Announcer:  The following presentation is a production of Capella University. It is not intended for commercial use.

Chris Xaver:  Hi. I am Chris Xaver, and this is Capella Inside Online Education. It is another way you can find out about the people and programs at Capella University. We will talk to faculty and staff about what it is like to earn a degree online and why it might be right for you. We will also talk to some students about their experiences at Capella, how and why they chose Capella, how they are balancing work, school, and family and what tips they may have for you; and we will have a little fun while we are at it.

Joining me today is Mike Offerman. He is the President of Capella University. Mike is also a key participant in a new initiative being put forward by the Presidents’ Forum. It is called “Transparency By Design”, and Mike, that is where I would like to start our conversation. Just what is Transparency By Design?

Mike Offerman:  Well, Transparency By Design is an initiative that is being done under the auspices of a group called the Presidents’ Forum, and the Presidents’ Forum is made up of colleges and universities that serve adults at a distance and what we are doing together is coming up with really a way for us to make transparent particularly to prospective learners or students what our institutions are doing in terms of learning outcomes, but we start really with a statement of principles of good practice for higher education institutions that serve it all to the distance, and then agree within that statement of principles that we will issue reports by posting them on our institutional web sites during the first quarter of each calendar year that tell people about our institutions.

For example, what are the demographics, what are the average ages and so on? What are our class, what are our completion rates, and then we talk about learning outcomes both at the undergraduate level what are called core learning, where we sample seniors to see how well they can write, engage in critical thinking, and so on. And also what we report as learning outcomes is how proficient our graduates are in their specializations or in the career or professional area that they are studying in.

Finally, we report out on learner engagement using a national instrument called the National Survey of Student Engagement, but collectively the demographic data, the student information as well as the learning outcomes, and then the engagement data begin to create for the prospective learner or other interested parties in more informed way to assess how well each of our universities is doing in serving our learner population.

Chris Xaver:  Mike, when I bought a dishwasher years ago, I went with a high-end brand of the dishwasher, and I followed consumer reports and it gave it a really bad rating for service calls, and when I went to the store and I was speaking with the clerk there, the clerk says, “Well, wait a minute, you are not comparing apples to apples, you are comparing apples and oranges because this brand considers any phone call into the service center a service call, but brand ‘Y’ considers anytime that they go to a person’s home a service call”. So, my question is using that analogy, are each of the schools then using the same exact reporting criteria, so if we log on to this institution and we look, are we seeing the same results?

Mike Offerman:  Well, what you are seeing are the same results in terms of the institutional data. We had come to an agreement about how do we calculate completion rates and cost, so you will see comparable data there. The National Survey of Student Engagement is a national instrument, and we have agreed to use that. So, that, that gives you a way to compare apples to apples.

When we look at the core learning that a learner demonstrates, we use a national exam again. It is called the Measurement of Academic Proficiency and Progress or MAPP. So, that is all apples to apples. Where it gets to be a little different is when you are talking about looking at learning outcomes in your program area, this would be your area of emphasis. Each institution defines what outcomes they want, and those are differentiated one institution to another. So, what we have agreed to do to try to overcome the fact that you maybe looking at apples and then oranges is each of us will use the same data, so that in your example, we are not describing service calls one way in one university and another way in another one. What we are doing is stating here our program level outcomes. This is what we are declaring that every graduate has to be able to demonstrate.

Here is how we measure those outcomes, so that you can see how that measurement has done. In other words, is it service calls that come in by phone or is it service calls where we go out to the home. And then finally, what are the aggregate results we are seeing, what proficiency levels are we producing? That makes sense?

Chris Xaver:  It makes perfect sense. I think that, that is — my biggest concern is making sure that everybody is using, at least, similar criteria, so that I can understand those results. Can you tell me how is this different from other systems of accountability?

Mike Offerman:  Well, there are other systems out there that are emerging and most of these are emerging in a sort of a new trend. And by the way, I would say that as we learn from this, we maybe able to get closer to apples to apples, even on those program level, but what we are doing here is just sort of bravely taking the first step and then saying, “Let us start making things more transparent to learners and other external constituents and learn from that”. The way that we are different is it really ties back to the mission represented in the institutions that are part of the Presidents’ Forum.

If you look at some of the other systems, they are assuming more traditional aged students who are coming to a campus. They are going to study there for four or five years and leave with an undergraduate degree, let us say. And that allows them to do, what would be called, pre and post tests on those core learnings. We are challenged with that because as adult learners, many are at a graduate level, but those who are even coming at the undergraduate level, come with lots of prior experience, including lots of college experience. So, we just focus on that post tests for the core learning, but because we are working with adults and because we are online, we both believe we must be dealing with more of than just those core learning. So, we are the only system that I am aware of, that is surely talking about what are the outcomes at the program emphasis level. And where that is important for an adult, is that most adults come seeking to impact in a positive way their professional life, their career, and they want to know more than just will I come out being able to right well and think critically, but my example would be if I am going to be an accountant, are you going to really teach me accountancy, and what confidence do I have that you will do that? That begins to really differentiate, what we are doing again because adults want it and because we have the data because in an online environment, you capture data virtually on everything that occurs in the learning experience.

