Heidi Toth

Kay Mitchell-Spires has lived two lives.

In the first, she was a business owner, a world traveler and always on the go—living on her own terms, mother to eight children, happy.

In the second, she is confined to a wheelchair, in significant pain, unable to care for herself, struggling to read and write and do other tasks that she used to do without thinking.

They are bisected by a day in 2006 when Mitchell-Spires was in an accident that broke most of the bones on the right side of her body, including her neck, and left her with a stage III traumatic brain injury. She almost died. That day was followed by two grueling years of surgery and recovery, memory loss, doctor’s appointments, speech, physical, vocational and cognitive therapy and longing for the life she used to live. She didn’t recognize her children’s faces at first. Everything she’d had to live for was gone.

Kay Mitchell-Spires, however, had no intention of dying, or even just going through the motions of life. As difficult, painful and foreign as her situation was, she kept going, starting with earning a college degree—a goal she’ll accomplish when she crosses the stage at Northern Arizona University’s December 2018 commencement.

“I remember being driven by an elder daughter to the Pima Community College campus and rolling into the registrar’s office in my wheelchair, seeking to know the steps I needed to take to become a full-time student,” Mitchell-Spires said. “I expected stares and judgment but found only encouragement and acceptance.”

Unable to read and write, she had help from a tutor and an aide as she worked through her class. She had audio textbooks and used broken-speech voice commands to type out her homework and papers. Every day for that first year, she cried and thought about quitting.

“I felt as if everyone was speaking to me in a foreign language that everyone understood but me,” she said.

She didn’t quit, and as her brain got used to the work, she found other tasks were easier. By her second year at PCC, she was walking and relearning to read. Two years after enrolling at Pima, Mitchell-Spires was accepted at NAU, starting her bachelor’s degree in public administration. She attended classes at the Tucson campus in addition to taking online courses through the College of Education.

None of it was easy, she said. For the last nine years, she struggled with reading comprehension. She constantly feared she didn’t understand what an assignment was asking for. The best part was seeing grades posted at the end of a semester and knowing she was one class closer to earning her degree.

John Strader, a faculty member with NAU Online, said he taught Mitchell-Spires twice in her collegiate career, both at the community college level and as she worked toward her bachelor’s degree at NAU.

“Kay has overcome substantial setbacks and challenges in her life, and through all of those she has remained dedicated to learning and dedicated to her academic goals,” he said. “She has proven to be an exemplary student in the process, demonstrating her depth of analysis through her discussions with her fellow students and her academic work product. It is a real pleasure to see someone not give up on herself or her goals, and to achieve so much success in the process.”

With that degree almost in hand, Mitchell-Spires said a host of new career options are available to her; she’s looking for jobs in the Department of Veterans Affairs and with nonprofits that seek to better the lives of children in the foster care system. She and her wife have adopted and fostered several children, so these causes have extra meaning for her.

She’s even found ways to give back to the community. For the last three years, Mitchell-Spires has spent four days a month teaching other foster or adoptive parents how to style and manage hair of African-American or multicultural children; it doesn’t seem like a big deal, she said, but knowing how to care for a child you’ve taken in who’s a different race promotes bonding and makes children more confident and self-assured.

Mitchell-Spires said it feels surreal to think about walking across the stage to accept what she calls her “small moment of glory.”

“Attending NAU was a visual reminder to myself and others that, despite my different abilities, the impossible could become possible as long as my courage and perseverance never wavered,” she said. “It’s hard to explain, but NAU, its faculty and students, gave me the skills and confidence to collect, gather and examine the broken pieces of my life and make the most beautiful mosaic of my life that I have now.”

 

Heidi Toth | NAU Communications
(928) 523-5556 | heidi.toth@nau.edu

Dec. 10, 2018

Mountain Village, Alaska, is poor—one of the poorest towns in the country, in fact. The town of about 800 people sits in the banks of the Yukon River, far from the gold, oil and salmon that have enriched other parts of the Last Frontier.

