From across the Wood Center, 28-year-old Teneeshia York doesn't stand out among the people milling around. Her jeans and floral print top are stylish, and the little girl standing next to her might be a daughter, which isn't so unusual.

But her outfit hides what lies beneath: She is pregnant with her second child, and she is a full-time student preparing to apply to law school while also working 20 hours a week.

York came to Fairbanks from the Caribbean in 1997, following her brother who was in the military. Just a few years later, she got pregnant with a baby girl.

Rubie, who calls herself a "lucky baby" for being born in Fairbanks and bringing change to her mother's life, was born seven years ago, before York had started at UAF.

"I didn't even have a GED before Rubie was born," York says.

In the past seven years, York has taken her education well beyond the GED level. She started out shooting for an associate's degree in accounting. Once she earned that, she set a new goal, to get a bachelor's degree in criminal justice. So close to earning her bachelor's degree, York has set another goal for herself, to go to North Carolina and start law school in the fall 2008.

By that time, her second daughter will be a year and a half old, and her father should have returned from Iraq. He is expected to return in late July or early August. York hopes to go to North Carolina partly to be closer to her partner's family, many of whom live in North Carolina.

Not all of York's goals have been centered around her education. Her boss in UAF's Travel Department, Manager Dale Anderson, says that he has watched her set and achieve non-academic goals as well.

"She knows what she wants out of life and she sets her goals accordingly and she goes after them," Anderson says.

According to Anderson, York has also earned her citizenship and a driver's license while she has worked with him.

Anderson says that York's drive to get her license came partly from her strength and independence, because it allowed her to be more self-reliant, although it also required her to gain skills other than just using a car, such a navigating and maintaining her vehicle.

"Getting her license was very important to her," Anderson says. "She was very proud of it that day."

York says she got her license in July 2004, a little over a year before she became an American citizen.

To earn her citizenship, she went through a lengthy, bureaucratic process. She became an American in October 2005, she exercises her right to vote, and has gained an understanding of the American political system, Anderson says.

In the three years that York has worked in Anderson's office, he says she has become more than just a student employee.

"We rely on her as full employee not student employee," Anderson says. "She deals with customers, does banner, audits expense reports, works on special assignments. We trust her fully now, and from that perspective we're really going to miss her when she graduates."

York's goals don't end at her graduation from law school. She wants to be a prosecutor, although she hasn't decided what state she'll settle in.

Law is something interesting, and something she feels like she'd be good at, she says. Plus, she wants to give back to the community.

"I want to work with kids and help them see their mistakes," she says

York already works with kids in her spare time, al though they aren't youth headed to court.

She volunteers at Rubie's school, University Park Elementary, and is a leader of her daughter's Girl Scout troop.

York says working with the troop gives her a chance to spend time with Rubie, and to get outdoors -- troop activities are most of the exercise that she gets.

She and two other troop leaders took an outdoor survival class to certify them to take the troop on adventures outdoors.

Ernesta Moore, one of the women she took the class with, said her daughter, Grace, and Rubie were good friends. Moore and York see each other 3-4 times a month at various girl scout activities, she says, and York never ceases to impress her.

"She is just a magnificent, strong woman," Moore says. "I admire her so much for what she is doing for her and for Rubie. How she does it, I don't know. She definitely has her priorities straight."