Starting out

My career changed directions in November of 2003 when my unit's director reclassified my position to include the responsibilities of an Assistant Director. Up until that point I had been primarily an information technologist, although working for MSU's Virtual University Project had exposed me to a wide variety of issues within the enterprise of higher education. I had been supervising a technical team since 2001 and provided unit-wide technology leadership as the Virtual University's Lead Programmer.

I had a keen interest in how the university worked which derived partially from the need to learn and understand to frame the right solutions and extend MSU into the virtual realm, and partially from my innate thirst for learning and desire to understand. The challenge of being running all of the Virtual University's day-to-day operations, representing the director, and remaining an effective technical leader spurred me to start being more proactive about picking up a broader range of knowledge about the larger organization focusing on decision making, role-players, and different operations within the university.

This eventually led to a search for formal education that would supplement the non-credit opportunities I was already taking advantage of through MSU's Human Resource Development and the Faculty and Organizational Development branch of the Provost's Office. After considering various MBA programs, a Philosophy degree, a Master's in Information Systems, various E-Learning or Distance Learning Degrees I realized there was a great program right at MSU in the College of Education. As I considered entering the HALE Program at MSU I decided to test the decision by enrolling as a Lifelong Learner, which I had done for some other graduate level coursework that I pursued for technical professional reasons in the past.

Higher-Ed Administration

I selected EAD805 Higher Education Administration as my first course since the course description matched my curiosity in how a university worked. At the time I was more concerned with developing mental models and social theories that would help me to better grasp what I was already percieving at work. I joined MSU's Virtual University within two years of it's founding. As part of a startup unit at a university that is charged with implementing a new university wide-initiative we had a tendency to move very fast. It was quickly apparent that our measuring of time at 'net speed' was significantly faster than the institutional clock. It was also apparent that some parties at the university were very supportive and ready to try new models, while others were more concerned, or just outright disinterested. Many sensitive issues were dredged into the open during the course of our work such as how learning is assessed, how instructors are judged, and who owns intellectual property that is produced during teaching and learning. It was already apparent to me that the most effective leaders at MSU didn't always have titles, used several political strategies to reach objectives, and avoided entanglements.

I hoped that selecting EAD805 would help me understand how a large organization like MSU functions and how I could learn to perceive and communicate with others in the course of developing my administrative abilities.

Learning Organizations

Because my interest in the HALE program derived so closely from my work, and I was still unsure which courses were 'required' for the program my next choice as a lifelong learner derived from my professional practice. Working with information technology for MSU's Virtual University means life comes at you fast. We are usually in the middle of a few major technology retooling efforts at any given time. In addition the reasons the university encourages or develops online educational offerings evolves over time and our strategies can shift significantly year-to-year. Our Vice Provost encouraged our unit to increasingly focus on being the nexus of knowledge within the institution for online teaching and learning. Rather than focusing only on what we are able to produce, investigating and propagating our learned knowledge to interested parties and recent adopters became an important strategic imperative. Obviously, given this need, the concept of a "Learning Organization" described in the title of "EAD802 - Building a Learning Organization" attracted my attention. Given the flexibility of being a lifelong learner and picking whatever interested me, I chose to enroll in EAD802 as my second class.

Adult Learning

Continuing my lifelong learning journey in the summer of 2006, I again turned to my profession for inspiration when considering my course options. I chose to enroll in EAD861 Adult Learning because many of the faculty I'd worked with over the years were teaching students in online Masters programs intended for professionals. I'd been introduced through a community of practice in our office and my own professional organizations to the concepts of andragogy and understood that adult learners may have different needs than traditional students. There seemed to be a rich opportunity to learn more about these differences and leverage this knowledge in my day-to-day practice to improve the learning environment we provide and the advice I give to instructors. This also seemed to be a logical jumping off point from the courses I had taken so far which focused more on organizations and group dynamics. While I was interested in the relationship between learning organizations and how the adults in them learned, this was primarily an opportunity for me to focus on how to better perform the educational mission of the university.

