Keeping a Promise and Changing a Life

Shanna Gustin is keeping a promise and changing a life – her life. In May, she will graduate in psychology with a minor in sociology and a criminology certificate. She was a recipient of a CSBS Honor Roll Scholarship her senior year and finished undergraduate studies with a 3.5 GPA.

Shanna transferred to the U from Salt Lake Community College and worried that she’d find large classes and impersonal professors. She worried that she’d get lost.

“It was just the opposite. I found professors who were knowledgeable, willing to help and wanting me to succeed.” Gustin exclaimed. “I loved the campus, the classroom, the library – it just feels like a place of possibilities!”

The hope and happiness of the exclamation, ‘a place of possibilities,’ is an incredible juxtaposition once one knows a little more about Shanna’s life.

Shanna’s father died of Hepatitis C when she was five years old due to sharing an infected needle. Her father’s drug addiction wasn’t an aberration. For many years, Shanna was surrounded by drug and alcohol abuse. School was a struggle. Shanna’s mother tried to be helpful and supportive but a learning disability impeded her efforts to provide much more than encouragement.

“At 11 years of age I was in the juvenile justice system. At 15 I remember a Commissioner Russell asking me, ‘Why are you here? You are so bright. I don’t understand it.’ He was going to send me to detention but he asked me to give him a good reason why he shouldn’t. I convinced him to give me one more chance – that I was going to attend Central High and get my high school diploma. I promised him that I would never be back in court.”

Shanna’s never been back.

“I looked at how my father had lived, how my mother, my brother and my sister all had lived. I thought, ‘I’ve got to do something different. I can’t be in this anymore.’ So I pursued an education and a career.”

Shanna earned a high school diploma. She began working, enrolled at SLCC where she completed an associate’s and then enrolled at the U.

“The U allowed me to meet amazing people, expand options for my life and solidified what I want to become,” Shanna said. “It made me have so much hope and excitement for the future.”

Shanna is especially grateful for the CSBS Honor Roll Scholarship she received as a senior.

“The scholarship is more than money – it’s an intellectual gift. It’s knowledge … knowledge that I will always have that has changed my life.”

Shanna plans to earn a master’s in social work and become a licensed clinical social worker.

“I want to give hope and motivation to children who have been victims of abuse or to those struggling to reclaim their lives after serving time in the criminal justice system,” Shanna said. “I want to help them improve their lives and the lives of people around them.”