Goodnight Scholars Find Their Wings
Goodnight Scholars and Goodnight Transfer Scholars benefit from a robust program dedicated to helping them develop their whole selves. The program is set to expand significantly in the fall, providing scholarships and support for more than twice as many students.

Career advice and resources helped current Goodnight Transfer Scholar Juan Gomez find the confidence he needed to fuel his professional journey into health and nutrition.
Goodnight Scholar alumna Minh-Thu Dinh found the support to define success for herself – and reach for the life she ultimately wanted.
This fall, with the expansion of the Goodnight Scholarships, more students will benefit from the comprehensive support that Gomez and Dinh found to grow and reach their goals. The program will award twice as many first-year scholarships and 20% more transfer student scholarships.
It’s an exciting moment of growth for the program that awards STEM or STEM education majors with a need and merit-based scholarship currently valued at $23,000 per year.
Goodnight Scholars also participate in a comprehensive student development program. Last year, Goodnight Scholars and Goodnight Transfer Scholars took advantage of over 200 offerings, including the new student retreat, peer mentor programs, seminars for first and second-year students, along with weekly programming.
“It feels like an investment into the person that you are, and you’re going to be.”
Mentorship and leadership opportunities, travel experiences and enrichment funding prepare students to become transformational leaders at NC State, in North Carolina and out in the world.
For Gomez and Dinh, these programmatic offerings provided personalized and caring support that empowered them to take flight toward their personal and professional goals.
Finding a Path and Passion

For Gomez, a senior majoring in nutrition science, what began as a New Year’s resolution has become a meaningful health journey.
Gomez developed a passion for nutrition as he sought healthier habits. Even though he played football for his high school in Statesville, North Carolina, he still struggled to maintain his weight. It began to affect his self-esteem and became something he wanted to change.
As a biology student at Appalachian State University, Gomez started to watch online videos to learn more about eating healthfully. His roommate noticed his YouTube “obsession” and suggested that he switch his major to nutrition. It was a smart piece of advice that set Gomez on a professional path that was meaningful to him personally.
Gomez left Appalachian State to continue his education at Mitchell Community College, then transferred to NC State. Once with the Wolfpack, Gomez applied for the Goodnight Transfer Scholarship. He was selected for the scholarship, but his feelings of low self-esteem lingered.
“I didn’t have a whole lot of confidence in myself as a student, as a person, and just general other aspects of my life,” Gomez said. Also, he worried that his experience of transferring three times might make him feel out of place. “I didn’t [follow] a traditional track of school.”
“There are so few programs for transfers, so what we’re providing is truly unique to NC State.”
Allison Medlin, the executive director of the Goodnight Scholarships office, understands the challenges and concerns that Goodnight Transfer Scholars sometimes face when navigating a new, and often larger, university environment.
“There are a lot of structural barriers to their success,” she said. “Being able to give them the financial support and all the programmatic and advising support, it really makes all the difference in the world.”
Medlin added that scholarships generally focus on traditional paths that start with four years in high school and lead directly to four years at one higher education institution. Transfer students often chart a less linear course.
55%
of Goodnight Scholars come from the most economically distressed counties in North Carolina.
42%
of Goodnight Scholars are the first in their families to attend college.
48%
of Goodnight Scholars identify as students of color.
“There are so few programs for transfers, so what we’re providing is truly unique to NC State,” she said.
Gomez quickly saw that the Goodnight Transfer Scholars Program was designed specifically for students like him.
“I think coming into this program with other transfers definitely helped out,” Gomez said. “It was nice seeing that there were other people [like me] because I assumed that I was an outlier. But then I saw how diverse the transfer program actually was and there weren’t any outliers.”
A key benefit of the Goodnight Scholars programs is their robust professional advising and development. Gomez took advantage of the comprehensive resources in networking and resume assistance. He also participated in numerous mock job interviews and learned a lot from the feedback the program staff provided, giving him a boost in confidence.
“Whenever I get into conversations, I feel like I kind of blank, especially when I’m nervous,” Gomez said. “I had done so many different mock interviews that I was ready for every question. On top of that, they gave me feedback to think about. And after every mock interview, I was getting to a point where I was confident and ready for anything. I just had a better idea of how to go through the interview process and not be so fearful.”
With the expansion of the Goodnight Transfer Scholars program, more students like Gomez will get the chance to build confidence and better tap their potential.
Gomez’s goal is to become a pediatric dietitian and help young people like him make more informed choices about their health — a path that comes full circle.
From Personal Growth to Leading the Pack
The Goodnight Scholars Program equips its students with the ability to reach for their dreams and live life as a whole person.
Minh-Thu Dinh ‘23 found the support to explore her passion for community advocacy work, while also gaining the confidence to define the life she wanted after NC State. The Charlotte, North Carolina native graduated with a degree in electrical engineering and currently works as a power system engineer in the Raleigh-Durham area.
“They’ve always been very supportive of me trying new things and growing as a person.”
Dinh enjoyed being involved in student organizations such as the Vietnamese Student Association. She became a Goodnight Scholars outreach ambassador, and traveled to different schools around North Carolina to share her experience and encourage students to apply. She also mentored incoming transfer students.
The program improved her public speaking and management skills — and soon she began to take on student leadership roles. However, when she was in the process of co-founding a student organization, she felt a bit lost about why she was doing it.
During a Goodnight Scholars mountains-to-coast service trip, she had the opportunity to teach STEM activities to middle-schoolers. The experience helped her reexamine who she was and what she could offer as a leader.
“It changed my whole perspective about how to be a leader and how to give back or pay it forward,” Dinh said. “It allowed me to just be myself — like, my humor as well as my personality, not just my skills.”


Similarly, guidance through the Goodnight Scholars Program helped Dinh reexamine her career choices in a healthier way. Like many high-achieving students, Dinh felt pressure to aim for a prestigious career. The program encouraged her to envision the kind of life she wanted and gave her the confidence to choose the classes that would lead to a career that was ideal. For her, that was one with the work-life balance she ultimately wanted to stay active in community-building and advocacy.
“They’ve always been very supportive of me trying new things and growing as a person,” Dinh said. “Without the Goodnight Scholars Program … You may have seen me stuck in an office 10 hours a day in a job I hated. So that’s what I would say, how [the program] changed me. It allowed me to see more life versus career.”

With support and encouragement from the Goodnight Scholars Program, Dinh applied and was selected as NC State’s 2022 Leader of the Pack Award winner, chosen for exemplary leadership, service and scholarship.
Lift Up, Lift Off
With the expansion of the Goodnight Scholarships this fall, the annual number of recipients will increase from 350 to 580 over the next four years.

Founded by NC State alumni Jim and Ann Goodnight, the Goodnight Scholarships office welcomed its first cohort of freshmen in 2008. The program expanded to include transfer students in 2017.
The Goodnight Programs’ comprehensive services do as much to buoy their hard-working students as the financial scholarships they provide. Gomez believes, however, that the services might even go a bit further.
“Tuition is just the monetary value of it,” Gomez said. “But there’s so much value that you get from the other opportunities that, to me, it feels like they’re worth even more. It feels like an investment into the person that you are, and you’re going to be.”
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