Chris Xaver:  I think you are so right, as an adult learner myself, I love that scholar practitioner model that Capella has because every single thing I learned I took right back to my institution and started applying it, and it was like, wow, this felt so much more valuable to me than my undergraduate experience.

Mike Offerman:  Well, and a lot of what we have to do and what I think having a system like this in place, it really becomes something that drives you to focus on more on outcome. So, what we try to do is to work with the profession or the industry that a learner is preparing for to make darn sure that we are staying current with what the expectations and the needs are in that profession, and then that should drive us to deliver education that is immediately applicable for you or other learners who are studying in that area. I think that is going to improve and get better over time as we learn how to do outcomes better assessing outcomes and as we began to report those publicly. One of our strong beliefs here at Capella University is that, if we report on something, we are going to give it a lot of attention and if we are not really doing a great job at the beginning, we are going to get in a hurry because we are going to pay attention to what it is that we report.

Chris Xaver:  I did some outcome assessment within my own program. I am a program chair at the community college that I teach at, and at first, I was really anxious about it and I thought, “Oh! My goodness, what is they are  going to show?” and I loved when it showed me areas that we needed to focus on because it really did give me a specific, almost blueprint, of meeting the needs of my learners, my students at my community college. So, I can imagine that we will see some change based upon feedback that you are going to receive from this.

Mike Offerman:  I certainly hope so. One of the drawbacks of getting institutions to sign on to something like Transparency By Design is there is this fear what is going to happen, what am I going to find out, but if you approach it from the idea that what I am going to find out is going to help me to get better and get better faster, then it just is a real opportunity and a benefit for the institution to do this. To be clear, Transparency by Design has been created so that we give better information to our, in particularly, prospective learners, but also current learners in a lumps about what is going on in our programs. But there is no question, it really helps us to do a better job by looking at our learning outcome.

Chris Xaver:  There is a need, of course, for employers to understand outcomes. There is a need for students to pick a college or university that has the programs that will help them in their specific areas, but there is also a need by the education secretary. I mean, she came down and said, “Hey, we need to start reporting on performances and measuring and really learning how students learn and how well they are learning”.

Mike Offerman:  Well, there is no question that there is a desire, if not a pressure, at the national level by multiple constituents including Education Secretary Spellings who basically set forth what the expectations are through her commission. Actually, we were working on this idea before that commission was formed. This is an idea that has been in the works now for about somewhere between a year and a half, two years by the Presidents’ Forum.

Chris Xaver:  I do want to ask a question though, because as a general rule, when you have to self monitor, how do we know how great that is going to be, how do we know how impartial that is going to be, and how do we know that the results are really valid?

Mike Offerman:  Well, part of it is, in the Transparency By Design approach, we are going to be laying out how are we measuring, what is the methodology that we use so that external folks can begin to assess whether that is good or not. That is making people a little bit nervous because one of the things we like to do in higher education is be really critical about methodology, but I really think it is important for us to just put it out there and people want to be critical of it; that’s fine, but your question of how do you know if it is valid or not. One of the things that we are trying to figure out if we might be able to do is once we get a number of institutions to sign on would be to have a third party, an independent third party, who would take a look at what we are doing and basically address some of the issues you are talking about. (A) this looks legitimate, (B) we have assessed what these reports look like and here is some aggregate information that is coming out of this Transparency By Design effort. So, I do think at some level it is important to have a third party.

What we have done in terms of inviting institutions to join Transparency By Design is to set it up so that first of all, we are saying look this is really for institutions, it serve at some level adult learners. Quite honestly, most institutions do that anymore, but you are making a serious commitment to serving adults and you are doing a large part of it at a distance i.e. online. The third thing we are looking that begins to get at the legitimacy of the institution and the effort is that we want institutions that are regionally accredited.

Chris Xaver:  So far you have five institutions that are regionally accredited participating. Can you tell me who those five are?

Mike Offerman:  Well, in addition to Capella University, we have Charter Oak State College, that is obviously a state college and that is a public college which is in Connecticut. We have Excelsior College which is in your state, New York, Kaplan University, which is another national university and then Union Graduate University, an institute from Cincinnati. So, it is Charter Oak, Capella, Excelsior, Kaplan, and Union Graduate University.

Chris Xaver:  Which kind of begs the question in my mind what if another institution wants to sign on and their reputation is not as good as these institutions’ reputations are. Do you stop them, is there a way to say, “No, you cannot participate in this”, or how does that work?