My HALE MA Curriculum

MA Curriculum for Degree Completion of the
Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education Program
Michigan State University

When I was considering the program the HALE masters program required successful completion of 30 credit hours as follows:

15 credits of core classes
6 credits of specialized courses
9 elective credits

Since I had two children and was expecting more during the program, in addition to working 50+ hours a week, I took a gradual pace. When I was admitted the program had taken on a more flexible form and required the pro-seminar and a research methods course and other requirements were decided by the student with help from their advisor. The course courses in the program were largely the same, so this was just gave further advantage to composing a program that was most inline with your interests and need for development.

My interests derived from my professional roles and centered around learning, information technology, distance education, governance, budgets, and leadership.

In fitting with my original goals my course selections and subsequent study and growth focused on the following areas:

• governance surrounding entrepreneurial activities
• teaching and learning with instructional technology and distance education
• leadership and organizational development

Here are the selections that I made...

Transferred in from Lifelong Learning

• EAD 805 Administration in Higher Education
• EAD 802 Building a Learning Organization
• EAD 861 Adult Learning

Fall Semester 2006

• EAD 860 Concept of a Learning Society
• EAD 991B Special Topics in Higher Adult and Lifelong Education (HALE MA Professional Seminar)

Spring Semester 2007

• EAD 876 Budgets and Finance in Higher Education
• TE 891 Educational Inquiry and Research Methods

Fall Semester 2007

• EAD 877 Program Planning and Evaluation in Postsecondary Education

Spring Semester 2008

• EAD 801 Leadership and Organizational Development
• EAD 866 Teaching in Postsecondary Education

Entering the program

I formally entered the program in Fall of 2006 at the bottom of this page you'll find a link to my statement of interests I wrote shortly after entering the program. I started by maintaining focus on the three areas that had already attracted my attention: further practice writing, study of higher education organizations, and theories on teaching and learning.

It was exciting after spending so much time considering my goals and interests to be united with people that would broaden and extend those horizons even farther. Since we mix with Student Affairs, Ed-Tech, and K-12 masters students in many of our classes, it is good to start out with a core group that is focused on higher education administration beyond student affairs. Our group quickly developed a rapport and I'm proud to be a member of the HALE community of scholars.

Dr. Steven Wieland gave a great talk about writing at the graduate level and I was partially familiar with his distinct style of online teaching from a presentation I had attended the previous year. I'm an avid reader and Dr. Wieland's passion for good literature and contrasting theorists was right up my alley. I talked this over with my advisor, Dr. James Minor and decided to take EAD991B the HALE Proseminar with Dr. Marylee Davis and EAD860 with Dr. Steve Wieland.

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Proseminar

Joining the new students at orientation reinvigorated my learning spirit. Since I've stayed in the MSU community for so long and had already completed three courses I volunteered to help answer questions for the other incoming students. I found out we had a great deal of diversity in our cohort. We had a few international students, a couple of people that already had more then one degree, and a couple that were switching careers. Many of us already had substantial experience working in higher education and were building on that with the degree program. It was apparent even during the orientation that there would be a variety of professional experience and scholarly interests in our group.

A significant focus of our cohort's seminar was diversity. We used diversity as a lens to explore the historical foundation of higher education, teaching and learning, as well as contemporary issues. The timing of our proseminar coincided with the passing of Michigan's Proposition 2 which underlined some fundamental differences between the broad citizenry and the core values of many institutions of higher learning. We observed the University of Michigan take a very public stance about this, while MSU took a quieter approach. There were big differences in voting patterns between urban and rural areas and between college towns and outlying communities. Ultimately as we watched the effect of Proposition 2 take effect, minority enrollments were down, but institutions maintained affirmative action hiring policies and redefined domestic partner benefits to be more broadly applicable.

This semester was also an opportunity to explore our scholarly interests and tie them to our professional development. I ripped a hot story from the headlines and tied the information technology breaches that had occured at Ohio University as inspiration to explore IT security and governance of security. A copy of my report is attached at the bottom of this page.

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A Learning Society?

EAD860 - Concept of a Learning Society interested me because I had now explored the basics of each of my interest areas and this course had the potential to connect them all . Wieland's class didn't involve much interaction with the other students, but we sure did engage with great ideas. We read several books and numerous articles and web resources over the course of eight modules.

The objective of the course was to complete a very brief essay at the close of each module. I've attached examples of these assignments at the end of this page.

The books I took the most from include...

Mary Catherine Bateson's "Composing a Life" whose narrative allowed you to walk in her shoes as a stranger in another culture. Bateson's work reminded me how much we have to learn from those around us, and how other cultures can provide alternative ways of looking at ideas showing us what we take for granted.

