The University of North Alabama will unveil a tool in August that will make it easier for working adults to return to school for a graduate degree. That option will be available through an online professional studies program, university officials said.

“It allows our target audience, which are really working professionals in the community, to come back to school and earn that graduate degree,” said Craig Robertson, UNA director of the office of professional and interdisciplinary studies.

The professional studies degree, which will become the 11th graduate program offered at the university, offers an interdisciplinary approach so people can cater their classes to individual needs. In many cases that will mean students in the program have identified skills necessary to advance in their current career, Robertson said.

After completing a set of core courses, participants will move into one of three areas for additional training: communication development, information technology or security and safety, or leadership studies.

“It makes it a unique program within the state because it allows graduate students to really customize a great deal of their graduate program,” Robertson said.

UNA spokesman Josh Woods said the professional studies program reduces the time that might otherwise be spent taking undergraduate classes to qualify for a particular graduate program.

“For example, if you want to go through the traditional MBA program but your undergraduate degree is in history, you’re going to have to take several undergraduate business classes,” he said. “But the master of professional studies degree will enable a student to basically design a program that pulls from several different academic and professional areas. (The approach) will best benefit that particular student in his or her career.”

Because the target audience is working adults who have likely been out of school for several years, Robertson said, the university designed a system for admittance that doesn’t revolve around test scores.

Instead, prospective students identify people in the community who will evaluate them on six dimensions that have been deemed relevant to the completion of the graduate program: knowledge and creativity, communication skills, resilience, teamwork, ethics and integrity, and organization and planning.

“It provides us with an overall measure that can be used to prepare potential applicants (for the program),” Robertson said.

For those who are already enrolled in graduate school and would like to enroll in the professional studies program when it becomes available in August, Robertson said a cumulative GPA of at least a 2.75 on the 4.0 scale is required or a 3.0 GPA in the last 60 hours of another graduate program.

He said people should take notice of the program because a more-educated workforce means better economic development.

“Only about 10 percent of the adult population holds a graduate or master’s degree nationwide, and that percentage is at 7.5 in Alabama,” Robertson said. “In the Shoals, only 5 percent of residents hold graduate degrees.”

For details, call 256-765-5003.

Hannah Mask can be reached at 256-740-5728 or hannah.mask@TimesDaily.com.