What are LSC-CyFair’s former Falcons doing now? We are excited to share the academic and career success stories of a new alum each month here in Cy’s Spotlight. On occasion, we will also include successful achievements about our Falcon faculty.

Sarah Moreno

February 2025: A 2013 Lone Star College-CyFair graduate, Sarah Moreno said “I’ll never forget the day I found the courage to take a double stroller and register for college! LSC-CyFair is perfect for moms looking to further their education.”

After seeing the Cy-Fair Fire Department EMS save her son’s life, Sarah said she enrolled in LSC-CyFair’s EMT classes. She found LSC-CyFair offered the flexibility to take courses at her own pace while balancing a busy home life as a wife, mother of sons and business owner. In addition, the training received with clinical practice and hands-on experience laid the foundation for a career in the medical field. She also developed public speaking and leadership skills through speech class and serving as president of Phi Theta Kappa’s Beta Lambda Mu Chapter.

Proud to be the first female to graduate college in her family, Sarah would use the lessons learned at LSC-CyFair to further her education at University of St. Thomas and reach her goal of earning “a holistic nursing degree where mind, body and spirit were treated.”

A registered nurse since 2015, Sarah’s medical career has ranged from time on a Mobile ICU Ambulance and a 911 truck for the Cy-Fair Fire Department prior to earning her nursing degree, to serving as a hospice nurse, COVID nurse and travel nurse in Hawaii, Minnesota and Galveston, to name a few places. Still a private nurse for occasional clients, Sarah is now focused on being an entrepreneur running multiple businesses.

She dedicates most of her time fostering happy memories in the community with the family business, Big Texas Custom Events. She is co-owner with her husband, while their son Christopher is the general manager, son Michael is operations manager and daughter-in-law Ana is staff supervisor.

Most recently, for the second year in a row, the Morenos brought their Big Texas Foam Party to Cy-Fest at LSC-CyFair. Moreover, Michael and Ana have their own fond memories of LSC-CyFair, which is where they first met as students.

Sarah said “With the support of LSC-CyFair faculty and staff, I gained the knowledge to not only join the medical field, but become a stronger patient advocate and to start a successful family business.”

Tonia Merideth

January 2025: Lone Star College-CyFair helped Tonia Merideth, a mother of two sons and two daughters (both of whom later attended LSC-CyFair) with a full-time job, achieve her dream career in the field of history, a passion she found in high school nearly 30 years ago.

“The catalyst to enroll at LSC-CyFair was learning about the Williamsburg Bray School (a historic school for freed and enslaved Black children),” said Tonia, who is not only a member of the descendant community, but a full-time Oral Historian at the William and Mary Bray School Lab. “And there was also my desire to pursue a history degree at some point in my life, although at that point it was more of a ‘bucket list’ item.”

When this non-traditional, first-generation student at LSC-CyFair graduated in 2018, she was a member of The Honors College at LSC-CyFair and Phi Theta Kappa, Jack Kent Cooke Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship Semi-finalist, Italy Study Abroad participant, and intern at the African American Library at the Gregory School. Mentored by Professors Dr. Keith Altavilla and Dr. David Bruner, she presented and published her first article and then gained her first experience working with the descendant communities in Olivewood Cemetery and Freedmen’s Town (historic sites recognized as part of the UNESCO Slave Route project in 2019).

Earning both a bachelor’s in 2020 and master’s in 2022 at Sam Houston State University before moving to Virginia, Tonia’s initial goal to teach college-level history became a career she loves “giving a voice to those who have been overlooked and erased that made significant contributions to history.”

And just recently this now award-winning author and historian was featured on the cover of the Washington Post, interviewed by Scripps News, and included on the Today Show for her work to rediscover, capture and preserve the legacy of the Colonial Williamsburg school house. Also of note is that Tonia contributed to the just published William and Mary Bray School lab book project.

“LSC-CyFair gave me the keys to success by helping me learn public history and research and conference skills that I would need as I continued my educational career,” she said. “I learned how to publish an article, present at conferences, as well as how to conduct oral histories and archiving as an intern.”