PRESQUE ISLE – Leeann Ward, who graduated on Saturday from the University of Maine at Presque Isle, has endured many of the same experiences as her fellow students.

She lived in a residence hall, walked the long path from the university’s Campus Center to her professors’ offices in Normal Hall and in March, even married a fellow student.

Though she did it all, Ward also did it all differently. She accomplished everything despite being almost completely blind.

On Saturday, to rousing applause, Ward received a bachelor of arts degree in English, accompanied to the stage by her service dog, Amigo. In announcing Ward’s degree, UMPI Registrar Sharon Roix named the student and her dog as degree recipients.

Amigo, who sported an UMPI bandanna around his neck, lay quietly beside the new graduate during the entire ceremony.

“It feels great [to earn my degree],” Ward said after commencement. “Amigo was very good throughout the whole thing.”

Ward, 23, has been visually impaired since birth. An operation in 1994 that was intended to improve her vision actually worsened it, and her sight steadily has declined since then.

“I have a little bit of sight,” Ward said recently. “I can see shapes of people and I can see colors, but I can’t see details of people’s faces. I’m unable to see stairs, which is mostly why I got Amigo. I was using a cane, but I kept bumping into things.”

Ward spent two weeks in January at Guiding Eyes for the Blind, a school in New York that taught her handling commands and gave her time to bond with Amigo.

“People tell me that he’s really cute,” Ward said. “He’s very friendly, too.”

Ward confirmed that it has been difficult to survive as a visually impaired student.

“When I was in high school, I always felt like I had to prove myself,” she acknowledged. “I felt like there was a stigma attached to me because I’m blind. I battled it a lot during college, but I shed that after a while.”

Dr. Deborah Hodgkins, UMPI associate professor of English, described Ward as being “a fun presence in the classroom.”

“She adds a sense of humor to our conversations, but she doesn’t dominate conversations,” Hodgkins said. “She is very respectful of others.”

Ward’s mother, Janet Morrow of Presque Isle, who attended her daughter’s graduation, said after the ceremony, “I knew she’d make it through college ever since she was young. She’s always been very determined.”

Ward has championed improved accommodations at the university, a campaign that began when she came to UMPI in 2000.

“I fought for a long time to get Braille on the vending machines,” Ward said. “And finally, they got them. Then they changed vending machines, so there’s no Braille on them anymore.”

And then, Ward said, there was the “head lamp incident”

“I was telling an ex-employee that I was having difficulty getting to classes at night, because I didn’t feel the campus was well lit,” Ward explained, giggling. “I got lost a number of times. And the person asked me if I’d ‘ever thought of getting a headlamp.'”

Ward said she has a vast array of equipment that she uses to read and type papers.

“I have an Optelec machine, which magnifies text on to a closed circuit television,” Ward explained, “and I use a computer with a speech program on it, so that when I type, it tells me what I am typing.”

Ward said that the UMPI professors have been wonderful in accommodating her needs, but she feels that the university “could have done more.”

“I do think UMPI needs to work on some things,” Ward said. “There will be people coming behind me who will have to go through the same things that I did.”

Ward and her husband, Bill Ward, are leaving the area this summer, as she will begin classes at Western Michigan University on a full scholarship. She plans to earn a master’s degree in education in order to teach children with visual impairment.

“I don’t see what I did as anything special,” Ward said. “Everybody works hard to get a degree, so I don’t think I went above and beyond.”

A few years ago, a friend gave her a headlamp, and Ward took a picture of it.

“I plan on taking that to Michigan,” she said with a giggle.