Celebrating first-generation graduates

It’s never easy to go first, particularly when it comes to pursuing higher education. According to a 2005 National Center for Education Statistics study, only about one-quarter of students who are the first in their families to go to college end up graduating. This month, The POST salutes six HSC grads who beat those odds … and made a little family history.

Jacqueline Arencibia Salazar

In 1959 after Fidel Castro took over Cuba, newlyweds Luis and Luisa Arencibia fled the country, leaving everything behind but the clothes they were wearing.

They knew no one in the United States, but they hoped it was a place where they could build a better future. After landing at the airport in Miami, they asked around about jobs and hopped another plane to New Jersey, where work was more plentiful. Once there, they took whatever jobs they could to make ends meet.

“They did housekeeping, whatever jobs they could get,” says Jacqueline Arencibia Salazar, the couple’s only child. “They never got to go to college. I was born a year or two after they came here, and they always wanted me to go to school. It was not really an option. It was an expectation.”

The couple got their wish … and then some. Salazar received her bachelor’s degree in 1984 from the UF College of Nursing and her master’s degree in nursing from the University of North Carolina in 1990. And on April 30, five decades after they first came to the United States, the Arencibias watched their only daughter receive her Doctor of Nursing Practice degree, the highest degree for a practicing nurse.

“I didn’t need to get my doctorate for my career path or future because I pretty much have a wonderful job right now and I don’t plan on making any career moves,” says Salazar, a nurse practitioner for a thriving practice in Melbourne, Florida. “I am a forever learner, and that, plus a strong work ethic, was definitely instilled in me by my parents.”

With a busy practice and three children, Salazar’s schedule is so hectic she was not even planning to walk in the UF College of Nursing graduation ceremony — until she mentioned it to

her parents.

“They were like, ‘What!’ she says. “I have three kids and everyone had to compromise so I could do (the D.N.P. program) so I am walking for them. They are proud of me.”

Chris Gauthier

Chris Gauthier wasn’t the kid who knew he wanted to be a veterinarian when he was 5 years old. He never knew what he wanted to be when he grew up.

“In my junior year of high school I sat down and made these lists of everything I enjoy, everything I am good at,” says Gauthier, who will graduate from the College of Veterinary Medicine May 29. “Everything kind of came to medicine, but human medicine didn’t interest me that much. I shadowed a vet and loved it. So I went for it.”

It wasn’t always easy. Gauthier, now 26, worked full-time while earning his bachelor’s degree at UF and while working on a one-year business management degree before entering veterinary school in 2006.

“It was a struggle at times but you do what you have to do,” he says. “If you are really interested in something and motivated, you can do it. Most people surprise themselves.”

For Gauthier, graduation from veterinary school is just another step along the way. After graduation he is headed to Massachusetts to complete a one-year internship at Tufts University. Then, he plans to pursue a residency in small animal surgery, hopefully at UF.

And although Gauthier is the first in his family to graduate from college, he may not be the only one for long.

“My sister is just now finishing high school, so hopefully that will be her aspiration, too.”

Meyleen Izquierdo

After moving from Costa Rica to South Florida at the age of 3, Meyleen Izquierdo watched her parents struggle to provide for their four children. She knew she wanted a different future.

“I hated being poor,” she says, “and I knew that there was no other way to ever get ahead, other than go to college.”

Izquierdo was the first in her family to graduate from college in 2006 when she earned her bachelor’s degree in nutrition from UF. This month she donned a cap and gown again to mark another milestone: the completion of her Doctor of Dental Medicine degree.

Without financial support from her parents, Izquierdo relied on scholarships to pay for her bachelor’s degree and part-time jobs and loans to get her through dental school. She says she’s leaving dental school with “a lot less debt than everybody else.”

Her next step is to take the dental board exams in June and begin a one-year residency with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in Tampa.

She says she wants to eventually work as an associate in a general dentistry practice. In the meantime, she has a bit of advice for other young people who could be first in their families to finish college.

