Kate Steinbeck, Debbie Ochsner and Heidi Edmunds

Completing a doctoral degree is never an easy feat. It’s even more challenging when you have to meet advisers and take classes from a distance. But three Torrington women did just that, working full time for Eastern Wyoming College as they did.

Kate Steinbock (B.S. ’94, M.S. ’00), chair of the arts, humanities, and social and behavioral sciences department; Heidi Edmunds (B.A. ’99), licensed professional counselor and vice president for academic services; and Debbie Ochsner (B.A. ’99, M.S.W. ’03), dean of faculty/student services, earned their doctor of education degrees last May after five years of intensive study and research, largely conducted in Torrington.

Though the process was demanding—and exhausting—Steinbock, Edmunds and Ochsner say they had no regrets, adding that anyone could do it if they put their mind to it.

“We had full lives,” Steinbock says. “We wrote into the middle of the night, we read in the morning, we carved out time for it, but we didn’t let other things go. People can do this. It’s just a matter of chipping away at it.”

Though the doctoral candidates conducted their other interviews and prepared their own write-ups, the result was a collaborative dissertation bearing all of their names.

“One of the difficulties of our program, and one of the reasons we worked together, is that we are so isolated from the campus,” Edmunds says. “So our access to our chairs, our committee and our faculty is pretty limited.”

But the collaboration extended beyond academic support.

“We naturally formed this cohort group, and if we hadn’t done that, I don’t know how this would have panned out,” Ochsner says. “When one person went, ‘I don’t know if I can do this anymore, I don’t know if I can keep up,’ the other two would go, ‘Yes you can.’ ”

The dissertation focuses on young adults who earned college credit in high school through dual or concurrent enrollment, graduating after their senior year with associate degrees already under their belts. As the three Torrington women pushed themselves to complete graduate-level work, they talked to interview subjects who had been through a similarly demanding situation.

The interviewees went on to enter the workforce, join the military, continue schooling, or any number of other life paths. But none of them had regrets, Edmunds says.

“It is not for everyone,” she says. “It was the right thing for these students but maybe not an ideal pursuit for other students.”

The character traits Steinbock, Edmunds and Ochsner found across the people they interviewed could easily be applied to themselves.

“We also found these students developed a grit or stick-to-itiveness,” Steinbock says. “Quitting was not an option, and many made sacrifices to do it. All of them had that personality trait.”

Earning their UW degrees while living in Goshen County, the three women pushed through time crunches, burnout and the difficulties brought on by distance. But working as a cohort allowed them to both draw off of and challenge each other—the hallmarks of any successful team.

“It was empowering,” Ochsner says.