Ciara Rogers experienced a lot of health issues as a teenager, including gastrointestinal problems, and she found out she was gluten intolerant.

That inspired her to pursue a career where she could help others with similar issues.

On Aug. 20, she graduated with a Master of Science in applied nutrition and dietetics from Logan University in Chesterfield, Missouri.

In October, she will take an exam to become a registered dietitian, and she said her ultimate goal is to be a celiac dietitian. That would allow her to help patients with celiac disease, an autoimmune condition in which a person’s body reacts poorly to gluten, and other gluten-intolerant conditions take charge of their own health and follow healthy, sustainable diets.

“I enjoy talking with patients and getting excited about what I can eat and feel better when I eat this way,” the 25-year-old Norman native said.

“The Lord has given us food,” she said. “Knowing how to use it well and how to use it wisely and not looking at what you can’t eat but looking at what you can, a big thing is everything in moderation and helping patients understand their relationship with food and how they get to be healthy and sustainable and really not being on a diet but having sustainable habits that are going to last them forever.”

Her husband, Trenton Rogers, 25, a Brownstown native, later this year will wrap up his higher education degree from Logan. He, too, will be able to help people once he earns his Doctor of Chiropractic on Dec. 17.

“I believe it’s pretty clear that God has designed our bodies to get better, to heal, and we can do so much when we just give it the basics and then just get out of the way and you just kind of help guide it, so I’m really looking forward to that,” he said. “It’s like, ‘I gave you a good adjustment, I gave you good nutrition advice, you get what you need to get the good building blocks and then we just step out of the way and see how you do.’”

Trenton Rogers and the former Ciara Fisher met when he was a junior and she was a senior at Brownstown Central High School. She graduated in 2015, and he followed in 2016.

After high school, Ciara attended Purdue University and earned a bachelor’s degree in dietetics, which is the science or art of applying the principles of nutrition to the diet.

Her own health issues starting at age 13 led to that college major choice.

“Ever since then, it has been seeing how much food affected my body negatively with gluten and also positively by taking the gluten away and feeling better,” she said. “It just made me want to help other people, specifically with food allergies, food intolerances.”

After high school, Trenton started out at Cincinnati Christian University for ministry for a year. Then he went to Purdue for a year.

“I started out initially wanting to do chiropractic, and I was like, ‘Well, that’s a long time in school. I don’t know if I want to take on some loans and do that,’” he said. “I really wanted to honor God with my life, so I was like, ‘Well, I’ll just go to Bible college and I can see.’”

He, however, realized he wasn’t gifted to being a pastor.

“Then just walking with the Lord during that time, I just needed some time to figure out ‘Wait a minute, I can love Jesus and not be a pastor,’” Trenton said, noting he went back to his initial interest, chiropractic.

“I realized Cincinnati didn’t have that program, so I could either go to Indiana University or go to Purdue, and I said, ‘Well, my fiancée is at Purdue, so I’ll transfer to Purdue,’” he said, smiling.

Chiropractic became an interest of his after going to Klaes Chiropractic Clinic in Seymour growing up and seeing Dr. Chris Klaes and Dr. Levi Nehrt also be good members of the church and community.

“They really seemed to get people better with using their hands. It’s just such an incredible concept,” Trenton said. “It was like, ‘They were using their hands and they are getting people better. That’s so cool.’ It was still using all of the anatomy and using all of the science and there’s the thought process like, ‘That is so, so cool,’ and it was physical but also with using the hands at the same time.”

He wouldn’t be sitting behind a desk. He would be active, moving, engaged and personable with people.

“I could see the relationship that they had with a lot of their patients, and it just seemed very much like first line of defense, this is how you take care of people, this is how you give them very solid advice,” Trenton said. “They seem to just really take care of people. I was like, ‘Well, that’s great. That’s exactly what I’d like to do.’”

In 2019, Ciara graduated from Purdue in May, she and Trenton were married in June. They moved to Missouri in July.

Ciara then took a year away from school after the death of her older brother and worked at a gluten-free bakery, while Trenton began his undergraduate studies at Logan.

