As the eldest of five children, King University Senior Delaney Porter says it would have been impossible for her single-income family to pay for her college tuition without a miracle – and a miracle is what she believes happened.

The star softballer first attended community college to help avoid financial hardship for her family. Then, when it came time to seek her bachelor’s degree, Delaney discovered that there were scholarships available at King.

The senior says it was a step of faith for her to apply, but soon discovered that scholarships made possible by friends and alumni of the University could pave the way for her to attend.

“That was really cool, how God provided exactly the amount I needed to come to King,” she said. “Down to the last dollar.”

That support, Delaney says, has helped her grow and serve in her faith, and to understand she is a stakeholder in her own education and also in King.

“It’s really humbling and makes you really thankful whenever you do get a scholarship. It also gives you a sense of ownership in your education. You know, you feel grown. You feel like, ‘okay, I worked hard to accomplish this,’” she said.

In public school, Delaney said she felt unheard, unseen, and disconnected from her faith. Now, the fifth-year senior performs with her guitar at Chapel every Wednesday and leads worship at First Presbyterian Church every weekend.

“I’m thankful for the opportunity I had to come here. It’s such a God thing,” she said. “It really felt like he picked me up and dropped me here.”

King University senior nursing student Haakon Meyer learned at an early age that he has a heart to serve others. A resident of Washington state, he began to help care for his eldest brother after he experienced a traumatic brain injury.

“Whenever he was released from the hospital, he would just forget things,” Haakon says. “He would take a shower, get out, and leave the water running. Or he would cook food and walk away from a burning stove top. So my mom and I were watching to make sure he was okay, and those were important moments my life when I was able to give basic care. That made me feel good, and I like making other people feel good, and it put me on the path toward a nursing degree.”

Haakon also stepped in when his grandfather was diagnosed with cancer, helping care for him once he came home from school in the afternoons.

“I would make him eggs after the chemo, because that’s mostly what he could stomach,” he says. “I made sure that he was eating and taking his meds.”

Haakon says that it was a leap of faith for him to apply to King and travel from one side of the country to the other to pursue his degree at King, and he credits King’s nursing faculty and resources with preparing him to serve others once he graduates this spring.

He’s been able to attend King with the help of a swimming scholarship made possible by alumni and friends of the University, and has dedicated his studies and future career to his grandfather and brother.

“I’m going to be learning the rest of my career,” he says.

A philanthropist himself, King University Junior Demetri Teddlie encourages anyone with the means to donate funds for scholarship opportunities, to do so.

As the COVID-19 pandemic shut down campus after campus, Demetri was unable to visit many higher education institutions. It was when he stepped onto the Oval and wrestled in Kline Gym for the first time that he realized King was to be his home for the next four years.

The Shreveport, LA native liked the attentiveness of King’s faculty. He knew he would find support and encouragement at the small Christian university.

His single mother cared for Demetri and his two brothers.

“She would be able to afford to pay for college, but it would just be very hard on her,” he said. He did not want to subject his mother to the stress of debt. So, he worked as hard as he could at wrestling.

His freshman year, with a partial scholarship and the promise of more funding if he won on the mat, Demetri worked harder than he had ever worked before. Tragedy struck when he tore his ACL meniscus, with surgery and recovery costing him a year.

Low on hope, he worked as harder and returned to wrestling the following year only to qualify for the national championship.

“Even when you get a little bit, it helps,” Demetri said of the money he got to help him attend King. “To be able to help people, you may be able to help other people achieve the same goals you did.”

He would go from high school to high school in norther Louisiana, where wrestling coaches are scares, and he trains any student who wishes to participate – for little to no assistance.

“Any time I was able to help someone that was younger than me, I would always try to do that because I knew how much it helped me and I wouldn’t take money for it,” he said.

His dream was always to become a veterinarian, but after all the surgeries he’s undergone due to his wrestling injuries, Demetri is working on a biology degree to enter the medical field in some way after graduation.

Her parents started their business from the ground up, so Carly Turner knows a thing or two about trying again and again until you reach your goal.

When her big brother became a medical doctor, Carly decided to go into medicine herself.

She started on a journey to becoming a nurse at the University of Charleston her freshman year, then moved to Wright State University for her sophomore year. It wasn’t until she found King University in her junior year that she felt at home.

Currently pursuing her Master of Healthcare Administration degree, Carly says she wants to effect real change on the healthcare industry beyond graduation.

“I really just enjoy helping people and I wanted to dive a little deeper into the quality of healthcare and make improvements in patient lives,” she said.

Her goal is to minimize the number of patients nursing staff must engage at one time, keeping the patient-to-nurse ratio at 1:1 or 1:2 instead of the sometimes six patients that a single nurse must care for.

“Reducing the burnout of the nurses is going to be crucial, especially because of the field of nursing kind of decreasing because they are getting overworked,” she said.

Carly hopes to be able to give back to the community and urges others to do so as well. She says those who have the means to help students like herself receive first-rate education will be contributing to the future of our world.

It may have been the mountains that drew Carly to Bristol, but she says the level of education she has received has prepared her to impact not only the local community, but the healthcare industry.