Editor's Note: This is the eighth in a series of profiles of winter 2023 graduates.
Sean Andre Mirani, who grew up in Maryland, completed an associate degree in general arts at Montgomery College, but he still didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life. Instead of going on for a bachelor’s degree, he decided to join the Air Force.
For 11 years he was an aircraft mechanic, moving from Texas to Delaware then on to Spain, Germany and Turkey before ending up in Alaska, when he left the service a year and a half ago. It was a great career, he said, and he has no regrets. But when he saw the end of his military career approaching, he knew he had to prepare himself for the next career step—and he didn’t want it to be as a mechanic.
“I didn’t want to be working with my hands forever,” he said.
That’s when Mirani started thinking about University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC). Mirani’s brother had gone there—back when it was known as the University of Maryland University College—and had talked it up. And when Mirani was assigned to Naval Station Rota in the south of Spain, he had some firsthand experience studying at UMGC while working a full-time military job.
Mirani had a long-time interest in computers—he’d fallen in with some friends who built and coded drones—and he enrolled in UMGC’s digital media web technology program, with a minor in marketing, to complete his bachelor’s degree. Even though his major was different from his community college studies, UMGC accepted many of his transfer credits and even gave him credit for some of his military training.
He completed the bachelor’s degree while working for the military in Spain and Turkey. As soon as he transferred to Alaska, he launched into a Master of Science in Software Engineering.
One UMGC professor stood out with him. Renata McFadden taught Software Design Implementation. Her course was so rigorous, he said, that he had to drop it as he was finishing up his military career in Alaska and moving back to Maryland. But the course’s difficulty was important to him. “This would be what real work was like,” he explained.
As he worked to complete his graduate degree after leaving the Air Force, his coursework helped him land a new job as a software developer for DAI, a global economic development company funded by U.S. government grants for projects around the world.
“UMGC has enabled me to complete my degrees in the midst of moving around the world throughout the years,” he said. “The skills and knowledge I have obtained have made me a successful developer.”
He is hoping that completion of the master’s degree will open doors for him to advance either with DAI or another company.
“I never liked feeling stagnant,” he said. “I always wanted to learn more. With software development, you are always learning.”
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