Jose Torres, Oregon State's first online honors degree graduate, has found numerous career-advancing opportunities and professional success with his education.

Here's an excerpt from the OSU article, "Oregon State's First Online Honors College Graduate Finds One Opportunity After Another".

“Nobody in my family’s ever gone to college or university, so it wasn’t even in my mind. We’re all working class people, and so that was my thing,” [Torres] says.

[Jose] Torres is a U.S. Navy veteran who joined the service straight out of high school and did three deployments in Japan, San Diego and Guam.

“I was going to become an aircraft mechanic. That was my goal,” he says.

But while stationed in Guam, he saw another possible path for himself when he decided to volunteer at the Guam Wildlife Refuge. There, he worked with the Indigenous Chamorro people to help support native species in the refuge.

“I was just like — ‘How do I get your job?’” he says. “I just had no idea this was a possibility or a career choice that somebody could get paid for.”