Student Spotlight: Former Air Force Tech Sergeant goes back to school...HUA!

As John Lennon wrote, “Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.” It’s a sentiment former Air Force Tech Sergeant Monroe Conley can certainly relate to. “Life has many turns and seldom goes as planned,” says Conley, “and that’s included my own life. I actually dropped out of high school for a while,” he admits, “but realized that wasn’t going to work. I went back and I graduated. After high school, I worked multiple jobs to be able to pay my bills, but with little left over in time or money to attempt an increase in my education.”

While Conley would have liked to continue his education, he says his high school grades would have made it difficult to get into college, let alone get financing, and he didn’t want to be a “burden” to his parents. “I went the only route I knew, and that was to join the military and earn money for college through the Montgomery G.I. Bill.” Conley figured he’d do his four-year duty, get out and get on with more schooling. “But the four years turned into eleven,” Conley explains, during which he married. He and his wife Wendy now have two sons; Caleb, 11, and Dade, 9.

Conley says he has no regrets for his life choices even though his educational dreams had to be "put on the back burner.” While in the Air Force, Conley’s job leaned heavily toward the use of computers. “As the years went by, my skills improved,” he says, “and others started coming to me with questions concerning computers and programs. This gave me the desire to create programs, to understand the inner workings of a computer.”

Opting out of the military in 2007, Conley put that desire into action. Pursuing a Computer Science Bachelor’s Degree, he’s been on the President’s Honor Roll at Spokane Community College. An Associate’s Degree in hand, Conley transferred to Eastern Washington University for the 2009 school year and applied for scholarships, becoming one of the first 38 A.I. Bright Promise Program recipients.

Where will his dream take him next? “I’ll likely head back into the Air Force,” Conley says. The Air Force has a program called "Bootstrap, he explains, that allows candidates to leave the military for more schooling, then come back as an officer.” Pulling himself up by the bootstraps, Conley could is a veritable poster child for that program. As the Air Force says, HUA! (Heard, Understood, Acknowledged!)