VCU news

Graduation season is upon us, and printing presses everywhere are busy producing diplomas for educational degrees of all kinds. Many of these diplomas will soon be framed and proudly displayed on walls; others will be tucked away for safekeeping. But behind each of these pieces of paper is the story of an individual who has accomplished a major life goal, often with great determination, sacrifice, hard work and passion.

Nearly 4,500 students will graduate from Virginia Commonwealth University on May 10. Following is just a sampling of VCU’s many remarkable graduates. Take a moment to get to know them.

 

Aleena Inthaly

When Aleena Inthaly started attending school as a young child, she struggled to adapt. A first-generation American whose parents had fled Laos during the Vietnam War, Inthaly spoke Lao with her family at home. Learning in English in the classroom was a challenge. So were certain social norms. For instance, teachers required her to look them in the eye when they spoke to her – a disrespectful act to elders in Laotian society.

However, Inthaly soon grew accustomed not only to American society but to her role as an intermediary between her family and their adopted home. In subsequent years, she helped to bridge cultural gaps, serving as a family translator and trailblazer – the first fluent English speaker, the first to attend school, the first to embrace American culture, and, this month, the first to graduate from college.

Inthaly said being first creates demands but also yields rewards.

“There have been a lot of challenges that have come with it,” Inthaly said. “But I’ve learned a lot, and it’s really shaped who I am now.”

In particular, Inthaly, who is graduating with a degree in political science with a concentration in international relations from the College of Humanities and Sciences, has developed a wider interest in societies and the way their traditions and cultures shape their behavior, such as the governments they form, the policies they adopt and the ways they interact with each other.

Inthaly has also maintained especially strong ties with her Southeast Asia roots. She was a founder of a VCU chapter of Legacies of War, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the proper clearance of unexploded bombs in Laos left over from the Vietnam War, and she plans to seek career opportunities to teach English in either Laos or Thailand, where much of her extended family settled.

Inthaly said VCU has been an ideal home for her, particularly because of the diversity that became apparent to her the day she moved onto campus. She described the university’s environment as “southern hospitality with international influences and the academic seriousness of a research institution.”

For the past two years, Inthaly has served as a resident assistant in Brandt Hall, an experience that she called “the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” She said serving as a leader for a unit represented by different nationalities, ethnicities and sexual orientations has been invigorating.

“As an RA, we really have to build a community for these students,” she said.

She said the echoes to her experience growing up are clear.

“It’s felt like a family for me here.”

 

Nikita Jathan

Nikita Jathan came to VCU on a Presidential Scholarship assuming she was on track to becoming a doctor. She realized eventually, however, that she couldn’t ignore her passion for environmentalism.

“I think I’ve always felt that our society doesn’t treat the environment the way it deserves to be treated,” Jathan said. “When we take from a human, we feel some obligation to give something back in return, but that philosophy doesn’t seem to apply to the Earth. I think I realized just how passionate I was about that concept about halfway through my college career, and that’s when I made the decision to make this my life’s work.”

Jathan switched her academic direction and reached out to VCU’s Office of Sustainability in her search for ways to get involved close to home. Jacek Ghosh, former director of the sustainability office, hired her as an intern.

“Nikita has been a great asset when it’s come to communicating with students about sustainability at VCU,” said Parker Long, sustainability reporting and outreach coordinator. “We are working on getting in the student orientation handbook this year and that was all because of her.”

Jathan also has pursued opportunities to work on green projects around the world. She has engaged in service projects in Thailand, the Dominican Republic and Nepal, and she’s joined projects elsewhere in the United States, too.

When asked how VCU has prepared her for her next steps in life, Jathan replied, “I’ve learned how to not to be shaken by change. I completely changed my life’s course in so many ways during my time here.”

She also shared a bit of advice for incoming freshmen.

“Don’t be afraid to fail,” Jathan said. “Trust me, I’m no pro at this yet myself, but I do know that I learned so much from my shortfalls and my mistakes in college – whether they were academic, social or personal. Getting caught up in little failures will impede your ability to move on and make your college experience awesome. Try new things, then try more new things and always keep smiling. It’s a short four years, so don’t waste any of it.”

Jathan will graduate this month with an undergraduate degree in environmental studies and a minor in chemistry. She plans to spend the next year completing her master’s degree in environmental sciences while working in a lab researching new innovations in environmental design.

“I don’t know if I can put a name yet to what I want to accomplish, but I do know that I want to end up working to improve how our cities and their buildings are designed,” Jathan said.

 

Courtney Cornejo

When Courtney Cornejo was homeless, she found it difficult to make it to school every day. Cornejo, a Portsmouth, Va., native, moved from house to house with her birth mother for four years, finding shelter with friends and relatives. They were never on the street, but they were also never in one place for long. Cornejo didn’t have a bedroom of her own or a favorite place to study. The persistent disruption and lack of stability – the shifting availability of the basics of food and shelter – frequently relegated classes to a secondary concern.

