FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

 

ANN ARBOR NUTRITIONIST RECEIVES MASTERS DEGREE AT AGE 59

Another Step in Life-long, Life-saving Journey

 

Ann Arbor, MI—To most Eastern Michigan University graduates who received diplomas on April 29, 2012 at EMU’s Convocation Center, the event was a gateway to their futures. To Cindy Klement, the event was another step in a life-saving journey that began over thirty years ago.

 

Cindy Klement, 59, a self-described “wife, mother, daughter, grandmother, entrepreneur, and student,” received her Masters of Science Degree in Human Nutrition.

 

Cindy’s journey began in the late-seventies, at a time when most of her fellow graduates had not yet been born. “After graduating from high school in 1971, I told my mother I wanted to become a doctor.  She told me I didn’t ‘have the brains to be a doctor,’ and discouraged me from attending college.” Instead, she got married and started a family.

 

By that time, her personal health already was challenging her day-to-day existence.  “I was brought up by parents who owned a party store. Breakfast to me was Ho Hos and chocolate milk. My childhood was wrought with asthma, allergies, skin problems, intestinal disorders, and other recurrent illnesses that I could never cure even with prescription drugs and frequent hospitalization.”

 

A chance discussion with a stranger led her to a holistic practitioner who gave her herbs, vitamins, and a list of whole foods to begin incorporating into her diet. He told her to give his suggestions nine months to begin showing results. She didn’t have to wait that long. “By the end of six months, my symptoms were disappearing. I had made it through my first spring without sneezing from the pollen, or having an asthma attack at the smell of cut grass. The eczema was clearing from my hands and my previously constant use of antibiotics ceased.”

 

That experience marked the beginning of Cindy’s lifelong study of herbal medicine, nutrition, and holistic health. She has been in private practice since 1983.  In 1997, she opened her present office at The Parkway Center, the premiere holistic health center in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Throughout her career, she has served over 3,200 clients as an herbalist and nutritionist, and thousands more as a health educator both nationally and locally.

 

Cindy’s college experience was a warm synthesis of real-world and academic learning. Because of her prior learning experiences in the working world, Cindy completed five portfolios that netted her fifteen credit hours to get her going on the curriculum requirements for her Bachelors degree. At the recommendation of her professor, Doc Evans, she joined the Honors College. One requirement for Honors was to write a thesis and present it at the Undergraduate Symposium. Her thesis, entitled “Intercultural Communication and the Nutrition Professional,” was an award winner. 

 

Not missing a beat, she began her Masters program a month after receiving her Bachelors degree. Courses included cultural nutrition, community nutrition, medical nutrition therapy, nutrition and aging, and other advanced topics in nutrition and nutrition research that she topped off with her Masters thesis, “Consumer Awareness and Belief Regarding the Health Implications of Soy," and a grade point average of 3.91. “My focus was on courses that would help me realize my ultimate passion, to expand my teaching and speaking career that I began in 1983, but now with a higher degree of knowledge.”

 

Graduation day for Cindy was the culmination of a journey she began in the fall of 2006 at the age of 53 when she entered EMU as a freshman. What’s next for Cindy Klement, EMU graduate? “Now that I’ve completed my Masters degree I plan to sit for the board-certified clinical nutrition exam. I am also pursuing national certification as a health educator by continuing with additional classes over the next two years.  I might possibly be teaching a graduate course on Functional Nutrition at Eastern Michigan University – a lifelong dream!"

 

This from a woman whose mother discouraged her from attending college because she wasn’t smart enough.