Left to right: James Jr., James, Angela, Jason, and Sofia Miaoulis

In 1999,  Livin’ La Vida Loca was on the radio, The Matrix was playing in movie theatres, and Angela Miaoulis was beginning her studies at what was then Felician College.

More than two decades later, Miaoulis accepted her Bachelor of Arts degree at American Dream in Rutherford from what is now Felician University, cheered on by her husband James and their three children.

Miaoulis sees the journey to completing her undergraduate degree as a blessing rather than a detour. She started as an elementary education major and enjoyed the field work, but in her sophomore year, realized teaching was not her calling. She changed her major to English with a minor in communications and got involved with Felician’s Little Theatre and radio station. She loved the Felician atmosphere which she described as, “compact, concise, and compassionate.” She found her courses stimulating and especially enjoyed Dr. Sherida Yoder’s History of the Novel course where she read classics including Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, and Jude the Obscure. “Dr. Yoder is a brilliant and determined woman,” Miaoulis recalled, “who freely shared from a personal identification point of view for each character providing an in-depth response from where I was in the here and the now.”

After learning she was pregnant with her first child, James Jr., Miaoulis put her studies aside to get acclimated to her new life as wife and mother, roles she embraced wholeheartedly. She returned to Felician as a part-time student in 2006, then soon after gave birth to her second son, Jason. She persisted with her education until the couple’s third child, Sofia, arrived not long after. “It was a tough and complicated pregnancy and this time I really had to put the studies down,” Miaoulis shared.

Even through the complexities of raising young children, Miaoulis never gave up on her dream of one day completing her degree. She prayed, meditated, journaled, and kept a manifestation wheel to attract what she wanted into her life. When the COVID- 19 pandemic hit, Miaoulis took advantage of the fact that her children’s schoolwork was remote and jumped on the opportunity to return to school. She was pleasantly surprised that many of her credits were still accepted at Felician. The Enrollment Management team worked with the English department in mapping out her curriculum, making for a seamless transition back to being a college student. Miaoulis says she is also grateful for Assistant Professor Dr. Kristen Abbey who was her faculty advisor for her senior seminar.

Miaoulis says there were some funny experiences being in the classroom with students much younger than herself. “I was the only one carrying a textbook. Everyone else had notebooks and were using laptops,” said Miaoulis, who added she was never made to feel embarrassed or awkward as she transitioned into the modern classroom.
She fondly remembers a young classmate who went out of her way to assist her. “I was going very slowly on an assignment and the rest of the class was working very quickly, Miaoulis recalled, “and this student came up to me and said, ‘check your phone, I am going to airdrop the assignment to you.’” She saw it a wonderful example of the Felician family looking out for one another and putting the Franciscan core values into action.

Now that the journey has ended and Miaoulis has earned her degree from Felician, Miaoulis looks forward to drawing on the experiences and support of fellow Felician alumni, including signing on to the mentorship program Felician Falcons Fly Together.

At the Baccalaureate Mass in May, Fr. John O’Neil told new graduates, “Love is a decision, and we get a lifetime of opportunities to reevaluate it!” For Miaoulis life has come full circle, especially since her first born graduated high school at the same time she earned her degree from Felician, and she encourages others who may have put their education on hold to consider Felician. “We do not always get to choose the order of things, but we do get to choose how we embrace them and fall in love with them.”