Africa-Press-Ethiopia<\/p>\n
An Illinois man who left college to serve in World War II returned to finish his education nearly 80 years later.<\/p>\n
Bill Gossett, 97, attended Lincoln College for a short time before transferring to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, but he ended up joining the U.S. Army Air Corps before finishing a degree.<\/p>\n
Gossett returned from the war and took over the family business, Gossett’s Cleaners, instead of returning to school.<\/p>\n
“There was always a void there but I was busy learning to run a business. Time went by and I finally decided to finish my degree. It was a goal of self-fulfillment,” Gossett said in a news release.<\/p>\n
Gossett approached Lincoln College officials about returning to the school to finish his associate’s degree.<\/p>\n
“In 2019, Mr. Gossett came to me and said he wanted to finish his associate’s degree at Lincoln College,” Lincoln College President David Gerlach said.<\/p>\n
“After meeting with the Registrar’s Office, we determined that Gossett could re-enroll as a reverse transfer student with Prior Learning Assessment credits. We were inspired by his desire to obtain a degree 80 years after his education began,” he said.<\/p>\n
Gossett completed his Associate of Arts degree in 2020, but had to wait for the 2021 graduation ceremony due to the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
Gerlach surprised Gossett at the ceremony with an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Africa-Press-Ethiopia An Illinois man who left college to serve in World War II returned to finish his education nearly 80 years later. Bill Gossett, 97, attended Lincoln College for a short time before transferring to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, but he ended up joining the U.S. Army Air Corps before finishing a degree. Gossett […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":5267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[241,346,270],"class_list":["post-5265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-miscellaneous","tag-africa-press-ethiopia","tag-covid-19-2","tag-miscellaneous"],"yoast_head":"\n