Outstanding adult students overcome challenges

Before Evelyn Cruz started into first grade in Isabeala, Puerto Rico, her father had already begun teaching her and her brothers and sisters to read and write.

“My father had had to leave school after sixth grade,” Cruz recalls, “and he was determined that all of us would go as far in school as we possibly could.”

Cruz — who will take the next step in her own education in December when she completes her B.A. in international relations — is one of two recipients of this year’s Outstanding Returning Adult Student Awards. The other recipient is Janette Langdon, who will graduate in May with a B.A. in sociology.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Outstanding Returning Adult Student Awards, which were established in 1981 as a way of recognizing the increasing numbers of “nontraditional” students who return to UW–Madison to complete their undergraduate degrees.

Cruz began attending UW–Madison for the first time in 1988, just a year after graduating from high school in Isabeala and moving to Madison. During her freshman year she married. Her daughter, Kaytee, and son, Mitchell, were born in the next two years; as Cruz puts it, “dreams of education gave way to family responsibilities.”

After working full time as an administrative assistant for nine years, she was able to return to college in January 1999. The long delay only increased her eagerness to complete her degree. Shortly after returning to school she had to endure the death of her father from ALS, but since then she has thrown herself into her studies with an enthusiasm that earned a place on the Dean’s list and praise from professors for her commitment in the face of so many other responsibilities.

In addition to serving on the board of the Academic Advancement Program, the minority retention program of the College of Letters and Science, Cruz volunteers with her daughter’s Girl Scout troop and for two years taught her son’s Sunday school class. Kaytee, now 11, attends Blackhawk Middle School, and Mitchell, 10, is in fourth grade at Gompers Elementary.

Most recently Cruz has been helping to establish a Latino credit union in Madison, a project for which she serves on the fundraising committee. Though she plans to attend law school and eventually to practice international law, Cruz says, “My kids come first, so it may be a while before I start law school.”

Janette Langdon’s journey toward a degree began more than 30 years ago when she enrolled at Muskingum College in New Concord, Ohio. A diving accident forced her to leave college, and her then-husband’s military career meant living in many different parts of the world during the next 15 years. Her first child, Megan Hesselbein, was born in Arizona in 1979; her second, Mairin, in England in 1982.

Eventually Langdon settled in Madison, where she first enrolled at UW–Madison in 1989. But a combination of factors, including her divorce and her brother’s death from AIDS, caused her to drop out of college in 1992. She then worked as an office manager and as a special-education assistant in the Middleton and Verona schools.

A few days before the start of fall semester 1999, Langdon was trying to decide whether to re-enroll at UW–Madison or to accept an assignment as a special-ed assistant for another year. On her way to submit some paperwork, she vowed that if she could find a parking place at the Peterson Building, she would take it as a sign that she should indeed return to school.

“Not only was a place waiting for me,” Langdon relates, “there was still time left on the meter! From that point on, I literally ran my application through the process.”

She has hardly stopped moving since, maintaining a 3.9 GPA while tutoring in the Madison schools, serving on the board of the Starfish Center, and playing the piano and singing in her church and in nursing homes around Madison.

Of course, she devotes her greatest energy to her daughters. Megan is now a senior at UW-La Crosse and Mairin is a senior at Middleton High who plans to attend UW-Milwaukee. “Throughout this journey, my first priority has been to be available to Megan and Mairin, even when that meant sidetracking my dreams for a time,” Langdon says. “In turn, they have remained my most passionate supporters.”

After graduation, Langdon plans to continue working in some way with children or young adults. “I’ve been told by one professor that I ‘bring research to life,'” she says. “And I find that with all my life experiences, including raising and loving my kids, I can offer a lot of help and encouragement to young people of many ages.”