Long Beach, California, native Siedra Johnson built her life around caring for others—both professionally and personally. Working as a direct support professional, she assists elderly individuals with their daily activities, a role that reflects her natural compassion and dedication. Raised by her grandmother, she grew up with a strong sense of resilience and creativity, often finding joy in creative ventures. Surrounded by a supportive boyfriend, family, and her two stepchildren, she found fulfillment in caregiving careers like home health, where helping others brought her a deep sense of purpose. Although she excelled in school, she once stepped away from her education—until the memory of her grandmother, who always believed she had what it took to work in healthcare, inspired her to pursue that dream with renewed determination. She joined American National University’s online Medical Assisting program to pursue her passions. With her dedication, Siedra was named a Term Trailblazer for Term 258!

When she made the decision to return to school, she began researching programs online, determined to find the right fit for her goals. It didn’t take long for American National University to stand out. “ANU was just on it! They answered all my questions, everything was [sic] timely, everybody was nice and very helpful… I got a good vibe from everybody, it just felt right,” she shared. That positive first impression was only strengthened by her experience with her admissions representative, I’Kea, who played a key role in making the process feel manageable and personal. “I’Kea was very supportive and she understood little things I had going on, she would work around it, I would work around her schedule, it was very cool!”

Throughout her time in the program, Siedra found encouragement and support from her instructors, including Carrie Rodriguez, Dr. Stephanie Denton, and Andrew Halverson. However, one professor who made a particularly lasting impact was Abby Chelstowski, especially during a challenging term when balancing school, work, and life became overwhelming. “She worked with me for Term 258! It was hard! It was like – I wouldn’t say it was hard, it was just with work and the things I had to turn in – I was exhausted! I started procrastinating a lot. And most professors won’t get into depth… she was like, ‘hey, you didn’t turn this in, if you don’t turn in something, you’re gonna have to repeat all of this!’ I was probably like four or five weeks in [a term], she would open things back up for me… I would get it done,” she explained. In reflecting on her time in Professor Abby’s class, she smiled and said, “she was just like, ‘Sisi relax, you got this!’ She was just so supportive, it didn’t seem like she got irritated by my questions… She was always nice and prompt and I love her! She really got me here at this point.”

“I think they, for some positions, they probably overly prepare us for!”

Her future goals include working in a unit for children or within a clinic to give back to her community. “I would love to have an opportunity to work with babies!” She enthuses.

Would she recommend ANU to others? “I definitely would. Especially the busy person who [sic] can’t physically go into a school, that are working or busy with homelife… [With ANU], you can move how you want to, just make sure you get it done. I would definitely recommend it, it’s ten out of ten. And it’s a great online school!”

Her advice to new students: “Come to class, make time for your work, study but don’t overstudy, and just make sure you’re paying attention to all of the material the professors are posting. Check your emails to keep yourself on top of everything.”

The post Back to School, Forward in Purpose appeared first on American National University.

For Samantha Kunz Voelker, a lifelong dedication to hard work has always been second nature. After years in retail, where her friendly and outgoing personality shined, she found herself longing for a career with more purpose and room to grow. When her husband was diagnosed with stage 4 heart failure, Samantha’s life changed dramatically. She became deeply involved in his care, learning everything she could about his condition and medical needs. That experience sparked a new passion for healthcare and inspired her to pursue her education at American National University, where she could build a meaningful career while continuing to care for her husband at home. Her dedication and determination recently earned her recognition as a Term Trailblazer for term 254!

At first, Samantha wasn’t entirely sure if a career in healthcare was the right path – she just knew how much she loved caring for her husband and children. As she began exploring schools online, one name immediately caught her eye. Her strong sense of patriotism drew her to American National University, and she decided to learn more. After filling out her information, she was soon contacted by a member of the admissions team, whose encouragement and guidance helped Samantha take the next step toward her new career journey.

“She made me want to go… she instantly made me feel like I was part of [ANU] already.”