Ciara started work on her master’s degree in the fall of 2020, taking online classes for a year and then doing rotations this year. The supervised experiential learning, which is the equivalent of an internship, involved completing about a dozen rotations in a course of 30 weeks.

During that time, she worked at a weight management clinic, a food bank, a long-term care facility, a gastrointestinal pediatric clinic, food service and private practices.

“I didn’t get to pick them. I could tell (Logan) the areas I was interested in more, and then they took that into consideration, but they set up all of my rotations for me, which was nice so there wasn’t the stress of that,” Ciara said. “You get a lot of unique experiences.”

Through those rotations, Ciara became more interested in gastrointestinal pediatrics and the community side of nutrition. She said she wants to start out in a clinical setting and work up to celiac pediatrics.

The day before graduation, Ciara received honors and Logan’s RESPECT Award. That’s one of five of the university’s mission awards and most highly honored for students to receive. It recognizes a student who has shown a commitment to the ideals of the Logan University values, including diversity, empathy, putting students first, positive attitude, evidence-informed decision-making, character and integrity and teamwork.

“It was exciting,” she said.

In terms of graduating, Ciara said it was neat to be part of one of Logan’s newest degree programs. She had 15 family and friends from Indiana, North Carolina and Texas attend graduation.

“It was good to finally be done and to reflect back on when I first found out about the program to finishing it,” she said. “Just navigating it with COVID restrictions and everything, too, was really difficult, and the Lord was very, very faithful through it all.”

Trenton received a Bachelor of Science in life science in 2021 and plans to earn a Doctor of Chiropractic at the end of this year.

The last three months, he did an internship at a family medicine clinic in Iowa. Now, he is doing an internship at an outpatient clinic in St. Louis.

“I met a doc at a seminar, and he was just really knowledgeable and mentioned his faith. I was like, ‘Well, he would be a great person to shadow and get to see his clinic,’” Trenton said of the Iowa experience. “Then I reached back through school and found a satellite clinic in campus rotations, so that’s what I’m going to be doing this trimester is I’m shadowing, looking for job opportunities in St. Louis.”

After graduation, Trenton said he would like to join a practice to gain experience and see where that takes him.

“Something that I have figured out through school so far is I have loved putting pieces together that show that you integrate some nutrition and you integrate chiropractic to help take care of people,” he said. “Especially, I love seeing that done with families with like a family practice or office, which is great because you take care of people of all ages, walks of life, which is wonderful.”

Considering the success they’ve had since graduating from high school, the Rogerses hope to inspire others to pursue their passions.

“If you feel like the Lord has put a calling on your heart to do whatever field, keep trusting him in it, no matter how long it takes,” Ciara said. “There were times when I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t feel like I’m equipped enough for whatever reason,’ but just keep at it.”

Being disciplined and having a support system around him have benefited Trenton, and he said that helped him buckle down and get through everything.

“Week 1 of school, I remember being told ‘Just take it a week at a time,’ and I was like, ‘OK, I can do that,’ and so I’ve taken it a week at a time,” he said. “As you just follow through it and you have those people around you and you try to be intentional with your days as you go, you just realize, ‘OK, I’ve taken this week. It’s now on to the next week.’ … Once I saw this is doable, that was my big breakthrough moment.”

Meet the Rogerses 

Names: Trenton and Ciara Rogers

Age: Both are 25

Hometowns: Trenton is from Brownstown, and Ciara is from Norman

Residence: Chesterfield, Missouri

Education: Trenton graduated from Brownstown Central High School in 2016, earned a Bachelor of Science in life science from Logan University in 2021 and plans to receive a Doctor of Chiropractic from Logan on Dec. 17; Ciara graduated from BCHS in 2015 and earned a bachelor’s degree in dietetics from Purdue University in 2019 and a Master of Science in applied nutrition and dietetics from Logan on Aug. 20

Occupation: Trenton will soon be a chiropractor, and Ciara will be a registered dietitian

Family: Trenton is the son of Paul and Tammy Rogers, and Ciara is the daughter of Jeff and Dora Fisher