Deborah Thompson Austin of UC Davis’ alumni association will instruct hundreds of undergraduates to move the tassel on their graduation cap from left to right at Sacramento’s Golden 1 Center Saturday morning.

For her husband, Ron Austin of Fairfield, it will be a moment — and degree — more than 47 years in the making.

The 66-year-old is proud he has finally completed the requirements for a bachelor of arts in political science, but he sees his life as a cautionary tale that he shares with first-year students.

“You don’t want to be me,” Austin said. “You have to take advantage of the university’s resources to the fullest. You had plans that brought you here. It will be easy to get off track and distracted.”

Football standout

Austin was a high school football standout in Vallejo, California, and the financial aid UC Davis offered made it just possible for the running back recruit to be the first in his family to go to university. It was 1977, and his goal was to get a degree and then a good job to make life easier for his mother, who was raising eight children on her own.

But the game that helped provide educational opportunity also lured Austin away from it. In his senior year, the Aggies’ first 1,000-yard rusher accepted an invitation to try out with the BC Lions of the Canadian Football League. Without making the team, he was traded to the league’s Montreal Alouettes, which released him before the season began.

But for seven units

“When I came back to the states, it wasn’t ‘What do I need to get that degree?’” Austin said. “It was go and get a job.”

What he didn’t know is that he was just seven units short of meeting the requirements for his degree.

Austin had brought to campus a false sense of security about tackling the challenges of university, and he still didn’t seek out advisers or counselors.

Austin worked as a management trainee for a drug store chain and then as an appraisal coordinator until the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s put an end to that job. He left work delivering and installing high-end home appliances to start a business with a friend to do the same thing. Two years ago while moving a large refrigerator up some stairs, he broke his leg and suffered a concussion. His wife said it was time for him to retire.

Sharing his story

Conversations at an Aggie football game led Austin to find out how close he was to earning a degree. Staff with the College of Letters and Science’s Student Transition and Retention (STaR) Program worked with a faculty sponsor to create an opportunity for Austin to complete the requirements. They developed an extended internship that required Austin to write a research paper on the struggles of first-generation students and to speak to classes of first-year students in the STaR program.

Thompson Austin, vice president of the Cal Aggie Alumni Association, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from UC Davis in 1987 and earned a master’s degree in public administration from California State University, Hayward. She said she is proud of her husband’s achievement. “He is inspiring others to go back and complete their degrees as well as inspiring undergraduates to utilize the university’s resources to complete their degree.”

The couple met in university and married in 1993.

The five undergraduate commencements, Friday through Sunday, are among the last of 13 in UC Davis’ spring graduation season, which began in May.