What Mary Beth is working on

So, I figured I'd let y'all know what I'm studying these days. Lots of people don't really know what I mean when I tell them I'm getting my M.Ed. in Higher Education and Student Affairs. This will not explain the whole thing, but just tell you about my classes for this semester.

I'm in a class called Trends in Higher Education. This class gets us to basically learn how to be good information gatherers. We post articles on our class discussion board each week about news that we think would have an impact on the higher education world. We also have to monitor the higher education news of a particular state for the semester. I chose... Alabama! So if any of y'all have any tips on what news I should be paying attention to in AL let me know! I know the community college system has had some big news lately, but I haven't seen tons of it!

For this class I am giving a class presentation and writing an issue brief on a report for higher education. If you're interested, the report I chose is Trends in College Pricing. I have also been asked to read a book and give a report on it on a topic we are interested in. I'm super interested in internationalization/globalization. So I choose the book Crossing Customs: International Students Write on U.S. College Life and Culture. When I was in Taiwan this summer, I found listening to the students from other cultures discussing their time in America and Canada as study abroad students to be very intriguing. This book has 13 students from all over discussing their time studying at Dartmouth College.

Today I went to a doctoral dissertation proposal, which was very interesting! A man that is a ph.d candidate presented his first three chapters of his dissertation to his committee today - which is open to the public. I thought I should go so that I could understand the whole PhD world a little better. I was surprised to see how much of a collaborative effort a PhD is - and encouraged by it. I always imagined writing a dissertation meant sitting in a room by myself and typing for hundreds of pages. I considered it to be extremely solitary - but watching this made me realize that it is not that way - at least in the higher education world. I don't have plans to get my Ph.D., I'm just excited to get my M.Ed. But it is not something I've ruled out either - especially after today. I enjoy learning about higher education and I think I'd enjoy studying it more. We'll see!

This weekend I am taking a group of 17 students to Myrtle Beach for our Student Advisory Board retreat. It is going to be a fun and activity-filled weekend! David is going with The Navigators with lots of students to the Navigator Regional Conference. That will be fun because Navigator ministries from all over the southeast get together. Hopefully we'll both be up to all the activity both retreats require! I've gotten to the point in my pregnancy that I am getting tired more quickly than usual. I have also started to wobble... embarassing I know. My students are great about letting me chill if I need to, though! Well.. that's all for now!