On November 2, Dan Green ’20 received an Alumni Achievement Award from the College of Undergraduate Studies (CUGS) for his commitment to the college and its students.
In 2020, Green achieved a life-long goal by graduating with a Bachelor of Integrative General Studies (BIGS).
Green began to pursue a college degree in the late-1960s as an architecture major. He left school to enter the workforce and had a successful career in the financial services industry. Green would go on to earn several degrees from the American College of Financial Services.
In 2008, Green retired from Prudential Insurance as the Southern Territory Vice President. Today, he is works with the Pinnacle Group and is a minority shareholder in the brokerage.
However, he wasn’t ready to stop learning when I left Prudential Insurance. He continued to take classes virtually from the American College of Financial Services. One day his wife asked why he didn’t finish his college degree. Green says, “That had never occurred to me, so her comment kind of got the juices flowing.”
He made some calls and learned that the college credits he earned in the late-1960s would still count towards a bachelor’s degree. He transferred his credits to Valencia College and took a few classes there. Then, through the DirectConnect to UCF program, he transferred to UCF.
Green had a variety of interests and wanted to study what intrigued him. “My advisor, Peter Wallace, told me UCF was introducing a program that might suit me better than the Interdisciplinary Studies major. With the BIGS major, I would only need two or three classes to graduate, whereas, with IDS, I would have had to take six more,” Green explains. “This was right up my alley, so when the BIGS program got approved for UCF, I transitioned into that major, took my last three classes, and I was done. It worked out perfectly.”
Green says the advantage of the IDS and BIGS programs is that they allow students to build a course of study around the things they’re passionate about. Even if that course of study doesn’t lead to a lifelong career, students will have been exposed to subjects and learned skills and concepts in those courses that will help them as they explore other options.
Green remains connected to the College of Undergraduate Studies. He is a benefactor of the college and serves on its Advisory Board. “I decided to join the board because I’m at a time in my life where I want to give back, and I’m grateful to UCF,” says Green.
He believes that learning is a lifelong pursuit and that a college degree is life-changing. “It always bothered me that I never completed my degree during my career,” Green shares. “The things I learned would have helped me immensely, so I would encourage people who didn’t finish their college degrees to go back to school.”
Finishing his studies has left Green with more time to pursue not just his work on the advisory board but other activities he loves, like cycling, a sport he started competing in when he was 13 years old. While he retired from competition at age 64, he never misses a day on his bike.
“You can always find me biking around the streets of Orlando,” Green says.