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On Thursday, May 14, Indiana University Northwest conferred 827 degrees to members of the Class of 2009. As with every year, the stories of this year’s graduates are as disparate as they are uplifting, and each attests to the power of education to change lives.
For some grads, such as Josh Garza, of Portage, a college education was a path briefly deferred; for others, such as Emanuel Medellin, of Lake Station, it was an epic journey. Having achieved this important goal in their lives, both men are set to pursue even greater achievements in their chosen professions.
“I love science and I love medicine,” said Garza, 23, who graduated this year with a B.S. in biology. By his own admission, Garza was not a serious student in high school, and he spent more than a year after graduation working as an electrician. But Garza wanted something more.
“I realized that being an electrician wasn’t for me,” he said. “I wanted to do something else. I was interested in science. A light went on in my head, and I realized that I could go back to school.”
Garza enrolled in IU Northwest’s pre-med program and threw himself at the task of making up for lost time.
“I was really deficient in a lot of areas in relation to math,” he said. “I had to catch up, on top of learning all of the new stuff I had to learn. It was pretty tough my first two years. I attacked school and worked at school like a job. It gave me a new outlook and a new focus.
“One of the things I like about IU Northwest (is that) it’s smaller,” he added. “Whatever time I need, I can get it with my professors because it’s one-on-one. It’s worked out for me.”
Garza will attend medical school this fall, and he is considering a career in pediatric medicine.
For Medellin, who graduated this year with a B.S. in elementary education, the journey to complete his degree began 17 years ago. The Andrean High School graduate initially set out to study criminal justice, but a high school English teacher convinced him to consider becoming a teacher. The more Medellin thought about it, the more convinced he became that his calling was in the classroom.
“The idea that my high school teacher had that kind of faith in me meant a lot,” said Medellin, 35. “I wanted to go into criminal justice to work with young people who were in trouble, or who were on the wrong path. But I thought, ‘Why not reach them before they get to that point?’”
He completed three years of study toward his education degree before taking time away from school. Medellin took a job in the steel industry in 1999 and later began a family with his wife, Jackie. Complications with the birth of their daughter, Evelis, in 2003, followed by her serious, but curable, illness, put his education plans on hold for a while longer.
“I would try to just put it out of my mind and accept that I was not going to be a teacher,” Medellin said. “But something inside me would simply not let it go. I thought, ‘This is where I have to be. I have to be in the classroom.’”
Medellin completed his student teaching in the winter, and he expects to enter the classroom as a certified teacher in August. The long and challenging path he followed to graduation, Medellin said, has left him better prepared for the classroom.
“I think I’m better off having waited until now to complete my degree,” he said. “Every experience I’ve had in life has taught me something new and will make me a more effective teacher. I’ve met a lot of great people along the way. If I had finished my degree and started teaching years ago, who knows if I would still be doing it?”
Medellin emphasized that he wasn’t leaving the steel mills for teaching just to have his summers off.
“This is an outstanding challenge and an outstanding opportunity, and it’s not something to be taken lightly,” he said. “This is about shaping young minds. There are some students, especially students of color, who may not have a positive male role model in their lives. This is a chance to be a positive influence for them.
“There is a lot at stake,” Medellin concluded.
Many of this year’s graduates will, like Garza, immediately pursue post-baccalaureate education. La’Kisha Girder, of Gary, who graduates this year with bachelor’s degrees in history and political science, has been accepted to the University of Cincinnati, where she will pursue her master’s degree in community planning with a focus on international development.
“I want to go back to get my Ph.D. in political science and hopefully do consulting for the European Union and the United Nations,” Girder said. “You have to be ambitious to be successful.”
Girder began her college career at Northwestern University, where she enrolled as a pre-med student. But she decided that neither her school nor her field suited her, so La’Kisha came back home to IU Northwest and pursued the subjects – history and politics – that had fascinated her since childhood.
“I was always good at history and politics,” she said. “The first question anybody asks you is ‘What are you going to do with that?’ I didn’t know what I was going to do with political science at first. But somebody once told me, ‘You can do anything you want with any degree.’
“You can save the world being a political science student,” she said.
Girder praised both the history and political science departments at IU Northwest for their knowledgeable, personable faculty, and said that her hometown university was the right choice for her education.
“I’m glad I came to IU Northwest. It’s been really rewarding,” she said. “A lot of the things that you would think you could get at a big school like Northwestern, I got that here. And I didn’t have to pay as much money.”
