Shantel Frazier has spent the last several years showing CSU Pueblo’s students how to get involved, find resources, and figure out their next move. On Saturday, she will walk across the commencement stage herself.

Frazier is the Executive Director of SLICE — Student Leadership, Involvement, Career, and Engagement — and this spring she adds a Master of Business Administration to her resume. It took four years. She did it one class at a time, funded entirely through the university’s tuition reimbursement benefit, which covers nine credits per year. Not a dollar of student loan debt.

“I did not want to get in debt. So it worked out to take one class a semester.”

— Shantel Frazier, SLICE Executive Director

Her connection to the university runs deeper than her current title. Frazier began at CSU Pueblo as a non-traditional undergraduate student, transferring in at 25 with an associate degree from Pueblo Community College and a young daughter at home. She completed her bachelor’s degree in 2020, and that same year she started working on campus — first as a work-study student in the Career Center, then as a full-time hire, and eventually into the SLICE director role.

MBA Director Gene Lucero is the one who pushed her toward the graduate program. “He said, ‘You should go ahead, go for your MBA.’ And I was hesitant and said, ‘No, Gene, I don’t think I could do that.’ He kept encouraging me and I signed up.”

The moment she nearly stopped came last summer.

She had just transitioned into the executive director role. She was in the middle of an accounting course — one of the more demanding requirements in the MBA sequence — when her mother passed away. It all happened at once.

“My mind was at 10 different places at one time. Trying to move over here, learn the job, and do school.”

— Shantel Frazier

She cried. She called her sisters. They told her to keep going. They told her their mother would have wanted her to finish.

“I didn’t come this far to come this far,” she said. Three years in, with a 15-year-old daughter watching, she decided she was not going to be the version of herself who stopped at the halfway point.

On Sundays — homework days in the Frazier household — they sat down together and worked. Her daughter on her own school assignments, Frazier grinding through MBA coursework. Her partner’s son helped with accounting. Her partner handled groceries and dinner and kept the house running so she could focus.

“We’re both supporting each other in different capacities, and we’re bonding over it.”

— Shantel Frazier, on her daughter and their shared Sunday study sessions

She started at CSU Pueblo because it was the practical choice — family nearby, affordable, close to home. But she stayed, in every sense, because it became hers. She has watched the institution change from inside it, first as a student, then as a staff member, and now as someone who holds both identities at once.

“CSU Pueblo has evolved a lot,” she said. “We’re now seeing students that are out of the COVID era. They want to go to things. They want to do things. They want to be involved. It’s very refreshing.”

What she brings to her work with students is not theoretical. She was a non-traditional student who did not know where to go. She worked her way through multiple positions on the same campus. She understands — in a way that is hard to replicate — exactly what a first-generation student or an older student returning to school is up against.

“You’ve seen every different part of it,” she was told during a recent interview. “You can help students in a way that they don’t even understand they need help in.”

Frazier is already thinking about a doctorate. The MBA lit something in her she did not expect.

“If you had asked me 20 years ago if I thought this is where I would be — in higher education — not at all,” she said. She wanted to be a photographer. She worked at a portrait studio inside a Walmart. Then smartphones arrived, the industry shifted, the studio closed, and she made her decision. She was already halfway to a degree. She kept going.

To anyone coming up behind her, especially those who see themselves in her story, her message is direct.

“Be resilient and believe in yourself. Believe that you could do it even on hard days when you feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. Whether you’re nontraditional or just starting out, just keep going. And there’s a lot of support here. Don’t be afraid to ask for any type of support.”

— Shantel Frazier

On Saturday, Shantel Frazier walks across the stage at CSU Pueblo’s spring commencement as a graduate of the university she has helped build. Her daughter will be watching.