Mike Offerman:  Well at this point what we are doing — and by the way, we are inviting other colleges and universities that are regionally accredited to join with us and it is that regional accreditation that we are relying on as opposed to trying to make an assessment about an institution’s reputation. And quite honestly, as the Presidents’ Forum for us to start making judgments about the reputation of another university goes beyond our expertise, all we could do is sort of deal with — reputation is a tough thing to literally assess. So, we are relying on the regional accreditation process to say, we as a regional accreditation body have reviewed this college and they are regionally accredited. So, if an institution wants to join us and we love to have more coming in with us, what they have to do again is be serving adults, doing that online to some extent, not necessarily exclusively, but at least some online and that they are regionally accredited, because that is the way that we are addressing reputation.

Chris Xaver:  It is a sticky situation I am sure, but as students, we pay a lot of attention to reputation because it is something that we hear other learners talking about and so I just thought as I was reading about this, “Wow, what if somebody comes to you and you are not as comfortable with them”. Mike, before we end our conversation, I just want to make sure that we have covered all of the points that you want people to know about Transparency By Design. Is there anything else out there that I have not asked you that you would like folks to know about?

Mike Offerman:  Well, let me first just go back to what you just said about reputation. I think it is very important and we all know that students do talk to one another and that is how you make some judgments and that is an important thing that goes on about coming up with the sort of ambiguous idea of what is the reputation of a university. So, what Transparency By Design is about is trying to provide verifiable objective data that informs students, so that they can make judgments about not only the reputation, but really the fit. Does this university have the kind of program I want and are they showing me that they deliver what they say they can deliver. So, hopefully as we move forward with Transparency By Design, we will be informing those reputation sort of perceptions in a way that has not been available to students before this. I will just close by saying, it is a bit scary for the institutions, as we talked about a bit ago, to join in this kind of an effort, but those of us that have been working on this, feel that this is an incredibly important thing, particularly, to prospective students who are trying to make that decision and we are committing to do a better job of getting information out there to allow people to make that sort of independent objective decision about whether this college or university can give me what I want as an adult student.

Chris Xaver:  Mike, I appreciate your time and I think you have shared a lot of great information and if folks want to find out more, they can contact who at Capella University.

Mike Offerman:  The best way is go to the Presidents’ Forum web site and that is presidentsforum.excelsior.edu.

Chris Xaver:  I appreciate it, Mike. Thanks so much.

Mike Offerman:  Thank you for the time.

Chris Xaver:  I am Chris Xaver. Thanks for listening and we will talk to you soon and remember, you can always find out more about Capella University online at capella.edu.

Announcer:  This presentation has been brought to you by Capella University and may not be retransmitted.
Total Duration: 17 Minutes.

Announcer:  The following presentation is a production of Capella University. It is not intended for commercial use.

Chris Xaver:  Hi, I am Chris Xaver and this is Capella Inside Online Education. It is another way you can find out about the people and programs at Capella University. We will talk to faculty and staff about what it is like to earn a degree online and why it might be right for you. We will also talk to some students about their experiences at Capella, how and why they chose Capella, how they are balancing work, school and family and what tips they may have for you; and we will have a little fun while we are at it. Joining me today is Tsun Chow, he is the Chair of the Technology Management Program in the School of Business and Technology - and they have received some very good news. They have been designated as a center of academic excellence and information assurance education. So I would like to start there; what exactly does that mean?

Tsun Chow:  It means — it is interesting you mention it, it is not a Certification or Accreditation; it is a recognition and designation; it is a role model for education excellence and information security.

Chris Xaver:  And so this comes from the National Security Agency, which is a Department of Homeland Security?

Tsun Chow:  Yeah, it is a joint effort started off by National Security Agency, and they are joined by the Department of Homeland Security.

Chris Xaver:  I understand that not many institutions have received this kind of recognition before; it sounds like it is a real honor.

Tsun Chow:  It is a real honor, and it is a recognition of the maturity and the depth of programs - and by this designation actually Capella would be joining the ranks of quite a number of pretty prestigious institutions such as Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, Johns Hopkins and University of Illinois at Champagne, Urbana.

Chris Xaver:  Those are some big traditional universities; I think we are the only one though that’s a fully online university to get this designation, right?

Tsun Chow:  I think there are probably maybe a handful of online universities as well.

Chris Xaver:  Okay, who are getting this as well. That is amazing to me. Now I am reading that they had to look at your faculty qualifications, the curriculum, the resources, the research and partnerships in information assurance. I guess, for those of us who are not IT specialists, what exactly does this mean? Are you essentially teaching people how to create some really secure websites?

Tsun Chow:   It is more than that; one of the major emphasis they are looking at — obviously, the program will get into the specific of what we call Control Mechanisms such as firewalls and the anti-virus and things of that nature, but also look at the different aspects of — on a day-to-day basis in terms of the usage, in terms of in a corporate world, the things that you have to do in terms of process, procedures, as well as management of setting policies and their actions, so that Information Security or Information assurance is on the top of the agenda for everybody within the organization.

