Student Profile

For Freshman, Second Choice is First Rate

From performing in a film for the first time to starting a podcast from scratch to jumping at leadership opportunities, freshman Chidera Okafor has embraced what Rockhurst University has to offer.

But it could have gone another way — Okafor said she came to Rockhurst to be a nursing student after being waitlisted for medical school at the University of MissouriKansas City. She decided not to wait — instead choosing Rockhurst’s nursing program — but it has been anything but a backup plan.

“I looked at Rockhurst’s website and saw the values and that it was ‘where leaders learn,’” she said. “I see myself as a leader, so I knew that if I went here, I would become the person I’m called to be.”

Okafor said she was involved in a lot of different activities as a high school student. In college, she’s pared that involvement back, choosing instead to focus on those activities she’s passionate about. That includes serving as part of Student Senate and Black Student Union, through both of which she effects positive change on campus.

That’s not to say that Okafor isn’t branching out. This year, she was part of a Rockhurst theater program film project, a first. And, spurred by an experience in high school and an internship with a podcast producer, she launched a podcast of her own, called The Chidera Brittney Show, with interviews and topics aimed at helping other young people.

“What I’ve realized is that when we think about leaders, we think about older people who already have that influence,” she said. “I want to tell my generation, Generation Z, that we’re all leaders in different ways. It’s all about embracing the power we have.”

Chidera Okafor, freshman

HEARD ON CAMPUS

“My hope is that as we witness what is happening in Ukraine and the categorical imperative to do something, we will reflect and ask ourselves why we have made it so incredibly difficult for people from south of the border to make an asylum claim.”

Ruben Garcia, ’69, who has dedicated his life to working with migrants, immigrants and refugees on the U.S.-Mexico border, during the Visiting Scholar Lecture Series, March 22

FACULTY KUDOS

Shatonda Jones, Ph.D., associate professor of communication sciences and disorders, was elected to a four-year term on the Council on Academic Accreditation. The Council on Academic Accreditation in Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology of the American SpeechLanguage-Hearing Association offers voluntary accreditation to graduate degree programs in audiology and in speech-language pathology housed within institutions of higher education.

Missy Ling, visiting clinical assistant professor of accounting and finance, and Acey Lampe, Ph.D., executive adjunct assistant professor of management, are serving on the Missouri State University Women in Leadership Advisory Board. In addition, Lampe moderated the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce’s GenKC Panel event Nov. 18. The panel discussed ways to appreciate, collaborate and uplift all five generations living in today’s workplace.

Leslie Merced, Ph.D., associate professor of Spanish, wrote a book chapter titled “Subversive, Combative, Corrective: Carmen de Burgos’ Interventionist Translation of Möbius’ ‘Uber den physiologischen Schwachsinn des Weibes’ [The Mental Inferiority of Women]” in a new critical anthology titled “A Laboratory of Her Own: Women and Science in Spanish Culture.” The volume addresses women’s interaction with STEM fields in the context of Spanish cultural production and was published by Vanderbilt University Press.

Biology Faculty Inspires Future Scientists With Her Own Story

Joanna Cielocha, Ph.D.

It was a transfer from a large state university to one not dissimilar to Rockhurst that might have changed the life of Joanna Cielocha, Ph.D.

The associate professor of biology was planning to be a doctor, convinced that was the most likely and logical career for her.

That changed when she transferred to the smaller Peru State College and met a faculty member who invited her to help him with an ongoing parasitology research project.

“Every time I wasn’t in class, I was in the lab,” she said. “I was doing primary research. I actually wrote a paper that was published in a peer-reviewed journal. I got the full scope of what it’s like to be a scientist from the beginning.”

It’s a story she retells to undergraduate students in her own courses — a reminder that studying the sciences can lead one in a lot of different directions, and that being an undergraduate or at a smaller institution doesn’t have to mean giving up on meaningful research experiences.

Cielocha does more than share that wisdom — as an instructor, she lives it out, providing interested students an opportunity to work alongside her doing research in parasitology, mostly looking at tapeworms that live in the guts of stingrays — identifying new species, analyzing their behavior and more. It not only means a lot of experience in the lab, but a chance to answer questions and have conversations about future careers and paths in science, she said.

“I want them to see that I am working as a scientist alongside them and I want them to feel that they are scientists, too,” she said.