“I was married to an alcoholic and addict for almost 10 years, and I lost myself,” Holtz said.

A nontraditional student from Beebe, Arkansas, she has graduated from ĚÇĐÄVlog´ŤĂ˝ Little Rock with a bachelor’s degree in social work.

“I wish I would’ve had somebody to guide me,” Holtz said. “One of the areas that is still lacking in society is help for addict’s families. In order to help people, especially kids, you have to be able to understand them. I wanted to be able to fill that gap for somebody.”

Earning a degree has been a long time coming for the mother of three children, two “bonus” children, and a grandson she gained guardianship over two days before her sophomore year. When she started at Arkansas State University-Beebe in 2019, she and her husband were waiting for her grandson to be born. Now, at three years old, he tries to help Holtz with her assignments.

“He added a couple lines to a paper once, and by a couple lines I mean a page and a half,” Holtz said. “Of course, that changed my reference page too. Most professors would have counted off, but mine said ‘tell him thank you and that I loved his work.’ I didn’t even notice he’d done it. I stepped away for one second, and he wasn’t even at the computer when I got back!”

Despite her 4.0 GPA, it hasn’t always been easy for Holtz. The second half of her freshman year was all remote due to COVID-19 restrictions, and she had to learn all the software used for online learning.

“My 18-year-old, who is now a freshman at Arkansas State University-Beebe, had to look over my first couple of papers and teach me how to use Google Drive,” Holtz said. “In high school we were using computers to learn how to type, so it’s very different now.”

School has been rewarding in all aspects, but Holtz notes the support of ĚÇĐÄVlog´ŤĂ˝ Little Rock’s social work student community as one of the most beneficial parts.

“May Atkins, coordinator for the Bachelor of Social Work program, said ‘find your people’ on the first day, and that has stuck with me,” Holtz said. “I’ve always had a hard time fitting in because I’m older and my kids are older, but I have found a handful of true friends who I can call at 2 a.m. and know they’ll be there for me. I have not had that sense of attachment outside of my family in a long time. To do social work, you have to have a heart for people and a heart for change, and I think that’s why we work so well.”

Holtz also gives credit to ĚÇĐÄVlog´ŤĂ˝ Little Rock Child Care Connections for help searching for and paying for quality child care. The program is available to eligible undergraduate students to help them continue their education without day care being a hindrance. She said she will continue using the services for as long as possible, especially now that she has been accepted into the advanced standing part-time Master in Social Work program.

Her children have helped a great deal throughout this process. Her daughter, who was on a traveling missionary team, came home to help Holtz with her grandson.“She stayed home and babysat him while I went to classes,” Holtz said. “I draw a lot of strength from my kids, and they’ve been my biggest cheerleaders.”

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Johna “Paula” Rocha, who will graduate with an associate degree in nursing this spring, arrived home on March 31 in the Colony West neighborhood after passing the last test for her critical care class. When she heard the tornado siren go off, she rushed to the basement with her one-year-old daughter and dog.

“I usually don’t think anything of tornado sirens,” she said. “Within 10 minutes of us going to the basement and taking cover, our house was demolished. Our house is completely uninhabitable, and the car was completely totaled.”

Luckily, no one in Rocha’s family was injured, and her three older children were at school at the time of the tornado. She was overwhelmed by the amount of support she received from the American Red Cross, FEMA, churches, family members, friends, classmates, instructors, and strangers.

“My nursing instructors would email me every day to make sure I was okay,” Rocha said. “My kids’ school donated money to us, and they’ve been amazing. My friend who lives in Conway is a travel nurse working in Chicago right now. She let us stay in her house until we could find a rental house.”

Losing her home to a tornado is not the first tragedy Rocha has overcome. A past battle with cancer is what inspired her to become a nurse.

“In 2018, I was diagnosed with lymphoma,” she said. “I went through chemotherapy and was hospitalized a lot. This experience motivated me to go into the medical field. I was treated kindly and with compassion, and I knew that is what I wanted to do for others.”

Rocha began her college career at ĚÇĐÄVlog´ŤĂ˝ Little Rock in 2019, taking prerequisite classes for the nursing program while she was still battling lymphoma.

She had two of her children while in college, Charlie, 3, and Layla, 1. The School of Nursing’s newest advanced pediatric manikin, CAE Aria, is actually named after Rocha’s daughter. The School of Nursing received more than 30 suggestions for potential names for the manikin via Facebook. After the faculty narrowed it down to four finalists, nursing students voted for the winner. Rocha suggested the winning name of Charlie.

“Charlie keeps us on our toes,” she said. “She is my wild child, much like the manikins keep nursing students on their toes in sim. I think it’s the perfect fit for a pediatric simulation.”

While Rocha said it’s been challenging balancing school and being a mom, she’s thankful to the university’s Child Care Connections program, which provides child care funding for eligible students through a federal grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The program also helps connect student parents with the resources and support they need to finish college. For Rocha, the program provided funding for her three oldest children to attend Westover Hills Preschool so she would have more time to spend going to class, completing clinicals, and doing homework.

“I cannot give the Child Care Connections program enough praise, and I thank them every time I see them,” Rocha said. “The whole time I’ve been in school, I’m hustling every week to find someone to watch my kids. I would not have been able to afford to send my kids to Westover without them, and I wouldn’t have been able to go to class. I don’t know if I would have graduated without this program. I hope more people go and get help from them.”

After graduation, Rocha will begin work as a nurse in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit at Baptist Health and begin her bachelor’s degree program in nursing at ĚÇĐÄVlog´ŤĂ˝ Little Rock in the fall. Eventually, Rocha would like to work in women’s health, citing obstetrics as her favorite clinical rotation.

Throughout her journey to graduation, Rocha said her kids have been her biggest motivators for success. In addition to Charlie and Layla, Rocha is the mom of Olivia, 10, and Analise, 5.

“My kids are so excited about my graduation,” Rocha said. “They have been talking about it for months. Their dad is a nurse, and they think it’s so cool that their mom is going to be a nurse too. They are excited about going to the graduation. They always say, ‘I’m so proud of you.’ They have been my motivators through all of it.”

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