Sherry Carrigan has been making a concerted effort to finish her bachelor's degree since the early 1980's. Motherhood, caring for children in need of emergency foster care, and moves to Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Virginia for her husband's job are just a few of the reasons she has had to put her education on hold. At each new place she started over at a local university in a traditional undergraduate program. This was until a classmate at the last institution asked her for dating advice. She decided then that she needed a change and applied to Georgetown.