Friday, May 13, 2005

College has been life-changing for graduate

She's achieved a 4.0 grade-point average while running a daytime drop-in center on Williamson Road for people with mental illness. Hubert said she also faced financial and physical challenges, including six herniated discs, and walked with a cane during her first school year.

"I truly believe in community colleges," Hubert said. "It has been a life-changing experience for me to be in school."

After supporting her three children and husband for 19 years as a respiratory therapist in Buffalo, N.Y., she moved with her family to Roanoke in 1997. She said she began to withdraw from life, haunted by her memories of treating people who attempted suicide or were involved in car accidents and other emergencies.

"My depression got so bad that I couldn't remember the date," she said. "It was severe enough for me to be disabled for two years."

During the acute stage, she said she was briefly hospitalized and then sought outpatient help from Blue Ridge Behavioral Healthcare. A counselor there helped Hubert find her way, pointing out her people skills, intelligence and inner strengths.

Hubert said she started work in 2001 as the part-time director of On Our Own of the Roanoke Valley, a Williamson Road activity center for people with schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder and other mental health ailments. Hubert also began taking classes at Virginia Western Community College that year. At the time, she was 44, worked 20 hours a week at the center and had two teenagers living at home. Later, she scaled back her course load.

"I knew that I had to slow down because I didn't want to fall apart," she said. "I wanted to be a mom and a grandma."

Despite the demands at home, she excelled in her classes on psychology, group therapy, behavior modification and other mental health courses for her associate in applied science degree.

Hubert was selected for the USA Today All-State Academic Team, won an award in April from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, Roanoke Valley chapter, and is a member Phi Theta Kappa, an international honor society for two-year colleges.

Today, she continues to lead On Our Own, which has about 30 clients daily. A new grant helped her recently acquire a computer to teach Internet and resume-writing skills. The center even has a coffeehouse and karaoke/open mike for clients on Saturday nights. Hubert said she told one of her clients that she overcame her depression and was about to graduate from college.

"I went to school to get the skills to help these people - and I'm one of them, too," she said.