By Chris Cunningham

"Lane was the perfect school for me," says Lane Community College alumnus Tanya Guidry, 23, who works at McKenzie Willamette Hospital in Springfield, as a labor and delivery and pediatric nurse.

Born in Glen Cove, NY, and raised in St Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guidry moved at the age of 10 to Baytown, TX, near Houston, to live with her grandmother and attend school. Weeks after she graduated from high school in 2008, Guidry moved to Eugene and enrolled in several summer school classes at Lane.

"When I took anatomy and physiology, I became fascinated by the way the body worked. Nursing seemed like a good fit," she says.

Guidry says she knew her family would not be able to help finance her college education, so she applied for scholarships, and garnered $30,000 in aid. She remembers the day she learned she had been admitted into the nursing program: "It was one of the happiest days of my life," she says.

In 2012, within days of earning an associate degree as an RN, Guidry accepted a job offer at Mc-Kenzie-Willamette, where she had completed an internship through Lane's nursing program. "It's been such a blessing to touch peoples' lives," she says.

Her nursing job helped her achieve another dream. "When I got the job, I asked my grandmother if she wanted to come live with me." Now the granddaughter and grandmother share an apartment together.

Grateful for her experiences at Lane, Guidry says, "I was able to learn more easily, because the teachers were very supportive, and the class sizes were small."

Guidry, who is the first person in her family to attend college, says, "It seemed that most of the teachers at Lane truly loved and enjoyed what they did and that made me want to learn."

She graduated last year, summa cum laude, from Oregon Health Sciences University with a bachelor's degree in nursing, a path she might not have pursued, had she not attended Lane.

"It's important to pursue the thing in your heart you strongly feel you should do," Guidry says.