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Miranda Wiles Domec knew when enrolling in the 51��Ƶ at Lafayette’s General Studies online program she was “made to do the hard things.” She’s proven that by maintaining a 4.0 GPA to earn her bachelor’s degree while raising her three boys on their Texas farm.

Dream deferred

Domec, 33, first began college immediately following high school. The Texas native followed her now-husband, Scott, to enroll in the 51��Ƶ at Lafayette’s nursing program.

However, she found she couldn’t balance full-time work and school with her other priorities, which included her now-adopted son.

“As soon as I got done with school, I would have to go to work,” she says. “I couldn’t even go home and work on the stuff I just learned about.”

Domec had to drop something, so she left the University.

While Domec cringed paying student loans with no degree to show for it, her mother remained adamant Domec finish her bachelor’s degree. She even asked Domec’s husband to encourage her to go back to college before they were married.

But Domec stayed her course and the couple married in 2010. The next year, they returned to Domec’s home state to be closer to her mother.

The following year brought exciting news for everyone: Domec was expecting. Although the child would be the second addition to the family, he would be Domec’s firstborn. But two months before Domec’s due date, she noticed the baby wasn’t kicking.

Their son Lawson was delivered stillborn.

“The day we buried him, my husband carried his little boy out of the church in his tiny, white casket, and our Catholic faith carried us the rest of the way,” Domec says.

Only a little more than a year later, the Domec family celebrated the birth of a healthy baby boy. But six weeks after meeting her grandson, Domec’s mother died at home, leaving Domec to repeat a now familiar heart-wrenching process.

Domec also had to face a different kind of loss: time.

“I had thought about going back to school many times — she always wanted me to — but when she passed, it became final that it wasn’t going to happen in her lifetime,” Domec says.

Do the Hard Thing

Domec had delivered two sons via C-section. When she became pregnant with her third, she was determined to deliver without surgical intervention. And she did.

The experience, she says, left her with a newfound sense of empowerment. 

“I realized I could do all the hard things — physically, mentally, emotionally,” she says.

So Domec began rifling through filing cabinets, unearthing 11-year-old college transcripts to finish what she’d started and fulfill a long-held promise.

“I didn’t realize how easy it might be; I didn’t realize how long it might take,” she says. “In my mind, I thought I had to go back in person on campus somewhere and that just didn’t seem feasible, having kids now.”

Because she’d begun her college journey with UL Lafayette, she decided to learn more about online degree options and discovered the Bachelor of General Studies online program.

“I looked up a couple of other schools as well and no one else could compete,” she says.

She enrolled in August 2018. Online courses allowed Domec to spend her days raising their sons on their Texas farm, fitting in coursework as time allowed.

“It was a lot of late nights. I was mostly waiting until they would crash and then I could do work,” she says. “Not having to be on campus, not having to be anywhere at a set time, made things so much easier. It was, ‘here’s the work you have to do; get it done by this deadline.’ That’s all I needed.”

Proud PI

The flexibility of the General Studies program allowed Domec to choose a concentration and courses that were meaningful to her personally and professionally. She says she’d always considered private investigation as a possible career path, so her advisor, Sharon Williams-Gregory, guided her toward a concentration in behavioral science with minors in criminal justice and health.

Courses like crime and mental health and ethics in criminal justice gave Domec practical perspective, she says.

“The courses were just eye-opening,” she says. “The things we were learning about were very in line with current events. We were learning about things that were happening, as they were happening. It was great to see the college at the forefront of that.

“We have professors teaching us who are also in the field, teaching not just from theory but actual cases.”

One of those instructors, Eric DeLaune, has experience working with homeland security. Domec says he encouraged her to explore federal positions, in addition to her private investigation goals.

“That’s a door that’s opened to me that I never considered before,” she says.

Promise fulfilled

Although Domec couldn’t complete her degree in her mother’s lifetime, Domec says she was nonetheless determined to make both her mother and Lawson proud.

After only four semesters of coursework, but many more years of waiting, Domec heard her name called as a UL Lafayette graduate during Fall 2019 commencement.  

“While life experiences and God brought me to UL Lafayette,” she says, “my advisor and the University College bridged the rest of the journey.”

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