After graduating high school, Phuong Lam made a pact with her best friend that they would both go to the University of Southern California (USC) together. Her plan was to study pharmacy, a lifelong dream of hers, and experience college with her closest friend. However, filled with anxiety about leaving her family in Las Vegas behind, she decided not to attend USC. Wanting to be closer to home, and with no pharmacy schools in Las Vegas, Phuong chose to study nursing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV).
After graduating and starting her career as a pediatric nurse, Phuong and her husband tried to start a family, but it proved to be a difficult journey. Not long after Nevada College of Pharmacy, now Roseman University of Health Sciences, opened in 2001, she decided to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a pharmacist. If starting a family was not in the cards, she reasoned; she could at least pursue the career she had always wanted. She told her husband, then her parents, then her boss—all of them were shocked by the sudden pivot. After rigorously working to pass her PCAT and preparing to leave her nursing job, Phuong, once again, stepped away from her dream and decided not to attend Roseman University. This time it wasn’t because of fear of leaving her family behind; it was out of the happiness of starting one. She was finally pregnant with her first child, Tayler.
“Oh, another tough decision in life, right?” Phuong, sitting next to her daughter, laughed softly as she recalled one of the hardest choices she had ever made. “I was like, ‘what am I going to do?’ I want to pursue my career path, but then, you know… God’s giving me a child.” Years later, that same decision would shape her daughter’s path in ways Phuong could not have imagined.
Growing up seeing her mom working as a nurse, Tayler Lam always knew that she did not want to be a nurse. In fact, as a child, she had no interest in healthcare at all. She had her sights set on the performing arts. However, in high school, she had to face the music. “The arts felt more like a hobby rather than a career, but I wanted to be able to still find a career where I can make an impact on people in a different way.”
She’d seen her mother do exactly that as a nurse, caring for her grandparents, her brother, and her patients with deep empathy. So, Tayler decided she wanted to pursue healthcare. While she knew she didn’t want to be a nurse like her mom—Tayler can’t handle blood and bodily fluids—she knew she wanted to affect people just like her mother did. “I wanted to be able to make that same impact,” she said.
When Tayler told her mom she was interested in pursuing healthcare as a career, Phuong was surprised but ecstatic. Contemplating what field she wanted to be in, Tayler turned to her mom for advice. Knowing her daughter could not handle bodily fluids, Phuong suggested a healthcare field that would be cleaner and more controlled. “I know a place that’s very clean,” Phuong recalls telling her daughter. “Pharmacy.” She laughs. “I kept trying to sell it.”
But Phuong wanted to make sure Tayler was choosing pharmacy for the right reasons. “I didn’t want her to feel like she had to do it for me or anything. So, I said, ‘Are you okay with all those biology classes and science classes?’ For me, it was fun; those are my favorite classes. But for her…” Phuong trails off while looking at her daughter, and then they both burst out in laughter. But Tayler passed those classes and graduated from UNLV with a biology degree.
After graduating, just like her mother, Tayler knew she wanted to stay close to her family. Her mom had told her about Roseman, and after attending info sessions and learning about the Six-Point Mastery Learning Model®, Tayler was sold. Tayler smiles as she recalls how the Office of Admissions showed genuine care for prospective students. “Out of all the other pharmacy schools I was considering, they showed the most enthusiasm about the trust in their curriculum and the education [Roseman can] provide.”
That enthusiasm stuck with her, so much so that she decided to get more involved at Roseman once classes started. Tayler was so impressed with her discussions with the admissions office that she ran for the Admissions Committee Representative for her class and won! “It comes back to how the Office of Admissions made me feel when I was applying to the program. They really paid attention to me, and they were just so enthusiastic about it… I want to help be part of that and recruit more students to get their education here.”
The block curriculum was one of the most appealing parts of Roseman’s teaching and learning model. “Roseman just [has] a really unique curriculum… I liked that we could master one block at a time, and I do well in that sort of curriculum structure.”
Equally important to Tayler in her college career has been the professors at Roseman. She appreciates how engaged the faculty has been in making sure that students succeed during their time at Roseman. Tayler noticed how professors show genuine care for the subjects they teach, making the material come alive in ways that inspire students to dive deeper. It’s a refreshing change from her undergraduate experience, where some professors felt more disengaged. “I [thought], ‘Oh, we would just kind of be thrown into the water,’ but after hearing stories of current students, and now experiencing it, [the professors] really want you to succeed, and they want you to get involved with the College as well.”
Tayler’s love for Roseman mirrors her mother’s own experience at the university years earlier. While Phuong never pursued pharmacy at Roseman, she returned in 2005 as part of the university’s first Master of Business Administration (MBA) cohort in partnership with Dignity Health. In fact, Phuong
wasn’t just a part of the first cohort; she helped recruit for it. Roseman’s innovative MBA program required a minimum enrollment to launch, and Phuong was eager to see it happen. She recruited her coworkers at the hospital, bringing together a group of nurses interested in business leadership. “I encouraged eight of my coworkers to enroll,” she recalls. “I said, ‘I can give you people.'”
Phuong appreciated how student-centered Roseman was. She remembered how staff would be flexible in scheduling classes, so they would align with Dignity’s tuition reimbursement cycle. “No [other] school’s going to do that,” Phuong exclaimed.
Like her daughter, Phuong valued the block curriculum and the structure Roseman provided. “They circle back in a group, and then they retake that assessment, and they give group points,” Phuong explained. “It’s so you can practice in a group setting; you can discuss your answers together and decide what is correct.”
Looking at her daughter, she reflected on the lesson behind it all. “That’s something you do in life. When you’re working, you’re always in a group setting. So that helps you build that confidence.”
“This is the full circle,” Phuong says, her voice soft with emotion. “We’re closing the loop now.” A loop that Tayler wasn’t even fully aware of. “That honestly was a story I didn’t know… I didn’t really know that much about the timeline of it all.” Still, Tayler is proud to pick up where her mother left off. When asked what it means to share this journey with her mother, Tayler pauses, searching for the right word. “I don’t know, it’s just very… kismet,” she says thoughtfully. Phuong’s own mother passed away when Tayler was in middle school, but Phuong knows she would be proud. “If she were here, she would have been so proud of Tayler.”
As they both reflect on their time at Roseman and Phuong watches Tayler build her path there now, the parallels are unmistakable: two generations shaped by the same spirit of resolve, risk, and Roseman.