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"I had 104 credits when I applied to USF,” recalls Robert Woerner, who has just finished his first semester in the new BGS program. “Initially when I got accepted at USF, I started taking classes at the College of Business. I was going to need close to 60 more credits to graduate. And when I went in for advising, I was presented with the BGS option. It made sense to me.”
Robert, a project manager for an international research company and the first student accepted into the BGS program, left the University of Maryland in December 1989 to concentrate on his career. “I’ve worked for the same company for 18 years and got promotions that kept me from going back to finish up school,” he explains. “Now I realize I’ve advanced in my company as far as I can without a degree. And I want to finish before my kids realize I never completed my undergraduate studies. I want that leverage in case I need it when they get older.”
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Children played a role in another BGS student’s life decisions. Alexandra Curtis Boyer was busy raising her daughters in distant places like Vienna, Austria, New York and Los Angeles. Before that turn in her life, Alex, as she likes to be called, studied at City College in New York City in the 1980s, where she dreamt of studying medicine. “When my girls were a little older, I started working in theater management, then volunteer management and eventually came to my position with the Child Abuse Council,” explains Alex, whose BGS concentration is public health. “For my work, I manage a program that provides prenatal education to at-risk moms and the community at large. I also teach parent-infant classes and have taken a lot of specialized, international training in Infant and Toddler Development. So this degree fits right in.” Another part of the program that Alex is pleased with is the availability of online classes. Three of the 10 BGS concentrations (Public Health, Information Technology, and Women’s Studies) are offered online. “It's been great. I took two Public Health online classes for the summer that my advisor helped me pick,” she says. “I planned on going to campus in the fall to use more of the services there, but I found the online classes so convenient I decided to take two more online classes fall semester.”
