Meet Jay Lopez, a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign online master’s student in Recreation, Sport & Tourism. 

Jay lives in Long Beach, California, with his wife, Emily, and their two young children. He works for the city as an events coordinator and found out about UIUC through Emily. Jay quickly realized how helpful this degree would be for his management skills and immediately started using them while running COVID-19 food distribution and vaccination pods. Jay wants people to know that pursuing an online graduate degree is doable while working full-time with a young family. And that this experience has been one of the most rewarding in his life. 

We hope that you enjoy Jay’s story and that it gives you an inside look at graduate college at UIUC! Want to learn more about UIUC graduate education? Click here: https://go.grad.illinois.edu/explore