Graduation season may have just come to a close, but thousands of ASU students are getting ready to embark on their post-college journey. One of those students is Marie Ehrler, a police sergeant with the Phoenix Police Department.
Ehrler’s history with ASU goes back to where she grew up; a small house within sight of ASU’s Tempe campus. Nearly her entire extended family hold degrees from ASU, but as a young child, college was never in the cards.
At almost 50 years old, and after 15 years of patrolling the southern zones for the Phoenix Police Department, Ehrler decided to enroll in ASU Online. She wanted to be an example for her children, whom she pushed to ‘study hard and earn a degree’.
"How can I be pushing education?" Ehrler said. "I don't have one myself."
Ehrler took two classes at a time and spent three years studying and completing assignments online after her 10-hours shifts as a patrol sergeant. She studied every waking chance she got, and when her alarm went off at 4:00 AM, she started it all over again.
"When I hit ASU, it was like, 'OK, it's all or nothing. Let's go,'" Ehrler said. "I poured everything into it."
Ehrler graduated this semester with a bachelor’s degree in political science and a 3.8 GPA. She plans to stay in the police department with one catch: in a year she’ll enroll at ASU again and set out to earn her master’s degree.