Her education at ANU has given Samantha the confidence to improve the care she gives her husband, and to one day join the field of medical assisting. “It’s more than I ever thought,” she says, “being able to do school at home and work in my own comfort, I feel like I’m absorbing more. I don’t feel as intimidated.” Being online has given Samantha more freedom to learn in the comfort of her own home, whereas an in-person environment would cause her more stress. She explains that being in-person wouldn’t provide her the comfort to join discussions, whereas ANU’s Zoom sessions have given her that opportunity.

“I also think doing it online [with] the live lectures – the live lectures are actually my favorite part! Because the discussions – I get to hear everybody’s point of view about a topic about a certain topic so it makes me look at it in a way that I wouldn’t have looked at it before… I personally feel like I learn a lot more doing [classes] online than if I were doing it in a classroom.”

Samantha found the staff at ANU to be supportive of not only her journey but also her peers’ journeys at every turn. The Medical Assisting program chair, Carrie Rodriguez, is one of the first staff that made an impact on her. “She helps everybody. She’s just got a pure heart and she’s good in anything! If there’s ever any questions about anything – it could be something [that has] nothing to do with her – and she will help you in every way,” Samantha explains.

Additionally, Dr. Stephanie Denton has made a difference in her learning experience. “I absolutely love her!” Samantha begins, “she talks a lot, but she knows a lot about a lot. If she doesn’t know, she’s gonna look it up and tell you… She’s right there every bit of the way for everything that you’re doing. To me, that helped me learn a lot. She gave me a really good foundation to be able to be successful in [my] classes.” One of the highlights of ANU’s online experience is that it brings people from all over the country closer together. In Samantha’s time, she learned that Dr. Denton grew up not too far from where Samantha lives now. “After talking to her and getting to know her, I felt like I almost knew her on a personal level [because] we have a lot of friends in common, towns in common, and stories in common.”

Her future goals include working at the clinic where her husband goes for appointments. After that, she hopes to love working in the medical field as a medical assistant so she can possibly pursue a nursing degree later. “I have a friend who is a nurse practitioner – and in the town that I live in, there isn’t any clinics, so we would actually try to get a clinic here and have something at home,” she explains. “Already, doing all of this, I already know, I am far more passionate about it than I thought I would be. I thought I would just do it to hopefully to help others learn about LVAD and certain heart failure and challenges my husband has faced. I see myself continuing and continuing to grow my education in the healthcare field.”

Would she recommend ANU to others?

“I have actually already recommended ANU to a few people around here, that I’m trying to get them in,” she says. She has a friend who has been struggling with the financial aid portion of education. “The financial aid team at ANU was so easy to communicate with and helped handle things. That was my biggest thing I was worried about, and they made it so easy for me!”

Her advice to new students starting at ANU is: “Plan! Daily planners, plan, write out schedules… I am a mother to three stepchildren who live with me, I have a husband in end stage heart failure, I have nine rescue cats, I work a job, and I am a full time student. If you plan everything out, it will work just fine!”

The post Advocacy Leads to Passion appeared first on American National University.

Kalin Boyers (left), like many adults, had long dreamed of pursuing higher education. However, life’s demands—marriage, children, and work—led her to put that dream on hold. As her children grew more independent, Kalin finally found the perfect time to focus on her goals. After caring for a family member at home, she discovered her true passion: providing care and support, much like a nurse. When she learned about ANU’s Medical Assisting associate degree program, she knew it was the ideal steppingstone to her dream career. Through hard work and dedication, Kalin earned the title of Term Trailblazer for term 242, nominated by her professor, Dr. Stephanie Denton!

In Kalin’s quest to find the education she needs to reach her dreams of becoming an RN, she explains a struggle to find a program that not only fit her schedule as a working mother but was also accredited. “I found a place, I’m gonna enroll, they’re accredited, which is a big deal, because lots of places online don’t actually carry the proper accreditations and then you’re just wasting your time,” she says of her journey to find the right school.

“So when I found ANU I was like, ‘this is perfect! I can do this online. And then if I choose to go back to school after graduating, then I can continue moving online.’” 

She explains that attending ANU gives her the opportunity to attend her Zoom sessions and finish her assignments during the week, while working overnight as a patient care technician at her local hospital on the weekends. She says she “just get[s] in that habit every day, open it, look at it. It doesn’t matter if you spend 10 minutes or an hour, you gotta do something. So that’s been the-the biggest factor that has enabled me to stay on top of everything.”

