For 45-year-old Dale Brimer, it started with a class. That led to more classes. And more classes. Until finally, Brimer recently completed almost every master’s level degree the UT Dallas School of Management offers — eight in all.

The first time he stepped onto campus in 2005, Brimer was newly out of a job and fresh out of ideas on what to do after a 20-year career in IT for Texas Instruments, Eastman Kodak  and Ericsson. “I went back to school to figure out what I should do with the rest of my life,” he said.

Dale Brimer by Degrees

MS ’10 – Healthcare Management
MS ’09 – Finance
MS ’
09 – Accounting and Information Management
MS ’09 – Supply Chain Management
MS ’08 – Information Technology and Management
MA ’08 – International Management Studies
MS ’07 – Management and Administrative Sciences
MBA ’06 – School of Management

In one of Brimer’s first Cohort MBA classes, aging and health care were the hot topics. As a baby boomer with aging parents, Brimer became “obsessed” with how to make a business out of providing health care to seniors. “What they learn in this class is how to be cogent in thought and word and writing,” explained Professor Charles Hazzard, who co-teaches the Contemporary Business Issues course with Dr. Larry Redlinger. But, Brimer said, “I also became woefully aware of how little I knew.” So, said Brimer, he approached big-box firms that quoted him million-dollar price tags for feasibility studies.

“I was too poor to hire someone to do my business plan, so I had no choice but to try and figure out how to do it myself,” he said. That might have meant assembling a dream team of professionals with backgrounds in finance, accounting, marketing and business another expensive proposition. Instead, Brimer “thought that even though I might not be able to do all these things at the time, most were subjects offered at SOM. So I took the course list, looked at what was offered and started to take classes.”

Though his academic endeavors have resulted in a variety of degrees over the years business administration, finance, accounting and information management, supply chain management, information technology and management, health care management, international management studies, management and administrative sciences Brimer remained committed to just one project.

The venture? An all-inclusive, five-star, combination surgical facility and hotel in Belize. The $50 million project will start by offering bariatric and cosmetic surgery and eventually, all types of surgeries. The goal, explained Brimer, is delivering better quality health care at a lower price.

 As for next steps, Brimer, who has two bachelor’s degrees from Texas A&M University, is meeting with investors that he’s partnered with through faculty at SOM. “If we could rate all the students we’ve had in our Contemporary Business Issues class, Dale would be in the top five,” Hazzard said.

The appreciation is mutual, as Brimer has volunteered as a teaching assistant for SOM for the last several years.

The eight diplomas to his name raise a question: Will there be more? “I’m auditing a class this summer in entrepreneurial finance and going forward, I’m only going to take one class here and there, just like a refresher,” Brimer said. “What I did here wasn’t special. Anyone can do it. All I did was stick around for four years.”