U.S. Employees Use College As A Job Lifeline

By ARI PAUL

When Buffalo-based Internal Revenue Service worker Dawn DiCarlo saw jobs evaporating at the agency in 2000, she decided her associate's degree in business administration wasn't enough.

DAWN DiCARLO: 'Reaching toward my goal.'

"I didn't know what was going to happen," she said. "Being in New York State, private-sector jobs can be hard to come by. Positions with the same pay scale and the same benefits and working with taxes, that's not something that can be easily converted to something else. I wanted to have the best resume that I could. That's why I decided to go back to school."

Among 6 NTEU Scholars

Currently a Lead Tax Examiner and a 28-year veteran of the IRS, Ms. DiCarlo is pursuing a bachelor's degree in accounting at Hilbert College in Hamburg, N.Y. She is one of six recipients of $5,000 scholarships announced Oct. 15 from the Federal Employee Education and Assistance Fund and the National Treasury Employees Union.

The 150,000-member NTEU established the scholarship last year with a $726,363 grant to the FEEA.

Ms. DiCarlo was able to stay at the IRS by taking a lower-level position after her department in Buffalo was relocated. She then got a comparable position while taking one accounting class at Hilbert and realized the best thing she could do was get a bachelor's degree.

She is currently taking two accounting courses, one of which is on-line, while continuing to work full-time. She anticipates receiving her B.A. in 2-1/2 years but admits that it is difficult to balance work and school, as she often travels for the IRS.

'A Lot of Juggling'

"It's challenging to be able to complete the homework," she said. "This is why it takes me so long to finish. You're juggling a lot of different balls in the air."

Originally, the IRS gave her a small grant for her education, and she pulled some money out of one of her Individual Retirement Accounts. The FEEA scholarship, she said, was a big help. But she was quick to insist that, "To me it does not seem so remarkable. This is just something that I wanted to do and I have a goal and I'm reaching toward my goal."

The other winners of this year's FEEA-NTEU scholarships are Kansas resident Megan Kennedy, the daughter of a U.S. Postal Service worker; Florida resident Tamara A. Krause, the wife of another postal worker; Ohio resident Margaret I. Liang, the daughter of a John Glenn Research Center worker; Virginia resident Grover A. Mewborn, the son of a National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency worker, and California resident Emily Suter, the daughter of an Army Corps of Engineers worker.

'Reason to Be Proud'

"These students were competing against hundreds of other applicants and came out on top," NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said in a statement. "They have every reason to be extremely proud of their accomplishments and I am extremely pleased that NTEU was able to make this happen."

Ms. DiCarlo hoped that her fellow IRS employees and those seeking Federal employment with associate's degree would go the extra step to get a bachelor's.

"When I first started, it was not uncommon to rise through the ranks without a B.A. in accounting," Ms. DiCarlo said. "Now the young people that are coming in, that's more of a prerequisite before they get in the door."