Finding a Different Path

Khristopher Lane ’23 had his post-high school career all planned.

He was going to follow in his father’s footsteps into the Army and serve his country. That trajectory was going smoothly. After high school, he enlisted in the Army as a combat engineer, supporting infantry units on the ground by analyzing combat areas for explosives.

Then, just two years into his military career, a medical condition resulted in an honorable discharge in 2013 and sent Lane’s lifetime of plans into disarray.

With the encouragement of his father, Lane moved home and enrolled at Fayetteville Technical Community College to begin charting a new course. Jumping between fields of study — from nuclear medicine to nursing to electrical engineering — Lane struggled to find his footing until he met Loutricia Nelson, a Carolina Student Transfer Excellence Program (C-STEP) coordinator. She not only helped steer his academic path but turned his attention to a field that combined all of his interests into one: biomedical engineering.

“I was like, ‘What is that?’ I researched it and thought, ‘Oh my God. This is math and science together,’” Lane recalled. “I decided to go that route, and Ms. Nelson told me there’s a program for biomedical engineering [at Carolina]. That’s what hooked me in.”

This weekend, nearly 10 years after he was forced to redirect his future, Lane will graduate with a bachelor’s degree from the UNC-Chapel Hill and NC State Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, setting the Tar Heel up for a promising career he couldn’t have imagined a decade ago.

“C-STEP is a big part of my life. If I had never heard of C-STEP, I probably would have never come to UNC. I am really grateful. It kind of feels like fate a little bit because C-STEP guided me and put me on the right path,” said Lane.

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