ongresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is taking questions from the crowd, fielding them as fast as they come. Do you have a bodyguard? What about a driver? Do they pick you up in a limo? It’s a curious line of questioning. But this is no press conference. Her interrogators are preteens in a civics class at Ponce de Leon Middle School in Coral Gables.
    “I love speaking to students,” she says. And Ros-Lehtinen should feel right at home in a classroom. Before her election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1989, she taught high school and ran a private elementary school. In fact, she’s passionate about education. Even while serving in Congress and raising two children, she has pursued a Ph.D. in education at the University of Miami. Taking one class per semester, she completed her coursework in 11 years, squeezing in study time during her commute between Miami and D.C. Now she’s working on her dissertation, polling her colleagues on the issue of national testing. It’s a perfect blend of her congressional experience and her passion for education. “I’m doing this for me. For my own personal satisfaction.” She has no further career aspirations in education. Ros-Lehtinen, 50, is one of the best known of millions of Americans age 35 and over going back to school. Some, like Ros-Lehtinen, do it for sheer personal fulfillment. Many are shifting careers. Others are formalizing a long-held vocation or getting the bachelor’s degree they never received but had always desired. These nontraditional students hit the books at odd hours, juggle child care obligations, work out the finances. A few go back to school full-time.

Almost one in five college and university students is older than 34, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. This is up dramatically from 1980, when the ratio was one in nine. The rise is largely attributable to aging baby boomers.

Older students “have a lot of the qualities that you want in a student,” says Bob Cowen, professor and Maytag Chair of Ichthyology at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. “Graduate students in general take it seriously and put a lot of time in, but [older students] go out of their way. They know how to work hard. They’re enthusiastic and challenging. They’ve gone through a lot to get here.”

We talked to a few of these nontraditional students—both undergraduate and graduate—about their decisions to go back to school, their future plans, and how they make it work.

Octave Duty

eresa Morgan taught herself to sing. “When I was little, I’d shut myself in my room with my mom’s 45s,” she says. She sang along to “Soldier Boy,” “Eddie, My Darling,” and “Leader of the Pack.” By 16, Morgan had saved enough money for voice lessons. And at 21, she left Detroit to hit the road performing country music with her boyfriend, a guitarist. It was crazy, she remembers. One time, their performance was delayed when someone let a pig loose in the bar.

Several years later, she began performing on cruise ships. She met her husband, also a musician, and fell in love with big band, jazz, and swing. But Morgan had never learned to read music, always relying on someone else to accompany her. At 39, she divorced, and the breakup inspired her to pursue a bachelor’s in music.

She’d done gigs with Don Coffman (B.M. ’82), professor and assistant chair of Studio Music and Jazz, and they’d become friends. “One day I asked him, ‘What do you think about me going to your school?’ And he looked at me and said, ‘Why?’”

“Here I am. I’m 40 years old. I’m working and hiring musicians to do gigs. But I’m alone. I have no community. I have limited knowledge musically. In order to become the stand-alone person I want to become, I need the security of a community. I need to learn the language of music.”

Following audition and acceptance into the School of Music, Morgan became a full-time student at the University of Miami, one of about 300 undergraduates (3.4 percent) over age 35. Older students are more common in the graduate programs (17.8 percent).

“Going to school felt like opening a new door. But it was terrifying,” she says with a laugh. “I’m a 40-year-old freshman, in school with a bunch of 18-year-old kids.”

The younger music students treat Morgan like the “fun aunt.” Last year, they asked her to chaperone them on a trip to Nassau, Bahamas. But Morgan says that the main difference between her and her classmates is, “They want to get out there and gig. I’ve gigged all my life. I want to learn.”

Rachel Lebon (Ph.D. ’86), coordinator of Jazz Voice, describes Morgan as “a perfectionist. Even though she is an intuitive musician, she wanted to become a literate, independent one—as she would say, ‘to know what I’m doing.’”

