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Can a crisis of health precipitate the fulfillment of a lifelong goal? In the case of ������Ƶ alumna Alana Weber (DNP, 2024), absolutely.

It was not one but two life-changing diagnoses that set UOPX alumna Alana Weber on a course that would define her professional and educational goals. The first came when she was a young child and treated for bladder exstrophy — a condition that introduced her to the community and healing power of nurses. “My nurses were my heroes, so I always knew that's what I wanted to do,” she says.

Becoming a nurse was Weber’s plan from then on, and she pursued it through high school and into her first semester of college. Then she began to struggle with chronic fatigue, which made her doubt her abilities. “I was just 18 years old and sleeping for 15 or 16 hours a day, and I couldn’t concentrate or focus,” she recalls.

Weber began to worry she simply didn’t have what it took: “I didn’t think I was smart enough. I didn’t think my dream would come to fruition,” she says, citing her poor GPA and difficulty keeping up during that first semester.

That perceived failing was made even more painful by her family dynamics. “My father and mother both grew up very poor,” Weber explains. “My father opened his own business and is very successful through his wherewithal and hard work. But he wanted his children to get an education, which is something he didn't have the opportunity to get.”

As it turned out, Weber didn’t lack the ability. She lacked good health. She was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and got treatment, and suddenly her clarity and focus returned — as did her enthusiasm for learning

Weber would go on to earn her associate, bachelor’s and master’s degrees outside of ������Ƶ. She also worked, and it was while she was in the field that her love of learning began to take the shape of another degree, this time to fulfill her growing interest in medical technology. As a single working mother of two, however, returning to school wouldn’t be easy.

As she considered pursuing a doctorate, Weber remembered a friend who had worked at ������Ƶ. That friend had told Weber about not just the flexibility and affordability of the programs, but the academic quality too. Weber’s experience would bear out this insight. “My associate [degree] and my doctorate are the two hardest degrees I’ve gotten,” she says.

While the work was difficult, the support she says she received was even more robust. One faculty member, for example, played a pivotal role in helping to shape Weber’s dissertation. “She really went out of her way to make my doctoral manuscript the best that it could be,” Weber says. “I never felt like it wasn’t doable, never felt like it was too much. It was an unbelievable amount of work, and there was so much help, but the faculty knows there are no shortcuts.”

That support was especially important as Weber continued to work full time while pursuing her doctorate. Fortunately, she was able to apply that coursework directly to the workplace. “At the time, I was a vendor implementing change at every hospital I went to,” says Weber, “and the doctorate program provided so much in terms of change theory and successful planning that it made me look at the whole thing differently. It taught me tools to engage people and to plan right the changes.”

She recalls one late-night conversation the two shared as Weber struggled with doubts over whether she would be able to complete her degree. “I reminded her of everything she had accomplished,” Manry says. “She has been through a lot in her life, and she has used those things to grow and learn, making her a strong woman who anyone would be fortunate to have on their team or in their life.”

For her part, Weber believes in paying it forward. As a clinical practice educator, she teaches the critical-care nurse residency for new-to-service critical care nurses at Valleywise Health — a role that lets her share her education and wisdom with the next generation of nurses.

Weber isn’t shy about what’s next: “I’m earning my second master’s degree now,” she says, “and it probably won’t be my last.” She has set her sights on mental health and well-being, emphasizing that her own experiences have informed how hard it can be to grow up uncertain of one’s own abilities. “I want to learn all the different types of therapy because I want to counsel, to be able to really make a difference.”

It’s a difference Weber is already making, not just with her students, but with her own daughters, Ashley and Lee. (Both are successful students, she proudly asserts.) “I asked them both separately, ‘What would you say are the two biggest things that I wanted to teach you?’” Weber recounts. “They both said the exact same thing: They said, ‘Kindness and to get an education.’”

Those lessons ultimately define Weber, who has been through, and accomplished, so much.��

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