Barely out of high school, Robert Tyzik spent six weeks at Brunswick Naval Air Station for survival training after enlisting in the Navy. That was in 1967.

Fifty-one years later, Tyzik is back — this time as a Southern Maine Community College student at the age of 70. After putting three children through college, he’s now earning a degree of his own.

When Tyzik went through the Navy’s SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) training decades ago, he stayed at Orion Hall, which is now Southern Maine Community College’s Midcoast Campus residence hall. Although he was stationed at a naval air base in Maryland as an aviation electronics technician on P-3 Orion maritime surveillance aircraft, he often came through Brunswick Naval Air Station while in the Navy.

When he moved to Maine last year, he checked out SMCC’s campus at Brunswick Landing, liked what he saw and enrolled as a Liberal Studies student with a focus in History. Our campus opened in 2011, the same year the Brunswick Naval Air Station officially shut down.

Tyzik is old enough to be the grandfather of many of our students, and he hopes they can learn something from somebody like him, who spent decades in the business world after the Navy and is now intent on making the most out of every day.

“It’s invigorating for me,” Tyzik said. “All the other students have been accepting of the old man in the class.”

SMCC has students of all ages and from all backgrounds. At our 71st commencement, to be held this Sunday in Portland, our youngest graduate is just 19 and our oldest is 68. The average age is 27.

Tyzik graduated from high school in 1966 and, after being drafted, enlisted in the Navy. He served in the Navy for four years and then attended Dutchess Community College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., near where he grew up. But he left college after a year when he was offered a money-making opportunity to sell semiconductors.

For more than 20 years, he sold semiconductors to companies such as General Electric, General Dynamics and Kodak. He then sold large fans for large computer systems until he retired in 2006.

When he moved here about a year ago to be closer to his children, two of whom live in southern Maine, he enrolled at SMCC. He took two classes this spring; he’s registered for another class this summer and three in the fall.

When he comes to class at Brunswick Landing, the memories flood back to his time here more than five decades ago. He can still see and hear the planes and recall his comings and goings on the base.

Now that he’s here as a student, he’s making the most of it. He plans to enroll in SMCC’s Honors Program and isn’t satisfied with anything less than his best.

“Not only do I want to get a degree,” he said, “I don’t want anything lower than A for a grade. If you don’t aim high, you will never hit high.”

Through the years, Tyzik put his children through college. Now it’s his turn.

“I’m just sitting here saying, ‘Hey what about you? Why don’t you go back to college and show them (my children) you’re as smart as they think you are,’” he said. “They are thrilled beyond belief that I’m back in school.”

Ron Cantor is the president of Southern Maine Community College.