Sisters, one with five children, to graduate with 4.0 GPAs

Raising a family is hard enough. It gets even more complicated when you throw in a difficult and time-consuming nursing program on top of life’s other daily demands. But through all the challenges, Cherry Cooper and her sister, Paula Markowski Houston, maintained a 4.0 GPA.

“It was nice to have a study buddy and sounding board throughout the process. It really helped a lot. We also relied on each other and our family to shuttle kids back and forth,” Cooper said.

Cooper wanted to make a difference to others. She was impressed by nurses when her mom was going through breast cancer treatment and when her brother died at age 18 in a car accident.

Houston knew from a young age she wanted to be a nurse — she was influenced while attending one of the college’s community teddy bear checkups at the zoo, tending to her siblings’ scrapes and scratches, or sneaking home the latest starving alley cat.

Houston, a single mother of five, said the death of her brother, as well as her mother’s cancer made her want to become a nurse.

“Between the procedures, surgeries, and chemotherapy, the majority of my mother’s life while fighting cancer revolved around either doctor’s offices or hospitals,” Houston said. “The nurses not only offered treatment, they provided a level of compassion and caring that left us feeling as though they were an extension of our family.

“I intend to devote the same level of dedication to caring for patients and their families. I would like to leave them with the same mark and lasting impression the nurses involved in my mother’s care left on my family. My mother’s cancer has been in remission for over 10 years, yet anytime we encounter any of those nurses, they still hail us by name,” she said.

Both sisters already have several job offers to consider.