Rovy Branon dropped all his academic classes in high school and spent most of his senior year playing drums in the school band and orchestra. Now he runs the University of Washington's Continuum College.
With his long hair and relaxed, approachable manner, Rovy Branon looks like a drummer in a rock band. Which he was.
These days, however, the 58-year-old has a different gig.
He holds the top post at the University of Washington’s Continuum College, where adult students can sample classes in all sorts of subjects — the college has 150 different programs — without getting a degree.
“Not everybody needs a four-year degree to get started in some of the professional fields that have long required four-year degrees,” Branon says.
And if you had told Branon in high school that he would one day be a vice provost at a major American university?
“I would have thought it was a joke,” he said.
It was the spring of 1984, time for juniors at Myers Park High School in Charlotte, North Carolina, to visit the guidance counselor for a discussion about their future.
Branon’s future, apparently, was not promising.
“With your math grades, you’re not getting into college,” he recalls the counselor telling him.
Branon took her at her word. He dropped all his academic classes and spent most of his senior year playing drums in the school band and orchestra.
“My parents knew none of this,” Branon said, explaining that they were going through a divorce at the time.
Though his parents were splitting up, and there was no college on the horizon, Branon still landed on his feet after high school. He was making good money as a telephone repairman and spending his evenings in band rehearsals. When he was 23, he married his high school sweetheart.
He didn’t think twice about getting a degree. Not for years.
But when Branon was 26, he decided to take a class in audio engineering. He figured if he did that, he could get some studio time, enough to make a demo tape for his band.
Upon enrolling in a nine-month certificate course at a local community college in Charlotte, Branon got a surprise.
“They don’t tell you until you get in there that you have to do math,” he said.
But once Branon found himself in school, there was no turning back. He went from community college to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he earned his bachelor’s in psychology and philosophy in 1995 with highest honors.
He stayed another four years at UNC Charlotte for a master of education degree in instructional systems technology, where he developed an online distance learning program. In 2011, he got his Ph.D. in instructional systems technology from Indiana University.
Branon spent seven years in the private sector in courseware development, most notably at pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, where he led a team that developed instructional materials for online learning. Before he came to UW in 2014, he spent five years at the University of Wisconsin Extension Program, where he was associate dean and chief technology officer.
And for the last 11 years, he’s been at the University of Washington where, every once in a while, someone tells him a story that starts like his — a story that reminds him what he’s doing there.
“Do people feel like they belong?” Branon said. “Can we really create a higher education system where everybody feels they can belong?”