Mason Fromeyer says he hasn’t always been a star student, but the support system he gained through the Young Scholars Academy (YSA) changed that. 

“Before going into YSA, I was not a great student,” Fromeyer says. “I mean, I got good grades, but that was purely from natural ability and luck. YSA forced me to realize, ‘Okay, I’m not good at this and I need to be better at this or I’m going to pay the price.’” 

Originally, Fromeyer had no interest in pursuing a college education after high school, and instead planned to go to trade school to become a plumber. But when his best friend told him about YSA, he decided to give it a shot. After making it through a nervous first day of YSA classes, Fromeyer says he fell in love with the campus and decided he wanted to pursue a full-time degree at Northern Kentucky University. 

“I really fell in love with the professors my first semester,” he says. “I had some really good faculty around, and I fell in love with the staff in general. When I met all the professors I thought, ‘These are really cool people, and they really care about me. This is going to be a lot more fun than I thought.’” 

In YSA, Fromeyer joined the ambassadors program, where he gained leadership and volunteer experience while knocking out all of his general education courses. He graduated from the program with about two years of coursework and approximately 58 college credit hours under his belt. 

In addition to a head start, Fromeyer says YSA helped prepare him for the college experience by giving him an inside look at college classrooms and providing wraparound support when he needed it.  

“It allowed me to start experiencing, and I was able to figure out what it was like to be in class and all the extra fun stuff,” he says. “But where YSA really shines is the support you get. In high school, I never had to study—homework and tests came easy to me, so I never really got any of those good study habits, and when I got to college I fell behind. YSA teaches you how to adapt like that.”

YSA also allowed Fromeyer time to do some soul-searching and explore a few career paths before deciding what to pursue. After a long debate, he officially declared his major in elementary education at NKU and is planning to graduate with his bachelor’s degree in spring 2028.  

“I’ve always enjoyed teaching, so I decided I’ll go teach high school history because I like history,” he says. “I got to visit all the different classrooms. I loved the high school classroom—just like I knew I would—but most surprisingly I really, really loved the elementary school classroom.” 

To people who are considering joining YSA, Fromeyer says to just go for it.  

“If you feel that you are emotionally mature enough or have the ability to grow to be emotionally mature enough to handle the course load, just go ahead and make the jump,” he says. “YSA gives you a broader outlook of other people in the world; it also helps you grow as an adult and makes you a better person. It’s a great thing because it helps you become more emotionally mature, more educated, and at the end of the day, it makes college more affordable.”

Over the next five years, Fromeyer is hoping the YSA program will grow even bigger and expand opportunities to more students.  

“I loved YSA desperately and I tried to grow it as much as I could; I feel I left it in a good place,” he says. “Most of all, I just want to see it grow more and more.”