Colorado Tech Online Students and Alumni
Meet Shari Davis
BSBA with a concentration in Project Management
Learning to Speak the Language
Shari Davis didn't need a Bachelor's Degree to get her position writing and developing software with GE Healthcare, but her boss sure is glad she got one. "I'm now able to help GE save a considerable amount of financial as well as human resource dollars. With my Bachelor's Degree, I know enough to have eliminated a lot of the middlemen that were needed before I had my degree. My supervisors love it."
Shari had tried college once before enrolling at Colorado Tech Online. Right out of high school she started at the University of South Dakota. She got three years into her Bachelor's Degree in Biology before deciding not to finish. "I just didn't know what I was going to do with it and people around me were pushing technical degrees so I went to a technical school instead."
Shari got an Associate's Degree as a registered invasive cardiac specialist and worked in a cardiac cath lab at Mayo Clinic. After six years there, Shari started looking for another medical-related position that would enable her to take what she learned at Mayo and apply it to technology. She found her current job at GE Healthcare. "Having a degree was desired but not a requirement from GE Healthcare, which was good because I didn't have a Bachelor's Degree at the time; it was my Associate's Degree and all of my hands on experience that got me the job."
Even though she got the job without a Bachelor's Degree, Shari knew she wouldn't be able to move up the ladder at GE Healthcare without one. She enrolled at Colorado Tech Online within a year of starting at GE Healthcare.
Now she can't believe she waited even that year. "My job involves speaking with the customers of our products and they aren't always technical people. I talk to lots of project managers and lab managers. Before I earned my degree (BSBA with a concentration in Project Management), it would often be challenging to speak about the business end of matters versus the medical end. At the time, my knowledge base was strictly clinical. I didn't know about budgets or project management at all. We sometimes had to bring in extra personnel to explain all of this stuff to the customers. Now I can speak the same language as the project managers and other managers and my office is so much more productive."
Not only is Shari doing a better job at her job, but also her responsibilities have increased. "Before it would have been my boss writing requests for proposals and handling the business part of working with our customers, but now that I have my degree, she trusts me to facilitate a lot of the things the customer needs." Shari is waiting to hear back on one particularly interesting piece of writing. She and two of her associates are trying to patent a piece of software they developed earlier this year and Shari, in addition to developing the software, wrote the patent application. "Everything at work is just blossoming now."
While Shari is very happy with her current employment situation, she appreciates that her Colorado Tech Online education set her up to work as a project manager in any field. "I happen to be in medicine now, but I can apply what I learned to anything. The Colorado Tech Online classes were scoped to business yet broad enough that I feel I know what I need to succeed in project management in any field. It really enables you to do a lot of different things."
Back to Student/Alumni Profiles Home