From turning a patient’s hospital stay into a home away from home, to taking care of family in his own home, Lyndon Porter has had to become a master in making it work before bringing home his Bachelor of Science in Health Sciences from Excelsior College in 2019. We spoke to Lyndon about his academic journey, career, and secrets to his success during a visit to Albany, New York, for Excelsior’s Commencement celebration in July 2019.

A veteran from Summerville, South Carolina, Porter left school to join the service. At the time, he didn’t think he was ready for college and credits his time in the military with giving him the structure and discipline he used to succeed years later. After the military, Porter started work in a nursing home and discovered a passion for health care. Porter knew he would need a degree to advance in his health care career, but after a stint at a traditional college, he realized that time spent sitting in a classroom wasn’t going to make his other responsibilities any easier. “You’ve got family, you have to go home, you have to cut the grass, you have to go pay bills, then you have to go to work, and you have to change diapers, and you have to be everywhere,” he remembers.

Thanks to encouragement from family, Porter discovered Excelsior’s online programs and knew they were the perfect fit for his life, work schedule, and goals. “Once I got exposed to going to school online, I was like, OK, now I can do it. I can make my own time … I can go review my homework and go in my class and not worry about missing an assignment or falling asleep and having to be back at work in the morning. You just have to find your niche,” Porter said, adding “Everything was a lot easier just because [Excelsior College] made it a lot easier.”

As a supervisor in a health care facility, Porter works on improving the hospital stay of every patient in his care and appreciated his courses’ focus on the patient experience. “The thing I remember the most is basically how to talk to patients, how to make them feel like they’re the most important thing because they are,” Porter said. Building a relationship of trust and comfort with his patients comes naturally to Porter in his role at the hospital. “You want to make sure they know that they’re taken care of and to let them know: ‘hey, this is what’s going on. This is how it is going. This is what I’m doing.’ Hopefully that eases them and makes the whole experience altogether better,” he said.

Now that he has his degree, he’ll be able to move into different positions at the hospital where he works or even pursue an advanced degree. But, first he planned some time with his family who had been the driving force behind his success, especially his children; Mark Peters, Jared Peters, Jesse Peters, Mia Peters, and Devin Porter. “My family’s very supportive ­— keep plugging at it, encouraging like, ‘you can do it.’ Letting you know what you’re doing is making a difference and telling me they’re proud of what I’m doing.”

Donna Tytko always thought that she’d write a book, and, as a student in the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program at Excelsior College, she finally had the impetus.

For the capstone experience of the program, she chose to pursue a creative thesis. “How could you argue with writing a book as part of your education?” quips Tytko, an avid reader since childhood. The course requirements directed that she incorporate her graduate-level research into the creative thesis and show how her studies influenced the novel. Her research paper explored psychology, education, and leadership, so she brought these themes to her novel “Night Air,” a psychological thriller about a woman named Penny who is haunted by her past.

The book captures situations from the perspectives of various characters. “I wanted the book to be from different people’s points of view. It’s like research [that way] … I wanted all these people’s points of view coming through in the story,” says Tytko.

The novel was essentially completed when she earned her master’s degree in May 2010, but Tytko wasn’t finished with the story. She ultimately rewrote the novel five times, starting from page 1 each time and working her way through it. “I wasn’t really satisfied with it,” she says. She’d consider whether a character was adding to the story and then decided to eliminate those that didn’t advance the story.

Through the rewrites, Tytko didn’t know how the book would end. Once she did have this elusive piece of the plot, the novel finally came together. In all, it took nine years to bring the novel to completion. After that, she moved on to writing another one. “I spend a lot of time enjoying the act of writing,” says Tytko with a laugh.

She was not going to be one of those people who throw away their first novel, however, since she had put countless hours into perfecting hers. “It was certainly difficult to stop writing it,” says Tytko, who explains that she would write from 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. and then wake at 6 a.m. for her day. “My vacation for years was working on my novel.”

For the second book, Tytko has learned to write outlines for each chapter so that she knows the ending early on and can avoid complete rewrites. This next book is a biography of Hattie Gray, the founder of the famed Hattie’s Chicken Shack in Saratoga Springs, New York, who was known as much for her restaurant as for her support of neighbors and the community. “I greatly admire her generous spirit,” says Tytko. “I learned about Hattie when I was doing research for my novel. I was looking for someone who lived in the Capital District and was known for their extraordinary kindness. In my book “Night Air,” Penny is given a “hand up” by Hattie.”

When she was learning how to write a novel, Tytko, the associate dean for liberal arts at Siena College in Loudonville, New York, was also learning about herself. “I learned to respect my own intuition and skills,” she says, adding that she put the book out for the public only when she thought it was ready.

“The education I received at Excelsior really did make this novel much richer,” says Tytko. As a graduate student, she incorporated liberal arts concepts into a research paper titled “You Do Better When You Know Better.” These concepts also appear in her novel. “There is so much available to us to make our decisions, so many viewpoints out there.”