Chris Xaver:  I would think that this is something that employers are clamoring for from their IT professionals.

Tsun Chow:  Yeah, absolutely; it is not only obviously, you know, that they are specialists about information security, but nowadays, because almost everything is on the computer, also on the net so that security is basically with everywhere — everything that you do, including the day-to-day activities by most of the employees in any major corporation.

Chris Xaver:  What do you want people to know about either the program itself or this designation in particular?

Tsun Chow:  This particular designation as I mentioned earlier, really it is a recognition of the maturity and the depth of our program, and this reflects a lot of the work we have been doing for a number of years, not only in terms of the kind of courses that we offer, but also in terms of the quality and the number of faculties we have devoted to this program, as well as a lot of the information reference and resources that we dedicated to support the learning experience of the learners. The most important thing is the reflection of the acknowledgement that the learners in this program — and this program would be talking about the Masters Level as well as a Bachelor Degree Level has been exemplary — in other words, through their coursework, through their PhD dissertation, that they have made a contribution to the advancement of knowledge in the Information Security area.

Chris Xaver:   I don’t know again a lot about the school of business and technology. Technology Management, that’s the program that you are in charge of; is that the specific program that received the designation, or was it a combination of many programs?

Tsun Chow:  It is a combination of — more specifically, it encompasses a Master Degree in Information Technology, MSIT, with specialization in Information Security, and also includes the program — a Bachelors degree, a Bachelor of Science in IT with specialization in Information Assurance and Information Security. So, they encompass both the graduate program as well as the undergraduate program. And even though we just launched a special — new specialization, a PhD in IT Information Security just recently in August and the — but the research at a PhD level has been going on under the umbrella of the PhD in organization management.

Chris Xaver:  It sounds like that new PhD is really in response with the — to the President’s national strategy to secure cyberspace; I guess they say that it is essentially a nervous system of our nation’s critical infrastructure, just like our highway systems and the bridges that we are hearing so much about in the news right now.

Tsun Chow:  Yes, and I think that it is more — I think that you are right in saying that it is more a response to the demand among our learning community — a lot of interest obviously in the area of doing research in Information Security and Information Assurance at a PhD Level, beyond the Masters Degree Level program.

Chris Xaver:  And if anybody wants to find out more about the program, they should just log on to Capella, is that the way they would get in touch with…?

Tsun Chow:  Yeah, I think so that — we have a Website in iGuide which will point to more specifically additional information on the overall program regarding Information Assurance and Information Security.

Chris Xaver:  Thank you so much for spending some time with me and explaining this, I am very excited, and congratulations.

Tsun Chow:  Thank you.

Chris Xaver:  And this was just an introductory discussion of this topic. If you want more information about Capella University, remember you can always find out more online at capella.edu. I am Chris Xaver, thanks for listening, and we will talk to you soon.
Total Duration: 9 Minutes.

Chris Xaver: Hi! I am Chris Xaver and this is Capella Inside Online Education. It is another way you can find about the people and programs at Capella University. We will talk to faculty and staff about what it is like to earn a degree online and why it might be right for you. We will also talk to some students about their experiences at Capella, how and why they chose Capella, how they are balancing work, school and family and what tips they may have for you, and we will have a little fun while we are at it.

We are talking today with Steve Shank, he is the founder of Capella Education Company. That is the parent company of Capella University and he founded that in 1991. In addition to his duties as Chairman and CEO of Capella Education Company, he has served as Chancellor of Capella University since 2001. Welcome!

Steve Shank:  Well, thank you.

Chris Xaver:  I wanted to ask you what on earth made you to think about starting a university?

Steve Shank:  The idea of starting a university was idea to start a university which could figure out how to use the coming world of the Internet to provide education to adult professionals. Education that would really be focused on their particular needs, they being adults in interest as opposed to the typical university programs which, in my view had been designed for a much different audience.

Chris Xaver:  Can you articulate how does Capella meet the needs of adult learners?

Steve Shank:  In my view we focus on a number of things; one, recognizing that if education is going to be relevant to adult professionals, it has got to be accessible and so everything we do in online delivery is focused on access and making access to education doable. The second key thought is that the education has to be relevant to the professional needs of the adults in their particular field, and again, my view has been that traditional university curriculum had been driven more from an academic perspective than the sort of practitioner bends or scholar practitioner bends that we take at Capella and that is a very big point.

And then the third point for Capella is that it is part of our DNA that we are going to do the task of providing access to education and relevant education with a high quality that is consistent with what people have come to associate with traditional schools, with good traditional schools.

Chris Xaver:  That is why I chose Capella. In my backyard, I am ten miles from Cornell University. I went to the Maxwell School for my Political Science degree. I have some really decent education behind me and I tell you what, and no bounds about this, I tell everyone all the time, Capella in my mind meets every educational expectation that I have had.

