From Navy to Numbers

By Dollie Elliott

Students in the Spears School of Business have many different backgrounds. Shannon Chiarello, who is studying accounting, took an unconventional path after graduating from Yukon High School in 2004.

“I enrolled at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond, and I went there for a semester. I really wasn’t sure about what I wanted to do yet,” Chiarello says. “My dad was really supportive, helping me pay for college. I really didn’t want to waste his time and money and still not know what I wanted to do in three years, so I decided to join the military.”

Chiarello joined the Navy at age 19. During the next six years, she went from boot camp in Chicago to nuclear power school in South Carolina to working on a submarine prototype in New York. She was lastly stationed aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in Washington state.

After leaving the Navy, she decided to return to Oklahoma to finish her degree.

“I thought that the hospitality program here at OSU would be good for me because I like to help people, and customer service is kind of my thing,” she says. “So I came here for that originally in 2012.”

OSU’s Hospitality Management students are required to take several lower-level accounting classes. The classes sparked an interest in accounting for Chiarello. She soon transferred to the Spears School to join the professional program in accounting that allows her to work toward her bachelor’s and master’s degrees simultaneously.

Chiarello is certain her experience in the Navy will help her career.

“A lot of things that you learn from any branch of the military can transfer into the civilian world,” she says. “There are a lot of people who have served in the military. Maybe in the future if I have clients who have served, then we can relate.

“(The military) is like its own little group where you can go through a lot of challenges like being away from family and working really late hours and holidays and weekends — and so you can really relate to people on that level.”

Chiarello works about 20 hours a week as a graduate assistant at the Spears School, saying the opportunity has enriched her learning experience.

“Being a graduate assistant has helped me gain closer relationships with the professors, but it has also helped me see how much time and effort they put in to preparing lessons for us,” she says. “In graduate school, they take all the concepts you learn in undergrad and expand upon it. So we think about the ‘why.’ We think why do we do this rather than just teaching us how.’ ”

Chiarello graduated in May with both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in accounting and plans to take the CPA exam soon. She is confident in her education and preparation from the Spears School of Business.

“I feel that the Spears School does a great job of finding out what employers want from their new hires and incorporates those things into its curriculum and classes.”