“Once a Bear, always a Bear” is a familiar and long-standing sentiment among Mercians. It expresses the belief that those connected with the University forever remain a part of the Mercer family and often keep on changing the world in the Mercerian way.
For some alumni, that phrase applies to their continuing education. In their quest to further their futures, they return without question to Mercer to earn multiple additional degrees. A few alumni hold four or five degrees, according to records pulled in June from the registrar’s office.
Our Quintuple Bears are Matthew Astin, M.D., and Spencer Price, M.D. Georgette Rosser is currently working on her fifth degree. Our Quadruple Bears include Anaya (Bryson) Williams, Ph.D.; John Christiansen, M.D.; Amanda Cosson, J.D.; Brian Cunningham; Monique Jimerson, Ph.D.; Kayla Nguyen, Dr.P.H.; Sebastian Propok; Taisha Rose; Richard Spivey, Ph.D.; Jessy Togba-Doya, D.Min.; Betty Williams, D.Min.; and Brian Wright, D.Min., M.D.
Below, we highlight the academic journeys of a few of these high-achieving Bears.
Matthew Astin
CLAS ’99 (dual degrees), MED ’01 ’06, BUS ’22
Astin fell in love with Mercer’s Macon campus when he visited as a high school student. Five degrees later, he now spends time there every day as the medical director of Mercer’s Master of Athletic Training program.
As an undergraduate pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in history and a Bachelor of Science in biology, Astin was a student-athlete on the cheerleading team, a Lambda Chi Alpha member and involved in theater. After earning his Master of Public Health, he applied to Mercer School of Medicine but wasn’t selected.
He took a job at a Macon hospital and applied to medical school again the next year. This time, he made the waitlist and was later offered a spot. After graduation, Astin completed a combined emergency medicine and internal medicine residency at Vidant Medical Center/ECU Brody School of Medicine in Greenville, North Carolina.
Wishing to return to Macon, he took a job as an emergency room physician. Mercer had just restarted its football program in 2012 and was looking for a doctor to work with the team, and Astin took on the volunteer role.
Before long, Astin had become Mercer’s director of student health and then medical director of the new Master of Athletic Training program, working with the football team initially and then all of Mercer’s sports programs. He enjoyed working with the athletes and trainers and saw the latter role as a great opportunity to continue doing that.
Since he was on the leadership and administration side of medicine, he re-enrolled at Mercer to earn a Master of Business Administration, graduating in 2022.
“For me, it was the fact that I could make (my education) my own,” Astin said of what makes the Mercer experience unique. “I was able to do exactly what I wanted, when I wanted, how I wanted. Even since back in the late ’90s, the quality of the faculty has been magnificent. They are part of the family of Mercer.”
Anaya Williams
EDU ’08, ’10, ’16, ’18
As an undergraduate student at the University of Georgia, Williams discovered that she wanted a career in teaching rather than in medicine. As she searched for a Master of Teaching program, she found Mercer’s College of Education on the Atlanta campus.
“I still wanted it to be a university that I could be proud of. I looked and saw Mercer had a program at the Atlanta campus,” she said. “I was working my very first job out of college. I was a teacher during the day, and I was a student at night.”
With Gwinnett County Public Schools, Williams began as a first grade teacher but also taught second, fourth and fifth grades. The school district supported her continued education, but Williams also returned to Mercer because she had outstanding professors who made her want to take her education to the next level.
“I mattered. In a university that’s as large as Mercer may be, my professors knew me. They knew my work,” she said.
She completed an education specialist degree, followed by a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction and Master of Education in education leadership, paving the way for her to become a school administrator.
Then, Williams moved to the Washington, D.C., area and began working at Fairfax County Public Schools, where she said she thrived and grew professionally. She taught fifth and sixth grades before being offered administrative opportunities, serving as assistant principal, interim principal and extended school year principal.
She recently relocated to Suffolk, Virginia, with her new husband and is the supervisor of assessment for Chesapeake Public Schools. Williams said the kids continually keep her fulfilled in her work.
“You can never have a bad day if there are kindergarteners in your building. To see how they’re trying to make sense of the world … it is so cool to be a part of that development,” she said.
Brian Wright
DIV ’03 ’10, MED ’15 ’19
Wright, who lives in the Atlanta area, found the knowledge and skills he needed for his first and second careers at Mercer. After earning a bachelor’s degree in religion and psychology at Bemont University, he enrolled at Mercer’s McAfee School of Theology to become a minister. He earned a Master of Divinity and was working in churches as he finished his Doctor of Ministry.
“Around 2009-2010, the economy was terrible. Part of my (doctorate) study was looking at the future of the church, and I started to see that churches were not growing. It was getting harder and harder to find work in the church,” he said.
After he left his last church, he struggled to find another ministerial position and, after a year, decided it was time to find another way to help people. He started shadowing people in a variety of jobs, and while volunteering with the Good Samaritan Health Center, he saw how a medical career could allow him to live out his faith while serving others.
“I still seemed like I had a calling. Medicine was a way for me to continue serving, working out my faith, and helping other people. Mercer was a natural fit for that,” he said. “Mercer’s medical school has a mission I’ve never seen in any other medical school. Its reason for existing is to serve medically underserved in Georgia.
“All of the Mercer degree programs have something unique in that you’re not just preparing for a career, you’re there learning about yourself, other people, and using those skills and gifts to help make the world a better place.”
After completing his pre-med prerequisite courses, Wright earned a Master of Science in preclinical sciences at Mercer School of Medicine before starting the Doctor of Medicine program. Psychiatry, his first medical rotation, became his focus area.
“There was something that felt familiar about it. It felt like I had found a home. Psychiatry is kind of my new ministry,” he said. “I think that doing both (ministry and psychiatry) has made me better at both of them.”
Wright was an outpatient psychiatrist for Mercer Medicine in Macon for a year before taking a job with Piedmont Health. Today, he is the psychiatric medical director at Piedmont Eastside Medical Center in Snellville, where he sees both inpatient and outpatient clients.
“We all got into medicine because we love science and want to help people. This feels like my way of living that out. This is my way of journeying with people through their mental health crisis,” he said.
