Mission Alignment with Mays Foundation

The Mays Family Foundation, which supports communities and empowers and educates citizens, has been a powerful partner in Texas A&M University System’s success.

In August 2017, the Mays Family Foundation donated $5 million to Texas A&M-SA — the largest gift in the University’s history — to help develop and support the Mays Center for Experiential Learning and Community Engagement. The University used a portion of the gift to complete the construction of the center’s 4,200-square-foot facility in the Science and Technology Building. “By integrating classroom activities with hands-on service-learning in the community, Texas A&M-SA is perfectly aligned with the Foundation’s mission,” Kathryn Mays Johnson, president of the Mays Family Foundation, said. “We are honored to support this academic center and look forward to seeing how it transforms students and our community.”

Johnson serves on numerous boards, including the Advisory Board of the SMU School of Journalism, the Board of Trustees of the United Way, and the Board of Governors of the Cancer Therapy and Research Center. As she presides over the Mays Family Foundation, Johnson oversees an organization her parents, Lowry Mays and Peggy Pitman Mays, started in 1994. (Lowry Mays, a prominent businessman and philanthropist who helped launch Clear Channel Communications, died last year). Over the years, the foundation has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to Texas organizations, including the Texas A&M University Mays Business School, UT Health’s Mays Cancer Center, the Witte Museum and Hemisfair.

Courage and Confidence

For Ochoa, that kind of support included the Mays Center’s C2C Engaged, a community-based work-study program that connects students with community partners. Through this program, Ochoa worked as an accounting intern at Chromosome 18 Registry and Research Society, a nonprofit advocacy organization dedicated to maintaining a registry of individuals affected by chromosome abnormalities.

“I learned so much at Chromosome 18,” Ochoa explained. “It was a great resource to help me gain experience in accounting.”

Ochoa said the staff at the Mays Center also helped her polish her resume and sharpen her interview skills. “I was a little shy at the time, and they helped me gain courage.”

After Ochoa graduated from Texas A&M-SA in May 2022 with a B.B.A. in accounting, she parlayed her Chromosome 18 internship into a full-time account supervisor position at the nonprofit. Using the skills she acquired, she soon moved onwards and upwards and landed a job as an accountant at Southwest ISD in October.

“I have truly fallen in love with this job,” she said. “I plan to stay and hopefully retire one day from here.”

Leopoldo Esquibel Carrera, 20, is another student who has benefited from the Mays Center. Born in Mexico and raised in Laredo, Texas, the finance major enrolled in 2020. After visiting the Mays Center multiple times to work on his resume and interview skills, he landed an internship in 2021 at San Antonio-based JC Utilities as a surveyor and project manager assistant.

“It’s a small company, so I wear a lot of hats and help the accounting department, working numbers in QuickBooks and Excel. It just really clicks with me,” he said.

As part of his internship, he worked on Texas A&M-SA’s new 45,500-square-foot academic and administration building.

“I get to leave a little bit of a mark on campus because of the Mays Center,” Carrera said. “The experience has given me more confidence. I’m proud of my skills and feel brave enough to go out and look for a job once I graduate.”

Powerful Partners h ips

Contreras said Carrera’s and Ochoa’s success stories illustrate the value and power of the Mays Center. Since its founding in 2017, the center has received nearly 5,000 requests for career advising and has awarded about 70 grants to students completing unpaid or underpaid academic internships. The center has 17 fulltime staff members, two graduate assistants and eight student workers, partnering with faculty and staff to provide internship and externship opportunities.

Moreover, the center’s three new community-based work-study programs have created opportunities for dozens of students to use federal work-study funds to gain professional skills with community partners. One such initiative is Texas Two-Step: Increasing Women in Technology. This workforce development program helps women bolster their technology skills with a data analytics certificate.

And now, Contreras said, the Mays Center is in an even better position to make an impact, as it recently partnered with San Antonio Ready to Work. The University announced the partnership in October at the Mays Center’s fifth-anniversary celebration at the Science and Technology Building.