After she graduates, Morgan plans to concentrate on recording and exposing children to sophisticated music early in their lives—through developing seminars and summer camp programs.

“I’m learning every single day,” she says. “And I want to share with them the joy and confidence that a solid musical foundation will give them.”

Sea of Dreams

ohn Purcell remembers the moment he knew he wanted to be a biologist. He was five. His father was reading to him from a book called The Poky Little Puppy when Purcell spotted an illustration of a snake. He remembers thinking, “I want to know about that.”

“I didn’t even know what biology was then,” says Purcell. “But I got this feeling like, ‘I’d like to do this. Forever.’”

Purcell’s path to biology was serpentine. He majored in biology at Harvard, but only by staving off a fascination with South African politics. (His father was South African, and Purcell had traveled there.) He earned his master’s and Ph.D. in political science—African studies at University of California, Los Angeles and then taught political science at California State University. In 1980, frustrated with academics, he took a job in finance, first with Banker’s Trust and then with Salomon Brothers, where he became the head of its global emerging markets research group. “I never viewed it as something that would be a permanent career.” He stayed 13 years, having amassed enough money that he didn’t need to work. Finally, he could study biology. He was 56.

“I didn’t know if I could hack it. It scared me.” He took some undergraduate classes at New York University and met State University of New York Stony Brook professor Bob Cowen, who had accepted a job at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. Cowen encouraged Purcell to come to the University.

At 62, Purcell has the look of someone who once had wrinkles that didn’t take. “Working with people who are younger keeps you young,” he says. Sandy-haired and quick-witted, Purcell swoops from topic to topic like a deft trapeze artist—political stability in Mexico, the perceived threat of communism in France during the 1980s, larval fish in the Caribbean.

It’s the fish larvae that interest him most. Funded by two grants—one from the National Science Foundation and one from the Wildlife Conservation Society—Purcell and Cowen will visit 11 sites around the Caribbean to track the movements of three different species of larval fish. During the three-year study, which will become Purcell’s dissertation, the men hope to identify areas where populations are renewing themselves, information vital to designing marine reserves.

“Getting a Ph.D. is a way of really understanding the science behind conservation,” says Purcell, who came to the University after serving briefly as a trustee on the board of the New Mexico chapter of The Nature Conservancy. He hopes to work with a conservation organization after he graduates.

When Purcell first arrived, everything felt strange. He was older than many of his professors. But studying molecular biology inspired him. “Since I was five, I wanted to be a biologist. It’s a real science. I wanted to be able to discover something real.”

And, like so many adults who’ve gone back to school, he discovered himself in the process.

Scaling Obstacles

ne field trip stands out in Maria Araujo’s mind. Her History of Architecture class was walking to a church in Coconut Grove and had to cross Main Highway, a very busy road.

“You had to run,” says Araujo, a native of Colombia who suffers from lupus, a chronic inflammatory disease. “Everybody’s young.” She laughs as she remembers it. “They’re running, and I’m stuck there.”

One of her classmates, a student from Japan, looked back and saw her. He stopped, stood in the middle of the highway, and brought traffic to a standstill so she could cross.

“I have very good friends who are young enough to be my children,” Araujo says of her former School of Architecture classmates. “They even invite me to go out. And I say I have to go [home to] be with my son.” Her son graduated from high school last spring, just one month after Araujo received her own diploma.

At 50, she finally has the bachelor’s degree she has wanted for half of her life. For many years, marriage, motherhood, and poor health prevented her from progressing past an associate’s degree. In 1992, she divorced her husband.

“Going to school was my therapy,” says Araujo. “I wanted to forget about my divorce and my sickness.”

The road has not been easy. She had to schedule everything around her treatment, sometimes even doing dialysis in her car between classes. Four years ago, life-threatening complications from a kidney transplant meant a doctor-ordered break from school. Araujo has been close to death four times. “But I refused to die,” she says. “And I refused to stop studying.”

