When Violeta “Blanca” Jaure (BA ’06) was pregnant with her first child while living in Albuquerque twenty-two years ago, she knew she had to return to Silver City, where she had grown up and where her family lived. What she did not foresee was how that choice would be pivotal in her educational journey.
“I didn’t even go to high school,” said Jaure, “I kind of was a high school drop-out here in Silver City. I didn’t feel like I really belonged in the high school, so I ended up getting my GED.”
When her daughter was born, however, Jaure decided to continue her education to provide her daughter with a role model and greater opportunities. “I had to do it for her,” she said of her decision to enroll at WNMU.
Her decision was made easier by the presence of the Child Development Center (CDC) on campus, which provides its infant/toddler program and preschool at a reduced cost for WNMU students. Jaure described how she and a friend who also had a young infant would visit the CDC regularly. “We could go nurse during breaks,” she noted, “We could go be with [our children], and I really got to know the staff and volunteers. They had a grandparent program, and older people in the community could come be grandparents for the kids.”
Jaure said that even today, she has connections with the CDC. “I still know some of the people there that helped raise my daughter,” she said, “I love [the CDC staff and faculty]. They offer family counseling, individual counseling, child counseling—just so much support for parents . . . I don’t think I could have gone to school if I didn’t have somewhere close to care for my daughter.”
Jaure, who now has an MA and PhD in psychology under her belt, also gives credit to the faculty of WNMU for her educational trajectory. She was especially inspired by Professor of Psychology Jenny Coleman. “[She] was so encouraging of me pursuing higher education,” Jaure said of her motivation to go to graduate school, “She really pushed me. When she started here, I think it opened a door to psychology that I was not aware of before. She offered physiological psychology. She offered abnormal psychology. She talked about Psi Chi [International Honor Society in Psychology].”
“It really helped me learn the process of becoming a psychologist,” explained Jaure, “You can do research. You can teach. You can work with clients. It made me aware of how many options I could have if I did pursue [a degree in psychology].”
Jaure decided to focus on youth mental health and addiction studies, and for a number of years worked as a youth counselor in the Silver City area, both at an in-patient substance abuse facility and as a school-based counselor with Hidalgo Medical Services. In the latter role, she said, “I got to work with the kids at the school that I literally dropped out of.”
Since earning her PhD, Jaure has been working with a Seattle-based start-up that offers a mental health app for schools to provide to their students. “I write clinical content for that app,” she said, “We write all this great clinical content for anything [students] might need, and we get such good feedback from the students that use it.”
Jaure said that the job was directly relevant to the topic of her doctoral dissertation, which was about medically underserved youth not being able to access care in New Mexico. “It’s my dream job to work with rural, underserved youth and offer an intervention that so many have access to,” she said.
Jaure credits WNMU for setting her on the path to the work she is now enjoying, and she is well aware of the happy ironies of her life. Sometimes, she said, “obstacles become the path.”
Blanca Jaure will be a featured cast member on the hit Amazon Prime TV series “The College Tour.”