When it comes to her class experiences, Kalin has enjoyed every minute. “I feel like it’s down to earth, it’s, you know, it’s achievable, it’s something that you don’t have to feel like you can’t just apply to because you don’t already carry four different degrees,” she explains. “You can start from scratch, you can go from zero to having that degree. You just have to want it, and I feel like they make it doable.” As she’s in our Medical Assisting associate degree program, Kalin thinks that her program is setting up a foundation for her that will last her whole career – even as she pursues her nursing degree later on. “I think that they’re setting up a really good learning foundation because if you don’t have even medical terminology walking into the hospital, that’s what they use… And so I think that they have done a really good job setting me up to make me feel comfortable around that environment.”

Her professors have been the shining stars for her in her education, however, bringing not only new knowledge for her to learn, but someone she can lean on for her education and beyond.

Dr. Stephanie Denton, the same professor who nominated her for her Term Trailblazer award, has been a professor she admires greatly. “She’s so smart. She knows so much stuff and she’s a jack of all trades. And so if there’s ever something that pops into my mind, she’s an open book to ask,” she says with a wide smile. “She had mentioned that later down the road looking for job opportunities, you can actually use your instructors as, professional referrals!”

Overall, she says that all of her professors “have truly been wonderful and really, that’s not just blowing smoke. That’s, that’s the, that’s the truth of it… I’ve been really happy with every single one of the professors and there has not been one where I’ve been like, ‘oh, I would not do that again’.”

Not only have her professors been wonderful, but Kalin feels immensely supported by the support staff she’s interacted with at ANU. She explains that student advisors always make sure to check in with their students. “If you are falling behind, they’ll reach out, they’ll call, they’ll email. So they’ve made themselves available… When I first was when I first started out, [my advisor] used to call me every week and she would check in just to make sure everything was ok if I had any questions or concerns.” Even in times of grief of losing someone close to her, her advisor was there to help her not only get the time she needed away, but to not fall behind in her classes. When she was in a heavy moment, she didn’t think she could handle being on camera during her Zoom session, and both her advisor and professors allowed her to sit it out without affecting her attendance grade. “And so they were like, ‘it’s ok, you don’t have to be on camera today’… reaching out to whoever needed to be reached out to so that way that I could be covered, and I wouldn’t miss anything. And that’s important with it being 40% of that grade.”

Her future goals include earning her nursing degree and becoming an RN. She explains that choosing her program now will help with that goal because “a lot of [classes] feed right into the nursing programs and it’s still relevant. It’s not just wasted credits and time.” Additionally, she hopes becoming a nurse will allow her to workday shifts rather than overnight shifts in her future, so she doesn’t have to sacrifice more time with her children and family.

Would she recommend ANU to other students? “Absolutely. And they make it easy!”

The post Support Every Step appeared first on American National University.

After dealing with some personal matters, Vanessa Barbee wanted to earn her education to better her future for herself and her three children. Before her time in the Medical Assisting program at American National University, Vanessa attended the Surgical Technician program when we were still known as National College. With her previous experience, she knew that our approach to education would fit her life and needs. Since her graduation with her associate degree in 2019, Vanessa has found success in many different jobs within her medical assisting career.

When Vanessa attended her medical assisting program at ANU, she attended campus in Lexington, Kentucky. She was part of some of the last few programs that attended on campus before we moved to mainly online programs. When she first attended ANU, she chose us because, compared to other schools she attended, we had smaller class sizes and more personalized attention.

“When I looked into ANU, I was like ‘this is a much smaller school,’ and the price was not even half of what [another institution] would cost.”

Along with that, she enjoyed how welcoming and kind the staff and faculty were to her even when she was just applying, “it felt homey!”

