For Rio Salado College graduate Diana Loya, earning an associate degree wasn’t about following a traditional college timeline.
It was about continuing.
For more than a decade, Loya balanced college classes with full-time work, raising two children, life setbacks and the everyday responsibilities that can make returning to school difficult for working adults. Sometimes she could take only one course at a time. At one point, she stepped away from college for several years.
Still, she kept coming back.
In May 2026, Loya reached a milestone years in the making when she graduated from Rio Salado College with her associate degree.
“I was so excited,” Loya said. “My family and friends were there, and my dad was on the phone (from abroad). I wanted to cry. It was so hard.”
Today, she is already working toward her next goal: earning a bachelor’s degree with Mesa Community College and continuing a career in early childhood education that she never expected to pursue.
Becoming a Teacher Wasn’t Part of the Plan
Long before Loya became an early childhood educator, she worked in an office.
After high school, she spent about a decade in purchasing. The job provided stability, but after she became a mother, the long hours became increasingly difficult.
“I was leaving at 8 in the morning and sometimes wasn’t getting home until 6 or 7 at night, and I was working Saturdays,” Loya said.
When her oldest daughter was preparing to start kindergarten, Loya began looking for a job at her daughter’s school. She initially applied for an office position.
Instead, someone suggested that she become a teacher assistant.
Loya’s response was immediate.
“No, that’s scary,” she remembered thinking. “I haven’t finished school. I cannot.”
Then she learned she could work in the classroom while continuing her education.
She agreed to visit a classroom and meet the teacher she would assist. Once she got there, something clicked.
“I liked it,” Loya said. “I learned a lot.”
There was still another obstacle.
Loya’s youngest was an infant, and after paying for child care, Loya had very little left from her paycheck. With encouragement from her employer, she stepped away from the position, vowing to return when her youngest was old enough to participate in the preschool program.
When her youngest turned 3, Loya did just that.
She has worked in early childhood education for 15 years, including 11 years as a teacher assistant and four years as a lead teacher working with 3- and 4-year-old children.
“I never in my life thought I would be a teacher,” Loya said. “I never thought about being a teacher until I became a mom.”
Returning to College — Again and Again
Loya began taking early childhood education courses through Rio Salado around 2011, including coursework connected with an Alhambra-area cohort.
She started by working toward her Child Development Associate credential and took classes one at a time while working and raising her family.
Rio Salado adjunct faculty member Leslie Jackson remembers teaching Loya during those early years and seeing firsthand the effort it took for her to stay in school. Back then, Loya’s cohort met in person, so Loya would bring her children to class at times as she tried to make school fit into family life.
She eventually completed a certificate, but earning a college degree remained a much longer journey – and one necessary to keep moving up in her job.
“I started doing the classes one by one,” Loya said. “Sometimes I’m embarrassed to say how long it took me to get where I am right now. It’s really hard, working full time and doing school and being so stressed.”
That experience is familiar to many adult college students, whose education may include stops, starts and changing responsibilities along the way, and Loya didn’t keep what she learned about navigating college to herself.
As she figured out how to select courses, balance classes with work and make progress toward a credential, she began helping coworkers do the same.
“Every time we’ve had a cohort, Loya would round up everybody at her job,” Jackson said. “She’s always advocating for others to go to school.”
Several coworkers she encouraged have gone on to complete certificates.
Showing Her Daughters that the Timeline Doesn’t Matter
Loya decision to continue her education is also deeply connected to her daughters, now young adults.
They have seen the difficult parts of her college journey: the studying after work, the stress, the stops and starts and the semesters when progress meant completing just one course.
Loya hopes they also see what persistence can make possible.
“It’s different going to work because you have to and going to work because you like it,” she said. “They gave me an opportunity to become a teacher. I just have to continue my school.”
She is doing exactly that.
After years of moving forward one class, one challenge and one season of life at a time, she is continuing toward her bachelor’s degree in early childhood education and dual language studies at Rio’s sister school, Mesa Community College — and encouraging the people around her to believe they can start, return or keep going, too.