{"id":49863,"date":"2017-12-12T10:30:34","date_gmt":"2017-12-12T17:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=49863"},"modified":"2017-12-14T09:32:16","modified_gmt":"2017-12-14T16:32:16","slug":"despars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/despars\/","title":{"rendered":"Family affair: Mother, son graduating from NAU on Friday"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Heidi Toth<\/strong>
\nNAU Communications<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Meet Sharon and David Despars<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Undergraduate program:<\/strong>
\nSharon Despars: Logistics and supply chain management
\nDavid Despars: Mechanical engineering<\/p>\n

Campus:<\/strong>
\nSharon Despars: NAU Online
\nDavid Despars: Flagstaff<\/p>\n

As a high school junior, David Despars signed up for a college course, earning dual credit. So when his mother repeated her oft-stated phrase\u2014\u201cI\u2019ll go to college when you do\u201d\u2014he had an answer ready.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am<\/em> in college,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The next semester, Sharon Despars enrolled at NAU. She built on her strength as a purchasing manager and majored in logistics and supply chain management, though that decision\u2014and the math that came with it\u2014wasn\u2019t easy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first challenge was deciding what I wanted to be when I grew up,\u201d Sharon said.<\/p>\n

One class at a time, Sharon worked through the degree requirements. David graduated from high school and started school at NAU, the only school to which he\u2019d applied. With 11 years of music behind him, he started as a music education major but then found an interest in biofuels and solar electricity and switched to mechanical engineering.<\/p>\n

On Friday morning, David Despars will be in the Skydome to watch his mother walk across the stage and receive her long-awaited bachelor\u2019s degree. On Saturday afternoon, Sharon Despars will be in the Skydome to watch her son walk across the stage and earn his degree.<\/p>\n

On Saturday night, there may be an epic celebration in the Despars household.<\/p>\n

The dual graduation ceremonies were unplanned but a nice bit of kismet for the Phoenix family.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels really cool to see my mom and me accomplish this milestone victory in our lives,\u201d David said. \u201cFor her to complete her degree while working full-time and being an awesome mom is really cool. I\u2019m very proud of her.\u201d<\/p>\n

For her part, Sharon is most proud her sons. They\u2019ve worked hard in school and they\u2019re following their own passions, she said, such as David switching his major to engineering, which required more classes and more technical work than a typical science degree. Also, she said, they were excellent math tutors when she needed help.<\/p>\n

After the official celebration\u2014a family road trip to Las Vegas to see the Blue Man Group\u2014the Lumberjack contingent of the Despars family will put their degrees to use. Sharon accepted a new position that moves her from supply chain management into logistics, and while she\u2019s not committing to anything, she hasn\u2019t ruled out a master\u2019s degree. David is taking a break after five and a half years of school and then will look for jobs in the aerospace industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Heidi Toth NAU Communications Meet Sharon and David Despars. Undergraduate program: Sharon Despars: Logistics and supply chain management David Despars: Mechanical engineering Campus: Sharon Despars: NAU Online David Despars: Flagstaff As a high school junior, David Despars signed up for a college course, earning dual credit. So when his mother repeated her oft-stated phrase\u2014\u201cI\u2019ll…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":49864,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-academics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}