Student Spotlight: Nita Mauigoa

Journalism and Public Communication, Class of 2014 Hometown: Anchorage Fun Fact: Sleep is her secret weapon; family is her secret sauce.

Graduating senior and just-retired features editor from The Northern Light, Nita Mauigoa, has some advice for her fellow UAA students:

• Get some serious shuteye, like eight hours, every night
• Take frequent study breaks (every 25 minutes)
• No matter what challenges the world delivers, put a smile on your face (thank her Mom for that)
• And yes, you can finish college in four years.

No, she's not being glib. She's living proof that her own strategies work. And if she sounds wise, well, that's true too.  She's a non-traditional student, age 35, and also mom to 8-year-old triplet boys and a 7-year-old girl. Her fifth child, another boy, has probably arrived by the time you read this.

Yes, Nita was studying, maintaining a commendable grade point average, accepting tuition waivers and scholarships, raising a family, working and mentoring writers at The Northern Light... and growing a baby, all at the same time. (Your applause is appropriate.)

How'd she do it?

Given the challenges many college students experience finishing in four, I thought I'd find out how Nita did it. Is she Superwoman? Her simple answer is in the first paragraph-rest along the way so you have energy, and can make it fun, to tackle the big stuff. But she's also the first to admit it probably wouldn't have happened in her twenties.

Then a newlywed, she spent much of that blissful decade being the carefree sprite she is at heart: creative writing, traveling, working different jobs, sampling classes at universities in Hawaii (her home state), Idaho (on a whim) and Los Angeles.

What changed all that? Well, let's just say having three children at once is wonderful for focusing your mind. First, she dedicated herself to being there for her young children full time. Then she decided to go back to school and get a degree.

An early plan to become a teacher paled when she realized she wouldn't have the energy to be with a class of students all day and be truly present for her children each evening. Her love of creative writing re-surfaced, and she decided to try journalism. She also wisely married a man who loves to cook, and she has an extended family here in Alaska as a major support. Her relatives arrived in the 1950s and opened the Rainbow Lodge in Talkeetna; now they number in the hundreds. She's even going to school at UAA with children of her siblings.

Back to school

Now ... Nita and UAA didn't immediately hit it off. She remembers during her first year just wanting to get through class and leave campus. "I didn't feel like I belonged here, like it was my place," she says.

It wasn't until she got through her general education requirements and started in on a journalism major/business minor that life on campus started to seem fun. With journalism classes and a job on the student newspaper, she'd found her people.

She credits the newspaper and her academic work with sharpening her writing skills and extending her multimedia experience. As she migrated up the leadership ladder at TNL, she learned how to mentor young writers so they learned to write for print, but didn't feel destroyed in the process. "You aren't 'absolutely scared,'" she'd counsel a young writer over his prose. "You're either scared or you're not. Leave it at that."

The day I interviewed her, she'd just officially stepped down as features editor and become a staff writer again, not quite ready to give up the ink-stained reporting life. UAA has been a very good run for her, and already she's feeling nostalgic about leaving after a few final summer classes.

Of course, there's that giant senior capstone project to complete this semester, a look at local Pacific Island and Asian members of this community and how they access-or don't-health information online. She's working with professors Joy Mapaye, E.J. David and Gabe Garcia.

But just past that milestone comes the goodbye to UAA that she's feeling pretty shaky about. She has truly made a new family here; she came to belong.

Making UAA a better place

I asked her what one thing would improve UAA. She said she sincerely hopes that the student newspaper continues to find and employ diverse reporters who can fully represent the broad community  on campus. In 2013, several faculty and staff nominated her for a Martin Luther King student appreciation award for how well she did exactly this on the campus newspaper.

One of her nominators, Paola Banchero (the journalism professor Nita says took the most red ink to her papers) said this about her:

"She has done more than anyone I can think of in my time at The Northern Light to change the direction of coverage on issues of culture, ethnicity and community. She listens carefully to the people she interviews and treats everyone with respect and courtesy. She has also been a good leader at The Northern Light, someone her peers saw as reasonable, helpful and approachable."

Expect Nita to continue professional work in this multicultural vein. She says she would love to tell the immigrant story of Pacific Islanders coming to Alaska, in print or multimedia. "You can't find it anywhere," she says. "Not in books, not anywhere."

After a six-month post-baby and post-graduation rest (remember, she's very big on breaks) she expects to leap back into the job market while her husband, Olo, starts his master's degree in education at UAA. "Now I'll be the one making him the hot cocoa when he has to stay up late to study," she says.

Written by Kathleen McCoy, UAA Office of University Advancement.