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Shenoah Lyons, a first-generation college student and mother of four, earned her Nursing degree from ���Ǵ��� in May 2025. Overcoming a difficult childhood, she is changing her family's future with her education.

Shenoah Lyons knew from a young age she wanted to be a nurse. In first grade, she sketched out a life plan in a spiral notebook: college, a nursing career, and motherhood. Having navigated a rocky path that sometimes felt impossible to get through, Lyons, a first-generation college student, earned her Nursing degree from ���Ǵ��� in May 2025.

“I had a rough family life. There weren’t really any high school graduates in my family, much less college. I knew from a young age I had to escape this life of poverty, addiction, disease and all this stuff I was born into,” says Lyons.

At 12 years old, Lyons began raising her infant brother. After a years-long battle with the foster care system, she officially adopted him. Today, she calls him her oldest child.

“That was a big motivating factor,” she says. “I wasn’t just doing this for me. I was pulling both of us out of that life.”

Lyons graduated from Union High School in 2013 and went straight to work in healthcare, becoming a certified nursing assistant and a certified medical assistant just six months later. By age 25, Lyons was a mother of four and knew it was time to take the next step to pursue her longtime dream of becoming a nurse.

She enrolled at ���Ǵ��� in Spring 2020 just before the pandemic hit. When classes moved online, Lyons struggled, especially with her Organic Chemistry class. The stress almost caused her to quit school.

“The transition to online classes, along with the complexity of the course, left me feeling isolated and overwhelmed,” recalls Lyons.

She sought help from ���Ǵ���’s Tutoring Services and was eventually paired with Mark Hames, a retired Chemistry teacher turned Mathematics tutor at the College. Lyons says Hames was dedicated to helping her, digging through his own old Chemistry textbooks to help her work through the material.

“He was willing to sit with me on Zoom for hours, working through problems and figuring things out alongside me. Even though he had nothing to gain from this time spent, he genuinely cared about helping me succeed,” says Lyons.

“Shenoah was very determined, very focused, and really wanted to succeed,” Hames recalls. “She reached out consistently and was always willing to do the work.”

After several virtual tutoring sessions, Hames met Lyons in person by chance while visiting his father in a nursing home.

“I went out there one day and I heard someone say, ‘Mark! I recognize you by your voice!’ I hadn’t really seen Shenoah in person, but there she was helping one of the nurses take care of my dad,” says Hames. “It was really a serendipitous thing.”

Now, five years after enrolling at ���Ǵ���, Lyons received her Nursing degree, a moment made even more special by the fact that her oldest son will graduate from Union High School just days later.

“We both made it,” she says. “We’re walking into new chapters at the same time. And I hope it shows him, and the rest of my kids, that our past doesn’t define our future.”

Lyons is a True Blue Lead, a member of Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society and the National Society of Leadership and Success, and has made the Honor Roll every semester at ���Ǵ���. She plans to pursue her Bachelor of Science in Nursing at the University of Oklahoma, with long-term goals of earning a doctorate.

When it comes down to it, Lyons credits her success to her positive mindset.

“We are all lost in the chaos and the struggle of this or that, but it's really all about how you perceive it. I feel extremely blessed to wake up and have a good job so I can pay for my house. I have a car that I drive my kids to school with. I feel blessed that I’m able to go through Nursing school, even though it’s stressful. We can do anything we set our minds to.”