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U.S. Marine Maj. Brandon Frazee during his second tour in Iraq in 2005-06. Frazee later enrolled in Thunderbird’s Global MBA On-Demand program.Desert windstorms created special challenges for one Thunderbird student, who completed his first term in the Global MBA On-Demand program from an Iraq war zone.

Brandon Frazee, 35, says the blowing sand often interfered with the satellite Internet connection near Hit, where he helped supervise construction of a $25 million Iraqi army base as a civilian contractor with Ohio-based TolTest.

Frazee says the limited Internet access created heavy traffic when the signal reached his base about 90 miles west of Baghdad, so he had to be resourceful. This usually meant waking up at 3 a.m. to connect with his professors more than 7,500 miles away at Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Ariz.

“I couldn’t have done it any other way,” he says.

Frazee finished his Iraq project in November 2007 and now works as a land development and construction consultant in Scottsdale, Ariz. He is scheduled to finish his Thunderbird distance-learning program in May 2009.

Frazee first served in Iraq as a field artillery officer with the U.S. Marine Corps. He completed a six-month tour in 2004 as an adviser to an Iraqi infantry battalion and then returned as a reservist from August 2005 to April 2006.

During his second tour, he traveled among 14 temporary holding areas and five regional detention centers as a jail administrator. Frazee says he worked closely with many Iraqis during his three stays in the country and developed a respect for their resilience.

“For generations, it’s been a brutal existence,” he says. “And yet there’s still hope.”

Frazee joined the Marines in 1996 after finishing a bachelor of science at Arizona State University.

“When I finished college,” he says, “I wasn’t ready to go sit in a cubicle.”

Frazee served at bases in Japan and all over the United States before leaving active duty as a major. He says he developed a global mindset in the military that made Thunderbird a good fit for him.