When Ruth-Anne Boyd turned 50, she made the gutsy decision to take her lifelong goal of becoming a professor off hold and pursue the university education she needed to make that dream a reality.
Fast-forward 10 years, and now the busy Change Architect, author, mentor and grandmother has not only just completed her second degree with Yorkville University but was also just hired as her alma mater’s newest Business professor.
“It’s an incredible feeling to join the faculty team at Yorkville,” said Boyd, who graduated as the valedictorian of Yorkville’s 2021 Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) graduating class, and recently put the finishing touches on her Master of Education in Adult Education studies.
“After working for years to earn the two degrees I needed, I am now living my dream of helping Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) students connect what they are learning with real workplace challenges. It will arm them with some of the essential knowledge and skills demanded in the workplace today.”
“If it wasn’t for Yorkville University – and the Master of Education program in particular – I wouldn’t have been able to go after and pursue my dream of becoming a university professor,” she added.
Boyd said she knew from the very beginning of her undergraduate studies at Yorkville that the university was a “very special” place, and it didn’t take her long to fall in love with the school’s uniquely small classroom sizes, as well as the structure of its programs and development of its courses.
“The small class sizes give you the ability to make deep and personal connections with the professors and students in every single course,” she said, adding that she also appreciated how she was able to apply the lessons she was learning in class to her day job as a change management consultant.
“I loved being able to connect my workplace and the real problems, challenges, and opportunities in front of me with what I was learning in class.”
Bottom line: Boyd wanted to start leveraging what she was learning on the job right away to deliver more value for organizations.
It was also at Yorkville where her faith in her own potential was renewed and where she was able to muster the courage to chase the dream she’d abandoned years before.
“About my second course (into my BBA degree), I realized, ‘Wow, I have so much to offer! What I really want to do is teach,’” she said, noting that realization as her biggest takeaway from her studies. “It was a reminder that I can just be myself and I have so much to offer to students once I start teaching. That was a very special moment for me.”
Now that she’s achieved her dream of becoming a professor – and at the university that qualified her to do so, no less – Boyd said she’s thankful for the opportunity afforded to her by this full-circle moment.
“I never would have been able to do this without Yorkville and all my amazing professors, as well as fellow students,” she said. “We really just supported and helped each other. It was a great experience. Yorkville is a wonderful, wonderful place to learn.”
