Navneet Kaur has always had an entrepreneurial spirit.
When she was 10 years old and left alone to roam the streets in her native India, Kaur decided to sell food and chocolates on the street corners so she’d have some spending money of her own.
That entrepreneurial fire still burns inside Kaur, 26, as she pursues a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration through SDSU Global Campus.
SDSU Global Campus student Navneet Kaur of South Lake Tahoe, Ca. is a recipient of the Dorothy Allshouse Endowed Scholarship from SDSU.
Kaur is one of three recipients of the 2022 Dorothy Allshouse Endowed Scholarship, which supports full-time students who have been out of school in the workforce for an extended period of time and are returning to school to earn a degree.
Students must be enrolled full-time to remain eligible for this scholarship, which provides tuition, fees, and books for one academic year.
Kaur’s college dreams had to be put on hold for a few years after graduating from high school in South Lake Tahoe, where she moved at age 12 with her mom and older brother because her single mother needed financial support.
“So I decided to stay home and help her out,” Kaur said of the decision to put off going to college. “But she was always very encouraging, she wanted me to go to college.”
After a few years of helping at home, Kaur moved to Santa Barbara and started taking classes at the local community college, all while holding down jobs in restaurants, customer service, and other gigs.
“It was really hard, I couldn’t do full-time school and work three jobs, so I had to cut back, taking one or two classes at a time, and then sometimes, I had to drop out completely and that happened a few times,” Kaur recalled. “So it took me a while until I was ready to transfer.”
In January 2022, Kaur moved back home to the Lake Tahoe area and enrolled in the Global Campus online degree completion program.
She expects to graduate in May 2023 and then plans to pursue a master’s degree in finance with a goal to open her own financial advising company focused on helping people from low-income households, just like hers was at one time.
“I know how hard that is, to be a single mother and not have anyone to guide you through it,” Kaur said of her future plans. “So I really want to do that.”
