Rangel found out she was pregnant in 2020 when she was 18, just after she started her freshman year at Texas Tech University. It never crossed her or her family’s minds that she wouldn’t finish college. Since it was the pandemic, Rangel took classes virtually at her family’s home in New Braunfels while she was pregnant.

On June 11, 2021, while on summer break, she gave birth to a beautiful baby daughter.

“She’s a bright, active, loving, sassy, curious girl,” Rangel said. “Her laugh is contagious, and she loves cooking with me, arts and crafts, being outdoors, going to the library, dressing up, ‘playing makeup,’ and other girly things.”

Bobbi had a gastrointestinal illness when she was born that required her to go to the emergency room. She was in the NICU for more than four weeks, during which time Rangel learned she had been admitted to the undergraduate speech pathology program at The University of Texas at Austin. Bobbi was barely recovering when Rangel had to attend orientation.

She admits she felt very different starting school in Austin, isolated. She struggled with postpartum depression and frequently had to go to therapy.

According to the Senate of College Councils, there are only 104 undergraduate student parents at UT, and they have a uniquely challenging experience.

Because of Bobbi’s feeding problems, Rangel decided to focus her studies on helping adults with swallowing disorders. Today, she works with speech, language, and hearing sciences assistant professor Corinne Jones in her Swallow Modulation Lab, and she also conducts research with associate professor Jun Wang examining speech patterns in patients with neurogenerative disorders like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.

On top of being a student and a mom, Rangel has somehow made time to work as a research assistant, apply to graduate school and serve as president of the University’s Student Parent Organization. In that role, she advocated to the Senate of College Councils to change syllabus language to include academic accommodations for pregnant and parenting students. The organization also has helped establish priority registration for student parents and started a diaper, wipes and formula pantry at the UT Outpost.

Rangel knows every mom’s experience is different, but it’s never easy.

When asked to give advice to her fellow moms, she said:

• Practice time management.
• Use your support systems — family, friends, professors.
• Look for services on campus such as child care and resources like University Health Services.
• Connect with other student parents.
• Take time to yourself.

She said she knows that last one is difficult advice. It’s clear, as she talks, that she struggles with it herself and almost doesn’t have an answer for how to do that.

Counseling. Time with friends between classes. Quiet moments alone when you can get them.

She said the faculty at Moody College have supported her so much along the way, holding space for her while she cries, sharing their experiences, letting her borrow a phone charger when she forgot hers.

“I love Moody,” Rangel said. “I don’t know what I would do if I had to go anywhere else.”

Natalie Czimskey, an assistant professor in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, said she feels so lucky to have had Rangel as a student.

“Emily is the best. She is so composed and focused while balancing motherhood and her studies,” she said. “She is going to be an amazing speech-language pathologist.”

Rangel tries to remember, on days when she’s moved to tears with stress — which is a lot of days — that she is doing this for both herself and her daughter.

“I feel like she will be proud of me,” she said. “I am proud of myself.”

Rangel loves to see Bobbi excited about Bevo and days she gets to study at home with Bobbi banging on her computer while she’s typing. How it felt to have her daughter attend her Ring Day ceremony, and how it will feel when they attend her graduation May 10.

Two days after the ceremony, Rangel will celebrate Mother’s Day.

She’s invited close friends and family to watch her walk the stage, including the family friend who drove her from New Braunfels to Austin those first two years of college for $20 a week before Rangel got her own apartment in West Campus, and those who have supported her when she felt like everyone else ran away. There’s a stigma against young moms, Rangel said. And she’s definitely felt it.

She knows years from now, both she and Bobbi  will have a better life because of her sacrifices today. Rangel recently got into grad school at UT for the fall. She hopes one day she can work as a researcher and also part-time as a speech-language pathologist.

“I know a lot of young women who were in college and got pregnant and faced challenges continuing their education,” Rangel said. “I want to be a representation for parents and to empower them to achieve their personal and academic goals. Because it’s possible. I really feel like I flourished here at UT and learned something every day that helped me grow.”