Simon Ndely vividly remembers when his connection to the University of Minnesota started. It was 1998 and his mother, Elizabeth Gobina (B.S. ’99), was graduating from the School of Dentistry with a degree in dental hygiene. Simon was still in elementary school, but sitting in Northrop Auditorium and watching his mom walk across the stage made a huge impression on him. “I couldn’t really appreciate what the accomplishment meant, but I knew it was an accomplishment,” he says, noting the commitment it took her to get a degree while also raising three children. “That memory is always something that stuck with me. And it was always something that I aspired to do.”

To say Simon (B.S. ’13, M.D. ’18) made good on that aspiration is an understatement: He would go on to attend the U of M for 13 consecutive years, first as an undergraduate, then as a medical student, and finally as a resident specializing in pediatrics.

In fact, the U of M has become a cherished tradition for several members of the extended Ndely family.

The Ndely connection to the U of M started in 1975, when Stephen Ndely moved to the United States from Limbe, Cameroon. Attending college was a bedrock value in his family, but at the time, there was only one university in his home country. Instruction was in both French and English, and Ndely (B.C.E. ’82) says his French proficiency wasn’t robust enough for him pursue his studies in it. He was young and adventurous and already had several cousins studying at American universities, so the U.S. was a natural choice. Ndely initially chose the University of Wisconsin Superior because the brochures showed a small campus on the shores of a beautiful lake. At the urging of his father, who had studied in England, Stephen bought cold-weather clothes. But nothing prepared him for the experience of the Lake Superior wind freezing him to the bone as he walked the mile between his dorm and the main campus.

Homesick and struggling, Stephen visited high school friends from Cameroon who were studying at the University of Minnesota. Intrigued, he spent the following summer in the Twin Cities, where he took a few classes at the U of M. He liked the experience so much that he applied to transfer, starting that fall as a premed student focusing on chemistry.

Stephen threw himself into campus life, joining the Minnesota International Students Association and starting the Minnesota chapter of the Cameroon Students Association, eventually becoming the organization’s president. “It was a huge achievement to leave Cameroon and go to the USA and be admitted,” he says over a Zoom call where he is dressed in maroon and gold Gopher logo wear. “It was something that I wanted to experience, and it met everything that I wanted to do, because I love different cultures.” He met students from Iran, Iraq, and other countries across the globe. “I told people it was like touring the world without going to different places.” His boundless enthusiasm for the U of M even persuaded his brother, Samuel (B.A. ’85), to join him in Minnesota.

After a friend urged Stephen to consider the long odds of making it into medical school—it was the 1970s and the opportunities for Black students, and students from Africa, were limited—he switched to chemical engineering. After graduation, he worked in the food industry as a process engineer for companies including Pillsbury, General Mills, and Nestle. Today, he runs his own engineering and project management consultancy.

In 1998, Stephen married Gobina, a family friend from the same tribe in Cameroon who was living in Seattle. They settled in Brooklyn Park and raised their three children, all of whom went to Champlin Park High School. Stephen instilled a pride in the U of M early, taking the kids to Gopher games, dressing them in maroon and gold, and buying his daughter, Michelle, a pom-pom. They cheered for the football and basketball teams and watched as the women’s basketball team with Lindsay Whalen had its magic 2004 run to the Women’s Final Four. “Even when the Gophers lost, I made sure we had fun afterwards,” Stephen says.

Given that extracurricular activities played such a huge role in helping Stephen establish himself in a new country, it was only natural he would encourage his own children to take advantage of everything college had to offer. “I told them ‘I’m okay if you’re not a 4.0 if you ... are involved with your community,’” he says.

It’s advice his children took seriously. Stephen and Elizabeth’s oldest child, Sam (B.A. ’12), started at the U of M in 2007 and joined several clubs and initiatives before classes even started, including the Black Student Union, where he was elected Student Leader of the Year in 2012, and Phi Beta Sigma, a historically African American fraternity, where he served as president. (Simon was also a member of the Black Student Union.)

