Lisa Koykar pursued her master’s degree while living in her in-laws’ house, along with her three children, their three children and one bathroom. Her husband, Maj. Francis Koykar, was stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
“I had to essentially be a geographic single parent for the time I was at Marquette,” Lisa Koykar says.
That did not deter Koykar from getting her degree from Marquette’s Direct Entry Master of Nursing program in 2019, an experience that set her up for success as a nurse. After receiving a Post-Master’s Certificate from Milwaukee School of Engineering, Koykar became a psychiatric nurse practitioner near Tacoma, Washington, where she helps people undergoing depressive disorders and struggling with generalized anxiety.
Six years later, Koykar views her time at Marquette as foundational to the nurse she is today.
“Marquette does an amazing job at looking at individuals holistically, and that’s not just the school of nursing,” Koykar says. “My time at Marquette taught me to look at all the nuances that make an individual unique. If you miss those nuances, then you’re more likely to not get the outcomes that you want when you’re treating someone.”
At the time of her degree, Koykar’s three children — Madelyn, Adysen and Anneliese — were eight, seven and four years old, respectively. Mother-daughter time with Madelyn consisted of Koykar giving her oldest a set of color-coordinated flash cards, with the names of medications like “Propranolol” scribbled on them. As Madelyn held them up, Koykar would describe the mechanism of action for each one.
“When a patient comes to you in the worst moment of their life, you can use the skills you learned to make them feel empowered.”
Lisa Koykar, DE MSN Graduate, Class of 2019
Her other daughters got in on the game too, frequently playing with mom’s stethoscope. Amid the light-hearted moments, however, were more serious ones.
“One day, one of my daughters told me, ‘You work a lot now.’ And I told her that I was doing it so I could give them a better life, the kind of life I didn’t have as a kid,” Koykar says.
While Marquette’s five-semester program moves at an accelerated pace, it also offered the flexibility Koykar needed. She requested clinical sites closer to Illinois instead of Milwaukee and rotation times starting in the morning, which allowed her to be closer to family. Staff worked with Koykar to structure her summer schedule so trips to North Carolina to see her husband became possible.
That DE MSN degree became the basis for her career in psychiatric nursing. At Creative Wellness TMS, the mental health clinic where she works, Koykar uses trans-magnetic stimulation, an FDA-approved treatment that uses magnetic pulses for the restoration of neural pathways, to treat mental disorders. Koykar, who grew up in the foster system, is passionate about mental health care and was always intent on using her Marquette degree to help those who are struggling.
“Having the life experiences that I’ve had, I just gravitated toward psychiatric mental health,” Koykar says. “It was pretty much staring me in the face, that this is the path I was going to take.
“When a patient comes to you in the worst moment of their life, you can use the skills you learned to make them feel empowered.”
A lot has changed since Koykar graduated. She’s taken up bodybuilding, finishing second in a local show in March. She plans on getting a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree from the University of Connecticut, where she plans to show up to the program’s in-person days wearing Marquette basketball gear. Most importantly, the children who helped her with flashcards and played with her stethoscope are now much bigger. Madelyn, the oldest, is entering high school and has dreams of being a Marquette soccer player.
Koykar still remembers visiting campus all those years ago, her kids still young, feeling the sense of community that would keep her tied to Marquette forever.
“You could just tell people really cared at Marquette, and it’s something I wanted to be a part of.
