Years before Fayette Jiang put on a uniform of her own, she sat in the stands at TCU’s Amon G. Carter Stadium, watching service members take the field at the Armed Forces Bowl with her “Texas dad,” former U.S. Marine Curtis Strawn. A high school student at the time, she had no idea that she’d end up back on that same campus as a Horned Frog one day.

Jiang, a cadet in TCU’s Air Force ROTC program and a junior nursing major, was born in Los Angeles as a first-generation Taiwanese American. When she was a baby, her family moved to Beijing for her father’s work, about 7,000 miles from Fort Worth.

Jiang attended an international school and watched her older brother, Jesper, move to the United States for high school. “In eighth grade, I decided that I wanted to come back to the United States for school, because my parents’ goal for me was ultimately to go to college here and get better opportunities,” Jiang said.

A mutual friend from church introduced Jiang’s family to Curtis and Jane Strawn, a host family from Justin, Texas, with whom the siblings stayed.

She had heard about military life from Strawn and family friends but never considered it until a friend convinced her to talk with a recruiter. “I want to go to college and get a degree,” Jiang recalled telling the recruiter. He told her about ROTC. She could train during college, earn a bachelor’s degree and commission as an officer.

“Never in a million years would they have thought that I would want to join the military,” Jiang said of her family’s reaction.

Training Across Two Campuses

After high school, Jiang enrolled at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas, and joined the Corps of Cadets, which Tarleton requires of anyone in an ROTC program. Tarleton students in Air Force ROTC take part in TCU’s program through a crosstown agreement, so every Tuesday and Thursday she and her fellow cadets drove the approximately 75 miles to Fort Worth for training and back again the same day.

Nursing first crossed her mind after seeing her brother go through medical school. Unsure of what she wanted, she chose communications because of her high school yearbook experience. As she progressed in her studies, Jiang began to rethink her major. Communications, she said, wasn’t fulfilling. She took a few introductory nursing classes and rediscovered her old interest.

“I think I learned a lot over there, just in general, what kind of leader and person I wanted to be,” said Jiang, reflecting on her time in Stephenville. “I did really like the school, but I just couldn’t do the travel.”

She set her sights on Tarleton’s accelerated nursing program at its Fort Worth campus. Jiang said a Tarleton nursing administrator told her there was about a 90% chance the accelerated 18-month program would open at the Fort Worth campus in spring 2026. “I just had to wait a semester and do something else,” Jiang said. She spent the semester taking kinesiology classes at Tarleton’s Fort Worth campus.

In mid-November, Jiang said, she got a call from Tarleton telling her the accelerated program would not open that spring, and that continuing in nursing there would mean returning to Stephenville. That would have pushed her graduation to December 2027.

Tarleton State Fort Worth offered its first BSN cohort that spring, but Jiang said she learned in early December, after she had already been accepted at TCU, that a small group of students would take classes in Fort Worth while joining Stephenville’s lectures remotely.

“It’s really nice to have two good support systems.”
Fayette Jiang

A New Direction

Jiang turned to Lt. Col. Joseph Solano, TCU’s Air Force ROTC detachment commander and professor of aerospace studies. Her Air Force contract required her to be commissioned in May 2027, she said, but returning to Stephenville would have pushed her graduation past that date. Solano was able to get her commissioning moved back a year, and he raised another option, Jiang said. “He was like, ‘Well, how do you feel about coming to TCU? I could reach out to the nursing school over here.’ ”

“Despite the normal admission window having already closed, we were able to coordinate her acceptance into the program,” Solano said.

“He’s definitely really intentional with all of us in making sure that we’re OK,” said Jiang of Solano. “He has a mindset of making our cadet wing a family.”

ROTC was the one piece of her routine the transfer didn’t disrupt.

“It was like the one thing that was constant,” she said. “I think it really helped with my transfer transition process.”

On Tuesdays and Thursdays during her first semester at TCU, she started class at 8 a.m. and finished with ROTC practices and workouts in the evening.

“I didn’t think I was gonna make it in the beginning,” Jiang said. “I wanted to get to the finish line, but I never did junior ROTC in high school. I was never exposed to anything like that.”

Early in the program, an older cadet gave her advice that she still thinks about. “One of the things he said was, ‘You’re the only person that will fight for your own future.’ That kind of just stuck with me. I’m going to work hard for this. I know this is what I want.”

Syrah Omar, a senior computer science major and fellow cadet, described the same sense of community. “Being able to watch my friends like Fayette grow into these leadership positions and put her ambitions and plans into action has been so motivating and rewarding,” Omar said.

That community extends beyond ROTC and into her nursing program. “I like that I have two separate groups of people that I am with,” Jiang said. “I think we’re all super understanding of each other, and it’s really nice to have two good support systems.”

Jiang said her faith keeps her going as she balances the demands of ROTC and nursing. Photo by Glen E. Ellman

Purpose in the Path Ahead

Many nursing students spend their senior year interviewing for jobs at hospitals. Jiang said she already has a contract with the Air Force. “ROTC is our four-year interview,” she said. “It’s nice to know that I already have a job secured.”

In August, Jiang was one of 14 cadets nationwide selected for officer development training, an Air Force ROTC program built for nursing cadets, held at Travis Air Force Base in California. She was the only cadet chosen from TCU. The group talked with active-duty Air Force nurses. She watched surgeries in an operating room and shadowed on a medical-surgical unit. The cadets also visited the aeromedical evacuation unit, where they saw flight nurses at work in a training scenario.

After graduation, Jiang will enter the Air Force Nurse Transition Program, a course designed to prepare new nurses for military-specific practices. She hopes to become a flight nurse and remain in the military while earning a doctor of nursing practice degree to become a nurse practitioner.

Balancing ROTC and nursing can be grueling, but Jiang said her faith keeps her going. “My biggest ‘why’ is because I want to glorify God with my life and to love others and care for others like Jesus loves me,” she said. “I feel that God has called me to be a nurse in the military to share his love and light in that way.”

She will commission in May 2028 at a school she had been visiting twice a week for two years.

“TCU was not in my plan,” Jiang said, “but I am really happy with how it played out.”