Posted by Seattle University Alumni Association on Thursday, June 10, 2021 at 11:00 AM PDT

When Joe Schultz, ’06, saw a Renton High School track coach’s Facebook post seeking a room to rent for an international high school student in need, he didn’t hesitate to respond.

“My undergrad experience at Seattle U inspired me to share my home,” Schultz explains. “I am from a culturally homogenous town in Montana and SU opened my eyes to a broader world of people, places and ideas, what we should expect of ourselves and of society. I wanted to help and my wife, Vanessa, and I had an extra room.”

The student, Hameed Makttoof, ’20, had escaped war-ravaged Sadr City, Iraq, and landed in Seattle via United Nations guaranteed safe passage. At the time he was 16-years-old, alone, illiterate and unable to speak English. A social services organization placed him in a group home with other youth in the foster care system and enrolled him at Renton High School as a freshman. He took three English Language Learner (ELL) courses each day and joined the cross country and track teams. He was a talented runner.

A year later, a frightening racist encounter with a group home employee drove him to seek new living accommodations. Makttoof moved in with Joe and Vanessa, both special education teachers at Chief Sealth International High School, as an18-year-old sophomore.

“We weren’t sure what our relationship would be—parental or landlord/tenant,” Joe says. But Hameed quickly became part of our family, and Vanessa and I became like an older sister and brother to him.”

The Schultz’s transferred Makttoof to Chief Sealth High School, which has a strong ELL program and one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse student bodies in Washington State. Joe and Vanessa took turns tutoring Makttoof at home, often one cooking dinner while the other worked with him. “Education was a beacon to Hameed, and he worked harder than anyone I’d ever met,” Joe says. In 2016, Makttoof graduated high school.

He enrolled at Central Washington University on a track scholarship, but the demands of college athletics and a heavy academic schedule became overwhelming, and his grades began to spiral downward. Always supportive, Joe told Makttoof about a Seattle U program he’d learned of called Fostering Scholars.

“I had read about the program in The Seattle Times and Seattle U publications,” he says. “Fostering Scholars appeared to provide a very supportive environment for promising students who had been in the foster care system and needed some extra support in transitioning to college life. The program provided financial, academic and personal assistance while students worked towards an undergraduate degree and navigated adulthood. It sounded like just the thing for Hameed. Plus, Seattle U is close to our home.”

Joe connected Makttoof with Colleen Montoya Barbano, director of the Fostering Scholars Program, and she was struck by Makttoof’s determination to do what it took to be at Seattle U. He returned to Central for a quarter and took the upper-level classes in math, science and psychology, his area of interest, that SU undergraduate admissions had advised, earning straight A’s. He applied and was accepted to Seattle U and the Fostering Scholars program as a transfer student.

In June 2020, Makttoof graduated from Seattle U in with a BA in psychology. He was on the Dean’s List and received the Bayanihan Award for Community Service and Involvement. Later that summer he was notified of his acceptance to graduate school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he recently completed his first year in the PhD Clinical Psychology program. Makttoof received his U.S. citizenship in 2019.

The Schultz’s demonstration of the Jesuit value of cura personalis (care for the whole person) in their relationship with Makttoof and Joe’s role in connecting Makttoof to the life-changing Fostering Scholars Program are beautiful examples of how this alumnus engaged with the very heart of Seattle U.