Gene I. Maeroff's "A Classroom of One" provided a sweeping guided tour of online education . Embedded in his text is a history of some of the early adopters and a variety of interesting models and motives for online learning. Maeroff take an almost journalistic approach in trying to document the early state of the industry before it evolves before him. Given my background in online learning, I didn't cover much new ground here. However, since the course was self-paced I did spend over a month in this module because it provided so many connections and branching-off into familiar territory that I was extremely interested in. I keep the book in my office as a reference to early literature on the trend of online learning. It was always somewhat surreal to be reading about a hypertext learning environment, from within a hypertext learning environment.

Studying articles from scholarly journals, the New York Times , the Chronicle of Higher Education, Educause, and National Public Radio provided a diverse set of opinions about the forces at work in our society. There is more pressure than ever to learn continuously throughout a lifetime. People are expected to switch employers if not careers several times in a lifetime. In moving from the knowledge age from the industrial age there are already great disruptions in the balance of power globally. Even so, the divide has never been greater between connected and unconnected or between rich and poor. I fear both the growing energy crisis and water crisis will continue to exacerbate the gap between those that exist in the information rich networked world and more basic agrarian or industrial economies.

Michael Pollan's "A House of My Own" provided an interesting counterpoint to the larger concerns of lifelong learning, society, globalization, and formal education. This was a great lesson in informal and experiential learning that focused on one man's solitary quest, or at least his quest for solitude. This is learning at it's purest, completely parochial and driven by personal interest. The author almost commits to learn and build the house, just because he can. By choosing to learn and do it himself, he is taking ownership and redefining himself. I thought of the writing house as a place he had chosen to preserve a part of himself, while recognizing that he would be changing with his home with the birth of his child.

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Budgets & Finance

I chose EAD876 - Budgets and Finance in Higher Education because I was getting involved heavily with our unit's budget and had for years managed capital infrastructure projects and revenue generating work-for-hire contracts. When I enrolled in the course I was working regularly with a unit budget that totaled over $1M and frequently dealt with projects with budgets ranging from $25K-$75K. I wanted to better equip myself to understand the larger picture of budgeting and gain familiarity with university wide finance issues.

The course was an online course that encouraged collaboration with fellows in a group on a weekly basis through small-group discussion and report-out to the rest of the group. This is a highly successful format when supplemented with effective content. Our group was half K-12 people and half college or university staff. My learning was enriched by debating the societal financing of universities with other stakeholders. It was also beneficial to compare budgeting strategies between colleges and intermediate school districts.

Eroding support for higher education, especially public institutions was a frequent theme. I found great relevance between the MULTI (Deans, Directors, and Chairs meetings) briefings that I received as a Director from MSU's budget staff and during discussions with the President and Provost and the literature on the state of the industry. Various coping strategies, such as scaling up instruction, were also discussed in the class that relate directly to strategies in use by MSU, UofM, and in different ways amongst the smaller universities in Michigan as well.

This theme played directly into the opportunity to revisit a previous scholarly interest 'entrepreneurial universities' and advance my understanding made this a powerful learning experience. I was able to broaden my understanding from one that focused mainly on individuals and their purpose, direction, and style in governance and expand it to a framework for understanding the nature of academic markets and the influence of capitalism in higher education. Attached at the bottom of this page is my research paper on this topic.

Compared to my earlier work in EAD805, my understanding of this topic is much richer. My previous work relating to entrepreneurial university activities focused primarily on the aberrant character introduced by decisive, business-like, and financially well-equipped institutes or centers. My thinking in this area centered on capitalistic influence or even intrusion into the public-good mission of research universities. Traditional advocates of strong liberal arts curriculum often advance this notion that academe has been corrupted by capitalistic forces. In reading Slaughter & Rhoades (2004) I incorporated an alternate perspective that allows me to see the motives of the institution that causes not just reaction but actually takes an active role in creation of some of these capitalistic market trends. Erosion of public support has furthered the dependence on entrepreneurial revenue sources and encourages ownership of knowledge as an asset rather than a public good. This has equipped me with a balanced perspective that allows professional pursuits of common-good and financial wins simultaneously, with less regret and the confidence of having my eyes wide open.