Despite the high number of absences and tardies on her record, however, Cornejo thrived in her course work at Churchland High School. She scored excellent grades, ultimately building up a catalogue of 28 college credits, and she graduated on schedule and headed to VCU. She points to three chief reasons for her success. One, she happens to love school. Working hard on academics comes naturally to her. Two, a friend’s family took her in late in her high school tenure and gave her a place to live, ending the cycle of unpacking and packing, settling and resettling. And three, she was blessed with high school counselors who believed in her.

Those counselors, she said, prevented her from turning her back on high school for good during her junior year.

“I almost dropped out,” Cornejo said. “But they kept me in school, worked with my teachers to help me out and made sure I applied for college. If they hadn’t done that, I don’t know what I’d be doing right now. I’d probably be struggling in Portsmouth.”

The counseling department had such an influence on Cornejo that she decided to pursue a career that would allow her to have a similar impact on students in tough spots. She earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology at VCU and then entered immediately into a master’s program in the School of Education. This month, Cornejo will graduate with her master’s degree in counselor education, specializing in school counseling, at the age of 23, having swept through school on an ambitious schedule of classes.

Cornejo said her classmates and instructors at VCU have spurred her forward in pursuit of her goals. She particularly points to the help of her adviser, Donna Dockery, Ph.D.

“She saw my motivation to do this, and she helped me keep on a good track,” said Cornejo, the recipient of VCU’s Student of the Year recognition from the Virginia School Counselors Association. “She was wonderful, absolutely wonderful.”

Cornejo is eager to share what she’s learned – both from her experiences and her education – with students facing their own difficulties, and she will seek a school counselor job after graduation. She’s quick to note that students face many challenges that may look trivial next to homelessness, but they are not trivial to the student – nor are they to Cornejo.

“I want to help them through their adversity, no matter what it is,” she said.

 

Charles “Dale” Stevenson

Charles “Dale” Stevenson graduates this month from the VCU School of Allied Health Professions with a doctorate in nursing anesthesia practice. He is 78 years old.

Stevenson’s motivation for earning a DNAP at this distinguished stage of his life is so he can teach aspiring nurse anesthetists at a university. His aim is to pass to younger students all of the experiences and tricks of the trade he’s picked up in his 40 years on the job.

“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” he said. “But you can teach a new dog some of the old tricks.”

Stevenson is owner and chief nurse anesthetist at Complete Anesthesia Care in Waxahachie, Texas. He earned his first degree in nurse anesthesia from St. Joseph Hospital in Forth Worth, Texas, in 1974, and his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from North Texas State (now the University of North Texas) in the 1950s and 1960s. He spent most of his career in the Air Force, retiring as a major in 1993. He served as a nurse anesthetist during Operation Desert Storm when he was 55.

Stevenson has taken most of his VCU classes online, but commuted from Texas to Richmond every August, January and May. He chose VCU over schools closer to him because of the experience of the faculty, the quality of the distance education program in DNAP and the national reputation of the department, which is ranked No. 1 by U.S. News & World Report.

Once Stevenson attends graduation on Saturday and returns to Texas, old tricks and lessons learned on the job won’t be the only things he teaches his future pupils. His advice to them, he said, will be to do what he has done over the years and commit to being a lifelong learner.

“The biggest changes are in technology and pharmaceuticals, so get involved in everything you can that might promote learning,” he said. “Latch onto every opportunity afforded to you and you can accomplish anything.”

In other words, if you are always learning along the way, you won’t ever really become an old dog.

 

Amani Walker

In her time at VCU, Amani Walker devoted herself to serving others – as a resident assistant, as a reading coach in a Richmond elementary school and as a political activist who led a voter drive that registered more than 300 students to vote in 2012.

Walker, who is from Woodbridge, Va., and is graduating with bachelor’s degrees in political science and international studies, as well as a minor in gender, sexuality and women’s studies, all from the College of Humanities and Sciences, sought to serve the VCU community from her first year.

“My freshman year, that’s pretty much where my journey began with involvement at VCU,” Walker said. “I worked as an orientation leader with new student programming. And that kind of set the tone for everything else that I did here at the university and the community.”

In her sophomore year, Walker became a resident assistant, and went on to serve as an RA for the next three years. She is currently the senior RA in West Grace Street Student Housing – North, home to VCU Globe, which aims to expand students’ knowledge and impact as global citizens through course work, co-curricular activities and a residential experience.

Walker served as a student representative on the task force that helped establish the Globe living-learning community.

“There’s about 40 international students and 40 domestic students and we’ve really built an environment where international and intercultural exchange can occur,” she said.

Walker also served as political chair of NAACP at VCU. In that role, she co-founded a coalition of student groups called Ram the Vote that organized a campuswide voter drive during the 2012 presidential election, held an event where a panel of politicians discussed the importance of voting, and arranged for VCU Police’s shuttle to drive students to the polls on Election Day.

