Yessenia Estrada-Zerhoudi is one C-STEP ahead
The transfer student traveled, boxed, built sets for plays and prepared for a career studying criminal minds.
Yessenia Estrada-Zerhoudi’s mother knew her homeschooled 16-year-old was smart enough for a diploma but too young for college. The Carolina Student Transfer Excellence Program offered a perfect transition.
“When she caught wind of the C-STEP program, she was like, ‘You’re doing that,’” recalled Estrada-Zerhoudi, a December graduate.
C-STEP guarantees admission to UNC-Chapel Hill to talented low- and moderate-income students who complete their work at a partner community college. As a C-STEP student, Estrada-Zerhoudi could continue taking classes at Fayetteville Technical Community College and living at home in Fayetteville, where her 82nd Airborne Division veteran father had settled with full disability benefits.
Her C-STEP adviser, FTCC university outreach coordinator Loutricia Nelson, prepared her well for college.
“We had weekly meetings with her and a little time sheet that we would fill out so we could see where our time was going,” Estrada-Zerhoudi said. “She would have us write down all the assignments for our classes on this massive calendar. She instilled very good habits in us.”
Nelson also took the C-STEP students on field trips to the Carolina campus. Those visits helped Estrada-Zerhoudi when she arrived as an 18-year-old junior transfer student. “It felt so massive, this school. It really did,” she said. “Now it feels pretty small, but when I first got here, I felt so small, so isolated.”
But Carolina turned out to be a small world after all. Anxious that she would be late on the first day of class, she decided to leave 30 minutes early. She ran into someone she recognized from C-STEP orientation at their residence hall elevator. That student was also leaving early, headed to the same classroom. They became fast friends.
“It was so crazy. That was fate, I know,” Estrada-Zerhoudi said. “She genuinely was my support system here.”
For her second semester, she signed up for a study abroad program in Seville, Spain. “I feel like that jump-started my independence more,” she said. During the program and the following summer, she visited nine other countries, including her mother’s native Morocco.
Back at Carolina, the confident world traveler plunged into her senior year. She built sets for PlayMakers Repertory Company, the work-study job reminding her of times she helped her dad build items at home.
She also joined the Carolina Boxing Club, for exercise, skills and companionship. “That was my goal, especially for my senior year. I wanted to meet more people, talk to more people. I didn’t want to be alone again.”
Her plans for a career in forensic psychology solidified. “I’d always been interested in people’s behavior, but particularly criminal behavior because it just never made sense to me,” said Estrada-Zerhoudi, a fan of true-crime documentaries and podcasts. “There’s this one class that I’m taking right now, Psychology 601: Psychology and the Law. That’s exactly what I want to do.”
Her dream job is to work in a correctional institution, helping to rehabilitate prisoners. “My goal would be to help that transition, make it easier so that they can get out, be in society, and not want to do things to go back to prison.”
She has a plan for financing the required five-year doctoral program in clinical psychology. Getting her bachelor’s degree in 2½ years thanks to C-STEP plus the financial aid of a federal Pell Grant and a North Carolina scholarship for children of wartime veterans gave her a head start.
The next step is to join the Air Force. “I would work in the Air Force as a clinical psychologist,” she said, “and they would pay for the last three years of my doctoral degree, so that’s the current plan.”
