Breaking Boundaries

June 17, 2025

Overcoming adversity, three COCC students find the right formula for academic success

It was finals day at Central Oregon Community College, in the spring term of 2010, and things weren’t going well for Heaven Roberts — she couldn’t figure out how to write her name.

The Culver resident, a pre-veterinary student with a goal of someday working with horses — a dream she’d harbored since she was a toddler — wasn’t suffering from exam-day jitters. She’d recently been in a serious car accident and the severe concussion she’d experienced wasn’t allowing her mind to fully connect. She recalls how her professors came to her aid and made sure she postponed the exams until she was ready.

“There were a lot of great instructors,” Roberts recalls of COCC, where she took classes in subjects like chemistry, biology and math, supported by a COCC Foundation scholarship. But that was just the start of her journey. What followed were years of speech and occupational therapy. “It was a ton of work,” she says. “I felt like an alien…I was a little lost for a while.”

The mind that emerged after the accident didn’t connect with content and material as it once had. It had a new way of processing things. “It gave me a fundamental appreciation for the uniqueness of people.” Ultimately, she found a new way forward, a new method of harnessing her attention. “I have a hard time with anything that’s not super analytical.”

Although Roberts had been accepted into Oregon State University’s honors college, she realized she needed to heal first. It took two and a half years, and she initially used classes at Linn Benton Community College to make her way back. She discovered early on that research-driven work — the minutia, the data explorations — were what enlivened her mind.

At OSU, Roberts would earn a bachelor’s degree in animal science and then a Ph.D. examining fungal toxins in livestock diets. It was actually the equipment used to capture the studies’ bioinformatics that led to her career. “I got really interested in the new instruments and technologies,” she recalls.

Now a staff scientist with Thermo Fisher Scientific, based in Eugene for the global company, Roberts works on a device called a flow cytometer, utilized primarily in the field of immunology to provide single-cell analysis for things like cancer research. Collaborating in programs of more than 50 engineers and immunologists — “It’s a huge honor to work here, I work with geniuses” — Roberts herself was recently touted as an expert in her field by her Fortune 500 employer.

When Isaac Shannon was at COCC, the personalized attention and smaller class sizes made all the difference. “Everything is adapted to your goals,” says the 2021 graduate, who earned an Associate of Arts Oregon Transfer degree at COCC and then went on to California State University-Dominguez Hills for a bachelor’s degree in international studies. But he recalls feeling uncertain at the outset.

“I was nervous to start COCC because I have learning disabilities. However, my experience in this program was nothing but a positive one,” he says. “Each professor was approachable, knowledgeable and fun…I wasn’t afraid to raise my hand in class.” The support helped open doors.

Now obtaining a master’s degree in education at California State University-Dominguez Hills, Shannon’s goal is to attend law school and one day work for the Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal organization. “Attending COCC was the best decision I made in my education.”

For a long time, Taylor Taliesin has been on a path of finding new ways to connect with and care for community. It’s a resolve Taliesin, who uses the pronoun they, traces back to middle school, seeking out CPR and first aid training to help fellow students who engaged in self-harm. And prior to coming to COCC, they were active in many areas of the health care field — as a trained EMT, among other roles — now turning their attention to public health. Being a college student, though, had once felt somewhat remote.

“College was not an option for me until I received my diagnosis for autism,” Taliesin shares, saying it provided a “blueprint” to help create a college plan. “I was able to work with my local vocational rehab program, which had a close relationship with COCC,” adds Taliesin, who then applied for, and received, a COCC Foundation scholarship. “With appropriate accommodation and support, I have been able to be wildly successful at school and am looking forward to giving back to my community.”

Taliesin, who recently finished Peer Support Specialist training at COCC, is soon to be the College’s first completer of a brand-new certificate in Community Health. One of just three COCC students to make the 2025 All-Oregon Academic Team, they are also pursuing an associate degree in Human Services, with aspirations to ultimately become a physician-scientist.

“I have formed relationships with the staff here that are supportive and reciprocal, that help me grow as a human being — I get to interact with my professors on a personal level, which improves my learning and meets my needs.”