‘Sizzler’ Cert = Business Degree?

[Robert L. Peters]

Another physics genius making false claims because he thought nobody would check.

Sunday, August 20, 2023
Jack Montgomery

DeSantis PAC Chair Claimed ‘Sizzler’ Certificate was Business Degree.

One of the chairmen of Ron DeSantis’s Super PAC ‘Never Back Down’ attempted to pass off a training certificate from the ‘Sizzler’ restaurant chain as a business degree when running for office in Iowa, The National Pulse can reveal.

Mark Chelgren, one of a number of controversial county chairmen for the DeSantis PAC in the Hawkeye State, is a former State Senator who was exposed as having burnished his resume by claiming to have a “degree” in business from Forbco Management – a now-defunct company that ran a Sizzler franchise.

“This was a management course he took when he worked for Sizzler, kind of like Hamburger University at McDonald’s,” admitted a spokesman for the Republican Party in Iowa at the time, confirming Chelgren got a “certificate” rather than a degree.


Chelgren, who approved the bogus biography, played dumb after the ruse came to light, suggesting he didn’t know “a degree and a certificate are different.”

His biography also claimed he “attended the University of California at Riverside majoring in astro-physics, geo-physics and mathematics,” and biographies elsewhere claimed he received a full degree from that institution. He later admitted he did not actually graduate from the University of California.

Chelgren exited the Iowa Senate in 2019, and failed to win reelection to the Iowa House in 2022. He is now the chairman of the Appanoose County, Iowa ‘Never Back Down’ operation.