Slaughter, S. & Rhoades, G. (2004). Academic Capitalism and the New Economy: Markets, State and Higher Education. Johns Hopkins University.

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Educational Inquiry

Completion of the HALE program required TE891 - an Educational Inquiry and Research Methods course. Because my work with online courses put me in proximity to primary investigators on a few research efforts related to the scholarship of teaching and learning I had some familiarity with human studies procedures and methods associated with collecting data or interviewing subjects. This course was my first pure introduction into research design. We learned about various quantitative methods such as forced answer surveying and how to compose a sufficient sample size to yield an accurate and representative pool of data with an adequate response rate. We also learned about qualitative methods such as interviewing and composing focus groups.

One of my greatest takeaways from this course came from Vivian Paley's "White Teacher". Paley's message reinforced that even if we don't see ourselves as researchers or seek publication, we can still benefit greatly from incorporation of rigorous inquiry into our professional roles. As educators our professional ethos should be focused on supporting students and faculty as best we can, which requires continuous learning and adaptation.

The course presented the challenge of formulating a project to conduct some form of educational inquiry that was worth conducting. We were asked to base our research on existing knowledge in the field. We had to design our methods and get approval in advance prior to proceeding. For my project, as is commonly the case, I needed to negotiate access to my subjects and gain some administrative consent prior to proceeding. I chose to interview faculty that were simultaneously engaged in developing for-credit and not-for-credit e-learning or at least had committed to doing both. Such commitments derive from administrative strategies to maximize reach and value for the sunk cost of development. I was curious if this was a practical exercise for faculty and how successful they were in reaching both objectives. My report on this is attached and the bottom of this page.

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Program Planning & Evaluation

As I began to round out my degree program the choices became more precious, as I had only three courses left. I chose EAD877 - Program Planning and Evaluation in Post-secondary Education because I am frequently exposed to the creation of new degree and certificate programs. I'm asked to help provide advice to administrators and core faculty driving the creation of new programs and the design of a curriculum and course sequence. We try to encourage 'best practices' but sometimes it is unclear which interventions have a deterministic or even positive effect.

Something that became apparent to me in the course of our study and discussion of this topic in class, was the lack of assessment commonly done on campus. During the course my interest in assessment and accreditation increased and I left the course with a strong interest in continuing to learn about this field and develop my evaluation skills. I found this practical and timely form of inquiry to make effective use of my basic research skills. However, since evaluation is concerned with the merit and worth of programs it is much more relevant to an active practitioner like me who is concerned with choosing interventions that are well-directed and effective.

In this course I formed a team with Melissa Buffenn. We wrote a fictional program plan based on the scenario of Antioch College's struggle to keep their main campus open. Our peers chose not to approve our project plan, it was too ambitious and needed more evidence that it would succeed. However, given our limited access to Antioch materials and knowledge of the College, I think we made a very good try in what is a very difficult situation for that school. I've attached the program plan to the bottom of this page.

We also worked together to conduct a formative evaluation of University of Michigan Dearborn's (UMD) online bachelors program. We initially cast our scope too wide, and with encouragement from Dr. Minor, managed to narrow the scope to specifically focus on faculty satisfaction with support resources. We were invited by the Associate Dean to to interview faculty, staff, and administrators to develop an understanding of multiple viewpoints and concerns prior to writing our report. Multiple site visits were conducted and we attempted to identify levels of satisfaction with various supporting technologies, services, and staff made available to faculty teaching online.

Most of the evaluation was conducted through personal interviews, which we balanced against comparison to similar supports in other organizations, and my own expertise as an experienced instructional technology support person and distance education administrator. We delivered the report to UMD early the next term, and Melissa answered questions for a committee. Our goal was to equip them with some independent assessment of their support structure for faculty and an indication of satisfaction levels to inform decisions and enable them to take steps to improve their system.

My greatest takeaways from the experience were:

• Access is critical, without administrative support and consent evaluation is impractical.
• Choosing the right evaluation methods and scoping the evaluation is critical relative to what is being assessed, the resources available, and the necessary timeliness of findings.
• The evaluation must hold value to the stakeholders and sponsors, but the evaluator must retain enough autonomy to design a valid assessment.

