U.S. Navy Veteran Fulfills Promise by Pursuing Business Degree

Jack Atkinson cherishes the memory of the afternoon in 2020 when he first drove onto the University of San Diego campus with his mother. They walked around a construction site, full of steel beams and concrete that would one day become the Knauss Center for Business Education. His mother had a feeling.

"One day, you and I will walk through those doors for homecoming weekend," she told him.

Unfortunately, cervical cancer took her before she could make good on her promise to her son.

This past Homecoming and Family Weekend, Atkinson stood inside that same building — not as a visitor, but as an undergraduate student at the Knauss School of Business. He's a retired Navy logistics specialist, a husband and father, and one of USD's student veterans pursuing a BBA, specializing in business sustainability.

“This past homecoming, standing here as a student, I felt something close to completion — like I had kept that promise [to my mother],” Atkinson said. “She always told me to finish the story. And I aim to.”

For Atkinson, finishing that story means honoring a woman who embodied service herself. His mother, a hairstylist for more than 30 years who raised five children on her own, had also served in the U.S. Navy before becoming a police officer.

“She had this idea of, anything you're given, do it well,” Atkinson said. "Give it more.”

Growing up in Roswell, Georgia, Atkinson watched his mother shield her children from the harder parts of life while never letting them forget the value of education. When he told her at 18 that he wanted to go to college, she was honest about the road ahead.

No one in their family had ever attended college. His grandfather was a farmer. His grandmother raised nine children in the 1950s and '60s. Atkinson would be opening a door no one in his family had walked through.

"I didn’t really understand the financial side of college [at that age]. I thought, ‘I just want to go to school,’” Atkinson explains. “I’ll open the door if that means that’s what I have to do.”

That’s how Atkinson found his way into the military. The Navy was a way for him to build up work experience and help him pay for his education.

But the path wasn't easy. When enlisted, Atkinson was thrown into a whole new world.

“In boot camp, you learn a lot about other people. It's the first time you’re in a room where everyone’s from a different state. Kind of like college,” Atkinson explained.

Atkinson served as a logistics specialist, achieving the rank of E-3 before medically retiring from the Navy in November 2023 due to an injury he sustained during his service. Now, he navigates a different kind of life — one measured in midterms and group projects rather than deployments and duty stations.

Being a student veteran at USD means existing between worlds. At 29, Atkinson sits in classrooms with 18-year-olds experiencing independence for the first time. He goes home to a wife and son. He serves as vice president for USD's student veteran board, taking the responsibility seriously because he knows what it means to need support.

“I may have more marbles in my bag than you, like in life and experience,” Atkinson said of his younger classmates. “Nevertheless, they’re still your peers and there’s something you can learn from them.”

His brother once reminded him of the night they spent talking outside of the garage before going into the military. “He asked me, ‘Do you remember how bummed you were that you didn’t get to go to university at 18? Well, now you’re in that group. Now, you’re getting your chance.’”

The perspective helps on the hard days. When exams pile up and his packed schedule grows, Atkinson thinks about his wife throwing him a party for being accepted to USD’s Honor Society. He thinks about his son, feeling thankful for the opportunity to be a better provider.

“It’s the one thing you can guarantee that cannot be taken from you,” Atkinson said of his education. “If you earn it, it stays with you forever.”

Atkinson’s mother wanted him to value education because she recognized the opportunity it had to change a person’s life. Atkinson is proving he understands that sentiment.

This semester, each time he walks through the doors of the Knauss Center for Business Education, he walks for both of them. He’s finishing the story she predicted back in 2020 — one class, one semester at a time.

– Kelsey Grey ‘15 (BA)