Air Force, Marine veterans earn data science master’s degrees
Anthony Gheen and Ross Matheny applied skills they learned in the military to balance full-time jobs and graduate studies.
This May, two veterans — Anthony Gheen and Ross Matheny — graduated from the UNC School of Data Science and Society’s first degree program, the online Master of Applied Data Science. The school celebrated the 78 graduates of the MADS program and 40 recipients of the Bachelor of Science degree in data science at its graduation ceremony May 10 in Memorial Hall.
Gheen was an aircraft mechanic in the U.S. Air Force, and Matheny was an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. Both students applied the time management skills they honed in the armed forces to balance a graduate degree program while working full time.
“Meeting deadlines, planning ahead and then just working under pressure — those are all things I did all the time” in the military, said Matheny. “Those are skills to get through this program.”
Gheen also recognized the benefits of learning how to balance multiple projects. When “certain projects might be more time-intensive or difficult than you had initially thought,” he said, “you can adapt and juggle and pivot.”
In addition to balancing multiple projects, Matheny and Gheen consistently applied problem‑solving skills throughout their coursework as graduate students. “I really enjoyed the critical thinking element of it,” said Gheen. ”I like the kind of process, in general, where you have to kind of orient yourself as to what’s going wrong and find out what is my problem, how do I fix it.”
Matheny, who is working in industry as head of production at Siemens, counsels younger Tar Heels to get exposure to as many different fields as possible. ”See what resonates with you, and then follow those things. And there’s still going to be hard work, and a lot of it is hard work. But that often makes it worth it, and that really is where you develop a ton of skill and experience.”
Gheen, who is an extract, transform and load developer at Spectrum, recommends students ask themselves, “What are the next two or three things I have to do?” As he explains, the process “makes this semester, and then the whole program, just a lot more digestible and manageable. And that’s what they tell you in basic training.”
“The days go by slow, but the weeks go by fast” was another axiom that Gheen learned during basic training. “I think that’s kind of how it’s felt in the program.”