So, my question to you is, is an education at Capella comparable to an education anywhere, do you think?

Steve Shank:  I would like to say that education at Capella is the superior education.

Chris Xaver:  The journalist in me wants evidence.

Steve Shank:  First of all, you have bodied evidence with the growing achievements of our students and our learners and our graduates and we have done a great job accumulating that gap, but we need to do that, but I’d turn that around and say, look at yourself.

The other elements are, we are probably much further down the road than almost any academic institution in actually measuring learning outcomes with our outcomes measurement program, and we have an increasingly sophisticated measurement of learning program and that is demonstrating that excellent learning is taking place. One, at least little factoid is that, we do subscribe to this NSSE, the National Survey of Student Educational Engagement and that is a survey participated in by hundreds of traditional colleges, universities and probably hundreds of thousands of students participating and this is of the undergraduate experience, and the satisfaction with an education at Capella benchmarks quite highly versus the norm for all schools participating in that study.

Chris Xaver:  I would think it would be difficult though I understand, work for profit and I understand that, but how do you balance the need, the desire for profit with the right thing to do academically. Is there a conflict there or not?

Steve Shank:   Maybe you might use the word ‘creative tension’ but we have a well-developed, well-articulated strategy that the way we succeed as a business is to differentiate ourselves and the way we differentiate ourselves is through what we call learner Success which is a combination of an extraordinary learning experience at real learning outcomes. So, as opposed to (Inaudible), we think of a relationship of a virtuous circle.

Chris Xaver:  I am glad you actually spoke about differentiating because that is actually where I wanted to go next. How does Capella differentiate themselves from other online institutions?

Steve Shank:  We differentiate ourselves along a number of dimensions. First of all, in terms of how we think about the learner that we serve. We very consciously focus on that population of people who want not just the convenience of online but also want a quality educational experience. So, this focus on quality is a big part of how we think about differentiation.

A second point is that we are largely a graduate institution; 85 percent of our learners are at the graduate level. That makes us really, really different than most schools doing online education.

The third point is that we really are seeking to distinguish ourselves profession-by-profession in a number of professions such as, college faculty, college administration, where we have curriculum and faculty, which are really directed at the profession, we understand the profession and we are creating great networks with people in that profession.

Chris Xaver:  We are always talking amongst ourselves about how much we like going here and how much we are being challenged which I think is absolutely imperative. I am wondering, I met you at one of the colloquia, so you are out and about. Are you hearing from other learners and are they inspiring you?

Steve Shank:  That is so inspiring, it is just amazing, and you can look at that from a couple of perspectives. Start with our graduations, which are like ‘the most’ amazing events that I have ever participated in my life the achievement of the people who have gotten a degree, but at the colloquia, you meet person after person after person who is literally changing world. These are just wonderful inspiring people doing fabulous things here and now, out there in the world.

Chris Xaver:  But part of the reason is because Capella allows us to do those fabulous things, at the same time that we are getting our education, so you get to hear about it.

Steve Shank:  There is this virtuous relationship there that, if we are doing our job right, those are the types of people who are going to attract to Capella in support and encourage.

Chris Xaver:  Can you tell me what is your vision for Capella?

Steve Shank:  The vision for Capella is that we lead the world of academe in defining high quality education for the working adult professional, and by that we are really saying, we want to build a reputation for excellence, we want to be a player that really defines the future of online higher education in academe.

Chris Xaver:  What is your vision for higher education in general?

Steve Shank:  My vision or hope for higher education is that — I am trying to pick my words here but that we generally do a much better, a hugely better job addressing the deficit that exist in educational achievement in our society.

Chris Xaver:  It sounds to me like your view on the current state of higher education is that we are failing.

Steve Shank:  It is the case, and that is not a particularly critical statement, it is a statement of obvious fact and I would apply that across the board, across the entire educational spectrum when you look at the fact that in this global world we live in, educational achievement is going to be the marker of success on an individual level, on a societal level, on a level of any institution and the rates of educational achievement that we are achieving at every level is just simply inadequate and maybe at risk of going backwards. The numbers are higher if you age segment, but only 28 percent of the adult population has a four-year college degree, only ten percent have a graduate degree. That is just nowhere as near adequate in the society that we live in.

Chris Xaver:  I think so much of that is because it is so inaccessible. I mean just from my own experience, I had the desire to come back and get a Doctorate, I just contacted the institutions in my area and they made it impossible unless you were willing to leave your career, to go back and do that.

Steve Shank:  Yes, I think that. Again, we were talking about how we got started on this journey, there was a point in time where institutions just simply did not care about learners like yourself. Now, they do not care about Ph.D. learners like yourself. They may realize that Masters learners are not interesting marketplace for them, but that is one of the points that if we are going to help people succeed in getting education access and support is a huge part of what has to happen.

