Fueling friendships and found family through F.A.M.E.

There is a lady smiling in the middle of a group of equally jovial college students.

She jokes with them—surprising them with her quick sense of humor. She compliments their hairstyles and their outfit choices. She asks them questions about their lives, their classes, their goals.  

She makes them feel seen. She reminds them that they deserve to be here. And, perhaps unintentionally, she shows them what kind of Spartan they will probably grow up to be: successful, resilient, and always, always, always looking for ways to make the world better for others.  

Her name is Lou Ann Tompkins, and these students, all part of the FAME program here at MSU, are recipients of a scholarship she created through a $150,000 gift to the program last year.  

FAME, which stands for Fostering Academics, Mentoring Excellence, is entering its 19th year as MSU’s go-to support system for students who come to MSU from foster care, or for those who were in kinship care, have experienced homelessness, or are otherwise independent at the time they come to college.  

“Michigan State has always had a soft spot in my heart”

It’s one thing to say that education plays a pivotal role in a person’s life story.

It’s another thing to look at the timeline of a person’s life and see the exact moments those pivots happened. For Lou Ann Tompkins, those moments are obvious, and with every directional change—with every pivot—her life, and the lives of the people around her, got better.

There was never any specific expectation that 18-year-old Lou Ann would go to college. Her parents didn’t push her to attend, and they didn’t plan to help her with the cost, but she didn’t let that stop her. She chose MSU on her own, cobbled together some scholarships and some work to pay her way, and navigated the unfamiliar challenges of college life by trial and error, blazing her own trail as she went.

That approach became a bit of a reoccurring theme in Lou Ann’s life. From that point on, at any fork-in-the-road moment—where Lou Ann could either accept things the way they were, or find a way to make things better—the choice was always to make things better, and, often, the way to do that was more education.

When job cuts in the auto industry threatened to eliminate her position at General Motors, Lou Ann came back to Michigan State to complete her MBA in finance and went on to get an even better job at Chrysler.

When her children’s school was ambivalent about providing necessary accommodations for their needs, Lou Ann went to law school, specialized in special ed law, and made sure that kind of thing wouldn’t happen to her kids—or anybody else’s kids—again.

“At one point,” she recalls, “my daughter said to me, ‘Mom, whenever you come into the school, it seems like everybody is afraid of you. Doesn’t that bother you?’ and I said, ‘Not as long as they take good care of my children!’”

And, in addition to giving her more insight in how to improve educational opportunities for her own children, her time practicing law as a juvenile attorney opened her eyes to the tenacious spirit and, in some cases, unique needs of young people in the foster care system.  

It’s why she chose to give to the FAME program at MSU.

“It’s great to watch any kid make it through the foster care system—because it can be so hard,” Lou Ann says. “If they make it through with the grades and the drive and the emotional readiness to go to college? Even better. If they’re willing to put that much effort into themselves—into pursuing an education—I am so happy to be able to turn around and put my own effort into supporting them.”

“It’s hard to think of a way to make something better when it’s already so perfect”

This is how the petite, quick-humored, smiling 1982 MBA alumna Lou Ann’s life path came to diverge with that of Nyles, a toweringly tall, soft-spoken second-year student who couldn’t be happier to be pursuing his dreams at Michigan State.

Nyles was adopted by his grandparents at a young age. They raised him and, at some point, raised within him a strong desire to go to college. He’s studying criminal justice because he wants to help people, wants to be a part of a community where he can play a role in making it better, for as many people as he can. And he’s off to a great start as a member of FAME and a recipient of the scholarship created by—you guessed it—Lou Ann Tompkins.  

“Between financial aid and the scholarships I’ve received, I’m able to go through school without worrying about the financial aspect,” he says. “I get to focus on how I can grow as a person, and what I’m going to do to help others in the future.”

FAME is, of course, a highlight of his experience so far.

“FAME is like a family on a campus of 50,000 people. I have friends, I have mentors, and I have people looking out for me,” he says.

As the director of the FAME program, Chiquita Whittington, LMSW, is one of the people looking out for Nyles, and for all of the students who engage with its services and programming each year.

“The 2024-2025 academic year marked a milestone for FAME,” Chiquita says. “We recorded our highest number of engaged students to date, and ensured that they were connected to services designed to support their success.”

Those services meet students where they are. If they need life skills coaching, FAME has a certified life skills coach to help. If they would benefit from mentorship, FAME can connect them with a volunteer mentor on campus or within the community. If students want to learn how to speak about their experiences, there’s training for that. There are group activities and events. And when a student walks in and says they need a physical item of some sort, like a snack, a household item, or even a new toothbrush—things a student might get in a care package from home—the FAME care closet probably has it, and it is theirs for the taking.

FAME has always been a popular place for annual donors to make a big impact with smaller gifts. Last year alone, with help from MSU’s Crowd Power platform and giving campaigns like Give Green Day, donors gave more than $61,000 in expendable, discretionary support for these ongoing needs and initiatives in FAME.

Those gifts help keep FAME running, and gifts like Lou Ann’s help it grow. The FAME Scholars Program, launched thanks to her generosity, provided financial support to 47 students last academic year, and helped to draw the attention of prospective students who may not otherwise have known FAME was available to them, let alone that they might be eligible for a scholarship.

“We owe special thanks to Lou Ann Tompkins,” Chiquita says. “Thanks to her support, we were able to offer engagement-based scholarship programming that encouraged students to stay actively involved and on-track toward graduation.”

Given their shared enthusiasm for wanting to “make things better,” it’s only natural that Lou Ann and Nyles would start dreaming up ways to further bolster FAME’s mission—though Nyles insists that it’s hard to improve on something that, to him, already feels so perfect.

“I have loved every moment of being part of FAME,” he says. “I want every student who finds their way into this program to have this same experience.”

With help from donors, they will. And then some. 

LEARN MORE about how to support FAME.