Charity Ketu, a senior communication studies and marketing double-major, might never have discovered TCU if not for a high school job at The Blue Bears Special Meals cafe in Princeton, New Jersey. 

One day, a coworker, Madelaine Capuzzi ’25, told Charity she wouldn’t be seeing her around much longer. Capuzzi would soon be off to TCU. 

“What is TCU?” Ketu asked.  

When it was time for Ketu to consider her next step, she applied to 21 colleges and universities. On the list was Texas Christian University, which invited Ketu to interview for the Chancellor’s Scholars program, an opportunity extended to the top 1 percent of applicants. 

Her weekend in Fort Worth began with meeting the other candidates as well as current Chancellor’s Scholars, being assigned a program mentor and having dinner at the Chancellor’s official residence, Minor House. 

“The next day was interview day,” said Ketu, who learned the following April that she was selected to receive a full-tuition Chancellor’s Scholarship. Approximately 45 academically stellar incoming students earn the award each year. 

The TCU tour turned out to be Ketu’s first and only visit to any university. 

“I remember walking by Frog Fountain, and I was taking a selfie there, and these two random dudes popped into my video, just having fun and acting like we were friends,” Ketu said. “That’s when I was like, ‘This is awesome. This is an amazing place.’ ”

Ketu said it wasn’t her better-than-4.0 GPA but her story, reflected in the personal essay she submitted to the committee, that secured her scholarship.  

“I am a big believer that our experiences shape our perspectives,” Ketu said. “The nature of my experiences has been different than most.” 

Beginnings Etched in Enterprise 

Twice graduating from high school certainly qualifies as “different.” 

Originally from Douala, the economic capital of Cameroon, Ketu was brought up in a bilingual country and household, learning English and French as she progressed through the school curriculum with stunning rapidity. 

“I was always in the classroom with people two, three, four years older than me,” said Ketu, who earned her first high school degree in Cameroon at 15. 

Ketu, a first-generation college student who’s also minoring in educational studies, said her parents were inspiring intellectual role models during her childhood.

“My dad has a wealth of knowledge,” Ketu said of her father, Israel Ketu Nembo. “That man knows everything there is to know about everything.”  

Ketu’s mother, Marie Blaise Tchamen, became a young breadwinner so she could support several siblings in the wake of her mother’s death. 

“She’s the definition of a boss lady to me,” Ketu said. 

By the time she was 9 years old, Ketu, too, was contributing to her family’s livelihood, supporting her mother’s kiosk by selling beignets and other goods such as water, juices and candies. 

Arrival, Interrupted

Ketu’s first time taking a flight, and her first time leaving Cameroon, was in 2019. With her mother, brother and older sister, Ketu flew to the United States, where the sisters planned to attend college. The family landed at New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport after a layover in Togo.

Charity Ketu toured only one college — TCU. She accepted its offer after receiving a full-tuition scholarship.

A few weeks after arriving in the U.S., Ketu fell extremely ill and went to the emergency room — without insurance. 

The expense forced the family to make the difficult decision to prioritize their older daughter’s education. Ketu said her options were to stay home until her mother could afford to send her to community college or attend high school a second time for free. 

“I love learning, so I went to free high school,” Ketu said. “And they were like, ‘You’re going to be a sophomore because you’re 15.’ And I’m bawling my eyes out, and I’m like, ‘Literally, I have graduated high school.’ ” 

Ketu would eventually enroll in community college courses to complement her high school course load — “I was bored out of my mind,” she said — but the repetition of schooling became a blessing in disguise. 

“I’m grateful for that because if I didn’t go through high school [in the U.S.], I wouldn’t have gone through the application process, received the scholarship and gotten into TCU.” 

A Frog Who Fosters Change

Ketu is among the 30 or so Horned Frogs from her class selected as a Neeley Fellow; the honors program within the Neeley School of Business provides an even more rigorous, experiential curriculum and helps students expand their professional networks through alumni mentors, company tours and travel opportunities.  