Kory Joe grew up in Mountain Village, his childhood lost to a life with relatives who struggled with alcoholism, coping with friends and family members killing themselves while battling depression himself, including a suicide attempt, all in such abject poverty. He didn’t travel or have any grand adventures.

To an outsider, his future may have looked hopeless, but Joe had a reason to keep working, which powered him through high school, where he was valedictorian, and his bachelor’s degree at two different universities. On Dec. 14, he graduates from Northern Arizona University with a degree in mechanical engineering,

“At a young age, I promised my mother that I would make a difference for the better,” he said. “I didn’t know how I’d do it at the time, but I knew I had to start with an education.”

Joe went for it. He enrolled at Mount Edgecumbe High School, a boarding school in Sitka, 1,000 miles away from his village. There he took physics and robotics classes and discovered his love for engineering. He studied for two years at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, where he earned an internship with Boeing through the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES). That internship provided another opportunity he’d longed for all his life—traveling. He earned enough money to be able to afford to transfer schools, and after applying to a number of different universities throughout the lower 48, he settled on NAU.

“I love that NAU is in the middle of the huge Coconino National Forest, I love that Flagstaff gets snow—it kinda reminds me of home—and I love that NAU has a wonderful Native American Student Services program, where I have met many wonderful, like-minded people,” he said. “I certainly did find myself going on a memorable adventure choosing NAU.”

Joe landed in Flagstaff with a goal. He came from a poor community, but he doesn’t intend for Mountain Village to stay that way. He wants to return to his hometown with the skills and knowledge to help all of southwest Alaska move away from old, expensive diesel generating stations to provide power, which negatively affect the environment and aren’t contributing to the economy. Renewable energy systems are the answer, he believes, and his education at NAU provided him with the skills and abilities to be part of moving the Yupik people forward.

Kathleen Frank, the assistant director at the Native American Cultural Center, said Joe has worked hard during his time at NAU, particularly in acting as a mentor to other students through AISES, including at a national level. She believes he did so well in large part because of his resilience.

“All students have their challenges, whatever they may be; with Kory, it was him being far from home, and there were family challenges and financial challenges,” she said. “In this time while he’s been here, there were times when we almost lost him to go back home to be with his family.”

The biggest challenge, she said, was the day in 2016 when Joe’s mother died. He took some time away, then came back determined to keep his promise to his mother.

After graduation, Joe is moving back to Alaska to find work in renewable energy while studying for the Fundamentals of Engineering exam and getting his Professional Engineer license. From there, he wants to work in individual small-scale renewable energy development projects and earn a master’s in business administration and a doctorate in renewable energy.

“Where I’m from, and for most of rural Alaska, there is not much educational or economic opportunity,” he said. “I want to build an economy that provides for my people along with a culture that promotes education, but to do that I know I have to take life a step at a time. Ultimately, my dream is to improve the lives of my people through renewable energies, economic development and education promotion.”

 

Heidi Toth | NAU Communications
(928) 523-5556 | heidi.toth@nau.edu

Dec. 6, 2018

When Lukas Striegl first landed in Flagstaff, he was not feeling it.

The high school student from Düsseldorf, Germany, was interested in Northern Arizona University’s School of Hotel and Restaurant Management, but before committing, he wanted to visit the city. It was rainy and overcast as he toured the campus, and he just didn’t feel a connection.

He walked through the rain to a store one day, browsing for half an hour or so before heading back. Outside, Striegl found himself in a new world. Rays of the sun highlighted a clear blue sky, raindrops sparkled on the trees and the mountains and forests flaunted their natural splendor.

“I looked to my left and I saw the San Francisco Peaks for the first time ever, and that’s when I decided this is my place,” he said.

Just more than four years after that moment, Striegl will take another walk—across the commencement stage in the Walkup Skydome as he earns his bachelor’s degree in hotel and restaurant management. He’ll do so as a recipient of the Gold Axe award with community service and leadership to add to his resume.

