WSU Business School Graduate Pursuing Cyber Dream Job
OGDEN, Utah – When Tarl Langham steps foot on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University this August, forgive him if it feels like a dream. Five years ago, Langham couldn’t have imagined attending college, let alone pursuing his master’s degree.
A lot has changed for the Syracuse, Utah, resident since he enrolled as a nontraditional student at Weber State University in the fall of 2013.
Growing up poor in Layton, Utah, Langham said he knew what he wanted to do since he was 8 years old.
“I loved to fix things, and I loved to work with my hands,” Langham said. “I decided it was either going to be car work or computers”
After serving a church mission to South Korea, Langham spent 12 years working as a master mechanic. By age 35, he found himself a divorced father of three, working a job that was no longer fulfilling.
When he started at WSU, Langham planned to study network administration, but an advisor and professor in the John B. Goddard School of Business & Economics encouraged him to consider a major in Information Systems & Technology (IS&T), which would combine his computer knowledge with business acumen.
That decision led him to a networking course taught by IS&T associate professor Randy Boyle.
“The first day in Dr. Boyle’s class got me so excited about IS&T possibilities,” Langham said. “He put the whole picture together for me. He blew it out of the water. Look at all the brand new technologies that were coming and what you can do. I couldn’t stop smiling the entire time. He was so inspiring.”
In his classes, Boyle introduces students to the future.
“In technology, the hottest jobs right now, didn’t exist 10 years ago,” Boyle said. “The hottest jobs in 10 years, currently do not exist. It’s the nature of such a rapidly changing field.”
During that same course, Boyle planted the seed for Langham’s future: earning a Master of Information Systems Management (MISM) from Carnegie Mellon.
According to Boyle, graduates of Carnegie Mellon’s MISM program have an average starting salary of $135,000 and are in high demand from Fortune 100 tech companies and startups. About a third of its graduates go into consulting.
By the summer of 2016, just as Langham had set his sights on being admitted to CMU’s MISM program, he got unexpected news that nearly derailed his education at Weber State.
Langham had planned to take summer 2016 off, after attending year-round for the previous three years. That’s when he received word that he had missed a funding deadline, and the Pell Grants and student loans he’d been surviving on, were gone. He feared he’d have to drop out of school.
Panicked, Langham contacted associate provost Eric Amsel and explained his predicament. Amsel contacted financial aid, and by 9 a.m. the next morning, Langham received word that he qualified for the university’s Dream Weber, which pays tuition and fees for students whose annual household income is $40,000 or less. All he had to do was register for summer session classes.
“It was such a relief. I just broke down. I literally broke down,” Langham said.
By fall 2016, Langham was ready to renew his quest for admission to Carnegie Mellon, when he encountered a self-inflicted hurdle. Professor Boyle recommended Langham attend CMU’s fall visitation session as a way of increasing Langham’s chances of being admitted. Boyle even paid for Langham’s plane ticket.
“It was a stressful time. I was taking eight courses that semester, working on a 4.0,” Langham said. “I had the CMU application and the GMAT [Graduate Management Admission Test]. Everything was coalescing.” Amidst all that, he booked a flight to Pennsylvania. The only problem, his flight was to Philadelphia, not Pittsburgh. Langham didn’t realize his mistake until he was waiting to board his connecting flight in Denver International Airport.
“That’s when panic just set in. You have no time to move things around,” Langham said.
By the time he landed in Philadelphia, Langham’s brother and several WSU professors were scrambling to find a way to get him 300 miles west to Pittsburgh. Rental car companies wouldn’t accept payment with his pre-paid debit card. They required payment with a credit card, which Langham didn’t have. Several other attempts to find transportation to Pittsburgh failed. After two days spent in a Philadelphia hotel room, Langham returned to Utah dejected.
“I felt very defeated at the time,” Langham said. “I felt like I had let so many people down. I felt like I had disappointed Dr. Boyle. I sent him an email to apologize.”
Despite the setback, Langham didn’t dwell on the lost opportunity.
“I’m not a quitter. There is something inside me that whenever I come up with a failure, I use that as a motivator to do better,” Langham said. “I do that in all my classes and on tests. I take it personally, and I say, ‘I’m not going to let that happen again.’ If I fail at something, it motivates me.”
According to Boyle, that’s one of the Tarl’s critical traits that will make him a success. “Setbacks don’t faze him. He sees them as opportunities to try harder.”
Boyle tells students that college is all about hard work. It’s something he has instilled in his students who have been accepted to Carnegie Mellon’s MISM program. Boyle estimates that more than 30 students he’s taught have been admitted to CMU, including two Goddard graduates last year and another three students this year, including Langham.
“Tarl is successful because he has the trifecta of technical skills, business acumen and social skills,” Boyle said.
Langham submitted his application to CMU’s graduate program in January. He got a response in March, informing him he had been accepted.
“After a lot of jumping up and down, it started out with raw intimidation. Am I good enough? Do I belong here?” Langham recalled. Both Amsel and Boyle assured him he belonged there.
Boyle said that in addition to elation, he also had a sense of relief, because he knew how much Langham wanted to get into CMU.
“The primary mission of education is to create a fundamental change in another person,” Boyle said. It’s why he teaches. “I like helping students who are sincerely struggling to make their lives better. When I identify a student like that, I try to go the extra mile.”
Langham said he hopes his experience will serve as an example to his three children.
As he prepares to walk across the stage and receive his WSU diploma later this month, Langham reflected on his first days at Weber State, including a poster that said “Worthy of Your Dreams.”
“At the time I had very low hopes of being able to complete college,” Langham said. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the caring that I feel from faculty and administration. It’s just amazing.
“There are challenges along the way, and I know life will kick you really hard, but it’s not something that will stop a person who has the willpower to do it.
“I was given the ability to think that my dreams will actually come true. Weber State gives you the path to stop aiming low. Where is the sky for you? Let’s shoot for that. That has come true immensely for me. There is no end to the sky. It just goes straight up. Wow, it just keeps going up.”
Visit weber.edu/wsutoday for more news about Weber State University.
For high-resolution photos, visit the following links:
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John Kowalewski, director of Marketing & Communications
801-626-7212 • jkowalewski@weber.edu- Contact:
Tarl Langham, Information Systems & Technology graduate
801-991-0466 • tarllangham@mail.weber.eduRandy Boyle, Information Systems & Technology associate professor
801-626-7831 • randyboyle@weber.edu