Alison Noone, of Toms River, New Jersey, was already familiar with Excelsior College when she enrolled in the MBA program, having earned a Bachelor of Science in Business in 2010. She chose to pursue another degree at Excelsior because she loved the bachelor’s program and the online learning fit right in with her lifestyle.

Noone, the assistant director of student life at Ocean County Community College, enjoyed the experience of earning her bachelor’s degree with Excelsior, particularly because of the flexibility to do her coursework around her full-time job and life as a mother of three and the support available from Excelsior 24/7. “If I had a technological issue, I was able to contact someone and get it fixed even at midnight or two in the morning, so when I came to the final decision to get my MBA, there was really no question to come back to Excelsior,” she says.

Earning an MBA in 2018 has allowed Noone to move up in her career at Ocean Community College, located on the Jersey Shore. She has been with the college for almost two decades, starting as a student worker in the Student Life Office and taking on positions of increasing responsibility in the same office. The Student Life Office is an exciting department where no two days are alike, says Noone. Sometimes they coordinate events for the community and some days they coordinate events for other departments. That’s part of what makes it so much fun, too. “It helps keep me connected to the campus as a whole and feel like I am part of something bigger than my department alone,” she says.

As assistant director, Noone is responsible for keeping students engaged and encouraging them to progress forward with their studies. “I feel like my education has helped me do my job better and provide the best information for my students. I’ve also been able to create opportunities for myself that I may not have considered previously,” she says, and adds she regularly uses business, financial literacy, and accounting skills learned from Excelsior’s MBA program when doing such things as balancing club budgets and negotiating contracts.

One thing Noone shares with students is how she overcame hurdles she ran into as a student. Time management was the biggest challenge, and she gradually learned how to schedule her days so she could fit in schoolwork. “The master’s program is fast paced, it is challenging, it doesn’t hold back or care that you have other things going on, just like your job doesn’t care that you’re going back to school,” she says.

Although her title hasn’t changed, her responsibilities have changed greatly since earning an MBA, she says. She has been coordinating leadership training programs for students and staff and has also become a certified Gallup Strengths coach. “Probably most importantly, I was an integral part of establishing an on-campus food pantry,” says Noone. “I serve as the director of the resource, coordinating volunteers, inventory, donations, and more.”

Noone says she wishes she had not waited so long between earning a bachelor’s degree and returning for a master’s and encourages other adult learners not to wait. She has taken her own advice and is pursuing a Doctor of Education in Organizational Leadership, Learning, and Innovation at Wilmington University.

After spending 10 years in the nuclear Navy sector, Aaron Alexander, of Saratoga Springs, New York, decided to transition to the civilian sector. To do so, he knew he needed to pursue his higher education. His superior officers told him to “get it done” when it came to his education and to use his GI Bill^® benefits to go back to school. With their encouragement, he decided to attend Excelsior College and earned his combined Bachelor of Science in Nuclear Engineering Technology and Master of Business Administration in 2019.

Alexander joined the Navy as an advanced engineman but after taking the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) test and scoring high, his superiors recommended he go into the nuclear program. His background in nuclear technology allowed him to find a job in the civilian sector. He works for Global Foundries, a semiconductor manufacturing company, as a module section manager. In this position, he oversees a team of 22 technicians and engineers. He used to work 12–13-hour shifts, four days a week in the engineering department, but his job now is more manager-oriented. His main role is making sure everyone works together to get the job done. He says, “It’s bringing everything together to kind of accomplish one thing and keep production up.”

Pursuing an MBA with Excelsior helped Alexander as he transitioned into his new position. “I kind of picked up my skill set that I was learning in my MBA course and I became more appealing to the company as a manager,” he says, and adds he applies a lot of what he learned from Excelsior’s conflict management course to his supervisory role. BUS 311 Organizational Behavior also had an impact. “There were chapters in [the book] that weren’t even required reading. I read them anyway because they applied so heavily to what I was doing and leading people and understanding that aspect of the business.”

Alexander believes he is in a field that has a future full of possibilities. He believes nuclear power is misunderstood because people tend to think of disastrous events like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. “We’ve come so far with our ability to control nuclear power safely, just in the past 10, 15, 20 years, that it’s got to be a part of our energy future,” he says.

Returning to school has allowed Alexander to thrive in his career and now he tells others, especially servicemembers, to go back to school, too. “Jump in and do it as soon as you can,” he says, adding that his only regret is that he waited longer than he should have to earn his degrees.

Alexander hopes to become a leader in the field one day and may add to his resume by pursuing Project Management Professional certification and taking the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam in the industrial and systems, mechanical, or other disciplines category. He isn’t ruling out going back to school or possibly becoming a teacher in the future either, because he likes to see what’s out there. “I kind of want to see where else I can apply my skills and see what fits. I like figuring things out,” he says.

GI Bill^® is a registered trademark of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). More information about education benefits offered by VA is available at the official U.S. government Web site at benefits.va.gov/gibill/.