Busy transfer student graduates early after finding her future at Wingate

By Chuck Gordon

It's not every student who can change her major eight times, transfer to a new school, take on the extra work needed to be a part of the Honors College and still manage to graduate a semester early.

Meet Hannah Achilles, who is not your ordinary transfer student.

After bouncing around from major to major at another college, Achilles transferred to Wingate in the fall of 2024 and thrived in the University's sport management program. On Saturday, she'll graduate summa cum laude with a sport and recreation management degree. Commencement exercises begin at 10 a.m. in Cuddy Arena.

In January, Achilles is off to get her master of business administration degree at North Carolina Wesleyan University, where she will serve as a graduate assistant in athletics. That's a far cry from where she thought she'd be as a teenager in her native Rocky Mount, N.C. After high school, Achilles enrolled at Brevard College in the North Carolina mountains. A soccer recruit who had health-science and (just maybe) musical-theater dreams in her head, Achilles loved the school and loved the mountains, but she was unsettled academically. She started out in health science (with a minor in theater) and then, over the course of two years, bounced from exercise science to biology, back to exercise science, back to bio, and then on to chemistry before landing on business and organizational leadership.

In some ways, Achilles' journey is a testament to the importance of a liberal arts education, which gives students a taste of many subjects, trusting that one will strike a chord with them. But her seventh try didn't quite land either: She felt unfulfilled by her business classes, putting her back in search mode. Achilles kept going back to sports. A broken ankle (not her Achilles, by the way) her senior year of high school never fully healed, and although she had surgery during her first semester and wound up never playing a game for Brevard, she remained a part of the team, entertaining recruits and helping out with practices.

"My coach was really good at letting me see a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff when it comes to sports," she says, "and that's when it was like, 'I want to do sports management.' Great. Brevard doesn't have sports management. So now what?"

In stepped Wingate, which has a robust sport management program. Her newfound clarity of direction didn't make the move easy, especially when she had become a fixture on the Brevard campus, leading several clubs.

"I'm a really outgoing person and a talkative person, so it wasn't like I was worried that I wasn't going to find people or anything," she says. "It was more like, 'Everything at this school is going so well, why would I transfer? Why do it?' But in my head, it was, 'If it goes any way like I'm imagining it will, it'll be better.' And it ended up being so much better than I could have asked it to be."

Achilles took time out of her busy schedule to speak on a student panel during the Society Dinner this fall.

Achilles has loved the program, appreciating the hands-on learning and the caring professors. "Dr. (Chris) Harrist is one of the best professors I've ever had," she says. "You can tell how much he cares about us doing well and about the actual coursework that he's teaching." She also praised Dr. Nick DeLangie for the many experiential-learning opportunities in his classes, such as the "Pie a Professor" program she helped organize for the women's flag football team.

It seems impossible for Achilles to overextend herself. Mindful that she'd spent two years preparing to major in other things, she bulked up on credits during her last semester before transferring. While taking 18 hours at Brevard, she took an additional 18 hours of online coursework through Wesleyan, where her mother is a professor (her father is also a college instructor, teaching information technology at Edgecomb Community College).

Yes, 36 hours in one semester. Achilles also took a few more hours in the summer, and she's hardly slowed down at Wingate. She took an 18-hour load this semester, plus she got two hours of credit for being a Bulldog Guide and an Honors College peer mentor (not to mention that she coaches youth soccer in Wesley Chapel and was a mentor for the new Presidential Ambassadors program).

Satisfying the Honors College requirements has also added some work to Achilles' schedule. She'd been in the honors program at Brevard, and a few of those hours transferred to Wingate's Honors College, but she still had some catching up to do. Achilles entered into "honors contracts" with several professors, which meant she had to spend 10 to 15 additional hours in a few courses, resulting in an extra paper, PowerPoint presentation or presentation at the Wellspring Symposium.

Needless to say, Achilles doesn't spend a lot of time in her room watching TikTok clips.

"I don't like free time," Achilles says. "I feel like I'm losing time. I feel like, 'Why am I not doing anything?'"

During an Honors College meeting at the start of this semester, Achilles told wide-eyed first-year honors students about her busy schedule.

"I'd recommend going to Hannah for time-management skills," Dr. Allison Keller, dean of the Honors College, told the first-years, "but don't try to do what she did. It's OK to take a little more time."

Kellar had been impressed with Achilles during her year as an honors student but was reluctant to ask her to be an Honors College peer mentor this semester because Achilles had so much on her plate already and was planning to graduate early. When a mentor dropped out just before the semester started, she called her up anyway; Achilles eagerly accepted.

"I couldn't have chosen a better person to be a peer leader for Honors 101," Kellar says. "She just did a great job with the students, and they really showed that they trusted her and felt comfortable asking her questions. She really set them at ease.

"I'm glad for her that she's graduating early, but I've jokingly told her I wouldn't mind if she stayed around another semester."

Achilles' M.O. seems to be to jump at every opportunity and then roll with the punches.

"I'm really glad I went to Brevard," she says. "I'm glad I did all of the science stuff first. Glad I met all the people that I did. Glad I started business there. Glad I transferred. Glad I did sport management here. I haven't regretted any of the steps that I've taken.

"The sport and rec program here is fantastic. I love it so much," she adds. "Obviously I only got to take a year and a half of it here. But everything happened for a reason. I loved my time at Brevard, but Wingate has been fantastic."

Dec. 11, 2025