Our Graduates. Their Stories.
Our counseling students and alumni serve people in a wide range of settings – pediatric clinics, counseling centers, private practices, and schools – but one common thread connects them: the desire to bring hope and healing to those they work with.
Below are just a handful of the stories about our graduates making a tangible difference in their communities. As you read their accounts, perhaps you’ll be inspired to follow in their footsteps. Where will you be called to make a difference?
‘I wanted to work more directly with people and not so much with things’
Even as she reported to work as a product manager, Sammy Rott had this burning desire to do something different as a career. She just had yet to discover what that was.
It took about a decade to finally arrive at the answer, but her lifelong fascination with the human psyche led her to a career helping people in crisis.
“It took about 10 years of doing something else, but I feel like I organically found my path into this field,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to focus on helping people understand why they make the decisions they do, why they have the beliefs they have, and considering their own perspectives on life to lead to the change they want.”
‘It felt like the longest 10 minutes of my life’
It was Oct. 1, 2017, when Marchelle Carl and two of her friends endured a night they will never forget – an active shooting incident at the Route 91 Country Music Festival in Las Vegas.
Upon surviving the event, Carl found a way forward through counseling. Today, she is using her personal experience and the trauma counseling training she received to help others heal.
“I tell every client on our very first session together, ‘My No. 1 goal is that you won’t need me anymore. You will move on and move through whatever you came for,’” she says. “‘We will have worked it out together, and you’re going to stop counseling because you don’t need me.’ And that’s when I know that we did a good job.”
‘I believe that we were designed for connection’
After working as a vascular sonographer for 27 years, Mindy Sutton decided it was time to retire. But her desire to continue helping others never left her. The only question was, “What’s next?”
She found the answer after enrolling in the university’s marriage, couple and family counseling program and discovering equine-assisted therapy – the use of horses to help clients process their complicated emotions.
“God is brilliant, and he just allows the horses to interact with us in a way that can be so impactful and healing, without having to use any words at all,” she says.
‘I’ve always had this fascination with the fact that children are naturally resilient.’
Forced to flee war-torn Yugoslavia as a teen, Mirna Pani learned early on to be resilient. She had no choice.
Unfortunately, the trauma didn’t end with her arrival in a new country – the U.S. She struggled to adjust to a new culture, then watched her father pass away and her twin sister, Lana, die from breast cancer.
Now, after earning a degree from the university’s master of arts in school counseling program, she is modeling for her school counseling students what it takes to overcome hardship.
“What I love about working with elementary youth is the fact I get to listen to them and empower them to advocate for themselves and come up with solutions rather than just getting those solutions from adults,” she says.