Love and lifelong friendships found in Lancaster have been celebrated at University of Cumbria’s winter 2024 graduation ceremonies.
Embarking on their postgraduate MA Counselling and Psychotherapy programme in 2018, Emmie and Mike Togneri-Hyslop quickly started dating and went on to fall in love, buy a house together and get married. They have also gone on to become parents, and have a two-year-old daughter, Alice.
Their studies took place largely at the University of Cumbria Lancaster campus in Bowerham Road, moving online during the pandemic. They celebrated together at Carlisle Cathedral last week, where they attended the university’s winter 2024 graduation ceremonies.
The pair are now supporting patients in Lancashire, working in the NHS for the Talking Therapies service.
Emmie said: “We met on the course and just really connected. It was like we’d always known each other. It was great to have clear shared interests as well being on the same course.
‘’We’ve now got our beautiful, confident and sassy two-year-old daughter Alice to complete our little family. It was so lovely to be able to bring her to our graduation to finish everything off nicely.
“University of Cumbria will always represent the start of our future. Both professionally and personally. We got the training and experience we need to work in a field we love, but also found each other and could begin to build our lives together.
“We both now work for the NHS for the Talking Therapies service, a role we both love. We’re both potentially interested in doing a PhD as well at some point and are still looking for that passion project that will draw our interest enough.”
Above: Louise Corless, Jess and Ann Molyneaux
Twenty years ago, Louise and Ann were degree nursing students at St Martin’s College, the legacy institution that is now University of Cumbria’s Lancaster campus following the university’s formation in 2007. Louise studied Mental Health Nursing while Ann focused on Adult Nursing.
Their careers took different paths and today Louise is programme leader for all fields of the University of Cumbria’s BSc (Hons) Nursing programme whilst Ann’s career took her to Canada where after working 15 years in the NHS, she now works as an Emergency department nurse in South Okanagan.
This month Ann travelled more than 3,000 miles from Canada for her daughter Jessica’s own graduation ceremony.
Jess has graduated this winter as an adult nurse after being a student on Louise’s programme for the last three years.
Jess was in Cumbria late last week for her graduation ceremony at Carlisle Cathedral exactly two decades after Anne and Louise graduated in a ceremony held in the very same building.
The ceremony was one of eight during which celebrated the achievements of the latest 1,100 University of Cumbria students to graduate.
Ann said “The last 5 years working as a nurse in Canada has been and continues to be fascinating! I believe that the strong academic background and working in the NHS gave me to confidence to take the leap.
‘’I always remember at my own graduation 20 years ago, one of the lecturers saying that obtaining a Nursing Degree ‘is a passport to the world’. I never forgot that and even now I wonder where it will take me in 5-10 years from now."
University of Cumbria nursing graduate Jess has gained a position on the Acute Medical Unit at Lancaster Royal Infirmary – the same ward where Louise’s daughter Jemma is a clinical support worker.
Louise said: “It has been so exciting to see Ann again. We were students together and during that time we used to take our little ones out together for day trips out with other members of our cohort.”
“Then as life does, our careers have taken different paths and that means you don’t catch up as regularly or in the same way as you used to so this graduation in Carlisle has been so special. To find out after all that time, Jess and Jemma are working in the same hospital, on the same ward was a real surprise.
“It was emotional to see Jess graduate, I felt super proud knowing how me and Ann had also been in this very same position 20 years ago and then seeing her do the same now with us both here to see her was fantastic.”
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