By Sarah Nelson
Editor's Note: This is the 15th and final profile in a series featuring our winter 2023 graduates.
Mid-December will always be remembered as diploma time for Katrina Carter, who received her Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a minor in human resources from University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC) a day before her son, Jordan, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in communications from Old Dominion University.
For Carter, the winter 2024 commencement was a long time coming.
Carter’s path to graduation started in 1999, right after high school, but life and its responsibilities raised roadblocks. As a young mother and full-time employee, it was hard to keep up her studies. So, she put them aside until 2014.
That’s when Carter joined Boeing Company as a contractor, and her human resources representative provided information on the company’s Learning Together Program, which encourages employees to earn a degree and provides them with financial assistance to achieve that goal. Once a full-time Boeing employee, Carter decided to take advantage of the work benefit and enrolled at UMGC.
As a new UMGC student, she was assigned to a success coach, Sandra.
“Sandra was there to hold my hand and guide me through the process from the beginning,” Carter said. “She called and helped me map out my plan for graduation. Throughout the years, she encouraged me to keep going, especially when life got tough. She would call to congratulate me on my good grades and provide insight on steps towards success.”
“She was truly a partner that helped get me to graduation,” she said.
In 2016, two years into the degree program, Carter and her wife welcomed a daughter into their family and school was again placed on the back burner. But, as Carter’s eldest son, Jordan was nearing his high school graduation (in 2018) and then enrollment at college, Carter felt she wasn’t leading by example.
“All I could think was [that] he was about to go and finish college and I hadn’t. I had to get this done,” Carter said. So, one night while out to dinner, she made a deal with Jordan. They would earn their degrees together.
“I bet you this, I’m going to graduate before you,” she told him. “You stay on this path and we’re going to do this together. I dropped him off at Old Dominion University and I’ve been on my way ever since.”
Now a staff analyst with Boeing, Carter is part of Global Trade Controls, an organization that works on policy and licensing screening for imports and exports. She work directly with Boeing’s vice president of federal trade controls and oversees federal compliance. But she hopes to do more in business and plans to enroll in an MBA program in the summer.
Throughout her career, Carter said, she has engaged with small businesses. She has seen the need for customer service and noticed that most firms struggle to hire the right candidates and provide the training necessary to help grow their business. Those observations planted an idea that, in turn, helped define her academic path at UMGC.
Now, as she plans to advance her career, an area of expertise that has caught her attention is consulting on global diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and the need to ensure that a company’s culture and its global workforce are in alignment. She would like to help companies lay a foundation for success by creating business plans and assisting them in hiring the right employees and providing the right training.
Looking back, Carter has sage advice to offer new students, working parents or even students jumping back into school after a break: Give yourself grace.
“You have to take yourself off your hook. Don’t self-blame if you have to take a break. Forgive yourself,” she said.
The advice comes with a caveat. Carter said students need to know they can and should ask for help.
“It took me years before asking for help. And then one day I found myself drowning and reached out to Sandra,” Carter explained. “She told me I wasn’t utilizing the help and resources that UMGC offers—tutoring, library resources, resume support, just to name a few. It was very beneficial, the tutorials walk you through everything from statistics homework to building and editing a resume.
“It’s all accessible right there and will make all the difference, if you use it,” she added.
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