Army Vet Graduates with BSBA in Finance, Excels in Business

When Savann Thorn left the Army, he knew he'd need education to help his transition to working in the civilian world. He started at Tidewater Community College and earned his AS in Business Administration, and then finished his Bachelor's in Business Administration focusing on Finance online with Old Dominion University.

As a veteran, his choice for a bachelor's degree was clear. "The service that ODU provides to veterans ... there's no better from my opinion," Thorn said. But he was working full time and the road to his degree wasn't always smooth. "There are a lot of heartaches, there's lots of highs, there's lots of lows, but a finance degree, I feel, probably is the very best degree for someone that wants to practice business."

His hard work paid off. Thorn graduated with his BSBA in Finance, and was immediately able to apply lessons he learned in class to his job as Managing Director at KHEM Precision Machining, based in Richmond, Virginia. He shared a story about some of the finer points of what he called "the language of business" that helped his business soar. "Because of [what I learned] and projections I made as part of my finance degree, I was able to complete a really sweet deal. I can't get into the granular details about it, but it has made my business the best it's been in 13 years," Thorn said.

Thorn recommends an online BSBA in Finance from ODU to a wide range of people, especially if they have busy professional lives like him. "A person could run an auto shop, or maybe they're selling donuts, or they have a restaurant, or they're making ships or whatever it may be," Thorn said. "Business is the same and finance at [ODUGlobal] is the only way that I would have been able to accomplish those things."

Old Dominion University offers more than 120 programs through ODUGlobal in a variety of formats, allowing students to complete degree programs across the world. ODU serves more than 24,000 students annually by providing the same rigorous academics online and on-campus. Learn more about ODUGlobal's programs by visiting online.odu.edu.