As Dr. Jason Ward prepared for the start of a cohort class, he glanced at his roster to project how to best prepare for the number of students.
One name stood out as Ward, faculty manager for the College of Doctoral Studies at Grand Canyon University, glanced at the roster.
“No, it can’t be,” Ward said to himself.
But then he thought, “How many Tanner Davids can there be?”
Ward's curiosity was piqued, so he sent a message to this particular Tanner David to see if she, indeed, was the same astute student in his Spanish 1 and 2 classes at Willow Canyon High School in Surprise, Arizona, nearly 20 years ago.
David confirmed her identity, and any suspense ended once she walked into Ward’s class.
“We were in the cohort for more than a year, and I walk in, and all my classmates said, “Oh, yeah, he told us all about you,’’’ David said with a laugh.
Ward and David immediately caught up on what transpired in the last two decades, and Ward thought, “How cool it would be if I ended up serving as her dissertation chair and ended up seeing her at both ends of her education?”
“And sure enough, I had that opportunity, because she was really looking forward to me serving. I'm a quantitative guy, and she was going a quantitative route. So it just kind of made sense. It was a very exciting experience.”
That moment will officially become complete today, when David officially graduates from GCU with a doctorate in industrial and organizational psychology.
David successfully defended her dissertation, titled “Psychological Contract Violation and Turnover Intention: Mediating Roles of Job Satisfaction and Employee Engagement.”
David recently applied for a position with the FBI. She currently serves as the director of process improvement at Oasis Behavioral Health Hospital, where she runs statistical analyses, spreadsheets and tracking on identified risks and put new processes in place to mitigate risks for the future.
Earning a doctorate completed a goal that started when she was young but did not come into focus until less than three years ago, shortly following the passing of her grandfather during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I knew that was my decision to go back (to school),” said David, who took a four-year academic break after earning her master’s degree in psychology from the University of Phoenix in 2017. “(My grandfather) sparked things again, a reminder that life is short. Achieve your goals now. I’ve had the goal in mind that I waned to get my Ph.D.”
With Ward serving as chair, there was no uncertainty or skepticism. David recalled how much satisfaction she got out of Ward’s Spanish classes, despite the challenges of learning a foreign language.
“When you have teachers who make learning fun, you don’t forget them, do you?” David said. “He provided a lot of opportunities. It wasn’t just like ‘learn this one word.’ There were games involved. He made it super interactive, and I really liked his teaching style.
“He did the same for our Ph.D. classes. Like the beginning of each class, he had a 'Jeopardy!' game where everyone logged in for quizzes and questions. It was an interactive thing. That was his teaching style. And it stayed consistent. It’s been really cool.”
Ward and David meshed very well in her pursuit of earning a doctorate in less than three years, with some assistance from fellow cohort classmate and doctorate candidate Dr. Michelle Kurth.
David, who embarked on her doctoral journey in December 2021, sought to earn her degree within four years. But after she watched Ward’s PowerPoint presentation on the time and volume of work required for each subject, she sensed she could finish her requirements sooner and asked Ward for the prerequisites to complete her work within the three-year mark.
David drafted and completed her first three chapters before she got her chair assigned – which happened to be Ward.
“Tanner and Michelle were extremely motivated,” Ward recalled. “They thought outside the box when they were working on their their study. I would talk to them, and they would, several times throughout their program, tell me that, ‘We're going to such and such resort. We're sharing a suite, and all we're doing is we're writing the entire night.’
“And so there they spent an entire weekend doing nothing but writing their dissertation and doing research.”
David recalls renting a room at a resort three or four times, writing chapters 1, 2 and 3 (proposal phase) on Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. They would meet later on weekends to write chapters 4 and 5 (dissertation defense).
They reviewed each other’s drafts, and “the interesting thing was they were both doing quantitative research,” Ward said. “One was using a mediating variable, and the other was using a moderating variable. They were both using the same type of analysis but using a different approach with it.”
The extra efforts paid off, as David successfully defended her dissertation and received approval in August – completing her relentless mission in two years, nine months. David and Kurth graduated within a week of each other.
“I was excited to be a part of that journey,” said Ward, who credited several faculty members for assistance. “I'd love to take credit for this, but they were really put together quite well, and they were motivated to finish.”
For David, who earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology at Cal State Dominguez Hills, achieving her academic zenith at GCU was fulfilling.
“I’ve had some friends who went to GCU and had nothing but great things to say, and the concept of being a Christian university and having that moral compass and values, that’s how I was raised,” David said.
“For me, it was a really good matchup. The other piece to it is it offered the cohort group, and I learned really well when in person. So being able to work full time while still being in the cohort group was probably one of those indicators as to why I chose Grand Canyon.”
GCU News senior writer Mark Gonzales can be reached at [email protected]
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