Chris Xaver:  It seems to me like Capella has really positioned themselves to address this need. I know every step of the way when I have had a question, I have just been able to turn to someone and get the answers. This very week I am working on my final comp question. It has been a very…

Steve Shank:  Good for you.

Chris Xaver:  Yeah, I was very excited. I have a girlfriend who said, “We need to celebrate.” I said, “Don’t you want to wait and see if I pass them?” She said, “No, that is two celebrations.”

Steve Shank:  That is it, yes. Well, I think we are making tremendous progress there and we are not limited by a lack of opportunities for further improvement.

Chris Xaver:  Talk to me please about what you see coming in the coming years for higher education. Are there some thorny things that are in your purview?

Steve Shank:  I think that one thing that, now this is pretty obvious is higher education is going to be subject to more and more demands from external constituencies around accountability. We are spending all this money as anybody learning anything. And while some of the proposed approaches they are little over the top, I regard that as generally a positive thing to make us all be responsible about what results are we really producing. I think that higher education generally including Capella is going to have to come to grips better with how are we going to accommodate a flow of students who are less and less prepared academically than they have been in the past, and that could be in any number of ways. At Capella, it is a challenge that writing skills are not what you would hope, we have to do work there. The flow of students into the traditional schools and the traditional age ranges is just looking very, very different than we have ever seen before. Immigrants, people with color, people whose educational achievement probably is not what it was compared to people entering college 10-15 years ago.

Chris Xaver:  I teach at a community college, Steven, we see it everyday. At the community college level, 70 percent of our students come in needing some sort of developmental math or reading English and it blows my mind.

Steve Shank:  This is like, I would use the word as a societal crisis. This is America and we better figure out how we are going to deal with this.

Chris Xaver:  So, how do you see Capella as an effective force in helping to resolve it?

Steve Shank:  Right now, I guess our most direct impact, because we are working at the higher end of the educational food chain with our largely graduate focus is to basically educate the educators and the administrators who are working in the school system and help attack from that end. I would hope that as we grow an undergraduate education we come to grips with what we need to do to help people be successful and not kid ourselves that learners are going to come to us in an ideal state so this is probably not the case.

Chris Xaver:  It is systematic; I mean it is happening everywhere.

Steve Shank:  It is systematic. Here, I do not particularly damn the educational system, this is a reflection of the society but the educational system has to make a way to respond to this.

Chris Xaver:  Absolutely. I know at the community college level we are trying.

Steve Shank:  Yeah.

Chris Xaver:  We are really trying.

Steve Shank:  I actually, I certainly believe that the community colleges are perhaps disrespected but critical linkage in the whole educational brick in this country.

Chris Xaver:  I am the product of the community college system and First Generation College and…

Steve Shank:  Oh, that is wonderful.

Chris Xaver:  I see so much here that can help, and so many things that we are addressing that they are going to have to address sooner or later and so, we have been treading this water for quite a while.

Steve Shank:  Absolutely, absolutely, it is just so essential.

Chris Xaver:  I have a question for you. This is very personal for me because one of the things that just irritates the heck out of me as when somebody says, “Oh, you are working on your doctorate. Where are you going?” and I say, “Capella University” And they go, “What?” and I say, “Oh, it is fantastic online institution” and I see it in their face. How are we going to get society, everyone to understand this is a quality education?

Steve Shank:  This is one of my big burning missions and it is not a satisfactory answer, but we are making a lot of progress here. We have a huge amount of progress to go forward, but what we are saying is it is not our thought process that we are going to get society to understand this. What we want is to get all of the influencers in higher end to understand this.

In other words, to work on profession-specific building of reputation, and then we are going to do this by the visibility of all of us. The visibility of you, the visibility of all Capella faculty and Capella graduates by making ourselves visible. We at the community college level do a lot of events directed at the community colleges and that is the way it is going to happen. I am totally sympathetic with your experience and I would say your experience today is a hundred times better than it would be two years ago.

Chris Xaver:  Absolutely, I also teach online and I have the same reaction, when people find out I teach a class online, they go, “Oh! That cannot possibly be as good as the class you would teach in the brick and mortar setting.” And I think, why? I am still the same instructor, I am still hell bent on them having a good experience. I am going to make sure that learning happens in that class, but just their thought process is so antiquated, it makes me sad.

Steve Shank:  This is still a paradigm shift and people think in very antiquated or conservative paradigms but we have to do our job being excellent. I think we are going to have more and more resources and more and more graduates and more and more learners to deploy in this process and the tide is with us.

Chris Xaver:  Well, I make it my mission.

Steve Shank:  And it is frustrating in the interim.

Chris Xaver:  I make it my mission to tell everybody because I am on a mission here, I am doing this for me, for you, for the next students behind me.

