Military Alumni Profiles

In high school, I took an interest inventory that showed my top two interest areas were naval officer and army officer. So I enrolled in the U.S. Military Academy at West Point—joining only the second class that allowed women cadets. Today I’m a military leadership professor at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. In this position, I believe my doctoral degree from University of Phoenix has given me additional knowledge, understanding and patience, as well as added respect from my colleagues and military officer students. In fact, obtaining my doctoral degree has added to my self-awareness and improved my confidence level in all facets of my life.

The benefits of my educational journey such as new learning, greater understanding of leadership theories and processes, better writing skills, and newfound friendships with fellow learners, committee members and professors far outweigh the time I spent reading, preparing for class, writing and researching my required papers and my dissertation. The professors were extremely professional, competent and focused on expanding learner growth, while the computer tech support was exceptional.

After earning a bachelor’s in biology, I decided I wanted to become a teacher. The master’s in education program at University of Phoenix provided the flexibility I needed as a military spouse. The learning team experience helped me become more patient and honest with myself about my weaknesses and strengths and how I can better contribute to something. When I participated in my first teacher work day, I was not afraid to speak out and contribute what I learned in my program. The instructors put in a lot of time and effort to get us ready for the real world of teaching. I felt prepared to embark on student teaching and do well. After completing my student teaching, I felt confident and able to start my new career.

Completing the master's degree program at University of Phoenix helped me achieve the education requirement needed in today's military. My degree also has given me effective management tools that I utilize in my senior leadership position. My experience as a student at University of Phoenix was great. I had the flexibility of working on my assignments on my own time. Additionally, learning with other full-time professionals was very rewarding.

Actually, I did not intend to seek an additional degree when I started the doctoral program at University of Phoenix. Having never been involved in online learning, I was eager to determine the value of this educational approach for myself. Once I started the courses, I found the information and learning to be of increasing value to my own work and simply couldn’t quit.

During one course, my learning team created an innovative model related to prediction, adaptation and change. We decide to pursue publishing the model in a recognized journal, and to our great delight, the journal editors found our model relevant to contemporary leadership and published it. Since then, a number of heath care organizations have referenced and used our model. Besides the thrill of being published, my learning team was excited that what we had developed as students at University of Phoenix had relevance and value to organizations outside our program.