This article was originally published on May 6, 2024, when Covista was Adtalem Global Education. It was updated on February 5, 2026.

John Voight, MSN ’13, dropped out of high school at 16. Today he’s chief nursing officer at Woodlands Medical Center, a 500-bed, Level II Trauma Center in Houston, Texas.

He got there one step at a time on a winding path: earning a GED, serving in the Army and working as a police officer.

After his sister died in a car accident, Voight spent time soul-searching and ultimately realized his desire to do more. He looked for a new career he could enter quickly and with more opportunities. Though his academic past was less than perfect, Voight applied to nursing school and did well enough on the entrance exam to gain admission. With $10,000 from his sister’s life insurance, he earned an associate degree, became a registered nurse and soon fell in love with the job.

Still he thought, “I’m never going back to school.”

Voight worked in infectious diseases, then emergency medicine and soon he was managing two emergency departments.

“I remember my first day as a manager. I was told that capital budgets were due, so I’m thinking to myself, 'what’s a capital budget?'” he recalls. “I went to the hospital library that afternoon, checked out a nursing administration handbook and came back the next day with placeholders for that budget.”

More questions followed: How do you staff a department, manage people, manage projects, manage change? “It’s a very difficult job to learn on the fly,” he says.

That experience led Voight to Walden University (Walden) and a Master of Science in Nursing.

“Walden’s program was very illuminating to me,” says Voight. “I remember thinking to myself, I wish I would have known this before I became a manager or director, because I learned so much about real-life situations that I was dealing with every day.”

Now that he’s spent time in the field, Voight’s next goal is to complete a Doctor of Nursing Practice  at Walden.

“You can achieve great things once you take the first step, he says. “I didn’t have any expectation that I would get into nursing school, let alone graduate and be successful. I’m a guy who dropped out of high school and followed an incremental lifelong learning pathway.”

Here, he shares his perspective on the opportunities to learn and grow in nursing.

Learning and Career Growth Go Together

Nursing is a profession that allows for incremental growth and learning starting with an associate or bachelor’s degree.

“You can grow a little bit more and then decide if you want to go into education, leadership or become an advanced practice clinician, and there are unique benefits to whichever nursing pathway you choose.” says Voight.

Though it’s a challenging program and profession, Voight encourages those interested not to be nervous or fearful of going back to school.

“I just had this discussion with my leaders about encouraging continuing education and realizing their success is your success,” he says. “The higher level of education, the better leaders they become.”

Educating Men About Nursing Careers

Only 12.6% of U.S. registered nurses were men in 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“What I tell young men in high schools is that everybody who works in a hospital has to care. This job is too hard to not have something that fills your bucket,” says Voight. “But nursing is not just a caring profession. Nursing is a very technical job now, especially in the ICU and surgical settings.”

Voight encourages young people to decide how far they want to go in their career. “You can chart your own course,” he says. “If you want to become a nurse practitioner, you can be an autonomous, independent clinician providing care for any population that you choose in certain states.”

Research as a Step Toward Continuing Nursing Education

All of Voight’s nursing units are required to do a research project. He sees this as an obligation to the nursing profession. “It’s not just coming in and doing your three 12-hour shifts and going home,” he says. “Research is a way to be seen as equals to physicians and other healthcare workers. It is also a way to take a first step toward academic success.”