Steve Shank:  Absolutely, the best proof for that is, you.

Chris Xaver:  Yeah, well, and our experience has been stellar and there are five of us at my institution, all enrolled at Capella, all having the same experience and all of us, I mean we are little educationalists, not observer here, we have all gone to really good schools. So, it is not like we went to a third string school and we are like, yeah, it is pretty good. We went to some really high-end schools and we think that this is a really good education. So, I just feel like I need to shout it from the rooftops.

Steve Shank:  Well, do that.

Chris Xaver:  Okay, I will work on that. Hey, my question to you, what gets you up every morning? What brings you into work?

Steve Shank:  What brings me into work every morning is the mission, the people that we work with, that our learners at Capella are changing the world. They have an amazing group of people and they are supported by amazing group of people here and that just makes it all fun.

Chris Xaver:  You just hit the nail on the head though from my perspective and that is amazing group of people and not just from the learner perspective, the staff, and the instructors, and the folks behind the scenes from the very first person, the counselor that I called up and spoke to have all been top quality and I think there is something — of course, I read all of these books, Jim Collins, Get the Right People ‘on the bus’, and in the right seat, you guys are obviously doing that. 

Steve Shank:  I think we now are becoming more thoughtful about how we talk about this but we are very clear with both the staff and with the faculty that each one of us is here to support the learner and to support the learner’s success. If that is not what turns you on, please go somewhere else. We are actually now, I think, finding better and better challenges to explicitly integrate faculty thought processes into that old chain of thinking. There is great opportunity to continue to improve there.

Chris Xaver:  The faculty are so engaged, I just called Jerry Halverson for something this week and I expected it would take days if not weeks to get a response and boom, there was my phone ringing and he apologizes for taking so long to get back to me. They are just, they are great, and it is not just him, I mean, it is instructor after instructor where they have really fully seem to care about you.

Steve Shank:  We do talk about Capella experience and we are talking about this along the lines like we are here to honor the potential of our learners and to challenge our learners to be the best they can either, but we are here to be support of not otherwise and that is a set of philosophies that is not necessarily managed across a higher educational institution like we are trying to do that.

Chris Xaver:  I am going to wrap up, but I want to ask you, Steve, what do you want people to know? When someone says, “Oh, I have heard of Capella”, what do you want them to know?

Steve Shank:  Well, what I want them to know is this is an excellent educational experience and if you are hiring a Capella graduate or a Capella learner, you are hiring somebody special.

Chris Xaver:  I like that. I am going to end it with that because I think that is a great way to go out. I am feeling good.

Steve Shank:  Good!

Chris Xaver:  Thank you very much for your time

Steve Shank:  Of course I wish I had your energy.

Chris Xaver:  Well, thank you very much.

Steve Shank:  Thank you, take care, have a great day!

Chris Xaver:  Thank you, and remember, you can always find out more about Capella University at capella.edu.
Total Duration: 20 Minutes.

Chris Xaver:  Hi, I am Chris Xaver and this is Capella Inside Online Education, it is another way you can find out about the people and programs at Capella University. We will talk to faculty and staff about what it is like to earn a degree online and why it might be right for you. We will also talk to some students about their experiences at Capella, how and why they chose Capella, how they are balancing work, school and family, and what tips they may have for you, and we will have a little fun while we are at it.

Joining me today is Sara Orem. Sara is the coauthor of a new book titled ‘Appreciative Coaching: A Positive Process for Change’. She is an adjunct faculty member at Capella University. I would like to try and start by talking about the book, ‘Appreciative Coaching’, but I want to make sure that everybody understands Appreciative Inquiry, so I think we better actually start with AI.

Sara Orem:  Well, that seems like a good place to start. I will tell you that I began to know about Appreciative Inquiry in my own work as a Corporate Organization’s Development Consultant, also a graduate student in a doctoral program, where one of my professors was one of the original creators of Appreciative Inquiry, so I was introduced in the graduate program and I began to use it in my corporate life.

Appreciative Inquiry is a philosophy, and it is a philosophy used primarily in change initiative. The philosophy says that when we explore our past successes, the things that we are most proud of, which include our strengths, but may also be experiences that we have had in the past that really make us feel loyal or proud, or in some way deeply committed to organizations, to ourselves, to causes, then we have much more energy to use those things in order to change, rather than beginning with the problem and trying to solve that problem. So, it is contrasted with a problem focused way of changing, it is a strength focused way of changing.

Chris Xaver:  So, in the context of coaching, had traditional coaching started with a problem?

Sara Orem:  Well, I would say that lot of corporate coaching starts with the probleming, and I am sure that you have at least heard of the boss who calls in the coach, who says please come in and fix this person. I would like to promote them, but they cannot… So, it is your job to help them do… So, you start a relationship with somebody who knows, by the way, that you have been called in to make them a better interpersonal communicator, to help them work on their anger, to be better at details, whatever that something is. Most of us have less energy to work on those things that we see ourselves as not very good at in the first place, then we do to use things that we already feel confident and competent about to be able to apply those things to a change.

