Just two days before Christmas, a devastating fire gutted an Evanston family’s apartment and destroyed most of their possessions. Jeron Dorsey, a graduate student in the sports administration program, heard about the Jackson family’s plight and decided to lend a hand. Initially he donated cash and helped collect gift cards in collaboration with the Black Male Alliance, an Evanston anti-violence organization. But that outreach wasn’t enough. So Dorsey, a program director at Evanston’s Fleetwood-Jourdain Community Center, donated an entire two-week paycheck to the family and helped the Jacksons move donated furniture into their new home. He has continued to connect with the family. “I’ve committed to them that I’ll always be a part of their lives,” says Dorsey, who has two young children. Giving back to his hometown community is important to the Evanston native. Growing up, he remembers thinking that Northwestern was unattainable. His goal today is to change that mindset. “Northwestern was like a foreign country,” he recalls. “Part of going to Northwestern for my master’s was to show the kids growing up here that we have a tremendous university — and opportunity — in our backyard.”
A Wildcat Mission
Jesse Humpal drifted in and out of special education classes as a child. He almost failed out of his undergraduate program at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, and at Northwestern, where Humpal has earned two master’s degrees and a PhD, he almost threw in the towel on higher education entirely during a course on linear regression. But he persevered with the help of others — and now he's paying it forward.
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