Mandy Vachon, a senior Transfer-Year Interest Group (TrIG) mentor, is a finalist for the 2021 President’s Student Employee of the Year Award. Vachon is a TrIG mentor, a member of the Non-Traditional Students Advisory Board, and an officer and former president of the New Wave Longhorns student organization for non-traditional students. Establishing a strong community for non-traditional and transfer students at UT has always been important to her.

“Mandy promotes honesty and integrity by sharing her authentic self with students through self-disclosure of her own struggles,” wrote her nominator. “This helps students feel comfortable reaching out to Mandy and others in the TrIG community, which aids their learning and success at UT and beyond.”

Vachon helped pioneer TrIGs for the nearly 200 nontraditional students who join the Longhorn community each year. She has consistently participated in student panels and has become an integral part of the Transfer Student Leadership Summit. As a mentor, she created a weekly newsletter for her group of more than 60 students with timely information like a series of tutorials on how to use campus resources. Her efforts ensure that non-traditional students will continue to have a voice on the Forty Acres.

Vachon at the 2020 Transfer Student Leadership Summit