{"id":61954,"date":"2012-08-17T16:26:21","date_gmt":"2012-08-17T20:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/community\/?p=2859"},"modified":"2022-09-26T11:13:18","modified_gmt":"2022-09-26T15:13:18","slug":"six-degrees-of-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2012\/08\/17\/six-degrees-of-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Six Degrees of Education"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Tom Miller<\/p><\/div>\n

Seventy-two-year-old Tom Miller collected six sheepskins\u2014bachelor\u2019s degrees in political science, international studies, liberal studies, modern languages, anthropology, and geography\u2014when he took the stage at the June commencement.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a student of learning,\u201d Miller said. \u201cI used the courses as a method of organizing my readings. I have about 3,500 books at home in my library.\u201d<\/p>\n

A retired Air Force officer who already has bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s degrees in aerospace engineering, Miller embarked on his degree-collecting quest at Wright State in 2000 at the age of 60 as part of the Senior Scholars program. He was interrupted only in 2009, when he injured his back and cracked some ribs in a fall while hiking across a stream in the Great Smoky Mountains.<\/p>\n

Although Miller pursued multiple degrees at the same time and completed work toward them at different times, university regulations would have made it difficult for him to collect the degrees one at
\na time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s quite a great story,\u201d said Donna Schlagheck, Ph.D., chair of Wright State\u2019s political science department. \u201cTalk about lifelong learning. This guy embodies it.\u201d<\/p>\n

With an IQ once estimated as high as 203, Miller is in the top 1 percent of duplicate bridge players on the planet and is a formidable backgammon player. He won the chess championships at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base all 10 times he competed. He paints, hikes, scuba dives, and was once a competitive Latin ballroom dancer, traveling the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor an engineer, this guy is truly a Renaissance man,\u201d said Schlagheck. \u201cI say that in the highest possible praise. Only an engineer could schedule that many majors.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Miller grew up in Chillicothe, Ohio. He turned one of the rooms in the family home into a chemistry lab and would hang out at a nearby Mead lab as a boy, where he learned how to use a slide rule in the production
\nof paper.<\/p>\n

Miller was a math whiz, but never studied in
\nhigh school.<\/p>\n

\u201cI took one book home for the fun of it\u2014a trigonometry book\u2014to solve all of the identities,\u201d
\nhe recalled.<\/p>\n

Miller attended MIT, but didn\u2019t last very long there, blaming his lack of study skills. So he joined the Air Force, tested out of the first two years of college, and was selected to become an officer in the aeronautical\/astronautical engineers program.<\/p>\n

After a 20-year career, Miller retired from the Air Force in 1978. He went on to work for the University of Dayton Research Institute and for several aerospace defense contractors. In 1999, he retired as founder
\nand CEO of CompuTech Strategies, an aerospace defense company.<\/p>\n

In the past 24 years, Miller has helped 123 Republican candidates in their political campaigns. For the past six summers, he has worked at an archaeological dig at Fort Ancient, a site near Lebanon built by the Hopewell people.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe really has an incredibly broad range of interests,\u201d said Charles, Taylor, Ph.D., former dean of the College of Liberal Arts. \u201cHe\u2019s a very different kind of student. He enriches the whole classroom experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miller\u2019s studies at Wright State have touched on everything from Roman art and Irish literature to the Arab-Israeli conflicts. He studied German, Italian, and French, and actually posted his lowest grade point average in Modern Languages\u2014a 3.800.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever I\u2019m at parties and they play Trivial Pursuit, it\u2019s always Tom versus the room,\u201d Miller cracked.<\/p>\n

Miller is undecided about his next adventure.<\/p>\n

He is toying with the idea of working for a presidential campaign or perhaps seeking a position at London\u2019s British Museum, which is hosting an exhibit in March on the archaeological artifacts of Pompeii and Herculaneum.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s one more possibility.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m thinking,\u201d he said, \u201cabout going for another master\u2019s degree at Wright State.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seventy-two-year-old Tom Miller collected six sheepskins\u2014bachelor\u2019s degrees in political science, international studies, liberal studies, modern languages, anthropology, and geography\u2014when he took the stage at the June commencement. \u201cI\u2019m a student of learning,\u201d Miller said. \u201cI used the courses as a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":60254,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4863,747,4827,715,4855],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humanities-and-cultural-studies","category-liberal-arts","category-magazine","category-news","category-social-sciences-and-international-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61954"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129598,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61954\/revisions\/129598"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}