It’s a moment that almost never happened.

When Striegl was in elementary school in Germany, he was, as he puts it, a difficult child. He struggled with motivation and his teachers just left him alone, so by the time he should have been done with elementary school, he was noticeably behind in a number of subjects. His teachers, seeing him struggle with math, recommended he transfer to a special needs school, and after that, he could continue with Hauptschule, the lowest level of German education. He would do another five years of schooling and likely get a job doing menial labor.

His mother wasn’t having it. She marched into the school and demanded to know their options. She said no to the special needs school, she got Striegl into tutoring, she looked for other options to help as he struggled, and she listened when one of his teachers suggested a private middle school on the Realschule track. He wasn’t yet college-bound, but he was closer.

With that structure, he did well, and when he finished he passed the qualifying tests for Gymnasium, the high school for students preparing for college. After six months at a public high school where he was routinely bullied, he asked to enroll in a private school. It was 45 minutes away by car and 2.5 hours away by public transit. No, his mother told him. It was too far.

Soon, though, he learned a neighbor also went to that school and could give him a ride. Striegl enrolled. He succeeded, in one of his final exams writing for 22 pages. In that moment, he knew for sure his elementary school teachers were wrong about him, a sentiment he was reminded of again when he passed accounting.

“As soon as I was accepted to NAU, I went to my old elementary school teachers and showed them,” Striegl said. “As soon as I’ve graduated and when I go back to Germany for the winter, I’m going there again, wearing my Gold Axe and cap and gown and everything.”

Striegl wanted to study hospitality, and since the United States has the best programs, he looked around. He found a list of the top 20 programs and sent emails with questions to the top 15 programs. Some he never heard from. Some responded with a link to their website.

“And then NAU replied to my email, and they actually replied partly in German and answered every single question that I had,” he said.

NAU was the only school he applied to, and he’s loved the experience, he said. His private middle and high schools were both small, and he had a lot of support and encouragement along the way. He prepared himself to do without that atmosphere at NAU, where he’d be just one of thousands of students.

At the SHRM, though, he found the same environment. His professors were invested in his success, offering opportunities to learn and grow and inviting students over for Thanksgiving dinner; and he joined Delta Sigma Pi, who were his friends, brothers and study partners, even bringing groceries and driving Striegl to the hospital when he broke his ankle. He felt that faculty members trusted him to be an ambassador of the program.

In one such experience, NAU chef Mark Molinaro asked Striegl if he wanted to represent SHRM at the Undergraduate Research Symposium in April, using slow cookers and sous vide machines to show students quick, easy ways to eat healthfully while living on campus. After Striegl said yes, Molinaro mentioned he wouldn’t be there. The students were on their own.

They gave out so many samples that they ran out of forks for the last 100 or so tasters.

“We told the others to take it like a shot,” Striegl said. “That was a great experience.”

“Presented with the challenge of cooking for more than 500 people at the Undergraduate Symposium, Lukas simply said, ‘Sounds fun; I’ll do it!’” Molinaro said. “We at HRM are so excited to follow his journey toward making the world a better place in his own way.”

His post-commencement plans are still unsure; he has applied for an Optional Practical Training position, which is available for international students, and he’s looking for internships or work with resorts either in the United States (he has his eye on Las Vegas) or in Germany.

HRM professor Frances Hill, who had Striegl in class, said his life experiences prepared him to succeed in difficult situations.

“I believe the frustrations and disappointments he experienced in his young life might have caused him to become bitter, but he chose to find and focus on his own compassion,” Hill said. “Furthermore, he’s chosen to view the hurtful reality of the situation he endured and step back and look inside himself for a deeper understanding, determined to emerge in a state of grace.”

 

Heidi Toth | NAU Communications
(928) 523-5556 | heidi.toth@nau.edu