Biography | Todd Howard — The Wren Building Campus Where He Took a Business Degree in 1993

The degree on the later press kits is a Bachelor of Business Administration, class of 1993.

It was taken here, on the historic campus of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.

The Wren Building is the oldest college building still standing in the United States. Construction began in 1695.

Howard did not come to Williamsburg to become a colonial historian. He majored in business and took computer classes for credit, later describing the business path as the easiest way through college.

That choice looks odd after Skyrim. It was also practical.

Bethesda Softworks, then a small Maryland studio, told a visiting student that a finished degree was a prerequisite.

During a senior-year holiday he bought a copy of Bethesda's Wayne Gretzky Hockey.

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day he drove to the Rockville office he already passed on the road and asked for a job. They sent him back to finish school.

He finished. The diploma is dated 1993.

The Wren yard is the public face of that year: brick, a chapel, a dining hall rebuilt after fires.

The work that followed happened in Maryland. The credential that got him in the door was signed here.

William and Mary still teaches on this ground. The pin is the College Yard, not a private room.

Photo: Wren Building, College of William and Mary, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons