With a husband and three daughters, two dogs, and one hamster, Soveyra Rosas already had her hands full when she first applied to Alaska Pacific University’s Doctorate Program in Counseling Psychology. At the time, she worked as an elementary school psychologist, where the lionshare of her work involved student assessments, parent meetings, and creating programs for children with learning disabilities. And then the pandemic arrived.
COVID-19 highlighted many service gaps within the school system. For example, as schools shut down, students’ mental health quickly deteriorated and adequate resources weren’t available. Rosas found that there was seldom enough one-on-one time with students, making it difficult to address the mental health problems students faced. This limitation inspired Rosas to pursue a counseling degree. That, and “all this pandemic downtime,” she says with a laugh. Now she’s near the end of her fourth year and hopes to propose her dissertation this spring.
Returning to school once life has gotten underway is incredibly hard. Not to mention when raising three teenage daughters. With this in mind, APU offers a multitude of different educational pathways to reach a wide range of career goals. Rosas explains that she chose APU’s program because, “I needed the balance of being a student, being a mom, and helping to provide for my family.”
The Counseling Psychology Program offers a remote hybrid model with three in-person intensive sessions each semester. This design allows Rosas to work part-time at the elementary school, raise a family, and pursue a different career path.
When asked how she does it all, she says, “It’s a lot of caffeine. A lot. I also try to remember why I started the program in the first place and what it will look like when I get to the end. Our program director had us do a visualization exercise at the beginning, which I’ve returned to time and time again.”
Visualizing a dream can turn it into a reality. Rosas harkens back to this idea when discussing her time at the Anchorage Gospel Rescue Mission. During her two years there, she helped treat people experiencing substance use disorders and homelessness.
Rosas explains that one of the most important things she’s learned in this program and at that facility is that people can change.
She says, “The guys that saw that if I can get through this one-year program, I can rejoin my family and connect with my people. I can return to my village and make myself and others proud. I can become a respected elder in my community. Those guys did so well and made it through.”
So what future does Rosas visualize for herself after she graduates next year? “In a world with no limits, I’m running a one-stop-shop clinic for families experiencing fetal alcohol disorders. This clinic would be equipped with all of the practitioners these families might need, from behavioral health to speech, occupation, and physical therapy and counseling. ”
