Just twenty-five credits stood between Reggie Hanna and graduation from Howard University when his father's death forced him to leave school. After taking care of family matters, the one-time theater major found it difficult to get back on the college track. He acted and taught, established a repertory company in Dallas, and worked with the Smithsonian's Discover Children's Theater. "Despite my accomplishments," Reggie says, "I was haunted by the thought that I hadn't finished my bachelor's degree." He eventually settled into an office job, "but I just felt like I was collecting a check."

That's when the Liberal Studies program literally found him. "Dean O'Callaghan interviewed me. She realized I hadn't finished my degree and told me about the Liberal Studies Program. At that point, the question wasn't whether I would apply for the program, but when I could start."

Reggie's first semester has been "beyond amazing. I had never studied philosophy before. I had read Aristotle's Poetics for theater history, but not his treatises on values or slavery. I'd read Antigone, but it was for a show, and I never knew why Sophocles had written it the way he did. I'd never read Plato."

After graduating from Georgetown, Reggie wants to become a lawyer, "but my degree isn't just a means to that end. In Liberal Studies, the focus is on learning how to answer the big questions about the world."