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When Tami Smith sang the national anthem at UMUC’s commencement ceremony May 18, 2002, in Adelphi, Maryland, it marked the end of a long journey.

Smith, 42, received her undergraduate degree in the early 1980s from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and was recently featured in Baltimore’s The Sun in an article about the growing number of minority students going on to higher education. Smith observed firsthand many of the challenges facing those students.

"I watched several minority students drop out for either academic difficulty or often, financial difficulty," said Smith, who now lives in Upper Marlboro. "As an inner city Baltimore youth, I could not afford to drop out and ultimately disappoint my parents."

Several years went by and Smith began to see that the prestige of an undergraduate degree didn’t go very far in the corporate world.

So she decided, rather hesitantly, to enroll in UMUC’s graduate program.

"After so many years, I didn’t know how I’d fare," Smith said. "I’d lost my confidence." She also faced many of the obstacles familiar to part-time students everywhere—the challenges of balancing work, family responsibilities, and studies.

"I was pretty nervous when I first started out," Smith told The Sun. "Immediately, [UMUC] gave me an adviser, and when I saw that so many people looked like me, that was very encouraging. So I said, ‘OK, well, maybe I can do this.’"

Smith fit well into UMUC’s strong support system, which regularly wins praise from students. Smith told The Sun of one instance when she e-mailed a professor a question about an online class. The teacher surprised her by calling her at work—from his home in India—just to answer her question.

Smith also received strong support from her family.

"They all had a hand in helping me succeed," she said. "More than anything, though, I wanted to be a role model for the kids in my family. I feel it’s difficult to just tell kids how important education is for their future and what opportunities it will afford them when you have not tried your hardest to attain higher educational goals."

For Smith, the hard work paid off. She earned her master’s degree in management information systems with a grade-point average of 3.69. But that was just the icing on the cake.

"Whether I succeeded or failed, at least I tried," she said. "Thank goodness I began the journey. . . . Now my future is wide open."