The Work Before the Harvest

This weekend in New York, I got to see the fruit of years of effort.

WGU graduates stepped across the stage at the UBS Arena outside the city. For these graduates, their hard work has paid off. The roots of promise have finally penetrated the rich soil of opportunity.

What was particularly special about this graduation in New York was that I got to shake the hands of some of the earliest graduates of WGU’s newly launched bachelor’s and master’s degrees in public health. As I reflected on all the effort it took for WGU to create and launch these programs and all the hard work and determination it took our graduates to complete their degrees, I couldn’t help but make the connection to some of my earliest memories and lessons learned as a child.

Milk Cartons, Hailstorms, and Building an Orchard

When I was a boy, I remember how important it was to save cardboard milk cartons.

Every empty one mattered, and our whole family and neighborhood were part of the effort.

Our neighbors in the Central Valley town of McFarland, California, would collect them and wait for my dad to pick them up. The planting of our new orchard was coming up, and we needed them.

We would cut the bottoms out and place them around the base of our newly planted apricot and peach trees. They protected the tender trunks from pests, held moisture in the soil and created a barrier against the elements.

My dad was a high school teacher and coach, and after long days, we worked our 80 acres together.

Like any newly planted orchard, stone fruit trees will test your patience. You invest years before you see a return, sometimes four years before the first real harvest. And even then, nothing is guaranteed.

I remember two seasons in a row when the fruit was ready, and we were days away from the harvest when hail hit. In minutes, years of work were gone.

We lost both harvests and, just like our WGU students who experience setbacks, barriers and hardships throughout their journey to earn their degree, the next day, we woke up, shook off the disappointment and went back to work.

From the Ground Up: Growing Public Health Leaders

When WGU decided to offer the Bachelor and Master of Science in Public Health, we knew it would take a lot of time, effort and investment before we would see the fruit of our labor — our first graduates. We prepared the ground. We built curriculum grounded in epidemiology, health policy, public health law and global health strategy. We designed a bridge between the two programs so students moving from bachelor's to master's level would not lose momentum.

Then we waited, and we watched.

The planning started well before the first student enrolled. Months of hard work preceded the launch to ensure these programs were relevant for today’s workforce needs.

These programs help build practical skills to understand and respond to health challenges in individual communities. 

Programs also cover how public health systems are funded and run. You look at the real constraints, budgets, staffing, and long-term sustainability. The result is a mix of data, policy, and hands-on skills you can use in healthcare systems, government, and community organizations.

Planting Seeds, Growing Graduates

Eighteen months later, we are beginning to see the fruits of our labor. Sixty-three graduates from the bachelor's program. Thirty-two from the master's. More than 500 students enrolled in the bachelor's program and over 600 in the master's. 

Clearly, this metaphor is personal, having grown up in a rural farming community and later worked in public and rural hospital systems that struggled to find healthcare workers. This work resonates because I have seen the workforce shortage up close and personal, and now being able to put my shoulder to the proverbial plow to help close this gap is one of the things I am most proud of at WGU.

The Leavitt School of Health (LSH) has now produced 10,525 unique rural graduates across all 50 states since FY2020. LSH graduated more than 1,800 rural students every year from FY2021 through FY2025. FY2025 enrollments rose 8.5% over FY2024, and graduates increased 4.3% in the same period. Those numbers represent communities with a nurse, a public health professional or a practitioner who stayed close to home.

Shared Roots, Shared Rewards

In some respects, the team at WGU shares common experiences with our students. Like farmers, we both make deep investments long before we see the outcome. Our students invest in themselves in the pursuit of their education, and we invest in them through the creation of new programs that give them the opportunities to advance in their careers. And like droughts and hailstorms, we experience hardships and setbacks, but like the faithful farmer, we roll up our sleeves and get back to work. As WGU Night Owls, that’s what we do; it’s who we are.

But if you stay with it, if you keep showing up, you earn the right to see the harvest.

This weekend in New York, I got to see that harvest.

Graduates stepped forward as families celebrated, and you could see futures changing in real time.

It wasn’t really about the ceremony. It was about the years it took to get there. It was built by faculty who stayed late, mentors who made the call, teams who built programs from the ground up and students who refused to quit.

This is why we asked those questions, did the research, and built the program around the students, because every harvest comes from a hundred small steps and a thousand seeds, and in our case, a community, that helped us gather those milk cartons.