Scott Stanley can’t wait to return to the ice.
While earning a Master of Business Administration through the online program at Northern Kentucky University, he missed playing in several adult hockey league games in order to study. But he never took his eyes off the goal and completed the program in July 2019.
“I have worked in healthcare most of my adult life — in a hospital setting or a patient-care setting with the fire department and EMS,” he said. “A couple of years ago, I took a job with a healthcare communications company.
“I started to be exposed to a lot of the business aspects of a company, rather than just patient care. It intrigued me, so I decided to go back and get my MBA to learn more about my company and how I can contribute to it.”
Stanley, a regional services client manager for Pulsara in Burlington, Kentucky, was drawn to the online MBA program at NKU for several reasons.
“The tuition was much cheaper than a lot of the other online programs and the program was still accredited,” he said. “That was something that was important to me.
“I also liked that NKU is in my backyard. I live about 20 minutes from campus, so if I needed to go to there and talk to an adviser, I could. Plus, it was close that I knew that I could walk at graduation.”
The online format also allowed Stanley to maintain his job and still have family time with his wife, Angie, and children, Cooper (18) and Rylie (16).
“It was manageable,” he said. “I have a pretty flexible schedule at work, and management encouraged me to do the MBA. I was able to leverage some of my co-workers when I was doing the marketing program during my workday. The flexibility the online program gave me, along with the flexibility at work, was the best option for me.”
Better Late Than Never
Stanley was not initially interested in pursuing a healthcare career, but he soon changed his mind after joining the United States Army.
“As I was growing up, my grandfather told me, ‘If you go to medical school, I’ll pay for it,'” he said. “I never went to medical school, but I went into the military as a medic and loved helping others and taking care of them.”
After nearly five years in the Army and four more in the U.S. Navy Reserve, Stanley went to work as an engineer for the Asheville Fire and Rescue Department in North Carolina.
He graduated with an associate degree in nursing from Excelsior College in 2010, and then a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Cincinnati one year later.
“After doing patient care for 20-plus years, I was ready for a change,” he said. “Pulsara is a healthcare communications company, but it’s more in the private sector and not so much in healthcare.”
After enrolling at NKU, Stanley customized his MBA program by choosing the Leadership and Organizational Change and Innovation through Competitive Intelligence stacks as his areas of emphasis. MBA 611: MBA Practicum was his favorite course in the curriculum.
“It’s a very forward-looking course,” he said. “It took a lot of what we did over the course of the program and applied it to real-life situations. There are already things from this course I am applying to work.
“My boss was constantly asking me, ‘Is this something for class?’ after I asked her a question. I adopted a lot of the principles and applied them, or at least saw them in action at work.”
Net Result
Now that Stanley has successfully returned to college and earned a graduate degree, Angie is following his lead.
“My family was excited,” he said. “My wife is doing an MBA program now. My kids were very supportive.
“I tried to have some family time built in at night where there were no computers or phones and then did my schoolwork. It’s important to make good use of your time and relate your studies to the real world.”
Cooper is enrolling at the University of Kentucky in Fall 2019, while Rylie is researching area colleges, including Eastern Kentucky University. Stanley does not have an ultimate career goal in mind, but he knows the MBA laid a solid foundation for whichever direction he takes.
“I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up,” he said. “I joke with my wife about how nice it would be to own our own business, but I have no idea what that would be.”
Although Stanley sacrificed some ice time in the process of returning to higher education, he scored a master’s degree and the big-picture perspective of business he hoped to gain.
“In healthcare, you get so zeroed in on one patient and what’s going on with not only that one patient but a specific disease process,” he said. “You are very narrowly focused.
“In the business world, you have to pull back, break down those silos and see, ‘How are my actions going to affect marketing? How is marketing going to affect me?’ The MBA program gave me that overall, 10,000-foot view.”
Learn more about the NKU online MBA program.
