LeRoy Gardner as a wrestler at Wartburg College in 2003. He’s studying for an MBA at the University of Rhode Island.

Courtesy of LeRoy Gardner

LeRoy Gardner, 27, is a Navy officer stationed in Newport, where he’s serving as the wrestling coach at the Naval Academy Preparatory School. Eventually, though, he wants to go into finance.

Bryan Briggs, 47, of South Kingstown, was laid off from his job as regional director of the auto trader publishing division of Cox Enterprises at the end of November. He’s looking for an executive-level position, possibly in health care or consumer products.

James Sherrod, 28, of Warwick, studied to be an engineer at the University of Rhode Island. He now works for National Grid, and feels that adding a master’s in business administration degree would make him more marketable and keep him from being “pigeonholed.”

All three are working toward their MBA degrees at the University of Rhode Island. Lisa Lancellotta, coordinator for MBA programs at URI, said the university offers two options for MBA students — a full-time program and a part-time program that meets evenings at URI’s downtown campus. The full-time program, she said, has about 25 students a year, while the part-time program has about 170 students per year.

Lancellotta said the part-time program is designed for people who are working and provides flexibility in terms of how many courses are taken at a time. The evening program also allows students to take courses as “nonmatriculating students,” meaning they can start taking classes before they’re officially registered in the MBA program. It’s a way for prospective students to get a handle on the subject matter and the workload before fully committing to an MBA degree.

Classes for nonmatriculating students begin Jan. 21. For information on attending the classes, contact the URI MBA office at (401) 874-5000 or e-mail MBA@uri.edu.

The deadline for applying to URI’s full-time MBA degree program, which begins in August, is April 15. Deadlines for applying to the evening program are March 31 for the classes beginning in May and June 1 for classes that start in the fall.

Gardner grew up in Minneapolis and has a degree in psychology from Wartburg College, in Waverly, Iowa. As a wrestler, he won the 2003 NCAA Division III heavyweight championship.

After college, his employment experience includes working in Uzbekistan for a year as a manager for a defense construction contractor, TFI International. In the process, he said, he learned what he called “street level” Russian.

Gardner, who is married with a 5-year-old son, decided he wanted to go to grad school. Joining the Navy, he said, allows him to use the GI Bill to help pay for tuition at URI. The Navy also has another, less tangible, benefit: “If there’s anything I can say about the military, it’s that it absolutely requires authentic leadership,” Gardner said.

He took advantage of the nonmatriculation option at URI, taking three courses before signing up for the degree program. “It gave me a chance to check out the course work to see if I liked it. It’s like getting a test drive before you buy,” he said.

Gardner said that because so many of the students in the URI evening classes have work experience, the classes there have a strong connection with the real world. “The work experience of my peers has enhanced discussion within the classroom,” he said.

He’s scheduled to receive his degree in December. Gardner is aware that finance jobs are tough to come by, at least right now. “I don’t need 100 jobs, I just need one,” he said.

Briggs said he started taking MBA classes at URI in 2005, and was able to take advantage of a tuition reimbursement program at Cox Enterprises. “I always had a dream of finishing an MBA,” he said. “I’d like to do something in the consulting area someday, and I felt I needed more education.”

He’s scheduled to graduate in May, and said Cox Enterprises agreed to continue paying his tuition even after he was laid off. “In a way, the timing is perfect . . . as I look through opportunities in the marketplace, having an MBA is a significant advantage for me,” he said.

Briggs also took courses as a nonmatriculating student at first. “It was a real eye-opener in terms of the workload,” he said. (Briggs said he’s taking two courses per semester, and spends between 2 and 2½ hours a day on his studies.)

Sherrod, who also expects to graduate from the MBA program in May, got a bachelor of arts degree in civil engineering from URI, then went back to URI to concentrate on structural engineering, primarily bridges. He was working on his master’s degree in structural engineering, he said, but realized it wasn’t for him. “I always knew I wanted something else, something more. . . I thought an MBA degree would open doors, make me more marketable,” Sherrod said. He’s now working in a program at National Grid’s gas division, designed to train supervisors.

Sherrod said the economy as a factor in his decision to work for a utility company. Civil engineering, he said, is directly tied to building and development, which has slowed significantly in the current economic climate.

Sherrod said the National Grid job did not require an MBA degree, but he thinks his enrollment in an MBA program was helpful , because it showed his commitment and determination to advance. “The MBA program helps with management skills. It opens doors down the road. National Grid is a big company, and there are a lot of doors to open . . . it’s definitely different from engineering, a different kind of thinking. But I’d rather be doing it now, while I’m young.”

asmith@projo.com