Spotlight On Alumnus

Brent Messer
AIU Online Distinguished Alumni Award Winner

Meet Brent Messer: From Bachelor's Degree to Boss

AIU Online's third Distinguished Alumni Award winner had his pick of jobs around the country before even graduating with his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Communication with a concentration in Digital Design. While Nevada, Texas, and New York were intriguing, Brent Messer opted to stay in his home state of Florida. It turned out to be a great decision; within a month of his June 2005 graduation from AIU Online, Brent was hired as the Web Services Supervisor for the Florida county he lived in.

From day one Brent was leading a team of designers and programmers responsible for both the development of internal software supporting Alachua County's website and the site's actual design. Brent and his team designed a new website for the county as well as a new marketing campaign and a new logo. "It is quite rewarding to see your work on billboards and the web … not to mention on all of the county vehicles driving around," Brent says.

Brent and his team were also instrumental in making some of Alachua County's websites accessible to persons with disabilities. Passionate about the idea of an Internet that can be utilized by everyone, Brent started a campaign, Serious Web Accessibility Thinking (SWAT), within Alachua County. SWAT is dedicated to educating content providers on how best to make their sites accessible and useable to those with disabilities.

While Brent enjoyed his position as Alachua County's Web Services Supervisor, he's enjoying his new position even more. In August he was awarded a promotion to Applications Division Head. In his new position, Brent is responsible for a team of 25 designers, engineers and supervisors charged with creating web sites for the county and also engineering and designing software for various county officials and offices. Brent often finds himself communicating with Alachua County elected officials.

Since working for Alachua County, Brent and his staff have been nominated for several design and management awards.

Now that his career is on fast-forward, Brent laughs at the days when he feared he would never escape the dead-end jobs he was stuck with because he didn't have his college degree.

"I had a large skill set and wanted so much out of life, but without a college degree my options were limited," Brent says. "I had attended a few brick and mortar schools right after high school and after I had gotten out of the Army, but I always had difficulty managing my time. Sometimes I felt like I would never be able to finish my degree. Family and work responsibilities kept getting in the way of sitting in a classroom."

The necessity of sitting in a classroom wasn't the only hurdle in Brent's quest to earn his degree. "At the traditional schools I tried, whether a community college or a state university, I was always frustrated by how drawn out everything was. Classes were incredibly slow and boring. It felt like I was wasting my time."

Finally Brent decided to try something different: online education. He had taken a few online classes through the brick and mortar schools he had attended and was intrigued by the idea of a purely online education … as long as it was a quality education.

Not looking for just any online school, Brent was thorough in his research. "I looked at least at 20 to 30 different universities around the country," he says. From the beginning though, AIU Online stood out. "I liked the time frame at AIU. Not only did the classes themselves move fast, but the whole degree program was accelerated."

It was also important to Brent that a majority of the credits he had already earned would transfer. They did … and AIU Online was also able to grant him additional credits for his extensive work experience. "I guess even those dead-end jobs taught me something," Brent says.

Now that his Bachelor's degree education is complete and he is firmly established in the IT workforce, Brent is doing the teaching. This past June, Brent and his team gave a presentation on in-house design and development and best practices in standards and design to a standing-room only crowd at the annual Transforming Local Government Conference in Seattle. Like one of his favorite AIU Online instructors often did in her lectures, Brent's presentation took real-world examples and applied them in a fun and interesting way.

Since the Seattle presentation was so well received, Brent is forging ahead with a similarly themed book he has been working on. "This particular book skips the technical jargon and gets right into the business logic behind what we do. It's full of applied ideas and concepts." Brent plans of having this book finished in 2008. He's also writing another book, which he won't reveal the specifics of, and fleshing out two book concepts.

"There is no way I would be where I am now, doing all of these things I dreamed of, without my AIU Online degree."

Having accomplished so much with his Bachelor's degree, Brent is looking forward to seeing what getting a Master's degree will do for him. "I have no doubt I'll go back for my Master's degree at AIU Online. If AIU Online ever creates a Ph.D. program, I'll go and get that degree too."

"You never stop learning. The more I learn, the more I have to share with my community," he says.