Featured Student

Jennifer Thomas

Saint Paul College Culinary Arts Program

Twenty-four days. That's all Chris and Jennifer Thomas had together as husband and wife before he was shipped off to Iraq in October 2005. While Chris has been home three times since then, his tour of duty with the U.S. Army, slated to end in March, was recently extended until July. The Thomases are counting the days when they can be together once more. "Adapting to being away from home isn't fun, and now that we have been extended, it's even worse," Chris says. "But I call Jennifer and we IM-chat to keep in touch."

Chris and Jennifer are counting the days until he comes home for good. Until then, they count on each other — and on Saint Paul College. One semester after his wife enrolled in the school's culinary program, Chris began taking elective classes via the Internet in the summer of 2006. "Before he was sent to Iraq, he had planned to go to Saint Paul College for its accounting program," Jennifer says. "He figured that since the Army pays for schooling while you're in Iraq, he would get as many credits as he could while he was over there."

Chris' ambitious educational plan is to earn an associate in applied science degree in accounting from Saint Paul College, then follow up with a bachelor's degree in accounting from Metropolitan State University. A master's degree and a career as a certified public accountant are also on his radar.

Why Saint Paul College? "I live in St. Paul and it looked like a good school with a good variety of classes and programs to choose from," Chris notes. "Getting a degree at a community college would give me the option of obtaining work while continuing my education. That would allow me to gain experience in my desired career field and reduce the overall expenses of college."

Jennifer, who will finish up her two-year degree this summer, has already leveraged her college experience into a fun and rewarding career. "I enrolled at Saint Paul College not even realizing how excellent its culinary program was," she says. "It turned out to be a great decision. They have a lot of great instructors who made me realize how much I really did like cooking. In fact, I just got a job at a little café restaurant called Trotters on the corner of Marshall and Cleveland Avenues in St. Paul. It's a good place to work and it's got great food."

Jennifer's instructors appreciate her as much as she appreciates them. "She is a delightful student to have in class — eager to learn, always prepared, going above and beyond what is expected of her," says Culinary Arts Instructor Marcy Alfonsi. "She could easily let the fact that her new marriage got interrupted when Chris was sent to Iraq get her down. I know that it's hard for her, yet it never seems to show. She is endlessly positive, bubbly, and pretty funny, to boot."

It won't be long until Chris can sample his wife's cooking again. Until then, taking courses from thousands of miles away requires both discipline and ingenuity. "On one occasion, he said that he was posting his material to our Internet Web classroom through a satellite cell phone," recalls Speech Instructor Dan Paulnock.

Despite the obstacles, Chris' academic performance has been extraordinary. "We have a requirement in all of the speech courses that students gain the ability to develop presentations using computer-mediated communications, where we use the Web," Paulnock says. "We use a system called eFolio that allows you to create your own Web site; it's a free vehicle for Minnesota citizens and Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system students to place presentations on that can then be seen anywhere in the world. We created a group symposium on a human communications research topic and Chris participated just like anybody else. In our face-to-face classes, students get a little more help, but he had to do it on his own far, far away. He did an excellent job, and he earned one of our eFolio medallions that his wife received on his behalf. When she came to the speech and theatre faculty office to pick it up, she had her cell phone on so he could hear the official presentation in absentia."

Paulnock was also impressed with Chris' accountability. "What caught my attention was the fact that Chris never asked for extra time for any assignment," Paulnock says. "He never said, 'I just got back from some activity and I'm a little late on the deadline.'"

Phil Bolsta is a Blaine-based freelance writer.