Her tenacity inspired her boss, at 71, to pursue a degree in interior design. Her aunt in Venezuela, 51, is getting a bachelor’s in education. Her nephew, raising two children, is studying architecture. When he gets discouraged, he says, he thinks about her and keeps going.

“People always tell me I inspire them,” she says. “That is very satisfying to me.”

What’s next? She dreams of going to Italy for a master’s degree in architecture. Or working with Habitat for Humanity.

“But I just think about today,” Araujo says. “I have my eyes open. If I see the opportunity, I’m going to grab it.”

Raising the Bar

his summer, while clerking for a federal judge, second-year law student Michael Huber witnessed a man convicted on a narcotics charge. There, in the courtroom, the man took off his belt, wristwatch, and tie. He removed his wallet and keys from his pockets. And he handed everything to a federal marshal, who cuffed him and escorted him away.

“He started his day as a civilian,” Huber says. “And by the end of the day, he was an inmate. Every case is an incredible human drama.”

Huber, 49, is a keen observer of human drama. As a reporter and journalism professor, he learned to find it, track it, and bring it to life on the page. But after 25 years, he left journalism to attend law school.

He had completed one year of law school after college but interrupted his studies because his “muse was acting up.” For a long while, reporting satisfied his need for constant stimulation, but in the 1990s, “the newspaper business became less interesting and less of an option. I wanted to do more than I was doing. The decision was sort of a now or never thing.”

Not surprisingly, the writing aspect of law appeals to Huber. Legal writing, he says, is more creative than people think. “You can push the limits,” he says. What he neglects to add is, “if you know what you’re doing.”

Huber does. Originally from Norfolk, Virginia, he wrote for The Miami Herald, the Louisville Courier-Journal, the Chicago Sun-Times and others—more than a thousand newspaper and magazine articles in all. He taught journalism at Florida International University and coauthored Words Into Flesh, a textbook on writing. He’s been most surprised by the rigor of law school. “I thought, ‘I’m a smart guy. I’m an old guy. I can do this in my sleep.’ I made it through the first year,” he jokes. “No food. No sleep.”

Not only did Huber make it through the first year, he’s on the Dean’s List, he garnered a choice internship with U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro-Benages, and he won one of two national scholarships from the American Bar Association to attend an annual conference on communications law. Next year, he’ll advise first-year students as a Dean’s Fellow.

First Amendment law seemed like a natural extension of Huber’s background, but in his first year he became intrigued by criminal law and now considers it a possible career path.

“The only frustration I have is that my career horizon is fairly finite. But I wouldn’t change a thing. There’s nothing I’d do differently.”

Designed for Part-Time

ince a full-time jump into academia is not always feasible, programs like the Bachelor of General Studies (BGS) track in the School of Continuing Studies are designed to fit the frenetic lifestyles of part-time nontraditional students. It enables them to design their own curricula, blending disciplines such as art and music, philosophy and anthropology, or communication and business. Tuition is affordable, and students are limited to no more than nine credit hours per semester.

When Pilar Saborio started her BGS at age 36, she had three children, the youngest an infant. She breastfed the baby, drove to the University of Miami and spent mornings in class, then rushed home to feed the baby again.

“Was it a sacrifice?” she asks. “You bet. But worth every minute of it.”

In addition to the BGS degree, Continuing Studies offers credit certificates in various disciplines such as financial planning, computer information systems, and art history, as well as noncredit courses in areas like language training and investments.

“Our numbers are always growing,” says Louise Driscoll-Sevilla, director of Collegiate Studies. Last June, advanced registration numbers for Continuing Studies were already up 33 percent from the previous year.

When Driscoll-Sevilla created “Weekend College” to offer general education courses on Saturdays, she got a surprise: 30 to 40 percent of students who attend the courses are traditional students.

“The traditional/nontraditional category is blurring,” she says. “You have more and more students who have to slow down and go part-time because they’re working to finance their education.”