Student Stories

Manar Abdelbaky was a student at California State University, Northridge and working part-time jobs at amusement parks. That sounds like the typical beginning of a college student’s story. However, by the time she graduated with her Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Alabama, her story and life were anything but typical....

 

Ever since Breland Almadova was a little boy growing up in Hawaii, his passion has been baseball. His performance in high school earned him a baseball scholarship at University of Hawaii in 2009. After playing at the collegiate level for the Hawaiian Warriors through his junior year, he decided to delay his education to pursue...

 

Florida native Tatiana Gandolff attended Jacksonville State University in Jacksonville, Alabama, after high school. But Tatiana quickly determined traditional learning wasn’t for her and returned to Florida to earn her bachelor’s online while she began a career in early childhood education. “I loved learning but I hated being in school,” she said. “I don’t feel...

 

During her senior year at Mountain Brook High School in the Birmingham area, Virginia Winn had toured 15 colleges, and she still couldn’t decide where she wanted to go. None of them had exactly the right fit for her where she could envision her future taking shape. She decided to complete a gap year internship...

 

John McGreal has been working for The University of Alabama as a regional recruiter in the Midwest since 2012. In 2015, he was promoted to manager, and in this role he oversees 10 recruitment territories and nine recruiters who cover 20 different states, accounting for at least 50% of the geographic area of the country....

 

She left high school abruptly in the fall of her junior year. And by age 31, Jessica Snow was already an associate director at The University of Alabama with over a decade of professional experience and two post-graduate degrees to her name. How did she accomplish this? By taking a nontraditional path to higher education...

 

Megan Wagner graduated with her bachelor’s from Marquette University in Milwaukee, and then joined the Peace Corps and moved to Guyana. After a few years with the Peace Corps and making a life in Guyana, she decided to move back to the States. In January 2015, she chose sweet home Alabama as a landing spot...

 

Tina Cameron has practiced nursing for 28 years, and in May 2018 she went back to school to earn her Bachelor of Science in Nursing through The University of Alabama’s online program. She earned her associate degree in nursing from a technical school in Columbia, South Carolina, where she’s from, but she had been out...

 

Technical Sergeant Ashley Gilmore has served in the U.S. Air Force for nearly a decade, working with education and training. Currently in reserve status, she also performs the same roles as a civilian for the Air Force in Charleston, South Carolina. Ashley and her husband’s military service has taken their family around the globe, and...

 

In 1987, two weeks after high school graduation and at the age of 17, Tracie Hicks left home for basic training. While she was there, her father passed away unexpectedly. She had participated in ROTC in high school, and her goal was to continue through collegiate-level Army ROTC and commission as an officer when she...