Sam also chaired SHADES, which was a 2011 event dedicated to discussing skin color in contemporary society, and was a member of PRISM, a diversity and media initiative sponsored by the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication. As with his father, the University became a place to form lifelong bonds. His college roommates were the groomsmen at his wedding.

Today, Sam is a program officer at the Minneapolis Foundation and an active volunteer and board member for organizations including the Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Committee at the Alumni Association. “The U definitely put me in situations that challenged me to really step into opportunities and push myself,” he says.

Having Sam—and, eventually, Simon—on campus helped when Samuel’s daughter, Emilia Ndely-Ogundipe (B.A. ’11), transferred to the U of M from Marquette University in Milwaukee, after she was cut from the women’s soccer team. The loss of her identity as an athlete was devastating, and she feared the U of M would be a huge bureaucratic place. Sam convinced her to join the Black Student Union. “It was really, really nice to just have [my cousins] there and do college with them,” she says. Emilia also joined Black Motivated Women, a student group for which she served as president. She met her husband, former Gopher football player Damola Ogundipe (B.S. ’11), at the University.

After graduation, Emilia helped found the University’s Black Alumni Network, one of many networks facilitated by the Alumni Association. She also earned the 2022 College of Liberal Arts Emerging Alumni Award, and in 2023, was a speaker at the University’s undergraduate commencement. “I’ve always been a Gopher, even when I didn’t go to school [here],” she says. “But what I’m so grateful for is the leader that I became while I was here.”

Today, Emilia is a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow, a program that brings mid-career people from the private and public sector to Washington, D.C. to help modernize the government. She initially worked in the Department of Labor on an initiative to update unemployment insurance. Now, she’s working in the Department of Health and Human Services (she also has an M.B.A. and an M.P.H. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) on benefits programs.

Reflecting on her undergraduate experience, Emilia has a very Ndely outlook on the role of extracurriculars: “I think one thing that people don’t understand is, it’s not about getting into college—it’s about getting through college and graduating,” she says. “And what the college experience impresses on you. And if it wasn’t for those student groups, if it wasn’t for those spaces, I would not be where I am today.”

Sam and Simon’s sister, Michelle Ndely (B.S. ’18), also started the U of M as a transfer student. An accomplished high school athlete, she received a track scholarship at Concordia University in St. Paul, where she broke a school record at her first race. Contemplating transferring was difficult. “I had to make an executive decision about if I really wanted to do college sports,” Michelle says. “Did I really want to go and pursue the Olympics, or [was this stage of life] about academics and being able to be a [well-rounded] college student instead of a student athlete?”

Michelle transferred to the U of M after her sophomore year at Concordia. Like her brothers, she jumped into extracurriculars. She went to sporting events and joined the Black Student Union. And like her cousin, she served as president of Black Motivated Women. She also joined Zeta Phi Beta, a historic Black sorority. A psychology major, Michelle says being part of these organizations helped when it came to researching her senior thesis about taboos surrounding mental health in the Black community. Today, she works in the data analysis/program management unit of the Child Safety and Permanency Division of the Department of Human Services.

While she didn’t attend college at the same time as her brothers (Simon was on campus but busy with medical school), Michelle says the Ndely family legacy helped her transition to the U of M. “It was really great to have the support and legacy of my family being at the U,” she says.

And while the Ndelys certainly bond over their shared devotion to the University, they also believe that being committed alumni means pushing the University to be better, especially when it comes to equity and inclusion.

“We always have love for our University and the campus,” says Simon. “From my standpoint, that doesn’t mean we can’t recognize or call it out when it’s having issues.”

To that end, the Ndelys are generous with their time and talent in supporting the U of M. This past spring, Stephen even convinced a younger member of the family, Isabelle Endeley, to become a Gopher starting this fall.

“I’ve been campaigning like crazy,” he says, laughing. “I keep on asking, why would you want to go out to different universities when you have so much here?”

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