Old friends or African American alumni with high school or college-age children call her up with questions about campus. She gets inquiries from community college students who want to transfer, and calls from families who want to tour the University.

Nelson, coordinator of the African American Initiative in the office of Outreach and Special Programs at Fresno State, helps the public connect to the respective offices on campus. But she often coaches students and parents through the admissions process and gives campus tours herself with little-known African American facts about Fresno State.

For example, Herman “Ace” Lawson was a Fresno State football player in the 1930s and became a Tuskegee Airman, one of the first African American pilots to fly in World War II. And Fresno State alumna Zinzi Evans is married to “Black Panther” director Ryan Coogler (who graduated from Sacramento State).

But Nelson’s work doesn’t stop on campus. Over the past two years, she has expanded early outreach efforts in the African American Initiative to increase student enrollment, college readiness and graduation rates. On Friday, March 22, the initiative hosted its first overnight experience for incoming fall 2019 African American students as part of Preview Day at Fresno State, which was held on Saturday, March 23.

African American students make up 2.8 percent of the nearly 25,000 students at Fresno State.

The goal is to increase the number of graduating high school seniors that are CSU-eligible, said Nelson, who is also an alumna and the first African American to graduate from Fresno State’s Army ROTC in 1989. “We have to work to make sure these students are getting engaged … corralling them now and getting in their face now.”

Visit Fresno State News to read more.