Caleb Roche completed his undergraduate at the University of Central Oklahoma in May of 2019, and has been working on his Masters of Business Administration here at West Texas A&M University. Roche will graduate with an MBA in December at the mere age of 22 years, one of the youngest in WTAMU history.

Q: How do you think that your MBA is going to help you in your career in the future?

A: Learning the in depth tricks and the knowledge that people have, the professors. That was huge for me and also the fact of it’s career progression. The connections that I made, I actually connected with several people from Oklahoma in some of my classes, and so building those networks was huge for me, because I didn’t think I was going to be able to do that on an online program.

Q: What would you say has been the hardest part of your graduate program?

A: Balancing everything online is super tough. COVID was a tough year for me, because we had just had me and my wife had just had our son. I was traveling a lot with my job, and so I would get from the airport to my hotel at 10:00 at night, and I would have to do homework when I got out there.

Q: What has been the best part about your graduate program?

A: I’ve been in the program that I’ve been able to reach out to my professors, and they’re very flexible on working with deadlines, they help you out on assignments. I felt like I could actually email my professor or call them and talk to them, talk through certain things that I was struggling with and actually work with me. And then obviously, I feel like there are a lot of overqualified professors at WTAMU that I wouldn’t get at a different university.

Q: Do you have a favorite class or professor?

A: Dr. Robert Allen King was probably one of my favorite professors. He’s an Associate Dean of Graduate Business Programs, and then also Associate Professor of Marketing. He’s taught me so much about just the general pieces of marketing. And then also, he was very flexible. I’ve recently gone through some health issues, and so we actually connected on that level. He brought the personal side of life within the class to me.