A part of Workforce Solutions Alamo, which serves as the governing board for the 13-county regional workforce system, Ready to Work is an educational and job placement program. The partnership includes a $6.7 million contract with Ready to Work that covers tuition and emergency funds for the Texas A&M-SA community. Through this collaboration, unemployed, underemployed or underserved residents can access and complete training and education that will prepare them to secure employment in high-demand and wellpaid careers.

Contreras said the partnership will help bolster the local workforce, strengthen the community and improve many San Antonians’ quality of life. “It could have a significant impact, especially for those who attended Texas A&M-SA but didn’t graduate with a degree,” she said.

Key Con nections

Karen Ivy, director of career services at the Mays Center, is one of the staff members who helps students and alumni connect with employers. She said a big part of getting students “career-ready” is “connecting them with who they are, such as their interests, values, personality, strengths and skills — all of the qualities that make them unique.”

Career Services also offers practical guidance, like how to dress professionally, go through online and in-person interviews and hold conversations in business meetings. Ivy said that this combination of self-assessment and workforce instruction arms students with the tools they need to pursue career and internship opportunities with confidence.

She added that students have opportunities to connect with employers and develop their networking skills at functions like Next Steps Career Event. This revamped job fair enables Jaguars to interact with various company officials and career advisors before the career fair, making the experience more manageable. More than 100 students participated in the inaugural Next Steps event last year.

Ivy works closely with Krystina Irvin, director of experiential learning at the Mays Center. “Our goal is to find opportunities to take the knowledge that students acquire in the classroom and apply it to real-world situations,” explained Irvin.

Irvin said part of her job also calls for making students more civic-minded. According to Clarissa Tejeda, director of employer relations and community outreach, the Mays Center helps coordinate community volunteer opportunities for Jaguars at various nonprofits, such as the Children’s Association for Maximum Potential (C.A.M.P.), which provides recreational opportunities for individuals with medical conditions.

Irvin added that she, Tejeda and Ivy collaborate with employers, often through campus career fairs, experiential learning courses and internships.

The online portal, Handshake, is an important tool that the Mays Center uses to connect students with employers, where companies can post job and internship opportunities. Companies can specify if they’re looking for students with certain skill sets or majoring in specific fields. Students have an expansive, searchable database where they can look for opportunities that align with their career goals.

Ivy said the Mays Center works with many local and national companies, including Enterprise Holdings, The Walt Disney Company, Randolph-Brooks Federal Credit Union, USAA, GM Financial and Citi, which is building its headquarters at Port San Antonio.

Cheering from the Sidelines

Having worked at the Mays Center since it was founded, Ivy is quick to dispel the characterization that college kids are lazy and entitled. She points out that many Texas A&M-SA students grew up working for the family business, and many non-traditional students have military backgrounds, “and they’re familiar with hard work,” Ivy said.

She also pointed out that many Texas A&M-SA students, some of who help financially support their families, need help to afford an underpaid or unpaid internship. “We advocate that employers pay a fair wage for internships,” Ivy said. “We also provide support services and try hard to find supplemental funding for some of our students doing internships, so they aren’t left behind.”

Ivy said that while her job has challenges, she loves to empower students and help them recognize their strengths — a skill they can use for the rest of their lives. “It’s the most fun work I can imagine doing,” she said. “I mean, to see a student get an internship, they can speak to a roomful of students with confidence. You can see the changes happening, and I love being on the sidelines cheering on that process.”

Contreras said that as the Mays Center recently celebrated its fifth anniversary, she’s looking forward to the next five years and continuing to drive the center’s mission forward. She said that this includes connecting with more employers so that the center can provide additional internship and job opportunities for students. At the same time, she wants to reach more Texas A&M-SA faculty members to bolster the number of experiential-learning classes.

“It’s all about developing students holistically,” Contreras said. “We want them to be career-ready and community-minded. I’m proud of what the Mays Center has accomplished, but we’re just getting started.”