Class of 2008 includes inspiring students
Transplant recipient graduating for two
As a tribute to his 17-year-old heart donor, Don Conley returned to school in the Adult Degree Evening Program to graduate for both of them.
(THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – May 9, 2008) The Class of 2008 at California Lutheran University includes several inspiring students. Here are some of their stories:
Transplant recipient graduates to honor teen donor
Don Conley of Simi Valley will be walking for two people during commencement. Diagnosed with end-stage heart failure in 2002, he received a lifesaving heart transplant the following year. As a tribute to his 17-year-old donor, who never had the chance to attend college, Conley returned to school in the Adult Degree Evening Program to graduate for both of them. The 47-year-old network engineer for Sunkist Growers in Sherman Oaks graduated cum laude, received the Departmental Distinction Award in Computer Information Systems and will speak at the Undergraduate Commencement Ceremony.
Gates scholar will return to her neighborhood to teach
Raised by a single mother in a tough neighborhood on Chicago’s south side, Jenny Andrews received a Gates Millennium Scholarship for low-income minority students who show academic and leadership promise and earned admittance to Yale University, Stanford University and several other colleges. She came to CLU, where she started a hip hop club and inspired a professor to begin a multicultural art journal that has featured her poetry. Andrews, who was named a Diversity Student Leader of 2008, earned a bachelor’s degree in multimedia. She has been accepted into the Teach for America Program, which recruits outstanding graduates to teach in urban public schools, and will begin teaching in her old neighborhood in September.
Victim of aneurysm inspires fellow doctoral classmates
Despite suffering a near-fatal brain aneurysm in May of last year, Barbara Semel Parkhurst of Oak Park completed her doctoral degree in educational leadership. She endured a series of operations and double vision for several months, but continued to work as she could on her dissertation. In March, she was the first of the doctoral candidates to successfully defend her dissertation. Parkhurst, a program specialist for Oak Park Unified School District, was an inspiration to all of the students in her cohort.