MSU peer leader comes home to Bozeman by Marjorie Smith Ashley Roller, '99 pre-physical therapy, is a young woman who knows exactly what she wants: to support herself with a career of her choice and to live in Bozeman, her hometown. And if, along the way, she can help her alma mater, so much the better. After she graduated, Ashley knew she needed to get a master's degree in physical therapy. But first she spent a year as a disaster relief worker for the Red Cross in Atlanta, Ga. "It opened my eyes," she says. She helped on a couple of weather events, including Hurricane Floyd in North Carolina, but most of her work was with poor, urban families whose homes had been destroyed by fires and other disasters. "It was great training for graduate school," she says, listing time management and prioritizing as two vital skills she honed in Atlanta. "And being in that huge city for a year validated my decision to return to Bozeman as soon as I could." She earned her master's at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and returned to Bozeman in October of 2002. By December she'd landed a job at Bozeman Deaconess Hospital. "It's a great job," she says. "I get to work with geriatric patients who've just had joint replacement or back surgery, and then I work with college-age people with sports injuries. There are lots of chances to be creative because you have to figure out what sort of routines will make the patients carry through on their own." She thrives on the variety of challenges. One feature that makes the hospital assignment her perfect job is that she works a Monday-Wednesday-Friday and alternate weekends schedule, which leaves her free on Tuesdays and Thursdays for two other passions. She teaches skiing at Big Sky where she gets to meet people from all over the country. In the fall, she taught one of the freshman seminars for MSU general studies students. "It all fit together so perfectly," she says. She had been a peer leader working in the freshman seminars during her junior year at MSU and then coordinated the peer leader program her senior year. "I had a great time with this year's seminar," she says. "I had a wonderful group of kids, and I'll miss them now that the semester's over." The young, energetic alum expects to move into the house she's building at the foot of the Bridger Mountains by mid-winter. "I'm so lucky to be able to earn a living where I really want to be, doing what I want to do," she says.