Andrew Homan

TCC Manager of Technology Support Andrew Homan has attended many colleges, but he completed his first degree at TCC as a member of the college’s first Bachelor of Applied Sciences Program Management cohort, which graduated in 2021.

Homan started his college career in Arizona the 1980s and got most of the way through his first program before the school cancelled it. Then he was on active duty with the Army, and attended several schools before leaving the Army in 1998. Though he’d planned on a longer military career, Homan became a civilian after he was medically discharged with a broken foot. He got a job with the Pierce and Kitsap County YMCA, met his wife while he was helping to design the network for the YMCA that was being constructed on South Hill, and ended up staying and starting a family. At the Y, he found himself pulled toward IT. Before he had any official training in the field, he discovered that he’d become the Y’s “IT Guy,” a title that was eventually formalized to “network administrator.”

Homan enrolled in another Washington community college for its Microsoft-oriented IT program when he was already working in the field full-time. He was one class shy of graduating, but the program never offered the last class he needed to finish the degree. By then Homan was established in his career, but it always bothered him that he never finished the program.

“I always felt kind of incomplete because I didn’t have the degree – I had hundreds of credits,” Homan said.

In 2018 he tried a couple of quarters at online college Western Governor’s University (WGU), but Homan is a people person and decided that online that learning wasn’t for him. He would have to change his mind about that in March of 2020, when the in-person Bachelor of Applied Science (BAS) program he’d recently started at TCC was forced to go online due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’ve often given TCC credit – the rest of the world was scrambling like crazy, but as a student, I saw very little of the interruption. We just shifted,” Homan said.

Homan’s longtime employer, the YMCA, was hit hard by the pandemic, and Homan was furloughed. But he kept going with his classes, and in June of 2021, he met his classmates for the first time since the start of the pandemic at “Carmencement,” the socially distanced graduation ceremony the college held that year. Homan borrowed a convertible Mini Cooper from a friend and rolled through the graduation line to receive his diploma. The BAS cohort met across the street after for a class photo after the ceremony. It was the first time they’d seen each other in person since the program’s first quarter.   

“I really wanted to have a traditional graduation ceremony, with the gown, and throwing the hat in the air – but I thought it went well, and it was a very innovative and memorable way to do it,” Homan said.

The diploma and Project Management training he’d just completed soon landed him a job at his alma mater, and Homan now serves as TCC’s Manager of Technical Support.

“The training I got in the program has definitely helped me,” Homan said. “HR, accounting – I’d been doing it informally, but now I had more developed skills. In my day-to-day I’m less technical now, more managerial. I have the tech background, so I know what they’re talking about, but I’m managing people and budgets.”

Homan appreciates that the classes he took with Dr. John Inman validated his approach to his work.

“Because I’m very people-oriented, I really believe very strongly in getting out and getting close to your customers, and talking to them in person. That’s why the tagline on my email was ‘you must be present to win’,” Homan said. “At the Y, I spent time walking around, touching base with people, hearing what they really needed. Dr. Inman was talking about how in good project management, you stay very very close to your customers.”

Homan notes that there’s a current trend to discard that philosophy in favor of delivering all services online. It’s based in an efficiency ethic that often ends up being inefficient, he believes.

“You end up wasting time proposing and delivering solutions that aren’t correct. You have to go and fix them later.”

At TCC, if someone wants to meet with Homan, he makes every effort to meet with them in person. Crossing to the other side of campus doesn’t faze him; when he worked at the Y, he often had to drive to Silverdale.

“I think it’s important to build that goodwill, too. I want people to understand that I care about the success of their program,” Homan said.

TCC has changed since Homan moved to Tacoma, but he says what’s really changed is his attitude towards it.

“I drove by this campus every day for 19 years, and just kind of went, whatever, Tacoma Community College; I didn’t have any need for it. But after I started taking classes and working there, I’ve seen how dynamic it is, how engaging and welcoming it feels, once you get into the center of campus. I think it really is a community hub that a lot of people aren’t quite aware of.”

Homan keeps a place in his heart for the YMCA’s mission, and continues to volunteer there. Always on the lookout for a new challenge, he considered enrolling in a Master’s program, but decided on flight school instead – the only on context in which flight school could be considered “comparatively inexpensive,” he jokes. He’s almost completed his flight certificate; look for him in the skies above campus soon.

 

For six decades, Tacoma Community College has advanced equity, cultivated learning, strengthened community partnerships, and enhanced institutional vitality. This story is one of 60, celebrating our 60th Anniversary. Discover more on our TCC 60th Anniversary web page.