Graduate School Pays Dividends for Kent State Alumnus Seeking Career Advancement

Kent State alumnus Chris McFee is no stranger to working his way up in the ranks. Armed with a bachelor's degree in business 10 years ago, he landed his first job out of college at Key Bank, working the help desk for its information technology department. It wasn't glamourous, it wasn't high-paying but his foot was in the door.

The work was easy enough, says McFee, who answered phones, reset passwords and helped trouble-shoot computer problems for anyone in the entire organization. But he knew he wanted more. At the first opportunity, he took on a leadership role and eventually moved up to become a technical lead in his department.

But that's when McFee realized if he was to keep moving up, something needed to change.

"I realized I had plateaued," he says. "I started thinking 'what can I do to facilitate getting a better job?' and I started investigating. That's when I saw an article in Kent State's alumni magazine about a new concentration they had called Enterprise Architecture."

He applied and was admitted to Kent State's graduate school and spent four years working at Key Bank while taking online classes in Kent State's Digital Sciences program. The curriculum was challenging and balancing his family and work life with school took discipline and perserverance, he says. But the end result was well worth it.

McFee got his master's in Digital Sciences in 2016 and now oversees a staff of 12 as DevOps Manager at Key Bank, all thanks to his graduate education at Kent State.

"It took a lot of motivation," McFee says of working full time and going back to school. "The biggest thing is that you have to make time and separate yourself from distractions. You have to shut off everything."

McFee says the best part of his graduate education was that the courses were taught by people who actually practiced in the field and they could offer relevant, real-world perspectives that could be immediately applied to his work at Key Bank.

"Kent is on the cutting edge - they went out and got people who are currently doing what they were teaching," he says. It gives you the whole picture. They all had day jobs - that was the greatest thing about this program."

McFee was also able to communicate with his fellow students and create an online community where they could help each other problem-solve various issues that they could then apply directly to their day jobs.

"It was an open and collaborative situation - overall, it was just a great experience."