Father graduates from college with son
This past Saturday, Sherwood Brown Sr. and Sherwood Brown Jr. walked across the same stage to receive their college diplomas.
Sherwood Sr. received his MBA from Florida A&M University’s School of Business and Industry through the school’s online degree program. Sherwood Jr. earned a degree in business administration.
“It was not planned,” said Sherwood Jr. “We just looked up one day and realized that we would both be graduating at the same time.” For the Browns, their shared graduation date may have been happenstance, but a simple conversation with the pair quickly reveals that the conferring of their degrees on Saturday is symbolic of the effectiveness of their family’s resilient spirit and their mantra: “If you start something, finish it.”
For Sherwood Sr., “finishing it” meant returning to academia more than two decades after he received his bachelor’s degree from FAMU in 1989. He had always promised himself that he would return to FAMU to complete the MBA program at the request of founding SBI Dean Sybil Mobley, but the demands of fatherhood, his profession as a business services manager and loan officer, and his commitment as a minister of music left his plate full.
Sherwood Sr. says encouragement from SBI Dean Shawta Friday-Stroud, his former classmate in undergrad, was what inspired him to finally pursue his MBA. Sherwood Jr., who came to the school in 2008, took class in both SBI and the Department of Music. Since FAMU’s music industry bachelor’s degree program was just being finalized, he created his own schedule to learn the appropriate skills, which took him longer to graduate.
Congratulations to both Sherwood Sr. and Sherwood Jr. on their achievements!
Sound off below!
