A Promise Fulfilled through USCB's Saturday Business Degree Plan
Student News
From administrative assistant to consultant for one of the top firms in the world, 2012 Saturday Business Degree Program graduate, Rebecca Kennedy put her fears aside and fulfilled a promise to finish her baccalaureate degree.
The former Gulfstream employee attended college at the University of New Mexico after high school until “life got in the way,” and her studies were interrupted. Recently divorced, and looking for a “new direction,” Kennedy remembered a promise she made to her dying grandmother that she would finish her bachelor’s degree, and was determined to do so. “When you make a promise like that, you have to deliver.”
“I was 36 years old and terrified of going back to school,” she says. “I loved my job, but I had to do better; I wanted to get ahead, and I knew the only way to do that was by finishing my bachelor’s degree.”
Kennedy came across an internal company newsletter which highlighted USCB’s Saturday Business Degree Plan. For Kennedy, USCB’s Saturday Business Degree program was a logical fit. “I knew I wanted to be in a program that offered in-class instruction, but I also needed a program geared towards working adults.”
After 22 months, Kennedy finished her bachelor’s degree in business administration. She is a first-generation college student and the first woman in her family to graduate from college. “I wanted to have my degree before I turned 40 and my diploma is dated two days before my 40th birthday.”
“I didn’t know it then, but I know it now because you can only connect the dots going backward, but the friendships I built with fellow students and the professors changed my life,” she says. Seven years later, Kennedy is still close to her professors and classmates. “We experienced marriages, the birth of children, and even the loss of loved ones, and we did it all together.”
Kennedy credits the encouragement of her former professors for earning a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration. “There were days when I felt like I couldn’t finish.” Faculty’s response was always, “You are; you’re going to make it,” she says. “They believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself.”
“At the end of the day, this program changed my life,” she says. “I would not be where I am today without USCB’s Saturday Business Degree Program.”
