Opening a Path to Grinnell

When Champ-Pacifique Mukiza ’29 was in elementary school, he already had big plans.

A student at Findley Elementary on Des Moines’ north side, Mukiza was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up. His answer was ambitious: He wanted to become president. But first, he reasoned, he would need to become a senator and change the law that prevented him from becoming president because he had not been born in the United States.

Maybe, he decided, becoming a scientist would be the quickest route to getting elected.

The conversation happened more than a decade ago, when Emily Westergaard ’02 had recently begun leading what was then called the I Have a Dream Foundation. Today, the organization is By Degrees, a nonprofit that works with schools in Des Moines to help students envision and prepare for life after high school.

This fall, Mukiza began his second year at Grinnell College.

His path from Findley and North High School to Grinnell illustrates the kind of long-term impact Westergaard has sought to create: helping students encounter opportunities early, building relationships around them, and giving them the support to turn possibilities into plans.

Opportunity and Exposure

By Degrees began in 1990, founded in part by Grinnell President Emeritus George Drake ’56 and a group of Grinnell trustees. Under Westergaard’s leadership, beginning in 2010, the organization moved from working with small cohorts of students to a whole-school model.

Today, By Degrees partners with schools on Des Moines’ north side, including Findley Elementary, Madison Elementary, Harding Middle School, and North High School. Its work begins early, combining college and career exploration, academic support, financial education, and asset-building.

For Mukiza, the effect was not simply learning about college. It was developing a network of people who could help him understand what was possible.

“The biggest thing that was provided through that network was opportunity and exposure,” he says. “I feel like having the exposure to college — especially coming from a first-generation family — seeing what's possible for you has a really big impact.”

By Degrees’ work is designed around that idea: Students shouldn’t have to wait until high school to begin imagining their futures. The organization now reaches more than 2,300 students and has opened more than 1,000 529 college savings accounts since 2015.

That approach is personal for Westergaard. Growing up in Des Moines, she attended North High and says a seventh-grade teacher connected her with John Chrystal, the farmer, banker, Democratic party leader and advisor who served as a citizen ambassador to the Soviet Union. He encouraged her to consider Grinnell. She received the Bowen Scholarship and came to the College in 1998.

“It was one of those trajectory changing moments,” Westergaard says. “And it really was because I had these navigators that were looking out for me, that were helping me make those decisions.”

Years later, she saw in Mukiza a student who was benefiting from the kind of support she had received herself.

Finding Grinnell

Mukiza first heard about Grinnell through By Degrees staff while he was in high school. As he explored colleges, he also encountered Grinnell alumni around Des Moines.

“There were a lot of people in Des Moines who had a lot of good things to say about the school,” he says. “So that was a really big part to it.”

The connection resonated with him. Grinnell’s size, close relationships and emphasis on exploration reminded him of the community he had grown up in.

“Essentially, it resembled a lot of the community that I saw and benefited from growing up,” he says.

Since arriving at Grinnell, Mukiza has embraced that opportunity. He has explored computer science, acting, and debate; worked with the Wilson Center for Innovation and Leadership; and helped develop plans for a student organization and hackathon focused on software development.

He was selected by Grinnell in the inaugural class of the President’s Scholars for Community Building and, this summer, completed a software development internship with Amazon in Seattle through the Amazon Future Engineering program. At Amazon, he worked on simulations related to the company’s satellite broadband initiative.

He also was selected as a member of the inaugural Wilson Innovation Fellowship cohort, a three-year program designed to help students turn ideas into action through innovation, leadership and hands-on venture building.

“Champ-Pacifique embodies the power of early work and big dreams. I only wish George Drake, John Crystal, and their board colleagues could have met him and congratulated Emily on the work she is doing to realize the vision they had all those years ago. If it was not already clear, these Grinnell leaders understood the importance of planting trees under whose shade others would one day sit,” said Joe Bagnoli, Vice President for Enrollment and Dean of Admission and Financial Aid.

A connection that continues

For Westergaard, Mukiza represents more than an individual success story. He embodies the reason she believes communities and colleges should build relationships long before a student submits a college application.

“We are creating entire systems so that every kid that's at Grinnell or every kid that's at North now has that sort of individualized support,” she says.

That work is expanding. By Degrees recently completed a $5 million campaign to extend its whole-school model and reach more Des Moines students, while its 529 program has expanded to all students at North High.

Grinnell, meanwhile, is exploring ways to deepen its relationship with By Degrees, including opportunities for students to visit campus, interact with Grinnell students and learn about the possibilities of a Grinnell education.

For Mukiza, those connections have already mattered. Alumni conversations helped him understand that a liberal arts education can lead in many directions — and that a career does not have to follow a straight line.

“Hearing that from people who not only were at your school, but then who have decades of experience in working,” he says, “I've been constantly reassured that it is okay to do different things, to explore different things throughout your life.”

That may be one of the most enduring contributions alumni can make: not simply supporting Grinnell from a distance, but showing students what is possible, opening doors and helping them find their way through them.

Westergaard experienced that herself. Now, through By Degrees, she is helping create those moments for a new generation — including a student who once dreamed of becoming president, and who is now beginning to discover where his curiosity might take him.