Her experience with her classes has given her skills and knowledge she uses every day in her career now. She fondly remembers a time when one of her professors encouraged her to go around campus to take other students’ blood pressure. Or practicing on medical dummies under the watch of her professors. And during her time there, her professors would set up their classrooms to emulate a doctor’s office of an emergency room so students could practice in the environment they could potentially work in – with all of the items they would need to do their jobs. “[My professor] would have us pretend we were rooming a patient. So we would have to call each other by name and pretend to take them to the exam room.  [We had to] go over all of their medical history, we had to practice all of the skills, blood draws, blood pressure – we had to do the whole visit.” She says having that experience has stuck with her for her entire career.

Vanessa explains that when she was in a management-like position in one of her jobs, she would show new medical assistants the skills she learned at ANU to better their job performance. “I would be like, ‘well in school, this is how I learned it, from my teachers who are also medical assistants, so this is how I’m going to teach you.’” She says she does this even to this day, passing on the knowledge her own career-experienced professors gave her. She says that her professors had influence in their local area to send students to shadow at several different medical offices so they can see what it was like to work in the field and what specialties she wanted to work in upon graduation. Vanessa shadowed in allergy offices, primary care offices, and even a gastroenterologist office.

While in the externship at an urgent care for her associate degree program, Vanessa was offered a full-time position before she even finished her externship. The skills and knowledge she learned at ANU made her an asset to that office and secured her a position. “Before I completed my externship, I was offered a position, when I had three weeks left… they said, ‘you know what, Vanessa, you are doing really good with the patients, you learn fast, you know your stuff, how about a position here with us?’ And I said yes, absolutely!”

Her future goals include earning her bachelor’s degree in medical health management. She wants to one day run her own office and be integral to every point – from the hiring, staff retention and discipline, and more as expected from a manager.

“I would definitely recommend ANU!” Vanessa says.

Her advice to new students: “Do not give up! Think about how far you’ve come, even just by enrolling – that’s a huge step!”

The post Moving Forward in Her Career appeared first on American National University.

Shelby Ritchie’s Story with ANU

Shelby Ritchie has high goals of becoming a doctor to achieve the dreams her mother desired but never could. While striving for that goal, Shelby wants to break into the medical field, but earn money while she does so to support her family. Medical Assisting at American National University was her breakthrough the field that she needed, and her dreams have already brought her success! She earned the title of Medical Assisting Student of the Term for term 230 – and breaks through her new career after graduating in the June 2023 graduation ceremony.

When issues arose around her first steps into college, Shelby wanted to get in another institution quickly to not disrupt her education. Stuck between ANU and another school, she chose American National because “the [admissions representative] I was talking to seemed so nice, and the school seemed really nice!” Not only that, but ANU’s tuition rates were better for her. “The amount that [ANU] cost was lower, but it had more schooling for you. Also, it was completely online, where [other institution], once a week I’d have to go and meet a teacher that was out of the way that I could never reach.”

Following her graduation, Shelby has earned a job at a dialysis center due to her externship experience there. Some of the skills she learned in her classes are helping her in her new job. “Interacting with the patients, following the HIPAA laws, and taking the normal vital signs definitely helped me prepare for the externship,” she said.

Shelby’s overall experience at ANU has been good – but the shining stars were her instructors and professors.

“The teachers were not only really kind and not only taught you what they were supposed to, but a lot of them were medical assistants so they’ll give you their experience that they had,” she said, “which helps you a lot more to put it into perspective rather than just learning it and not knowing how to use it later on.”

She explained that near the end of her program, her professors were trying to prepare her and her classmates for their careers that they were about to embark on. “The teachers definitely tried to step up and prepare you in all ways possible, which really, really helped!”

With our High Tech, High Touch education, Shelby got hands on education with our at-home lab kits. Not only that, but our small class sizes mean that she got the personalized attention she needed to succeed. “We would sit in front of [our instructor], and it was only me and one other student, so the teacher could watch us straight on. We had our cameras on the arm. And somehow she managed to watch the both of us at the same time,” she described. “I did something wrong once, and she said, ‘oh no, Shelby, that’s not how you do that,’ while the other student is also doing it… Which this did help me because she also had her phlebotomy arm and was showing us how to properly do it.”

Shelby’s future goals include spending a few years gaining experience as a medical assistant. She wants to do this to explore her options to see which field would interest her most as a doctor in her future.