One thing I really appreciated with Dr. Minor's style was his supportive nature and willingness to help us succeed with our plans while still leaving us plenty of room to make mistakes and learn from them. It made many of the lessons of the course more powerful because we were able to perceive the inherent value in certain approaches once they addressed areas of uncertainty or aspects of evaluation we struggled with.

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Reflection on progress

I've noticed that my earlier work was more difficult to research, despite the fact that I entered with strong index searching skills. I feel that I've developed a much better sense of the body of literature available to me. I also notice in writing my assignments that although I'm still unsure if my writing is linear and easy to follow, I'm certain that it is more concise. My writing assignments used to be two pages too long and needed significant editing down. My sense is that I'm better able to conceptualize my topic and structure the paper to fit in an appropriate amount of space for the depth of inquiry.

My teamwork with others in the courses has been strong throughout the program. My work as a professional in higher education has afforded many opportunities for team work with professionals in other disciplines and with faculty members. I try to model reliance on the group and provide an organizing voice in my teamwork with other students. As my studies have progressed one area I feel has improved is my ability to reconcile multiple scholarly interests and identify projects that take advantage of each person's knowledge and curiosity.

I discover in reviewing past assignments that my thinking has become deeper on several topics. I already reflected on this in a post about recent work on entrepreneurial activities in EAD876 contrasted with earlier work in EAD805. Similar growth has occurred in my comfort with inquiry between TE891 and EAD877. Primarily I feel much more comfortable designing and carrying out an objective course of inquiry in a professional manner that respects and protects my subjects. Work in each of these courses complemented my interest in distance education and instructional technology while focusing on administrative and governance issues that set institutional strategy for supporting such efforts.

Scholarly Interests
As I move into my final six credits, I feel that for now I've satisfied my interest in entrepreneurial university governance. This is a topic I might pursue further if I choose to continue in a PhD program. I hope to close out my graduate program with courses that focus on leadership and teaching. These courses will provide good integration of the topics I've already been developing along the lines of distance education, instructional technology, and leading organizations.

Leadership

I rounded out my program with two courses that were like capstones on my HALE experience and provided the richest integration with my work life. The first is EAD801 - Leadership and Organizational Development. Beginning that semester I assumed responsibilities as Acting Director of MSU's Virtual University Design and Technology department. I also participated as a Fellow in MSU's 2007-2008 Executive Leadership Academy which complements my activities in EAD801.

As part of the ELA program I participated in a week long Leadership Development Program at the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, NC. The CCL experience was exclusively focused on self-awareness and personal development. In advance of the residency week I was given an opportunity to undergo several personality/psychological instruments to understand my underlying preferences and beliefs that influence my behavior. I also underwent two separate 360-degree feedback instruments to gain the perspective of my colleagues, management, and clients on my performance and behavior. During the week long program we were given opportunities to practice leadership under heavy observation often taped for later group review. We unpacked the results of the assessments and were given dedicated time with a personal executive leadership coach to help work through the findings. During the spring term I've been meeting in a group with other ELA fellows from MSU to further build on the experience. I've also worked with my previous Director and one of my mentors, Dr. Joan Predko to develop myself further. We also have a sequence of formal skill-based training seminars to attend throughout the Spring term.

I've found the ELA experience to be an excellent compliment to EAD801 thus far. EAD801 supplies me with a group of emerging leaders, many are student affairs professionals, who bring a different perspective then I do into the course. EAD801 also provides a foundation directly into leadership research and theory. So while ELA provided some practical suggestions in the seminars and provided me a wealth of self-awareness, I'm complimenting that with my own research projects in EAD801 and the opportunity to discuss underlying research in the study of leadership.

There are two concepts of leadership that stand out most for me from EAD801. Transformative leadership with it's focus on living shared values and investing in the development of people rings as a noble pursuit and a worthy way to direct positional power. Leading with stories also stands out as a key learning theme. I've realized that I already employ my storytelling ability to teach lessons and generate motivation and alignment that spurs action. A desire to reflect further on how my leadership already reflects these practices, and how to hone my skills in these areas, is my primary takeaway from EAD801.

Linked below is a statement of my personal philosophy of leadership which I developed during the course of participating in EAD801 and the ELA.

