Full-time professor, mom, wife, Learner

“NCU offers the truest form of distance education,” says Business Ph.D. candidate Julia Cronin-Gilmore, and that is exactly the kind she requires.

More than a little busy already as a full-time professor, a mom and a wife, Cronin-Gilmore still wanted to pursue her goal of earning a Ph.D. But she wasn’t about to remold her life around a graduate school program, so she had to find a grad school program she could mold around her life — which is just what she found at NCU.

“I spend my evenings running my kids to practice and other places, just like other moms, plus I teach one or two nights a week myself.” Cronin-Gilmore explains. “If I would have attended a traditional class, I would not be home at all and I didn’t want to put my family through that. NCU allows the flexibility to attend class when it is convenient for the learner and still have time for your family — or yourself — which is wonderful.”

A professor herself, she appreciates the quality of instruction she gets at Northcentral. “The teachers at NCU have been great and I especially like the individual attention they pay to learners, plus their commitment to seeing you succeed. I have been very pleased with the education I have received.”

Born in Omaha, Nebraska into a family of nine children, Cronin-Gilmore has always valued reading and education highly. “When I was a child, I remember looking around the library and wanting to read every book in it so I would have all that knowledge. Sometimes I still feel that way because education has had such a positive influence on my life.”

“With six sisters and two brothers,” she adds, “Traveling was limited, but through reading I visited many places.

Eventually, Cronin-Gilmore did get to travel for real, beginning with a honeymoon trip to Las Vegas. Since then, she has traveled extensively within the United States and beyond. Today, her family’s favorite spots all involve water in one way or another — “ocean or lake, and a boat is usually required.” (One recent trip was to Hawaii, where the family found great luck fishing, and has the pictures to prove it.)

In her “day job” Cronin-Gilmore is a marketing professor for undergraduate and MBA students at Bellevue University in Bellevue, Nebraska — a career choice that reflects her lifelong commitment to education.

“Education,” she says, “Is the process of change making you a different person than the one you started out as — a more educated one. Inside you are still the same person, but knowledge is powerful and can allow you to do many things with your life.” And one of the things Cronin-Gilmore chooses to do with her life is continue her education.