On recommending ANU to others, Shelby would to those looking to earn their higher education. She said, “not only the flexibility, but the teachers that do it hands on with you really help you learn.”

Her advice to new students at ANU: “Read the textbook! I do not like reading to learn… but it definitely helps with remembering things later on.”

The post Great Aspirations appeared first on American National University.

Aging Population

As the biggest generation of Americans, commonly referred to as the Boomer generation, continues to age, their need for healthcare rises. 76.4 million Americans are between the ages of 59 and 77. With their aging, according to The National Library of Medicine, “older persons do not typically have one morbidity that they are dealing with, but more often have many diagnoses and comorbidities that require them to seek treatment.” There is demand for medical assistants now more than ever before as this older generation needs more medical care. With more demand in the field, medical assistants will be needed to stay on top of records, assist in procedures, and work with insurance companies.

Not only are the patients growing because of age, but the number of professionals retiring due to age is increasing as well. Nurses and medical staff all over are retiring due to age, causing a growing need for professionals in the field. Medical assistants can step up in many different practices to make up for this growing need – without needing as much schooling as other professionals.

Flexibility and Versatility

Being a medical assistant means they are versatile. Not only do they work with technology that creates insurance claims, keeps records, and other administrative tasks, but they’re also performing patient care with procedures. They will take vital signs, perform venipuncture, electrocardiograms (EKGs), and more. Many medical offices need employees that can not only perform the administrative duties that come with having patients, but the physical duties as well.

Not only that, but medical assistants can work in many different types of healthcare settings. This can include hospital-based care, physician offices, outpatient care centers, nursing homes, and rehabilitation centers, and more. Because medical assistants are so versatile in what they can do within patient care, they can work in many different settings.

Patient Advocacy

Much like nurses, medical assistants are there almost every step of the way with their patients. From checking in, taking vitals, performing procedures, processing insurance claims, and creating appointments, medical assistants will be the people that patients see most. They will also coordinate care for patients between different healthcare providers. On top of this, they educate patients on their conditions, their appointments, medication directions, post procedure care, and more. Medical assistants enhance the quality of patient care and more comprehensive healthcare delivery.

American National University and Medical Assistants

American National University offers four different programs for students looking to break out as a medical assistant – certificate and associate degree programs. Through our 100% online programs, you can learn from the comfort of your own home. You receive lab materials straight to your door to learn hands-on training you need to work as a medical assistant – all included in your tuition. ANU Medical Assisting graduate, Sarah Slone, has felt prepared to enter the workforce because of the hands-on education she received. “I was nervous about the phlebotomy part, I thought ‘how am I going to do that when I’m not in clinicals?’ but the arm, the hands-on, the EKG… It’s helped me a lot, I do feel more prepared for when I do go into the work force,” said Sarah.

The need for medical assistants is rising. Become one of the many invaluable individuals that make up the heart of many medical practices. Be a patient advocate, flexible, versatile, and care for patients at every stage of life. Learn about how you can join our accelerated programs to get you in the workforce faster at ANU at an.edu/elearning.

American National University – Be live, in class, from anywhere.

The post The Demand for Medical Assistants appeared first on American National University.

American National University has recently been re-approved for the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) Title I program. The WIOA program provides government funds for laid-off workers to enroll in approved programs for additional education that will give them greater opportunities. By helping them learn and develop new skills, we prepare unemployed workers for careers in the evolving global economy.

WIOA program approval extends to the following courses:

• Pharmacy Technician (Diploma and Associate’s)
• Paralegal (Diploma and Associate’s)
• Phlebotomy & ECG Diploma
• Network Support Associate’s
• Business Administration Associate’s
• Business Administration – Accounting (Diploma and Associate’s)
• Medical Coding & Billing Diploma
• Medical Assisting (Certificate and Associate’s)
• Health Information Management Associate’s
• Administrative Medical Assisting Associate’s

The application was approved by the Western Virginia Workforce Development Board (WVWDB) and Chief Local Elected Officials (CLEO) in Local Workforce Development Area 3 (LWDA3).

For more information on how you may qualify, call 833.388.1100, click, or Zoom an admissions representative today!

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