Scholarships opened the door to exploration for Tracy Galeana ’25
Tracy Galeana ’25 leans hard into faith that the future will work out. As a first-generation student from the small border town of Brownsville, Texas, she came to Kalamazoo College with no example to follow and very little sense of the College beyond photos on the website.
While forging her path at K and finding her people, Galeana has held tight to that optimism for herself and those who come after her. As it turns out, her openness to exploration and variety has made her well-suited to K’s open curriculum, academic calendar and diverse community.
Despite changing her major and minor at least six times, Galeana expects to graduate in the spring with an art history major, a Spanish minor, and concentrations both in film and media and in women, gender and sexuality.
“I came in here like, I’m just going to see what happens,” Galeana said. “I’ve always been the type of person to try something out, and I changed my major and minor so many times.”
It wasn’t always as easy as that sounds.
“I definitely felt stuck my freshman year,” Galeana said. “I saw all my friends, like, ‘I know what I want to do, and I know what I’m here for.’ And I didn’t know. I felt really lost.”
When Anne Marie Butler, assistant professor of art history and women, gender, and sexuality, became Galeana’s advisor, Butler offered some crucial guidance.
“I had limited myself to thinking that what I major in, that’s what the rest of my life is going to look like,” Galeana said. “I was stressed out, and she said, ‘You have time. What you pick right now doesn’t have to be what you want later. You can change your major and minor, and later in life, you could do a job that’s completely different from what you graduated with.’”
That advice reassured Galeana, whose preference for a frequent change of pace matches perfectly with K’s 10-week terms.
“I feel like I can learn so many things, taking different classes every three months,” she said. “It’s good for my mental health and helps me not get stuck in, ‘I’m taking so long to do this; what if it’s not the right thing and I’m wasting my time?’ It gave me time to try a little bit of everything.”
Outside of the classroom, the Latinx Student Organization (LSO) eased her homesickness, and the broader campus community offered the chance to get to know people from a variety of backgrounds and cultures.
“K has helped me develop as a person,” Galeana said. “I’ve become more well-rounded. There’s so much diversity. There are people with different ideologies, people that come from so many different places—places I’d never even heard of—you have to be open-minded. I have a huge interest in traveling now. I want to visit the places my friends are from and be more culturally knowledgeable. Knowing people with different backgrounds opens up space for friendship, and I think friendship is the best thing I’ve gotten from K.”
In addition to the LSO, Galeana has been involved with the fashion club, tutored with the Swim for Success program as well as Community Advocates for Parents and Students (CAPS) through the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement, and currently chairs the Monte Carlo planning committee. She also worked as a resident assistant in Trowbridge and now is a senior resident assistant in Severn and Crissey. She completed an internship at the Brownsville Museum of Fine Arts and is writing about the experience for her Senior Integrated Project.
Many of those experiences have featured similar themes of community and mentoring. Galeana finds herself applying to her own situation the lessons she works to impart to students in the tutoring programs, younger dorm residents, and siblings and friends back home. As the example she lacked coming to college, she wants to inspire younger students as well as herself.
“These kids and these underclassmen are looking at me, and I’m the main face they’re going to see when they think about college or about K,” Galeana said. “I’m trying my best to show them that it’s possible. There were times when I wanted to give up, so when I try to teach the kids that problems are temporary, I have to apply that mentality to my classes and projects as well. That has shaped me into being less hard on myself, because I wouldn’t be mean to them; why would I be mean to myself?”
Galeana also finds inspiration in an unexpected place: the Kalamazoo College Class of 1968.
The Class of 1968 Endowed Scholarship, established in 2021 as part of the Brighter Light campaign, has helped make Kalamazoo College possible for Galeana throughout her time at K.
“The Class of 1968 has been kind enough to help other K students through their progress in college,” Galeana said. “They made it, and I can also make it, and I hope to keep the cycle going after I graduate to help others with funding as well.”
Without financial aid, Galeana would not be at K. In addition to the practical impact, scholarships provide Galeana and her family with emotional support. Each scholarship both lifts a financial burden and reinforces—especially for her mom—that Galeana is working hard and succeeding, so far from home.
“If I didn’t have the scholarships that I do, I wouldn’t be here or have the opportunities I have now,” Galeana said. “It also means there are people out there who, even though I don’t know them personally, believe in my cause, and believe in me, and they want to see me succeed how they have succeeded.
“I have a sibling back home in 11th grade. He’s starting to look at colleges, and he’s like, ‘Tracy, I don’t know what to do.’ I see myself in him, and I didn’t have anyone to teach me what college was, or to support me through college, so I knew that I had to be that person for my sibling. I’m trying to hype him up and be like, yeah, do it. Read about what they have, apply, and if it doesn’t work out, it’s fine; that’s not the end of your path.
“That applies to my brother, it applies to all the underclassmen, and it applies to me. I know there’s something out there for me. Even though I don’t know yet what it is, it’s going to work out.”
