When Karina Ximena Torres arrived at Texas Christian University in fall 2022, she expected to be here for two years.

Instead, she’s earned three undergraduate degrees — and is staying for a master’s.

Torres is part of TCU’s spring class of 2026, earning bachelor’s degrees in social work from the Harris College of Nursing & Health Sciences and in Spanish for the professions and criminology & criminal justice from AddRan College of Liberal Arts. This fall, she begins TCU's Master of Social Work program, where she will return to her current internship site — the Fort Worth Police Department’s Victims Unit — for her graduate field placement.

A first-generation college student from Fort Worth, Torres is the daughter of Susana Cano and Ricardo Torres, who immigrated from Monterrey, Mexico. Her path to TCU began at Riverside Applied Learning Center, where SuperFrog visits at school rallies were her first introduction to the university that would later become her home.

“I didn't know what college was at that time,” Torres said. “But you start seeing it on billboards, on T-shirts, and you wonder, ‘What is TCU?’”

A Pipeline to TCU

Torres credits two organizations with translating that early curiosity into a college plan: Girls Inc. of Tarrant County and Tarrant To & Through, the local college-access partnership commonly known as T3.

Girls Inc. guided her through her first college essay, her first interview and her first passport application. Through the organization, Torres became one of two Tarrant County recipients of a national $20,000 scholarship and traveled abroad for the first time, studying in Italy after her original Japan-bound program was rerouted because of COVID-19.

T3 layered on the logistics during her years at Marine Creek Collegiate High School, where she also earned an associate degree. The partnership ultimately helped close the gap on her TCU financial aid package — covering four years of tuition, a detail that would later reshape her academic plan.

“Every other school had something missing,” Torres said. “TCU gave me everything.”

Three Majors, One Throughline

Torres came to TCU planning to major in social work, inspired by the mentors who had been in her corner. The associate degree from Marine Creek meant she could finish a TCU bachelor’s in two years, but once she learned that her scholarships covered four, she began adding to her workload.

Her first addition came through Spanish for the Health Professions, a course taught by Spanish & Hispanic Studies faculty member Karla O’Donald.

“It was the hardest class I’ve taken here,” Torres said. “I didn’t know any of it in English, so I really had to work for it.”

When a sorority sister pointed out she was four classes away from turning her Spanish minor into a major in Spanish for the professions, she jumped at the opportunity.

The third major emerged from her social work internship with The Archway, formerly SafeHaven of Tarrant County, where the agency assigned her to work with offenders rather than survivors of domestic violence. Conducting intakes in both English and Spanish, Torres found herself wanting a fuller understanding of the criminal justice system her clients were navigating.

“I think the reason I did it was because I was scared,” she said. “And I said yes.”

T3’s four-year coverage gave her the runway to pursue it, so she added the third degree.

The Work Ahead

Torres’ undergraduate work has already moved into the field. At her current internship with the Fort Worth Police Department, she works with crime victims and survivors of human trafficking — connecting them with resources, navigating emergency protective orders and supporting them through the aftermath of violence.

When she applied for her MSW field placement, the department invited her back.

“I told them I wanted to stay and learn how to do crime victims compensation more in depth,” Torres said. “And they said yes.”

Long term, Torres is eyeing the FBI’s Victim Services Division, which deploys responders to mass-casualty events and major investigations. For now, she said, the foundation matters more than the destination.

“I usually have a lot of things planned out,” she said. “Right now, I feel like there’s a lot of free-floating. But that’s OK.”

What will not change, she said, is where she returns. Torres still speaks at Girls Inc. events and credits her parents, the programs that supported her and the TCU community she found at Frog Camp, in Sigma Lambda Alpha and on the TCU Rangers for everything that followed.

“Get involved,” she said. “And never forget where you came from.”

-Jamie Plunkett