{"id":546,"date":"2007-06-20T19:15:38","date_gmt":"2007-06-20T19:15:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/166.62.41.2\/~holaamericanews\/2007\/06\/20\/graduation-brings-new-opportunities\/"},"modified":"2022-07-17T14:26:57","modified_gmt":"2022-07-17T19:26:57","slug":"graduation-brings-new-opportunities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/holaamericanews.com\/es\/graduation-brings-new-opportunities\/","title":{"rendered":"Graduation Brings New Opportunities"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"frank_ceja\"<\/a>MOLINE, Ill. \u2013 Frank Ceja has watched his fellow correctional officers lose their jobs and knew that if he had a college degree, he would have a better chance to move on and up when more cutbacks came.
\nAfter working for 18 years as a correctional officer, he is ready to change careers. The 37-year-old graduated May 17 from Black Hawk College with an associate in science degree. In June, he will move his wife and family from Moline to Michigan where he will pursue a bachelor\u2019s degree in criminal justice at Michigan State University. He already has a job interview lined up with the Michigan State University campus police.
\nHis ultimate goal? To become a lawyer and work in a U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office. Having escorted prisoners to court and observed the court
\n system from the corrections side, he now wants to work in the court system. \u201cI find it intriguing,\u201d he says.
\nFrank, who graduated with a 3.22 GPA, is a first-generation college student. He will be the first of six children in his family to graduate from college. As the oldest child, he dropped out of high school at age 17 to get a job and help his divorced mother support his siblings.
\nHe earned his GED shortly after he left school. Frank knew he would need to go to college eventually, but put off college in order to work. He got his first job as a correctional officer at age 19, working in the Pontiac Correctional Center, a maximum- and high medium-security facility in Pontiac, Ill. He spent 4 \u00bd years at Pontiac, then worked at the East Moline Correctional Center for 2 \u00bd years. The last 11 years he has commuted from Moline to Hill Correctional Center, a medium-security correctional facility in Galesburg.
\nIn 2000 at age 30, Frank began attending Black Hawk College. For two years, from 2004 to 2006, Frank and his wife were both students as she completed an associate degree in dental hygiene at Carl Sandburg College. They juggled their college classes, work schedules and their kids\u2019 school and sports schedules.
\nFrank participated in the SMART program (Student Minority Advising Retention) at Black Hawk and took advantage of training offered by the program, such as time management and financial planning. Since Hill Correctional Center is a 40-minute drive from Moline, Frank quickly learned the art of time management. He would tape record his instructors\u2019 lectures, then listen to them in the car as he drove to and from work.
\n\u201cEducation is so very important. If you don\u2019t have it, you won\u2019t go very far,\u201d he says. A father of four and stepfather of three, Frank lets his children know that a good GPA is important. \u201cI preach to them to keep their grades up and continue moving forward no matter how tough they might feel that it is,\u201d he says.
\nKaren Taylor, coordinator of the SMART program, describes Frank as a positive student, a family man and someone who she thinks will eventually run for office.
\n\u201cHe is one of our shining stars. He\u2019s awesome,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

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MOLINE, Ill. \u2013 Frank Ceja has watched his fellow correctional officers lose their jobs and knew that if he had a college degree, he would have a better chance to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":545,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"es","enabled_languages":["en","es"],"languages":{"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"es":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/holaamericanews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/holaamericanews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/holaamericanews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/holaamericanews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/holaamericanews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/holaamericanews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/holaamericanews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/holaamericanews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/holaamericanews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/holaamericanews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}