portraits of student success

Tue., Jul 08

The following portraits of five new Southern graduates speak to the hard work and resourcefulness for which the university's students are known. Congratulations and best wishes to all of our new grads!

A Mother Supporting Other Mothers

The car was racing down the road when suddenly the driver was forced to pull over. The passenger was in labor and there was no time to get to the birthing center. Fortunately, the driver was Sarah Wheeler, a birth doula, and she managed to deliver the baby safely and quickly.

As a birth doula, Wheeler (right) is always on call to provide physical and emotional support to expectant mothers prior to delivery as well as during labor. She graduated last month with her Bachelor of Science degree in interpersonal communication. Her adviser, Associate Professor of Communication Linda Sampson, says that this major was a "good choice [for Wheeler] because it gives you the skills to read the other person and adapt your behavior accordingly."

Although her major fit well with Wheeler's career plans, her best preparation comes from having three children of her own. Wheeler and her husband have a 5-year-old daughter and 3-year-old twin boys. Wheeler became a doula and wanted to become a midwife after giving birth to her daughter. She became fascinated with midwifery and decided to shadow a midwife for a while after she had her boys. Over the years, Wheeler has balanced marriage, motherhood, working as a birth doula and a full class load. Not only did she successfully earn her degree, Wheeler was a member of Lambda Pi Eta, the communication honors society, and graduated with a 3.98 GPA.

"Sarah always did work that was spot on and often at a level other students have a hard time reaching," says David Petroski, professor of communication.  Her hard work was exemplified during her final semester when she chose to complete an individual research assignment as part of her capstone course. Her research focused on educating people about birthing options.

Wheeler accomplished an impressive amount of work in a 15-week period. After receiving IRB (Internal Review Board) approval, she found participants, received approval for use of certain materials, developed her own survey and completed analysis of all the data. "Completing this type of research in the period she had is unheard of even for students who don't have families or jobs," says Sampson. Wheeler found that 90% of her participants' knowledge about birthing practices increased as a result of her study.

With so many things on her schedule, Wheeler says she is forced to be organized. "The more I have to do, the more I have to prioritize. I don't have time to procrastinate." Instead of making excuses, Wheeler would always turn work in early if she was on call and never missed an exam, even if she was out the night before assisting at a birth.

According to Sampson, Wheeler "set the bar in every class she took and always got 110% out of it. You could tell she wanted to learn, and it's students like her that really make a difference." Wheeler is first on the waiting list for Yale's midwifery graduate program, which only accepts 14 non-nursing majors per year. She plans to become a mid-wife and continue to educate young people on birthing options.

From the Fieldhouse to the White House

Over the course of his academic and athletic career at Southern, Collin Walsh (left) epitomized the definition of the term "student-athlete." Walsh, who earned a bachelor's degree in political science and garnered a 3.82 GPA, was a three-sport standout in indoor and outdoor track and field and cross country. His success even took him as far as the White House for an internship during the fall 2007 semester.

On the track, Walsh was a seven-time All-New England performer in track and field and earned All-America honors in the distance medley relay during his sophomore sea-son. A team captain in all three sports, he also helped the Owls win four Northeast-10 Conference Indoor Track and Field championships and another three outdoor conference crowns.

He was named to the NE-10 Men's Track and Field All-Academic Team on three occasions and was also nominated for Academic All-America honors as a senior.

In the classroom, he emerged as one of the top students on campus. He was recognized with several campus awards. He earned the Kul B. Rai Political Science Award, given by the Political Science Department to the top student with that major. He also was a Barnard Scholarship Award finalist. He served as the vice president of Pi Sigma Alpha, the campus political science honor society, and was a member of the Gold Key International Honor Society.

But it was experience in the White House that set him apart from most of his peers.  While in Washington, Walsh also graduated from the Washington Center, a cooperative educational program that combines coursework and on-site work experience with government officials and business professionals.

"It (the White House internship) was certainly an eye-opening experience," Walsh says. "You get an inside view on how Washington works. It's real people making real decisions. They're not superhuman."

Jack Maloney, Walsh's cross country and track coach, acknowledges the special talents that Walsh brought to the program and his indelible impact on those around him.

"Collin was a true leader on our team and his leadership qualities transcended all ethnic lines, which is important with a diverse team such as ours," Maloney says. "He went out of his way to mentor our younger student-athletes -- academically, athletically and with their adjustment to the college experience. He's the type of leader that says 'follow me and I'll get it done.' He doesn't yell or place blame on others.

"I can't tell you the number of times that he was tired in practice and I would ask him if he was getting sick. He would say that he was up late the night before until 2 or 3 a.m. doing a paper. Collin didn't need to stay up that late -- he would have gotten a 3.2 or a 3.3 (for the semester). But he was staying up late and finishing his work to get a 4.0. Collin had very high athletic goals, but he never let his academics suffer at the expense of athletics."

Walsh says he believes that the ability to prioritize and focus are important in achieving success.
He is currently weighing several job opportunities. He is also studying for the LSAT exam and is eyeing a future career as a lawyer.

Now, with a Southern degree in hand, Walsh is also preparing for new challenges in life.
"I leave here feeling like I have to start new again," Walsh says. "The real world is not academia. I do feel fulfilled that I got this one step out of the way, but I also feel like I'm just beginning. I have a lot more to do."

Church Women Are Lovers of Language

They finish each other's sentences and obviously enjoy each other's company. So it comes as no great surprise that Lois Lake Church (at right, center) and her daughter, Julie (at right, on the far right), would attend the same university. What is perhaps more surprising is that both mother and daughter, who graduated from Southern in May with degrees in English, are literary journal editors and award-winning writers with a passion for words.

