Transformation, Leadership at UST w/ Paola Colon
Student Body President Boasts Goal to be Medical Missionary
As a young girl, Paola Colon would play soccer in her backyard with her twin brother while her mother made dinner. Now, the 2024-25 Student Body President and University of St. Thomas-Houston 2025 graduate, Paola scored goals for the UST Women’s Soccer Team and is driven by a desire to continue her journey of becoming a medical missionary.
Colon is described as “a beacon of light for her community,” and she believes her community has deeply defined who she has become – as an athlete and a child of God.
“My small athletic community allowed me to become closer to God,” she said. “It allowed me to realize and remember that my identity isn't in athletics or isn't in my perfectionism, it's that I'm a child of God. Also, the faith-based community in Campus Ministry kept me going and allowed me to remember that nothing I do is going to take that away from me.”
From a quiet high school experience, Paola’s UST experience began before her freshman year during Celt Camp, where she met other student leaders.
“Celt Camp made St. Thomas feel like a home and made me feel so welcome,” she said. “It's so hard to come in as a freshman and go into a new campus and a new environment that you don't know. I loved having UST student leaders and see faces that I recognized as a freshman. It made me feel so welcome. After that, I knew becoming a student leader was something I wanted to do.”
Colon joined the Club Sports Association, which led her to walk on to the Women’s Soccer Team. This group of women would be integral to her time at UST. She found not only athletic success but also a loving, supportive community that would help shape her leadership. When facing trials, the encouragement of teammates like Ailyn Carbajal, BBA/MBA ’24, reignited Paola’s faith, and she began to participate in Campus Ministry events, and later was inspired to run and win the coveted position of Student Body President.
“I was teammates with Ailyn for two years and she was just such a light,” Colon said. “You could tell she was on fire for God, and she continued to spread that love of God with our teammates and everyone she interacted with. She pushed me to join a student athlete small group that she had at the time. She took me to church with her. She was just so loving, and you could tell that she just had such a heart for people. I knew I had a teammate that I could rely on.”
While soccer and becoming Student Body President vastly shaped her time at UST, two UST-led mission trips to Honduras would begin to shape her future.
“It was a medical mission, so we would partner with churches that were in more impoverished areas,” she said. “These families lived in basically wooden boxes, and it was really hard to see the environment they were living in, but you could tell that they were just so happy with what they had. They are so grateful that you're serving them, but I really reflect on that experience, and I realize that I came out winning in that sense. Their heart, their faith and their love that they have for others really bleeds on you and then you want to give back. It's an eye-opening experience and I came back grateful.”
Colon’s witness amplifies Catholic Social Teaching (CST), a set of principles derived from the Catholic intellectual tradition that offers a vision and responsibilities for the human person within contemporary social, economic, and political issues. It is a part of the University’s Quality Enhancement Plan for Educating Students for Purpose. Colon’s experience calls on the teaching of the Option for the Poor and Vulnerable, which calls on holy people to put the needs of the vulnerable first.
Colon’s next steps are to go to graduate school to be a physician’s assistant and pursue her goal of becoming a medical missionary. Her leadership on campus and her incredible career goal is testament to the power of service, faith, and transformation that she experienced while at UST.
“St. Thomas is such a great faith-based community that everyone has that little spark of love of God that goes a crazy long way,” Colon said. “I think I've been shown that love, so I just want to reciprocate that and give back what St. Thomas gave to me - to share it within my family, in the community, and in mission trips.”
To see a video of Colon’s journey, visit UST MAX Studios YouTube.
