You might call William Alger the Benjamin Button of academia.
Alger did it backward. He went for his doctorate first. Then, he went back for a master’s. Decades later, the 72-year-old retired health executive is finally graduating with a bachelor’s degree from NAU, more than a half-century after his college journey began.
“Imagine someone seeing three diplomas on your wall and they’re in the wrong order: doctorate, master’s and finally a bachelor’s,” Alger said, chuckling. “That’s certainly going to be an interesting discussion.”
How did this wayward Lumberjack find his way back home after so many years away, becoming one of the oldest graduates in university history? That story’s “a hoot and a half,” Alger said.
New heights and snowball fights
In the 1960s, Alger and his family left their home in San Diego and decamped to Flagstaff for two summers while his father earned a master’s degree in teaching at NAU. Though he was very young then, Alger still remembers staying in the Tri Delta sorority house and playing in the sand near the then-under-construction University Union Fieldhouse.
After high school, Alger spent one “boring” year at a Southern California university. Recalling those good old days in the high country, he transferred to NAU.
“Campus life was very rewarding for me,” he said. “There was a lot of activity occurring on campus, unlike at my previous university, and the professors always seemed to enjoy teaching and really cared about their students.”
While studying biology with the goal of becoming a pharmacist, Alger spent his free time playing NAU club soccer, representing Sechrist Hall in dormitory snowball fights and volunteering for the service organization Circle K International, which supported on-campus and community service projects.
“One year I had to play Santa Claus at a senior center Christmas party,” Alger said. “Mind you, I was 5-10 and all of 135 pounds. I had to stuff myself with so many pillows that everyone laughed at me when they saw me walking back to my dorm.” One of the revelers was his classmate Nancy Serenbetz, now a development director in NAU’s College of Education.
Alger got the surprise of his life when, in his senior year, his academic advisor informed him he was two social science classes short of fulfilling graduation requirements.
“I was so focused on biology, psychology and chemistry that I didn’t realize I needed two additional social science classes to graduate,” Alger said. “It was too late to enroll by then, and I didn’t want to pay another year of out-of-state tuition. So I said to my advisor, ‘Why don’t I take these classes at San Diego State?’”
Back in Southern California, Alger completed one social science class and was in the process of completing the second when the fateful letter came: He’d been accepted to pharmacy school at the University of California San Francisco.
“It’s a little-known fact that back in those days you didn’t actually have to graduate to be accepted to pharmacy or dental school—you just had to complete the prerequisites,” Alger said. “The acceptance rate of people like me is extremely low; 98% of the others in my class had a bachelor’s degree. I just got lucky!”
‘Pre-grad’ life
For a while after that, Alger forgot about his unfinished adventure at NAU. He graduated from pharmacy school, completed a one-year residency and became a practicing pharmacist in the Bay Area. He became fascinated with the business of healthcare and went back to school for a master’s degree in public administration with a focus on healthcare from the University of San Francisco. He worked in leadership positions at several hospitals in northern California over the course of many years, eventually retiring as chief operating officer of a hospital and affiliated medical foundation in the Sacramento area.
After Alger retired, he remembered he had something pending in Flagstaff.
“In the back of my mind, I thought, ‘There’s an objective I never achieved, and that’s graduating from NAU,’” he said. “My kids have been busting my chops for years, stating that I was the only one in the family who hadn’t graduated from college!”
Finally, last fall, Alger sent an email to Serenbetz, his old classmate. He asked: What would I have to do to get that diploma? The message wound its way over to JJ Boggs, assistant director of enrollment management at NAU. Boggs said Alger’s story warmed her heart.
“I love a good challenge, and I knew I had terrific colleagues—like academic advisor Teresa Del Vecchio—who would dig in with me,” Boggs said. “It took months to coordinate staff, faculty and administrators from University Advising, the Registrar’s Office, Admissions Processing, Curriculum and Assessment, the Department of Biology, the Dean’s Office and more to unearth William’s NAU transcript, sort through degree requirements from the 1976 catalog, collect transcripts from other schools, evaluate transfer credit from almost a half century ago, submit and approve the graduation request and process a graduation application. What a team effort it was!”
After a lengthy period of time and multiple layers of reviews, Boggs sent Alger the news that he’d officially graduated from NAU on Oct. 2—his 72nd birthday.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained
Boggs said Alger’s story may be atypical, but it’s not unheard of at NAU. The university’s Jacks on Track program helps people of all backgrounds, from veterans to parents and beyond, achieve dreams deferred. Alger just so happens to be the program’s 200th graduate.
Alger said programs like Jacks on Track prove that life is a winding road, taking people to unexpected places on unpredictable trajectories.
“I always told my kids that college is an experience that exposes you to different people and perspectives, and it’s a place where you’ll probably evolve,” Alger said. “Most people don’t maintain the same major. I thought I wanted to become a dentist, and I ended up going to pharmacy school instead.”
Contained in the retiree’s story is a lesson for his fellow Lumberjack graduates—most of whom are 50 years his junior and have a whole lot more life ahead of them.
“If you have an objective you haven’t accomplished yet, you don’t have to forget about it,” Alger said. “You can just try. Focus. Never give up.”
Jill Kimball | NAU Communications
(928) 523-2282 | jill.kimball@nau.edu