Khrysten Sears Spencer (B.A. ’09) wore an orange University of Florida alumni T-shirt and a blue Gator logo belt as she walked up the large white staircase in the Reitz Union. Her eyes widened as she took out her phone, paused and used it to scan the interior.
“It’s changed so much,” she said as she followed the crowd toward the freshman orientation.
Sears Spencer’s daughter, Allannah Dean, a member of the class of 2028, stuck to her side as they found seats in the first row in the ballroom for the beginning of Preview. They opened their pamphlets and chatted with another Gator family seated behind them before the speaker began.
This first-year orientation experience isn’t new to them.
Eighteen years earlier, Sears Spencer traveled with Allannah, who was under a year old, from their home in Belle Glade — a rural town lined with sugar cane and spotted with football fields about 255 miles south of Gainesville — to begin her own freshman year. It was a life-changing feat she may not have managed without being accepted into the inaugural 2006 class of Machen Florida Opportunity Scholars, UF’s nationally known and recognized program for low-income, first-generation college students.