Alberto’s Scholarship Story

Computing the Possibilities

Alberto’s path to LSU has been a bit of a winding road. Originally set to play football at Louisiana Tech University, Alberto instead headed to basic training for the National Guard.

He remembered, “One day before football practice, there was a recruiting station nearby, and I walked in and told myself I wasn’t going to join because this is an important decision. I walked out at 17 years old with a parent permission slip to join the military, so I ended up enlisting in the Louisiana Army National Guard. I went to basic training after high school, so I missed out on the fall semester.”

For Alberto, though, attending LSU was never a question of “if” but rather a question of “when.”

“I’m really blessed that the Louisiana Army National Guard gives you that tuition exemption, so any state institution or college in Louisiana was an option. Being around LSU, having LSU memorabilia all around my house and walking into Tiger Stadium on my dad’s shoulders when I was little – kind of figured this was a no brainer.”

His family moved from Mexico to Gonzales, La., when Alberto was only 5 months old. They have strong and growing ties to LSU: Alberto’s older sister graduated with a finance degree in 2020, and his younger brother is a senior in high school with plans to attend LSU.

Alberto is now a senior studying information systems and decision sciences and a recipient of the Reymond Holmes (Bussie) Pope Scholarship Fund. He chose to pursue a field that married his two passions: technology and business. The relatively new degree program in the E. J. Ourso College of Business is a collaborative approach for “strategic thinkers” who enjoy technology and want to play “an essential role in defining the future of business.”

Alberto explained his choice of major, saying, “I want to be at the forefront, and I want to transform whatever organization I go into. I want to use that little toolkit that I developed here at LSU and solve problems. I want to create teams, identifying impediments and solving (problems). Anywhere that I go, I want to have a little bit of Alberto leaving a mark.”

Receiving the Pope Scholarship made pursuing something as significant as a summer position in Houston with Deloitte, a leading global provider of professional services, possible. Alberto has plans to join the company once more this summer before earning his LSU degree in December. He reflected, “(The scholarship) has opened my horizons, and it’s opened my goals and what I can reach for. Never in a million years would I have expected to go work for this company or receive scholarships like this … Now I know the sky’s the limit, and knowing what the sky looks like, I can actually make goals and see them and achieve them.”