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Reflecting on Themes & Growth

As I reflect on my experiences as a HALE MA student, I'm moved by how much I needed to pursue this program. When I began this program it was clear I needed to continue my education as my career had changed course into an exciting new direction. Sometimes it isn't clear how much you need to do something until you venture the courage to try. Now that I'm hitting my stride as an administrator, leader, and change agent for my institution I can fully recognize and appreciate the interplay between my work and my studies. I started with three focus areas, each of which took on greater meaning and evolved as I moved through the program and related these interests to my professional needs and growth.

Administration & Governance of Higher Education Organizations
Working through the HALE curriculum focused my scholarship and professional growth and provided a medium to expand my understanding of governance, leadership, and non-profit organizations. I've been able to use my deeper understanding of ways to balance entrepreneurial activities with traditional education at the university which provides a vital perspective. In managing my unit I must balance a competing set of priorities reflected with finite resources in the face of insatiable demand. My scholarship in this area gives me a perspective that makes me more effective at protecting the general fund allocation and directing it towards university initiatives while also producing revenue with the portion of my unit that provides outreach education and operates like an auxiliary unit. This enables me to work effectively with a wide variety of stakeholders and interest groups within the institution and provide a valuable integrating presence that enables new initiatives. Learning organizations expanded my understanding of how to foster the experiential learning that professionals accumulate collectively in organizations. My understanding of this whole learning theme has evolved to center more on my perception and enactment of my personal leadership role, leadership style, and my repertoire of leadership behaviors. I've learned much about what makes me tick, how others perceive my behavior, and what I can do to be more effective. The combination of understanding how the institution works, my role in the institution, and how to effectively carry out my role will prove invaluable in my new role as a unit director.

Distance Education - Instructional Technology - Teaching and Learning
Working to support instructional technology with faculty in online distance education has provided me a living laboratory to relate to my study of literature. The HALE program provided a framework that gave me a greater appreciation for many of the best practices I've seen emerge from MSU's online courses over the past ten years. I can now relate my knowledge readily with the body of knowledge in the discipline. Adult learning theories have provided a solid basis for understanding the nature of learning and the likely preferences that will apply to continuous lifelong learners. The concept of a learning society really sets the context for why our work is important and what society will need from higher education as the knowledge economy advances and continues to shape the coming century. The research methods course equipped me with a solid set of fundamental tools to design and conduct a formal process of inquiry and compose findings. These inquiry skills will provide a basis for my professional growth and ability to create new knowledge in the course of my practice. The program planning course provides a number of conceptual frameworks I can use to help new online programs make their objectives explicit and align effort to creation of a cohesive set of learning experiences. Finally the course on teaching in postsecondary education gave me a wonderful opportunity to focus on myself as an educator. I feel well prepared to select instructional strategies based on solid principles of teaching and learning with insight into my beliefs about what I can do well and the roles of the instructor, student, and content in learning.

Writing and Scholarship
I wanted to focus on writing, but I realized in the course of the program that really I was focusing on scholarship in general. My scholarly skills are better developed, I can organize and pursue a line of inquiry and compose a rational discourse while supporting my findings with literature and evidence. My writing has improved somewhat, but primarily in how well I frame a topic, organize the composition, and write efficiently. What has really expanded is my ability to explore established bodies of knowledge and select evidence from established theory to support my ideas. I also have a much greater understanding of where my scholarly interests lie and what I might pursue if I continue with a doctoral program.

What comes next?
I may take a six months or a year off and pursue some non-credit education that builds on my HALE program and will help me complete the transition into the my new role as a Acting Director of Virtual University Design and Technology. I'm considering pursuing a certification as a Program Management Professional, a certification from the Project Management Institute that will provide a set of professional competencies to aid my oversight of dozens of e-learning development projects each year. Ultimately if I pursue a PhD program it will likely be in HALE, although I will also spend some time in the immediate future exploring other areas that might provide a grounding in a traditional discipline that would benefit my pursuit of knowledge within the profession of Higher Education Administration.

Resume & Professional Networking

If you'd like to see my resume, please click on the link below to visit my public profile on the LinkedIn network. LinkedIn provides me a way to maintain a low-threshold connection to many of my colleagues and I encourage you to consider joining a social network. Making these ambient relationships a 'connection' gives you a broad pool of people with expertise that some day might be very important for you to know. This gives you an easy way to stay in touch and reach out to 'colleagues of colleagues'.