelor’s degree in Social Work. Now, she has not only accomplished that, but she is in her second year of the master’s program in Social Work at WNMU.
Her desire to work in the field was prompted by her experience with grief counseling as a teenager and it was strengthened by her observations as an adult. “While working I longed to return to school to earn my degree,” she said, “and was truly led to social work after witnessing the foster-adopt process my mom went through in achieving guardianship of a friend’s daughter, after [her friend] tragically passed away.”
Sanchez hopes to eventually work with young children. “I hope my MSW degree will allow me to effectively serve and support the young children of our community in the school setting for many years to come,” she said. Because of her commitment to working in the educational system, she was recently awarded funding from the NM Expanding Opportunities Program (EOP) which “aims to recruit and retain school-based mental health providers to serve the needs of students across New Mexico, focusing on rural and frontier communities with a high percentage of at-risk and vulnerable student populations,” according to the NM Public Education Department, the sponsor of the program.
Sanchez described her EOP funding at WNMU as “an amazing opportunity to help alleviate some of my family’s financial burden. . . It has definitely made it easier to breathe and enjoy my educational experience.” She especially appreciates that her degree program in the WNMU School of Social Work is available online, which has allowed her to raise her family while going to school. Sanchez noted that the program offers “intimate instruction provided by exceptional educators [through] small class sizes.”
Studying at WNMU also allows her to stay in Silver City, which she loves. She and her husband, “decided to raise our family here because of our passion for our small town, beautiful location, and rich community,” she explained.