Michele Peele
Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice

Meet Michele Peele: From AIU to Major Award-Winner

When you get a call from a congressman's office asking you to verify all sorts of personal information and you don't know what they want with you, it's understandable to be a little nervous. And AIU graduate Michele Peele was... until finally the Oklahoma representative's office told her not to worry. "It's a good thing we're calling you for," Michele was told.

It turns out that wasn't the complete truth: it was a very good thing Congressman Tom Cole's office called her for. Michele, who earned both her Associate's degree and Bachelor's degree from AIU Online, won a National Leadership Award. She will receive the award during a dinner ceremony with President George W. Bush in Washington D.C. sometime in June. Three weeks after having been notified of her winning, Michele still has no idea who nominated her.

"I am still in shock," she says. "My husband and whole family are so excited for and proud of me." When Michele, who is the first in her family to graduate from college, called her husband after hanging up with Congressman Cole's office, she was a little hesitant to tell him about the award. "He's a trucker and was out driving at the time. I thought he might drive off the road."

Now that the news of Michele's National Leadership Award has had a little bit of time to settle in, family members have recovered enough from their initial surprise to begin vying to be the one guest Michele is allowed to bring to the awards ceremony. "Everyone wants to come with me to have dinner with the President," Michele says. "I'd love to bring them all, but I'm not allowed."

In addition to her Presidential dinner, Michele is also scheduled to meet with various members of Congress and Washington-area business-men and –women. Her name and a brief profile will also appear in the Wall Street Journal.

While winning the National Leadership Award is certainly an amazing achievement, it is not the only one Michele has had since graduating. In October, five months after graduating with her Bachelor of Science degree in Criminal Justice, Michele founded a legal research company. She researches North Carolina law for a monthly legal journal sent out to lawyers across the country as well as doing freelance title research and research for private parties.

After growing uncomfortable at a legal research job she had started just before she graduated, Michele began looking for other options within criminal justice. "I've got this degree, I started thinking about all the different things I could do with it." On the advice of a friend, Michele began doing freelance title research. From there, she expanded to contract civil law research for the legal journal. Recently, Michele has also begun to do legal research for private parties lawyers won't immediately help. "I'm helping them get enough legal background information they can take to a attorney and show that they do have a case."

Within a year, Michele plans to have her own office space. She has also begun training both her sister and mother in legal research with the idea of eventually bringing them on board as assistants.

Michele hasn't just used her new knowledge to help herself and her family however. She is a sworn Guardian ad Litem for her county. As a Guardian ad Litem Michele represents the interests of neglected children. She has already been instrumental in protecting a four-year-old girl being molested by both her father and grandfather. Thanks in large part to Michele, the girl is no longer being molested and is about to be adopted by a loving family.

Michele is the first to say none of this – her founding and running her own successful company, helping abused children and winning the National Leadership Award – would have been possible without her AIU Online education.

"Without AIU Online, I couldn't have done any of this."

Michele says a traditional program wasn't an option when she began looking at degree programs. "I always wanted my degree, but I wasn't going to take time away from my family (Michele and her husband have two kids, now seven and 11) to make myself a better person. I needed a program where I could work on my own time so I wouldn't have to sacrifice time with my family. AIU Online had that."

Michele also credits the depth and practicality of the school's curricula with teaching her exactly what she needed not only to do the legal research she does, but also to get her business up and running. "I refer back to specific things I learned in both my Associate's degree program in Business Administration and in my B.S. in Criminal Justice all the time." Michele says the Business Time Management class in her Associate's degree curriculum has been invaluable as are the research skills she learned in her different criminal justice classes.

"Since every research project is different, I can't repeat exactly what I did in my classes, but I can apply the research skills I learned so I know how to approach and research anything I need to. I can't count how often I refer back to notes and books from my different classes."

Michele's AIU Online education can only do so much for her though. Come June, when she's dining with President Bush, she's not going to have any AIU class notes or textbooks to refer back to. With her self-confidence and determination however, we have no doubt she'll figure out exactly what to do.

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