I Chose ISU: Becky Wray, Idaho Falls renaissance woman

“Dad was a dreamer, always seeing the greener grass over the fence and down the road, so we moved all over the country,” said Becky Wray, an Idaho State University-Idaho Falls student. “I attended 13 different schools by the time I graduated from high school.”

It may have been Wray’s early life on the move or marrying a soldier that spurred her love of travel because she and husband Brian moved often.

“We were deployed to duty stations all over the U.S., but my favorite was the NATO station in Mons, Belgium,” Wray said. “The cultures were so varied and fascinating, different from anything I knew. I loved it.”

Wray is a senior majoring in biomedical sciences, and will graduate May 2016. Wrayplans to return to Belgium as a college graduation trip for her son Dalton, who doesn’t remember much of his early life there.

When they came back to the states, the Wrays wound up in Montana at a lumber mill. Becky had a job as office manager and bookkeeper, and Brian worked in the mill. When the housing crisis hit, it sent the lumber industry into a tailspin and put Brian and many others out of work. Brian volunteered for a 12-month deployment in Iraq. Becky and their son Dalton moved to Idaho Falls, her hometown, where her father and sister resided.

In 2009 she started taking classes at ISU-Idaho Falls.

“Having an outreach campus here gave me the opportunity go to school and still be with Dalton while he was in school,” Wray said. “I changed my major a few times, but nothing I tried was quite the right fit.”

She finally decided on biomedical science and has loved the program thus far. A plus for her is that she can complete the whole degree, with the exception of two anatomy and physiology labs, without leaving the Idaho Falls campus. After graduation, Wray plans to continue on to the physician assistant graduate program as soon as she finishes her Bachelor of Science degree.

Not all of Wray’s college experiences involve academics. She is also an ISU employee and has been since she started school. Her first job as a student worker was with the ISU-Idaho Falls nursing program in the Health Care Education Building that ISU shares with Eastern Idaho Technical College. Eventually she was hired full time and is now the administrative assistant to the vice provost.

“Working on the IF campus is great,” Wray said. “The whole atmosphere encourages learning, and that’s what I’m here to do. It’s a small campus with small enough classes that it’s easy to build relationships with faculty. As you get into your major classes, you build a cohort of fellow students, too, who are experiencing the same issues, successes and failures you are. You have a built-in support group. This is just the right place for me to be.”