St. George • Now that Matt Devore has finally found a home, the director of student outreach services at Utah Tech University is helping first-year students, many of whom struggle, feel at home.
At first glance, Devore and struggling students would appear to be polar opposites. During his student days at Utah Tech, the accomplished academician made the dean’s list three times, the president’s list once and served as the school’s student body president during his senior year.
Since graduating from the school with a bachelor’s in integrated studies in 2016, Devore has earned an online master’s in higher education administration from Louisiana State University and will soon begin pursuing a doctorate.
Looks, however, are not all they appear to be. The reality is that few know the value and stability that a home can bring better than Devore, who was born in Phoenix and was homeless for much of his formative years, sometimes begging for money and living out of the car with his mother and sister.
“My mother was battling some [drug] addictions and those addictions dictated the course of her life, which in turn dictated the course of my life because I was her child,” Devore recalls. “It got to the point where we had no vehicle and were moving from hotel to hotel and asking for money to pay for food and [shelter].”
In an effort to turn things around, the single-parent family moved to Mesquite, Nevada, where Devore entered the fifth grade. Alas, old habits die hard, and new locations don’t always equate with a fresh start.
“There was no job, there was no money, there was nothing,” Devore says. “It was just doing what you can to survive … And for [my mom], drugs were a powerful thing. That was her big motivation.”
Fortunately, with his mother unable to step up to the challenge of overcoming addiction, community members stepped in to help Devore. When he was 15, once again without a place to live, Devore talked a friend’s mom and sister into putting him up in their home for a week until an apartment was ready. In reality, there was no apartment, and his temporary digs turned into a permanent home apart from his mother until he graduated from Virgin Valley High School three years later. Other families also pitched in to help out — with places to stay and emotional support.
Still, navigating his freshman year at Utah Tech was challenging. Devore didn’t have a car to shuttle to and from work and school or a place to live. Eventually, he wound up sharing a room with a Mesquite friend in the home of that friend’s sister and boyfriend. When both of his friends from Mesquite dropped out during their first semester, Devore’s support system went with them.
He soon found himself working full-time at Walmart and taking night classes at then-Dixie State University.
“The only interaction I really had with the campus was just going to class, doing homework assignments, going home and sleeping,” Devore says. “I wasn’t going to any events.”
At the end of his freshman year, Devore had a 1.8 GPA, was on academic probation and was informed he needed to turn things around or would lose his financial aid. For all appearances, it looked like his time at the university might be over.
But then fate — or, more precisely, Del Beatty, then-dean of students at the university, intervened. Devore was stocking shelves in the toy department at Walmart when he saw and stopped to talk to Beatty, who advised him to get involved in student government. A friend who was in student government reinforced Beatty’s advice.
During his sophomore year, Devore signed on as an unpaid committee member in student government. It was a volunteer, non-scholarship position. His GPA rose to 4.0 that semester and he found a sense of purpose and belonging.
“That changed the game for me right there because I found where I fit in and found a home,” Devore says. “And I had 40 new friends because they were [in student government.]”
Jordon Sharp, then-Director of Student Involvement & Leadership, remembers challenging Devore to decorate campus during homecoming week in a manner that would far surpass efforts in previous years — all in an attempt to make students feel more involved in the festivities. Devore recruited 50-plus students to join him in the endeavor and went to work.
“When I walked on campus shortly before homecoming, I literally started bawling because he had literally decorated every ounce of campus,” Sharp says. “There were decorations everywhere you looked, just like I asked. That’s when I saw things turn for Matt. That’s when I saw you could give him an assignment and something special would happen.”
From there, Matt became marketing manager for student government, a scholarship position, in his junior year, and followed that his senior year by becoming student body president. As Devore’s mentor at the time, Sharp recalls helping the student leader — who had no experience in public speaking — craft his first major speech on the state of the university. They started honing the speech in the afternoon and wrapped it up at about midnight.
“He had to have it perfect,” Sharp says. “So here was a guy who had never done anything like this before. But just like when he decorated the campus, he was willing to find mentors and people who would help him, and then he would just kill himself until he got the task done or where he needed to be.”
Devore not only wowed fellow students and faculty, he also impressed Utah Tech President Richard Williams, with whom he frequently interacted on campus as student body president and still talks to on occasion.
During one of his speeches several years ago, Williams told students if they wanted to be mentored and become a university president to come see him.
“So [Matt] came into my office and said, ‘I want to be president of Dixie State University someday,’ " Williams said. “I think he will because he’s on that path.”
Dixie State University was renamed Utah Tech on July 1.
For Williams, Devore exemplifies the fact that Utah Tech can and does change lives for the better — that the university can meet students where they are and take them wherever they want to go academically and professionally.
He will get no argument from Devore, for whom life has come full circle. Only now he is on the giving rather than the receiving end of student assistance. As the university director of student outreach services, he oversees 45 peer coaches who meet with first-year students, helping them navigate the college experience and feel more connected to campus and all the university has to offer.
As a result of such efforts, retention among first-time, full-time students seeking bachelor’s degrees at the university has risen from 54% in 2014 to 59% this year. And Devore is ebullient about the role he and others are playing in helping students adjust to the academic stage.
Now more than ever it seems, for Devore and his student charges, Utah Tech University feels like home.
