“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” — Theodore Roosevelt, Man in the Arena Speech delivered at the Sorbonne, April 1910
Temple University Police Dispatcher Brian Nelson Hathaway has these words from Roosevelt’s famous speech framed on his wall. It is those words, among many others of encouragement, that he shared when he returned to the stage of the University College Graduation Ceremony earlier this year, a ceremony that he himself had been a part of just one year prior as a Temple Bachelor of General Studies program graduate.
“I felt incredibly honored to be asked to return to talk to the 2024 BGS graduates as the alumni speaker because I was sitting right where they were when I was part of the second cohort of the program,” said Hathaway, who fulfilled a lifelong dream when he graduated from the Bachelor of General Studies program offered by Temple University University College — focusing on criminal justice and psychology — in December 2022 and walked with the graduating class in May 2023. “At Temple, I have met nothing but the kindest and most decent people who've gone out of their way to help me, who've gone out of their way to support me. I have nothing but gratitude for having had this experience.”
Other than the birth of his children, Nicholas and Elizabeth — both recent Temple graduates in their own right — “graduation day for me was the happiest day of my life,” said Hathaway.
“It was a sense of accomplishment that I can never fully express. One of the points that I wanted to make when I came back as the alumni speaker was how important that moment and that accomplishment is,” he said. “There is this attitude that I pick up on sometimes that a four-year college degree is no big deal. I think there is this illusion that the majority of people in the country are walking around with four-year degrees and that’s simply not the case. Until you’ve done the work, I don’t think you realize just how involved it is — regardless of whatever discipline you study it will be challenging and rewarding in equal measure.”
Hathaway’s speech to the 2024 graduates was decades in the making. His relationship with Temple began right out of high school in 1981.
“Temple was awarding Outstanding Achievement Scholarships (OAS) to one student at every high school within the Delaware Valley. I was accepted on a full scholarship,” he said. “Unfortunately, I got into a situation where I was working full-time, and I was trying to go to school full-time. One of the conditions of the OAS scholarship was that you had to be a full-time student — at that point after a little while, I just couldn’t make it work.”
After a successful career as a finance manager and finance director at several automobile dealerships, Hathaway, however, found his way back to Temple.
“What brought me back was I started working for Allied Barton in Bucks County and then had the opportunity to transfer to work at Temple. In the back of my mind, I thought maybe at some point I could become employed by Temple and get back to completing my degree,” he said. “As luck would have it about a year into my work with Allied Barton, Temple had posted a job for police dispatchers. Someone I worked with at Allied mentioned it to me and suggested I consider it. I applied and was hired in 2013.”
Hathaway has been working diligently to help ensure the safety of the University community ever since.
“There have been times where someone was on the phone threatening to harm themselves, and I was able to talk them down and find out where they were and get a police officer dispatched to them,” he said. “I can’t really put into words what it means to be part of the process of getting them the help that they needed to address whatever was going on in their lives that brought them to such a critical point.”
Those experiences and experiences in previous careers have given Hathaway the desire to continue his academic journey to ensure that he can continue to help others. He is enrolled in Temple’s College of Education and Human Development pursuing a master’s degree in counseling, mental health track.
“After my career as a Temple dispatcher, my ultimate goal in life at this phase of things is to get my master’s degree in counseling psychology and become licensed as a therapist — I think my training for that career began a long, long time ago,” he said. “I think I’ve always been a good listener, and I've always had the ability to put people at ease. Maybe that's why people have shared the information that they've shared with me over the years regardless of what job I was doing at the time.”
When the time comes, Hathaway said, “I don’t want the kind of retirement that I saw my father and my grandfathers have.
“I don't want to just sit home and basically watch TV and read the paper and get down about where things are going — I think it's very easy to do that. I'm not saying I want to work full-time for the rest of my life, but I want to continue to make a difference,” he said. “Being a therapist is something I can see myself doing for many years to come. Mental health and wellness are such important topics in this country, and I think they are still not talked about enough — there are far too many people in crisis. If I can help just some of those people, that’s fulfilling to me.”
The deciding factor and impetus to return to the classroom for him, Hathaway said, was, “without a doubt, that the biggest regret of my life was that I did not complete my education.”
“I've always liked school, and I did well in school — Temple originally gave me a four-year scholarship based on two things, my academic history and my SAT scores. I had a lot of hopes and dreams about what I wanted to do with my education,” he said. “More recently, my dream had been to graduate with my son (Nicolas graduated with a degree in Film in 2020) or my daughter (Elizabeth graduated from the College of Education in 2021) and I thought I could line that up, but in the summer of 2020, I ended up in intensive care with COVID. After all those years, after everything I had experienced, after recovering from severe illness, walking down that aisle to accept my diploma was just an incredible sense of accomplishment.”
Hathaway said that since graduating he has had people tell him “they wouldn’t feel comfortable going back to school because they’ll be sitting with a bunch of young kids.”
“I have to say I always felt very accepted. Some of the other students were intrigued about someone at this point in their life going back to school while others just enjoyed having someone to talk to with a different perspective,” he said. “I don’t think anyone should ever be afraid of making a change, whether it’s in their careers, in their personal lives, or both. You have to be self-motivated — stay focused on what's working in your life and what your goals and dreams are. Like Temple’s motto says, Perseverance Conquers!”
The Bachelor of General Studies is designed for learners with prior college and at least sixty transferable credits who are ready to complete their undergraduate degree. The 120-credit bachelor’s program focuses on creating a solid foundation for a wide variety of careers and it allows students the opportunity to customize their degree path. Learn more about the Bachelor of General Studies here.