Michael Dorman ’24 is a born multitasker.
A native of New Market, Virginia, he double-majored in accounting and finance, but
in 2021, his sophomore year, he added another significant item to his ever-expanding
“to-do” list by joining the Army National Guard.
“I ended up taking my finals early that semester, and right after that, I went to
Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, from the end of April through the beginning of August,”
Dorman recalled.
He spent 15 weeks at the army base, in basic training to become a combat engineer,
which helped cover some of his tuition: “It also made the summer fly by. We were doing
something each day, and I remember as soon as they released us, I’d be asleep by about
eight o’clock.
“By the time I got back in August, I was right back into school.”
Dorman volunteers with Radford’s Student Veterans Organization and participates in National Guard exercises every summer plus one weekend each month
near Fredericksburg, Virginia, completing tasks such as building bridges and learning
firsthand how one climbs back into an overturned raft. He hopes to be promoted to
specialist soon, but his immediate civilian goal is to become a CPA.
Firm Night, the annual job fair coordinated by the Davis College of Business and Economics, gave him a big boost toward that goal, he
said.
It was there he found an internship with Brown Edwards, which lent him experience
conducting public school activity fund audits and other tasks. That was followed by
a stint as an intern for the Radford University Office of Audit and Advisory Services.
Even though Dorman graduated the first week of May, he’ll be sticking around a little
longer – he just accepted a job as an analyst with the university’s Office of Budget
and Financial Planning.
“It’s a nice distance,” he said of Radford. “Like being away from home but not being
too far away. I like the area.”
Nevertheless, as a two-time veteran of the IRS Citizens Training Academy, which Radford
hosts each April, he said he ultimately hopes to be a financial investigator for a
federal law enforcement agency, a position that could send him far beyond the New
River Valley. But as his undergraduate career proved, he’s fairly adaptable and seems
to have no shortage of energy.
“I'm open to move wherever," Dorman explained. "Wherever it takes to get the job done."
