An airman in the Wisconsin Air National Guard, Leah Letson found her passion for mixed martial arts and Brazilian jiu jitsu at UWM. The first-generation college student is now a professional MMA fighter who competed the night before accepting her diploma.<\/p>\n
\u201cUWM has been the place that has really transformed me from the young, shy 18-year-old into the adult airman, professional athlete and role model that I am today,\u201d Letson said.<\/p>\n
Letson double-majored in psychology and criminal justice. She was one of six graduates honored during UWM\u2019s May 2016 commencement ceremonies. More than 3,000 students received diplomas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At UWM, Leah Letson grew from a \u201cshy 18-year-old\u201d into an airman, professional athlete and role model.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3151,"featured_media":34100,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[174],"tags":[250],"section":[122,124],"display_categories":[115,116],"related-coverage":[261,178],"uwmnews-feed":[347,158,156,155,160],"class_list":["post-34288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-student-success","section-campus-community","section-students","display_categories-top-story-secondary","display_categories-top-story-section","related-coverage-graduation","related-coverage-veterans","uwmnews-feed-community-engagement-professions","uwmnews-feed-letters-science","uwmnews-feed-criminal-justice","uwmnews-feed-social-welfare-criminal-justice","uwmnews-feed-social-science"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-28 14:42:10","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34288"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34290,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34288\/revisions\/34290"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34288"},{"taxonomy":"section","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/section?post=34288"},{"taxonomy":"display_categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/display_categories?post=34288"},{"taxonomy":"related-coverage","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/related-coverage?post=34288"},{"taxonomy":"uwmnews-feed","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/uwmnews-feed?post=34288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}