Texas Woman’s University to conduct Fall 2019 commencement

Dec. 11, 2019 — HOUSTON — The Fall 2019 semester at Texas Woman’s University will draw to a close with commencement ceremonies scheduled Friday and Saturday, Dec. 13 and 14, on the university’s Denton campus, and Sunday, Dec. 15, in Houston.

The Houston ceremony will take place at 1 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 15, in The Woodlands Waterway Marriott Hotel and Convention Center, 1601 Lake Robbins Drive. Texas Woman’s University alumna Anne Gill, Dr.P.H., assistant dean for interprofessional education, professor of pediatrics and a professor in the Center for Medical Ethics and Policy, Baylor College of Medicine, will deliver the commencement address. Approximately 241 degrees will be awarded during the Houston ceremony.

The Denton ceremonies include candidates from TWU’s Dallas Center. Approximately 1,138 degrees will be awarded during the Denton ceremonies, which take place in the Kitty Magee Arena of Pioneer Hall, located on Bell Avenue.

A number of the students walking across the Houston stage this fall have remarkable stories of achievement:

• Amy Alvarado will receive her MBA during the ceremony. Alvarado overcame a divorce after 18 years of marriage, started a new job and raised two busy teenagers as a single mom, all while completing her graduate degree. During her first semester alone, she enrolled in three classes while finalizing divorce proceedings, purchasing a new home and car and working for a for-profit hospital. Through it all, she only made one B. She currently works as a revenue billing manager at MD Anderson and plans to continue working in the health care field and progressing in hospital revenue management.
• Deltra Muoki will receive her Ph.D. in nursing science. While working as a unit resource person and educator in MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Gastrointestinal and Colorectal Center, Muoki partnered with Novartis pharmaceuticals to develop a standardized annual training and competency check-off, and later developed and operated the first feeding tube clinic at the center. She earned her master of science as an adult/gerontology nurse practitioner, and now her Ph.D., from Texas Woman’s, all while getting married and giving birth to three children, two of whom were born premature and had to spend several months in the NICU. She plans to educate future nurses and continue her research regarding caregiver burden and feeding tube placement in the community.
• Jason Stark will receive his master of healthcare administration degree, graduating with a perfect 4.0 grade point average. He is president of Cole Health, a privately-owned outpatient rehabilitation facility with 20 locations throughout Texas, and plans to apply what he’s learned to further grow and expand his company into new markets across Texas and the United States. Stark also would like to develop a customer experience training program to be implemented system-wide within his organization.
• Sheranda Michelle Fesler will receive her Ph.D. in nursing science. As the first in her family to attend and graduate from college, Fesler chose TWU 13 years ago to pursue her first graduate degree in nursing education. Nursing is her second career after retiring from the U.S. Army after 23 years of service. In addition to working as the assistant director of clinical practice at Texas Children’s Hospital, Fesler has been a graduate teaching assistant and an adjunct faculty member in TWU’s undergraduate nursing program. She hopes to use her Ph.D. to teach in an online graduate nursing program.

Page last updated 9:12 AM, December 7, 2020