“Look at the people around you,” she says. “If you don’t want to be like them, you have to go to college. Now, even a bachelor’s is not enough to get a job. Look around and sacrifice a few years now when you’re young and you’re able to and you’re not married, you don’t have kids … rather than sacrifice your whole life later.”

David Lefkowitz

As he thumbed through an “A” encyclopedia, the entry caught then 5-year-old David Lefkowitz’s attention.

Anatomy.

“There were these transparent pages of anatomy,” remembers Lefkowitz. “I just thought it would be really cool to be a doctor. I was one of those people that always knew.”

On May 22, Lefkowitz realized the dream he has had for two decades when he graduated from the UF College of Medicine.

The youngest of three children, Lefkowitz became the first person in his family to graduate from college four years ago when he earned a degree in microbiology from UF. UF was also his top choice for

medical school.

A recipient of the college’s Excellence in Family Medicine award, Lefkowitz’s next move will be to St. Petersburg, where he will enter a family medicine residency.

“(Graduation) is bittersweet because we are so used to being students the fact that it is ending, we don’t really know what to do,” he says. “We’re just used to it. We have been doing this college thing for at least eight years.”

Apart from starting his career in family medicine, Lefkowitz is looking forward to graduation for another reason, too. He and his wife will be reunited after living in different cities for their entire marriage. The couple, who met in a freshman chemistry class at UF, wed in 2008.

“She is graduating (from Nova Southeastern University) in May, too,”

Lefkowitz says. “We’re looking forward to it.” — April Frawley Lacey

Yahaira Roman

When Yahaira Roman was in her freshman year of high school, her cousin got in a car accident. His recovery included physical therapy, and Roman visited him often during the sessions.

“Ever since then I knew I wanted to go into health,” says Roman, who recently earned her bachelor’s degree in health science from the College of Public Health and Health Professions. “I have just always wanted to help people. I felt like this was my route.”

But Roman’s course toward college and chiropractic school — she starts at the Palmer College of Chiropractic this fall — actually was set much earlier, by her mother. Roman’s mother, Rosa Reveron, brought her children from Puerto Rico to the United States when Roman was a toddler in hopes of giving them a better future.

“My mom has always encouraged me to go to school,” Roman says. “I don’t think she has ever missed an open house … I always knew I wanted to go to college, but you never really know if you can afford it. My mom was like, ‘Money is not an option, you are doing it no matter what, don’t let things stand in your way.’”

Roman, who grew up in Daytona Beach, Florida, was UF-bound from a young age. When she was a teen, her mother brought her to Gainesville so they could take her stepfather to the Malcom Randall Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Roman pointed UF out to her mother as they drove by.

“She said, ‘Ma, you see that school? One day I am going to graduate from there with honors.’ And she did,” Reveron says.

“When she wants something she works hard for it. I am just so proud of her.”

Kelley Hawes

Three years ago when she was one semester into her Doctor of Nursing Practice degree, Kelley Hawes thought about quitting the UF College of Nursing program. Already a nurse practitioner and the mother of two teenage children, it was tough for Hawes to fit everything in.

“I said to my son, ‘I am really thinking about quitting what do you think?’” Hawes says. “He said, ‘I think you should just do it.’ So I just did it.”

Listening to her son was easy. After all, her children have influenced her education and career from the beginning.

After marrying at 17 and having her first child when she was 18, Hawes didn’t start college until her daughter was 2 and her son was 4. She chose nursing because it seemed like a solid career that would allow her to provide for

her children.

“There were times I worked three jobs and went to school,” she says. “But I still had it worked out where I could take them to school and pick them up and do the homework and the baths and work at night or whatever.”

After becoming a registered nurse in 1997, Hawes went on to earn a bachelor’s, a master’s, and finally, a D.N.P. on April 30.

“Part of my reason for continuing with education was my kids,” Hawes says.

“And I think because I was always in school when they were little, they picked up good habits. My son was valedictorian, and my daughter is in the top 1 percent of her class.

“My son is a student at Florida State and my daughter starts here in August. We’ll have the whole rivalry thing going on.”