Alumni Highlight

For ASUMH grad, business is always looking UPS

BY DWAIN HEBDA

Garth Deems couldn’t have imagined that his career would have led him into business ownership when he reported for his first day of class at ASU-Mountain Home. Now looking back, he couldn’t imagine having a better business education experience anywhere else.

“When I graduated from Mountain Home High School, I came out with basically 3½ years worth of scholarships under my belt,” he said. “I went to school initially for computer networking because I was a really big computer whiz. I graduated with a computer networking degree with half a dozen certificates of proficiency. Then, I still had scholarship funding available, so I earned a graphic design degree.”

At the start of this four-year journey, one of Deems’ professors connected him with The UPS Store in Mountain Home, which was looking for help. What started as a part-time college gig became an important part of his education.

“During that whole four-year time frame, I was working here at The UPS Store,” Deems said. “When I needed an internship, I had the opportunity to use this workplace because I pretty much did all the graphic design here.

“When I was graduating (college) the second time, I just decided to just go ahead and make this a full-time endeavor, get to know the business and just go from there.”

Eight years after his first day on the job, Deems bought the franchise rights to the store and today employs other ASUMH students, providing the same job opportunity that was afforded him. He said his college coursework, combined with on-thejob experience, has been invaluable in his success as an entrepreneur.

“It was a huge risk at the time because here I am looking to buy a business in the midst of COVID lockdown with no telling what the future would hold,” he said. “But at the same time, the government was introducing programs for new business owners, so I was able to take advantage of some of those opportunities for financing and things like that. That was a learning experience in itself because I’ve never dealt with anything of that complexity before.

“I found that my business courses at ASUMH proved to be very helpful. I was able to go back and look at some of my previous work in some of my business classes where we had to do business plans. We also did practice interviews, so that’s helped me when it comes to interviewing prospective employees.”

Today, Deems is proud to promote his alma mater by participating in job fairs and supporting other events hosted by the school. He said he recommends ASUMH for its personal attention to students.

“The staff was super friendly and very open to help you with any of your needs at any point in time,” he said. “I would definitely say class size was one of my biggest likes about the college. I didn’t have to go to a class of 60 or 70 people in a lecture hall; classes were smaller and more manageable. It was a challenging environment, academically speaking, but a very rewarding experience overall.” ■