“A lot of people have this notion that young people don’t want to get involved with politics,” she said.
“We wanted to combat that.”

Last summer, Walker studied abroad in Brazil on a Global Scholar/Activist trip that explored how race, class and gender can affect people’s abilities to gain access to educational, political and socioeconomic privileges, she said.

That trip inspired her to pursue a career in international education, and she recently committed to attending New York University to obtain a master’s degree in the field. The trip also inspired her to support education in Richmond, and she has since been working for VCU AmeriCorps as a classroom reading coach at J.L. Francis Elementary School.

“It’s been a really eye-opening experience because you get to see the struggles being faced in the school system, but it’s also been a really rewarding experience to know that you’re making an impact on these kids’ lives,” she said.

 

Beth-ann Vealey

Lt. Cmdr. Beth-ann Vealey, a U.S. Navy social work officer, is poised to receive her Ph.D. from VCU’s School of Social Work, and her research may help the armed forces better support active-duty military women.

Vealey, who previously earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work from VCU, is an active-duty Naval officer who was deployed to Iraq with the U.S. Army in 2009 and served for four years in the U.S. Marine Corps.

In the Navy, Vealey has primarily helped Marines more effectively deal with combat and operational stress and other behavioral health issues.

Vealey said she chose to come back to VCU under the Navy’s “Duty Under Instruction” program – which allows selected sailors to professionally develop while on active duty – because VCU’s social work program educates its doctoral students on multiparadigmatic ways to conduct social science research.

At VCU, Vealey focused her research on the experiences of active-duty military women, with an eye toward helping military women deal with challenges arising from training and deployment experiences – particularly now that the military’s longstanding ban on women in combat has been lifted and more women will likely soon serve in combat-designated roles.

“The Marine Corps, having a specific warfighting mission, has focused their efforts and tasked research analysts to specifically study the [Marines’ efforts to integrate women],” she said. “They’re in the phase right now where they’re doing specific research on active-duty women Marines to determine how to successfully integrate them into those combat-designated roles.”

For her dissertation, “United States Women Marines’ Experiences and Perspectives about Coping with Service Life: A Phenomenological Study,” Vealey set out to interview active-duty women in the Marine Corps to better understand their experiences and discover whether specific military “stressors” influence their ability to cope with such challenges as combat exposure, interpersonal stressors, gender harassment and sexual harassment.

“Gender-specific research on military women is limited; current research has primarily focused on discharged veterans and has been remiss in addressing women-specific issues for those currently serving in an active duty status,” the dissertation says. “This study sought to address this under-researched phenomenon by exploring the military experiences of women on active duty in the United States Marine Corps.”

Vealey said it is her dream to see the Marine Corps use her research to better support active-duty military women, especially during this time of transition.

Following graduation, Vealey will report to her next duty assignment at the Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth.

Vealey’s husband, Sgt. Maj. James D. Vealey, is in the Marine Corps and stationed in Hawaii. Her son, Anthony Vealey, is an English major at VCU, and is slated to graduate in December.

 

Saher Randhawa

When Saher Randhawa was 17 years old, like of a lot of graduating high school seniors, she had a timeline in mind. She figured she’d be done with college by the time she turned 21, start her career and go from there.

“But I quickly learned that things aren’t always on a timeline,” Randhawa said. “You’re going to get some curveballs.”

After moving from Pakistan with her family at the age of 6 and growing up in the San Francisco Bay area, Randhawa enrolled at the University of California, Davis. When her family relocated to Northern Virginia, she found herself in a position to rewrite her plan and tap into the kind of hands-on educational experience she felt she lacked in California. Once she discovered the Richard T. Robertson School of Media and Culture at VCU, she knew she’d found it.

“I was a communications major at UC-Davis, but that didn’t really allow me to do some of the public relations and marketing work I was really interested in,” Randhawa said. “Here, I could do all of it, and immediately put what I learned in class into action.”

Through her course work, Randhawa helped craft a comprehensive outreach plan to grow participation in the Blue Sky Fund, which works to provide outdoor recreational experiences and science education for at-risk youths in Richmond. She also worked on a campaign, with an emphasis on social media, to grow awareness of the medical, employment and housing services offered by The Daily Planet in Richmond.

Similarly, in a cause close to her heart, as both of her parents have diabetes, Randhawa sought out an internship with the Central Virginia office of the American Diabetes Association, where she serves as a social media and public relations manager and newsletter editor, helping to plan events and craft press releases, web content and advertising materials.

“Being involved with these local organizations is something you don’t get exposed to at a lot of other places, and seeing firsthand how much you can help has probably been the most inspiring part of my VCU education,” Randhawa said.

However, perhaps as inspiring is the confidence Randhawa said her educational experience has instilled in her.

“Now, I’m 25, and finally being able to dive into the job hunt has been a challenge, but that’s the fun part,” Randhawa said. “And with the things I’ve learned and the experiences I’ve gained in just a short time here, I know I don’t have to settle for just any job out there. I can go get the one I really want.”

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