Captain Austin Luher, who expects to earn his MBA from the UO's Lundquist College of Business a year from June, knows what it means to lead.

He commanded 188 soldiers in Kandahar, Afghanistan. He led a platoon in Basra, Iraq. And he and ran operations for a 1,000-soldier battalion in South Korea.

Luher's next assignment will be at his undergraduate alma mater, the United States Military Academy at West Point. Starting in fall 2014, he will spend three years serving as the congressional liaison officer for the school's athletic program, matching recruited athletes with sponsors from the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate.

To best prepare Luher for this position, the Army offered to cover the full cost of an MBA program anywhere in the United States. Luher chose the Oregon MBA.

"I knew I wanted to be in the Pacific Northwest," he said. "The UO was the only program that offered anything like the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center."

For Luher, who is technically still on active duty in the United States Army, coming back to school has been eye opening. The biggest change?

"The technology is drastically different," Luher said. "The amount of technology here is great. It allows us to accomplish everything we need to."

The Oregon MBA has a track record of attracting students from the military. Five students currently enrolled in the Oregon MBA are active-duty personnel or veterans.

- from the UO's Lundquist College of Business