Single Mom Overcomes Hardships to Graduate with Honors on Mother’s Day

Brookville, N.Y. -- Michelle Ricks has endured a lot in her lifetime.

Over the past five years she’s had eight surgeries on her knee due to injuries sustained in multiple car accidents. Last year she underwent a cornea transplant to help her Keratoconus, a degenerative disease of the cornea that causes it to gradually thin and bulge into a cone-like shape distorting vision. And perhaps, most devastating, her maternal grandfather, Frank Edward Johnson, passed away in 2003. A role model with whom she shared her life, hopes and dreams, Ricks’ grandfather played a tremendous part in her life and the life of her young son.

It would have been easy for her to just give up. Instead, Ricks turned her hardships into motivation and decided to enroll in college. On Mother’s Day, May 11, 2008 the single mother will graduate cum laude with a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting when the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University celebrates Commencement.

“I realized the best way to work through my grief was to make my life an example of what my grandfather was to me,” the Hempstead resident said. “I’m thankful I was able to make peace with it and make something good out of a horrible situation.”

Ricks graduated with honors from Nassau Community College in 2006 and enrolled in the accounting program at C.W. Post that fall. She has thrived at C.W. Post and has become an important part of the campus community. A member of the Accounting Society, she was inducted into the Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society and won both a Transfer Achievement Award and a 2008 C.W. Post Women of Achievement Award.

“Michelle is a lovely, bright, talented young woman with a wonderful attitude on life,” said Martha Cooney, an associate professor and the director of the Center for Business Research who Ricks met while doing research in the library. “She is very dedicated to her studies.” This fall Ricks will start a position with Ernst & Young in the tax department where she interned last summer.

The significance of the day of her Commencement isn’t lost on the 32-year-old.

“I wanted my son to see that you should always do your best at whatever you try, no matter what the circumstances,” she said. “It hasn’t been easy for him, but now he gets to see that as a mother, I did the right thing.”

Commencement exercises will take place on the Great Lawn at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University in Brookville, NY beginning at 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, May 11. The Class of 2008 includes 1,022 baccalaureate degree candidates, 1,434 master's degree candidates, 15 graduates receiving the Psy.D. in clinical psychology and 4 receiving the Ph.D. in information studies. C.W. Post’s commencement ceremonies also include graduates from the Brentwood Campus, Southampton College, Southampton Graduate Campus and Long Island University at Riverhead.

Posted: April 10, 2008