Lois earned her Master of Arts degree and Julie received a Bachelor of Arts degree, and they each served this year as editor-in-chief of a campus art and literary magazine. Lois is the founder and editor of Noctua Review, the new graduate publication, and Julie was the 2007-2008 editor of Folio, the longstanding undergraduate journal.

A former high school teacher and home educator, Lois works in several capacities on Southern's campus. While working towards her master's, she has been an adjunct instructor in the English Department and a tutor in the campus writing center during the academic year. She also teaches English in the ConnCAS program during the summer. Her writing won second place in Southern's short story competition in 2006 and the Connecticut State University System essay competition in 2008. At Southern's May 23 commencement, she received the J. Philip Smith Outstanding Teacher Award for a part-time faculty member.

Julie won second place in the 2006-07 Folio poetry competition and served as art editor for the magazine. Outside class time, she has worked in Southern's Office of Financial Aid, and in the fall she will head to the University of Wyoming to pursue an Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing. She graduated from the Taft School in Watertown in 2003 and spent her junior year of high school abroad in Rennes, France.

A third Church family member, Victoria (above, left), also attends Southern. A dean's list theater major in the Honors College, she was the first person in Connecticut to have purchased a "smartcar," a tiny fuel-efficient import that debuted in the United States in January. Victoria recently received the Theatre Department's first William Elwood Award, which honors a scholar/artist in the department.

How is it that the three Church women all ended up at Southern?

Lois came to the university in 2005 to finish her master's degree, which she had started working on at Syracuse University years ago. "I started raving to my family about my classes and how at home I felt here," she says, and when her daughters found that they were less than satisfied with the experiences they were having at their own colleges -- Julie at Bryn Mawr and Victoria at Mount Holyoke -- they decided to move back home and give Southern a try. They never looked back.

Both of the Church daughters were homeschooled as children, and, Julie says, "We got to explore what we were really interested in." They played historical games and joined 4-H and a Shakespearean youth theatre, and Lois taught them poetry. The family has also performed together for many years with the Connecticut Gilbert & Sullivan Society. Lois and her daughters jokingly say they feel like they belong in the 19th century, and Julie and Victoria refer to their father, Meriden Record-Journal columnist Allan Church, as "Papa."

Lois brings her homeschooler's initiative and resourcefulness to her work at Southern, starting Noctua Review this past year when she saw a need for a graduate student publication. Never having started a magazine before, she says, she "made it up as I went along. It's how we've done everything with homeschooling."

The family says it has "a lot of plates in the air," but clearly the love of language that fills their lives brings them much joy, togetherness and success.

Research Dedicated to Deceased Younger Sister

Two years ago, Christina Saccoccio (left) was mourning the loss of her younger sister, Michelle, who died in an automobile accident in East Windsor. During the weeks following the tragedy, she questioned many aspects of her life, including her academic future.

But after some soul searching and support from her family, friends, classmates and professors, Saccoccio not only opted to continue her studies, but decided to dedicate her research projects to her sister. She earned a master's degree last year and a 6th-Year Professional Diploma in May.

Her research includes a soon-to-be published co-written article in the journal, Report on Emotional & Behavioral Disorders in Youth, which discusses the impact of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act on children's mental health. In fact, the work will be among those referred to by Edward Zigler, a psychologist and one of the foremost experts in child development and social policy, when he testifies in front of Congress later this year. Misty Ginicola, assistant professor of counseling and school psychology at Southern and co-author of the article, says she believes it will be the first article to examine the impact that NCLB has had on children's mental health.

"My work with (NCLB) was inspired by my sister and her experience in school," Saccoccio says. "Although my sister did not have a serious mental illness, she suffered from extremely low self-esteem and did not think she could succeed in college, even though she had the intellect to do well.
"But there are children in schools who develop serious mental health disorders -- anxiety and depressive disorders, behavior disorders. (NCLB) places an incredible amount of stress on children to perform."

Saccoccio notes that her sister was making significant progress in the months before her untimely death. Previously, her sister had not applied herself seriously toward academics in high school because of a perceived inability to succeed. "She had a million friends and was well-liked by her teachers, but she just didn't think she could be a really good student."

In fact, after graduating from Fermi High School in Enfield -- where Christina had graduated a few years earlier -- Michelle Saccoccio did not intend to pursue a college degree until she saw many of her friends moving away to college. She opted to enroll at community college twice, but dropped out each time.

"I knew she had the intellect, so I decided to try something different," Saccoccio says. "Behind her back, I filled out all the paperwork needed for her application, and ultimately her acceptance, at Western Connecticut State University."

One day, she asked her sister to accompany her on a tour of WCSU, thinking that being in a college campus might spark her interest to go to college. It did. "When we were done, she was saying to me that she wished she could go to a four-year college. That's when I told her she could -- that she had been accepted at WestConn. You should have seen her face -- she was shocked. I started crying because I was so excited for her. I told her that she could succeed."

But on June 25, 2006, after a successful first semester at Western, Michelle died instantly in a motor vehicle accident.

"It is a rarity to find someone who is so driven and intelligent, yet who is also equally passionate about being a good person," says Ginicola, who served as a mentor to Christina Saccoccio. "Because of what she has experienced, she has dedicated every moment to living life to the fullest and helping others who are in need."

Saccoccio hopes to land a job soon as a school psychologist, ideally in an urban school district.