New Graduate Returns to Iowa to Finish What He Started

IOWA CITY, Iowa -- Tim Dickson always knew he’d come back.

More than four decades after he left the University of Iowa just 14 credits shy of a degree, Dickson is finally graduating — fulfilling a promise he made long ago to his mother, and to himself.

What finally made it possible wasn’t a change of heart but a change in free time and access.

Thanks to the university’s online program, Dickson was able to complete his final credits from afar — without uprooting his life in the Washington, D.C., area or stepping away from his work. It was the flexibility he hadn’t had decades earlier, and the opportunity turned “someday” into now.

“It was always on my mind to finish,” Dickson says. “And I was not going to finish my degree anywhere else but Iowa.”

This spring, that promise came full circle as Dickson crossed the stage at Carver-Hawkeye Arena and picked up a BA in political science and religious studies.

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