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KALAMAZOO, Mich.—The  didn't just cover Navia Walker's undergraduate college tuition; it ended up laying the foundation for a fulfilling career that aligns her professional skills with her passion for helping others.

Walker is graduating from °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÙÍøÖ±²¥ on Saturday, June 29, with a master's in counselor education and a job as a Promise guide for the Kalamazoo Promise.

"I saw the job posted and it felt like the role had literally been written for me. I'll be working with students who've stopped out and trying to help them get back on track, essentially walking alongside them, helping them create success plans and being an avenue to access resources," says Walker, who has worked for the past two years in Multicultural Affairs for Students at Western as a graduate assistant for the Kalamazoo Promise.

"It's really an awesome opportunity to be able to continue the work that I was already doing at Western but also implement everything I've been working on in my master's degree for the last three years. I'm really excited to pull from all of my skills that I've been chiseling."

A STRONG FOUNDATION

Walker's grandfather, the late Moses Walker, B.A.'66, MBA'90, was a pillar of the Kalamazoo community. He was instrumental in founding the Family Health Center and held leadership roles over several decades with the Douglass Community Association, Borgess Mental Health Center, Kalamazoo City Commission, Greater Kalamazoo United Way and Borgess Foundation, among many others. He was also one of the most important people in Walker's life.

"He was a huge driving force in why I went to college," she says. "When I chose Western, my grandpa brought me to orientation and helped me pick my classes."

Walker wasn't settled on a major until she met with an exploratory advisor who shared her own career journey and mentioned her background in counseling.

"Counseling had always lived somewhere in my brain," she says. "I've always been that listening ear and the empathetic person in my friend group."

After perusing the courses that piqued Walker's interest, her advisor recommended the family studies program. It focuses on strengthening individual and family well-being across the lifespan with the goal of improving quality of life within communities and society—an educational foundation that would set her up well for a potential counseling career.

It also mirrored the impact Moses Walker had on Kalamazoo. However, he would not see Navia put her own education into action as he died unexpectedly in January 2020. Still, she is happy to have carried on his legacy at his alma mater, earning her bachelor's degree and enrolling in Western's counselor education master's program.

"Doing this program has allowed me to grow personally and has challenged me to look inward at myself and figure out the kind of person I want to be, the kind of clinician I want to be," she says. "I've grown professionally, I feel so much more confident and I've had experiences that prepared me for my career."

LEARNING BY DOING

Western's counselor education program is rigorous, and cohorts become close-knit as their studies progress. 

"The counseling field can be really, really isolating, and … this is really heavy stuff. So, it's important to make sure that you have community, and my colleagues and I have gone through this together," says Walker, who chose a concentration in marriage, couple and family counseling. "My professors have also been incredible. I've had the same professors from start to finish, so you really get to understand their teaching style, their expectations and build closer connections to them."

In addition to learning theories and counseling practices, master's students engage in internships and practicum experiences through Western's Centers for Counseling and Psychological Services, which offers no- and low-cost mental health services to members of the campus and local community. Walker gained experience counseling Western students through the centers and then expanded her skill set to populations ranging from court-appointed clients to parents reunifying with children and domestic violence survivors during an internship at Wicks Therapy PLCC in Kalamazoo.

"The practicum and internship have completely opened my brain," she says. "With all of these experiences I've gotten, I feel like not only can I talk the talk but I feel so much more confident in walking the walk.

Alongside her studies, Walker also gained invaluable work experience as the graduate assistant for the Kalamazoo Promise. In her first year in the position, she researched and collected data on the program at Western, weighing what worked and what didn't and determining what the program could look like in the future. That data was used in a grant proposal to the Promise which helped Western secure funding for the program.

"It was a really great experience for me to do all of the behind-the-scenes work that I had never imagined doing. Then, in my second year in the position, we set out to do all of those things we proposed."

Walker spent the fall 2023 semester meeting with incoming first-year and transfer students who are Promise scholars, helping them create success plans and routinely checking in with them to ensure they had the support they needed to thrive in their studies.

"It helped me grow personally and professionally. I can't even really describe how grateful I am to have had the experience working as a graduate assistant," Walker says. 

Now, as her experience with the Promise comes full circle and she prepares to guide the next generation of scholars, she's grateful for the holistic education she gained at Western that's prepared her for this next step. And she knows her grandfather would be proud of her success.

"My grandpa was the reason I pursued college in the first place; everything I did college-wise was for him. So, when he passed away before I finished, it really made me question a lot of things," she says. "I wish he was here to celebrate me, to talk to me, to continue to help guide me. But I feel so incredibly proud of myself to have grown so much as a person and to have made it on my own."

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