Oregon Quarterly, 2015

Dreams Within Reach

In partnership with private donors and federal and state government, the UO is making college feasible for thousands of lower-income Oregonians.

Myesha Abdulrahman, BS ’12, will never forget the day her odds finally evened out. She was sitting with her mom in the counselor’s office at Jefferson High School in Portland, reading a letter from the University of Oregon. “I write to congratulate you on being selected as a PathwayOregon program participant,” it said. It took a minute for them to figure out what, exactly, PathwayOregon was all about. Then it clicked. Her dream—of a good education, a promising career—had suddenly gone from seemingly impossible to starting-right-now. She was going to college. “My mom cried,” she recalls. “It was a lot of pressure off of her. We were both just really happy, because I could go to school now.” Read on... 

BY ED DORSCH, BA ’94, MA ’99 | PHOTOGRAPHS BY KELLY JAMES