Columbia Southern University graduate Dale Earwood grew up in the northwest Alabama town of Tuscumbia. He comes from a family of college graduates. However, college was not a desire as a young man, and he wasn’t interested in the classroom.
He attended college for a year after high school but struggled with reading and comprehension due to the lack of phonics instruction at the time. As a result, he felt that college wasn’t the right fit for him and decided to step away.
“I just decided college was not going to be for me right now,” he said. “That’s the reason I didn’t go through college right then. I stopped right there.”
After dropping out of college, he decided to take automotive mechanic classes which led to his employment with UPS. He worked at UPS for 18 years. Unfortunately, through no fault of his own, his employment ended after an accident.
With small children, discouraged and needing employment, he worked odd jobs for roughly a year before his brother-in-law, who was a chiropractor in Jacksonville, Florida, approached him with an opportunity.
Given Dale is mechanically minded, his brother-in-law knew he was good with his hands, and he was always in need of massage therapists in his practice. After graduating at the top of his class from a six-month massage therapy school, Dale was hired and moved his family from Tuscumbia to Jacksonville for the job.
As fate would have it, his job as a licensed massage therapist led to a turning point and career change.
“A lot of the railroaders worked four 10-hour shifts, and they would come in on Mondays through Thursdays and have Fridays off,” he said. “They’d come in the chiropractor office on Fridays, and I worked on a lot of them. They talked to me about coming to work at the railroad.”
The University of North Florida in Jacksonville happened to open a six-week course for railroad conductor training. After completing the course, Dale was given five locations that were hiring, with Nashville being one of the options. Since Nashville is only two hours away from where he grew up in Northwest Alabama, he and his wife, Regina, chose the area to call home.
Dale worked for one year as a conductor for CSX Corporation, one of the nation’s leading transportation suppliers. He then decided to go to engineering school. After completion, he worked as a locomotive engineer with CSX for 24 years driving trains.
CSX offered an associate development program, teaching the employees different areas of the railroad. Enrolling in the program led to another opportunity Dale was not expecting.
“They had a weeklong class down in Jacksonville and you met with the different high up officials to see what you might want to do,” he said. “I met with one of the vice presidents and was telling him what my goals were.”
The vice president asked Dale if he ever thought about finishing his degree. Dale had not thought about this option, but the vice president’s words piqued his curiosity.
“He said, ‘Dale, I’m going to school at Columbia Southern University right now and I’m taking a class. I’m trying to do some extra work getting my master’s. You ought to try this.’”
Dale was always trying to improve and better himself, and the opportunity would allow him to advance in his job with a business administration degree.
The conversation took place in February of 2011.Dale enrolled in April of the same year and wasted no time jumping at the opportunity.
“The reason I chose Columbia Southern University, I had already checked with some other schools around the country, and some wouldn’t even give me credits,” he said. “I just kind of got discouraged.”
After applying at CSU, Dale learned that 48 credits transferred in from his previous schooling, allowing him to earn his associate degree sooner than he imagined.
“I believe I can do this,” he said. “This is going to be doable.”
Dale’s classes helped him with typing and grammar, something he lacked prior to completing his classes at CSU.
“That was a challenge for me before,” he said. “Now I can go back and say, ‘man, that sentence don’t look quite right.’ When I type a paper or type an article I’m doing, those courses I took made me think about ‘is this the way to do it’ or ‘I have to rearrange this to make the paragraph correct.’”
Taking classes at CSU also helped Dale in working with others on the job.
“What I learned in class was how you work together with others, and you can work as an individual doing your job,” he said. “I was on the locomotive a lot of times by myself, then when others come up there, you had to work as a team together.”
When he started CSU, he was working 12-hour days, with an hour and a half drive to work each way, allowing him to take only one class at a time. Despite the 15-hour workdays, Dale earned an associate degree in 2013.
After earning his associate degree, he decided to take a step further and pursue his bachelor’s degree in business administration.
An Unexpected Diagnosis
Dale began having vision problems in 2015. He made an eye appointment believing he needed a new pair of glasses. His wife, Regina, was with him and thought it was odd when she overheard the optometrist tell the staff to file the claim with his insurance under medical and not vision.
After seeing his primary care doctor and being referred to an ophthalmologist, an MRI revealed the issue: Dale had an atypical meningioma brain tumor the size of a small orange located in the optic nerve area.
He had surgery that same year, halting his attendance at CSU.
“I had to, at one point, going back when I got diagnosed in 2015, I had to drop out of a class,” he said. “I couldn’t take the class and finish it because I was about to have surgery, and I said, ‘am I going to be able to finish this degree?’”
After surgery, concentrating on schoolwork while in the hospital was not in the cards.
“I had to really put my mind to it when I got back out to get back into it, and I was able to do it,” he said.
After surgery, months of treatment and healing, he went back to the railroad and drove trains for four years while also resuming his classes at CSU. Unfortunately, the first surgery would not be the last.
In 2020, Dale received his bachelor’s degree in business administration. Shortly thereafter, he began having worsening headaches. It took roughly a year for doctors to diagnose the problem: Dale had a brain infection.
In 2021, another surgery was necessary to remove the hardware from the first surgery along with the top part of his skull to eliminate the infection, but he wasn’t out of the woods just yet.
In 2024, Dale began having neurological issues, losing feeling on his right side. He also lost his peripheral vision. These symptoms revealed that the tumor had grown back but not as large as the first one.
A worry was whether the doctors could close the incision site after removing the tumor due to his past surgeries. Thankfully, the doctor determined that the tumor could be removed. Dale underwent his third surgery in May 2024 and is doing well despite having balancing issues.
Life After Retirement
Today, Dale and his wife enjoy spending time with their children and grandchildren.
Despite being forced to medically retire, the degree he earned was not in vain. Dale proudly displays his degree from CSU on the wall in his study where is likes to relax and read. The degree is a reminder of the exceptional accomplishment he achieved despite the odds stacked against him.
He also credits his two daughters for pushing him to finish his degree.
“They said, ‘Dad, you finish it. The only way you can do it is like eating an elephant, one bite at a time, just take one bite at a time. You’re going to do it, you’re going to finish it,’” he said.
Even though Dale was met with these extraordinary challenges, he persevered and earned his degree.
“Don’t give up,” he said. “Do finish. Keep up. Just keep plugging and you’ll get.”
Disclaimer: These testimonials may not reflect the experience of all CSU students.
Multiple factors, including prior experience, geography, and degree field, affect career outcomes.
CSU does not guarantee a job, promotion, salary increase, eligibility for a position, or other career growth.