She has made a mark on the university through her work for the Student Government Association, rising from a House of Representatives member to chair of the organization’s Academic Affairs Committee to serving as vice president in 2024-25. 

An effective Student Government Association vice president is the consummate team player, said TCU staff member Kim Turner, executive director of student governance and traditions. 

“A lot of times, there are initiatives and projects that SGA wants to accomplish,” Turner said, “but because we need to send the president out to do all of these external-facing things, we need somebody internal to really focus on these projects to keep the organization itself advocating on behalf of students.” 

“I am a big believer that our experiences shape our perspectives. The nature of my experiences has been different than most.”
Charity Ketu

Dominic Mendlik, who served as Student Government Association president with Ketu as vice president, worked alongside Ketu in the organization from her first days on campus.  

“It was evident to me pretty early on that she was going to be somebody looking for ways to make an impact on campus,” Mendlik said, “and who would be a changemaker in our organization.” 

During her term as chair of the Academic Affairs Committee, it was recognized as the most outstanding committee of the year. Later, she coordinated the Yard Sign Recycling Initiative, a campus-wide project that reduces plastic waste from yard signs left around campus. 

Drew Stewart ’21, former SGA director of sustainability, began the project in earnest during his final year as a student, collecting outdated yard signs and driving them to be recycled himself. Hampered by complex logistics, the effort eventually lost traction. 

“We had just not been able to get it across the finish line,” Turner said. “The big piece that was missing with that project was finding a couple of strategic partners so that all the steps would fall into place.” 

Turner pitched the concept to Ketu as a possible objective for her vice-presidential term. “She immediately lit up and bought into the idea,” Turner said, adding that Ketu’s professional network across campus was invaluable in bringing the vision to life. “People like Charity. People know Charity.”  

Yard sign collection resumed during the spring 2025 semester after Ketu established a working relationship with Eric Trevino, director of landscape and grounds, and One Shade Greener. 

Ketu developed a process calling upon members of One Shade Greener to collect signs, separate the plastic placards from the metal stakes and store the materials. The TCU grounds team then delivers them to a site in Worth Hills, from which AP&J, an industrial recycler, collects the materials. The operation runs two to three times per semester, resulting in a cleaner, greener campus.  

The Light She Carries

Another anchor of Ketu’s executive Student Government Association term was advocating for her fellow Horned Frogs. She based her vice-presidential campaign, in large part, around compassionate policy change.  

Such initiatives included providing on-campus food options for students during university breaks and communicating with the school’s administration to streamline class credit transfers for students. 

A key accomplishment of the pair’s 2024-25 term, Mendlik said, was working with faculty partners, college leadership and the provost’s office to reduce grading turnaround time for some classes. 

A Student Government Association survey identified a lack of timely assignment feedback to be among students’ chief academic concerns. “We found this issue cut across multiple majors and colleges,” Ketu said. “The impact is significant — without feedback, students aren’t able to learn effectively or improve their work.” 

“She has definitely been the driving force behind that,” Mendlik said. “She has been someone who has always tried to keep us centered on, ‘If we can just help one student be more academically successful, then our efforts are worth it.’ ” 

Beyond the Student Government Association chamber and the classroom, Ketu inspires through her work as a prolific writer. Since 2022, she has published four books intersecting her faith with profound universal concepts. 

Ketu said the idea for Never Dimming Light came to her while she was thinking about mentions of light in the Bible. 

“I just started writing and I remember thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, what a privilege for us to have electricity,’ ” Ketu said. “Because going back home, that was not something you saw every day. You would go days without light.”  

Her approach to leading others carries a similar tenor of gratitude and empowerment. 

“ ‘Yes’ should be your favorite word freshman year,” Ketu said. “Go to all the organizations that seem interesting. Attend your meetings. Try to learn more. Sit with someone you’ve never sat with before. … Sometimes we expect people to come ask us, but we never go to ask other people.”