“I met my advisor once (at the other school). I can go see any of my three advisors here any time I want,” Girder added. “I can email them or contact them. They’re always visible. You know what your professors are doing and where they are. It helps push you to be a better student, because you know that you have somebody rooting for you.”
One of Girder’s fellow history and political science graduates, Christopher Mercado, of Merrillville, has his own grad-school gig planned out – in Ireland. Mercado, also a double major, will study for his master’s degree in political science at Queens University – Belfast. Mercado is interested in international relations and political conflict management.
“Northern Ireland has always been my calling,” said Mercado, who served this year as president of IU Northwest’s Alpha Gamma Phi chapter of Pi Sigma Alpha, the national honor society for political science undergraduates. “I started my interest in my last year in high school. I did a term paper and talked about the hunger strike in 1981.”
At IU Northwest, Mercado expanded his interest in human rights to include Latin America and the Middle East. He presented papers on Latin America at several professional conferences. He, along with International Affairs Club President La’Kisha Girder, also helped to organize the Human Rights Awareness Week that was held on campus in March. Mercado and the honor society applied for and received a substantial cash grant from Pi Sigma Alpha to fund that week’s activities.
Mercado credited political-science faculty members Professor Jean Poulard, Ph.D., and Assistant Professor Marie Eisenstein, Ph.D., for helping him to follow his interest in human rights to a higher academic level.
“You’re a lot closer to your professors at IU Northwest,” Mercado said. “I’ve gone to six or seven parties at Dr. Poulard’s house, just holiday parties, and we had a voting-day party for Election Day. I’ve gone there for dinner and eaten snails. When you eat snails with the man, you’re pretty close. I’ve been to (Pi Sigma Alpha faculty advisor) Dr. Eisenstein’s house a couple of times. We had a game night there with all of our PSA members. We’re all really a close bunch.”
Mercado said IU Northwest offers ambitious students ample opportunity for academic enrichment both in and out of class.
“There’s a lot of potential here,” he said. “The students who get active and really challenge themselves, they’re going to be successful.”
For other students, of course, the challenges find them, and the Class of 2009 features numerous success stories from graduates who persevered despite obstacles or setbacks that might have discouraged less committed individuals.
Master of Social Work graduate Theresa Woods, 26, of Michigan City, lost her parents, James and Barbara Woods, within several months of each other in 2008. Such devastating personal adversity might have led others to take a break from their studies to recover. But Woods soldiered forth in what may be IU Northwest’s toughest graduate program and completed her degree on schedule. She was also inducted as a member of the Phi Alpha National Social Work Honor Society
“I just didn’t see the point in skipping a semester,” Woods said. “I wanted to finish. I only had two more semesters to go. My teachers were accommodating about letting me turn stuff in a little late and things like that.”
When coping with tragedy, Woods said, it helps to study in a program in which your teachers are also experienced counselors.
“They were very supportive during the time that all of this was going on, and they kept telling me to talk to them about things,” she said. “I told them that I knew all about dealing with the stages of grief, but they said, ‘That’s not always how it works in real life. Just make sure that you’re aware of what you’re going through.’ They helped me to put some things in perspective.”
Now that she has completed her advanced degree, Woods expects to work as a middle-school social worker. Woods said that she genuinely enjoys working with students in that age group.
For education graduate Dawn Swanson, of Crown Point, the major challenge to her degree aspirations was financial. Swanson and her husband, Joseph, a former police officer, faced a money crunch when he was injured and forced to retire early.
“I was about halfway through the program, and that cut our family income in half,” Swanson said. “So it’s been a real challenge, with three daughters in school, working a full-time job and going to class. But it’s been a total family commitment. Whatever we do, we do together.”
Literally. Dawn Swanson was the second member of her family to graduate from IU Northwest with a degree. Her husband, Joseph, earned his M.P.A from the School of Public and Environmental Affairs last year, and he is scheduled to teach a class for SPEA this fall.
“IU Northwest is home for us. We’ve been there forever,” Dawn Swanson said.
She chose the IU Northwest School of Education in part, Swanson said, because it offers the Teaching All Learners program that prepares students to teach students with special needs.
“I felt (that) certification, with the elementary education and the special education, was my best option for working in the fully inclusive classroom,” said Swanson, who graduated with a 4.0. Her commitment to her future students helped motivate her to pursue academic excellence despite the many competing commitments in her life.
“There was never any question. I need to be the best that I can be to do the best job for my students,” Swanson said.
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