Sergiy Denysov, a driven Saylor Academy student from Ukraine, has completed 11 courses so far in 2021. Having accumulated over 20 years of experience in the maritime industry, he is now taking the opportunity to acquire new knowledge through our free courses.
“We all know we live in a completely new modern world, unfortunately, affected by the COVID pandemic, and all these beautiful, magnificent luxury cruise ships, they stopped for a year or so, maybe a little bit less. And at this time, when I have my time off cruise ships to decide what else to do, the best thing is to develop. To continue developing myself will give me options, which I learned in the past.”
—Sergiy Denysov
This interview has been edited slightly for length and clarity.
Saylor Academy: How did you learn about Saylor Academy?
Sergiy: Well, in this time, people probably will say, Google it, yes? It’s not the case exactly. My first choice in my education was edX online. You’ve probably seen a couple of universities like Harvard, Maryland, and so on [offer those courses]. I took several courses there. Then I thought, maybe it’s a good idea to browse and see what other courses are actually available online just to compare, to see the quality of the different approaches. One of the options was an open university in the UK, and another option I found was Saylor Academy. Then I looked through the syllabus, and there was quite a significant amount of topics you’ve been offering very close to, I will say, a mini MBA program. So, I decided to look into this program as well.
SA: What was your first impression of Saylor Academy?
S: Well, the number one thing is all materials are readily available and free of charge. That’s amazing. So much quality information is available. It’s all already set out in a specific order. You have goals, you have objectives, and you have fast availability.
SA: Once you completed your first course, what inspired you to complete more courses?
S: Well, when I looked at the first course, I found quite a significant amount of useful information relevant to a couple of past years. It is not like information taken from the 70s and 80s, which then you read and read, and you become very bored, and you say, how can I apply all this that happened so many years in the past to the future application? And again, as I said, the very first courses I took were on the edX platform, on Harvard and Maryland, and I was really curious to see if any organization or any site offered something similar in quality. The [Saylor Academy] Operations Management course was quite good then I saw a number of courses that are relevant to an MBA program and because I was already familiar with the program in relation to my previous job, I thought it’d be good to begin and to see what is different.
"Learning is highly important, and learning never ends when you graduate from school or college, or university. You must master all your knowledge consistently throughout your life." —Sergiy Denysov Click To TweetSA: How do you plan to use your Saylor Academy certificates to advance your career?
S: Since 2007, I’ve been in a management position, and then since 2012, I’ve been in a senior management position, operating luxurious cruise ships. Onboard the cruise ship, not sitting in the office. As our time goes by, you know, we get a little bit slightly older sometimes, and then when you see all the opportunities in the world, you might think, what if I’m capable of doing something else? There are so many opportunities in the hospitality business. Like small private islands which offer luxury service for the guests. Management of those small islands will be a very good option. With this, you must know not just the basics and the fundamentals. You must know the latest approach to education based on the MBA program. It is not sufficient just to be a captain of a big ship. You need to build completely different skills and expand your leadership style to have the vision to inspire people and lead them. All this is not because you think you’re super good or you have so much experience. It’s because you learn through your life, and you learn through quality education programs.
SA: Would you recommend Saylor Academy to others? What would you say to others about Saylor Academy?
S: Learning is highly important, and learning never ends when you graduate from school or college, or university. You must master all your knowledge consistently throughout your life. Otherwise, you will get stuck somewhere. Saylor Academy has a lot of quality information. But quality information is not just something you read on the screen, you have to motivate yourself, and motivation sometimes comes from within. Some people can motivate themselves. However, I noticed that some people get motivated by the example of other people. So I hope, if my opinion is valid enough, people might be slightly inspired by what I said, that it will be great for them to study with Saylor Academy.