Chris Xaver:  That makes some good sense. I know I have been just kind of tapping into coaching a little bit simply because of the strengths focused, I was so excited about that. Coaching from what I am researching was way different than I thought it was going to be, I did not realize how much the coachee helps set the agenda.

Sara Orem:  Oh yes, I think that that is one of the — well, there are some important differences, but it is one of the important differences between coaching and other individual change kinds of relationships, and I include therapy in that. In so far as the coachee, the client really sets the agenda. The client will engage with the coach around something that she or he really wants, and possibly can do on his or her own but has not been able to do it so far.

So, I have clients who are first time supervisors, for instance, and they simply do not have the experience to be really fabulous managers right out of the shoot, but they really want to be, they are committed to being great managers. So, their agenda is, I want to be the very best manager I can be. My job is initially to discover all those things that we might use and leverage in that person’s past in order to help them be the best manager.

Chris Xaver:  To do that, I am reading in the book that there are four stages; discovery, dream, design and destiny, can you go into those?

Sara Orem:  Sure enough. The discovery phase is often the energizer bunny, because we ask four core questions. Those questions are about a peak experience, they include information about the client’s values, and they end with a question about what one or two things does the client want more of or different in her or his life. To see a client’s eyes light up, to see their voice get more energy around talking about the things that they are really proud of in their lives, is really inspiring.

It was in this context that I came to believe that Appreciative Inquiry was a coaching that I really wanted to explore, because I watched groups of people in organizations get really excited about change, where I had watched those very same groups resist change. So, I think this business of engaging each of our stories is a very powerful way to engage our energy, and applying that energy towards the things we want to change.

Chris Xaver:  I have been working with strengths, mainly through the Gallup Organization’s StrengthsQuest, I know you are familiar about that because you wrote about them in your book. It hit us a long time ago, I have been doing this about four years ago, we kept saying why are the two approaches not coming together more? You really are, at least as far as I am aware, one of the first books that are bringing this together, are not you?

Sara Orem:  I cannot swear to that, but I can tell you that I became aware of the other strengths based methodologies — first of all, I had used the early Gallup books, the ‘First, Break All The Rules - Now, Use Your Strength’. I was very, very excited about the strengths based things that Buckingham and others talk about in those books and also in their assessments. I began to use that assessment as well as Seligman’s Assessment from ‘Authentic Happiness’. So, Seligman who created Positive Psychology and the Gallup Organization’s Strengths, as well as the University of Michigan’s Positive Organizational Scholarships, are the three main streams of positive ways of looking at human life cycle, in and outside of organizations, and they are all three, they are good fits together.

Chris Xaver:  I totally see that. I am wondering, how are your clients responding to this, are they as excited about it as I know I was when I found the book?

Sara Orem:  I think individual clients who find their way to us are very excited about it. I would say that sometimes corporations that have come to depend on a problem solving way of going about change are somewhat, if not resistant, at least suspicious, and I would include some of my Capella students in that suspicion or resistance.

I know that I teach a class called Developing and Coaching Others, in which each learner is responsible to go and coach somebody using appreciative Inquiry, using Appreciative Coaching, as their method in a one hour session or in one session. They will mumble that they cannot see how this is possibly going to work, because this person that they are going to coach is completely and patently obviously unable to do something.

So, I just say, all you have to do is experiment. They often come back and tell me that they got to a place that A. Was different from the place they thought they would get to. B. Was better than the place they thought they get to. C. That the client was way more engaged than they had ever engaged this person before in a changed conversation. So, they see by their own experience how well that is going to work.

Chris Xaver:  I work in the SUNY System in the State of New York and we did an Appreciative Inquiry Summit at our institution, and it was the same thing, as soon as we went out and began the process, there were so many people who are like oh no, the flavor d’jour, this is not going to work. At the end it was a complete change. They were so engaged, and they were talking positively about what we do as an institution. To me, that was worth its weight in gold.

Sara Orem:  Absolutely, and I think that that is what happens and that is what I saw Chris, what you saw. When I say in the introduction to the book that my experience with change had been through the time that I began to use Appreciative Inquiry, that I would walk into a room, sometimes with ten people, sometimes with 500 people, and it was my job to say okay, we have to do something differently, something new. I would be greeted by a room full of heads that were not looking in my direction, that were looking at the floor, or the wall, or at some place besides me. People’s arms were sort of universally folded across their chest in a very defensive kind of way of approaching this.

I did not blame them one bit, because I was there to talk about downsizing, I was there to talk about a merger, I was there to talk about something they really did not want to do. Yet, when I began that same ultimate reality with an Appreciative Inquiry set of core questions, people got to that ultimate place in a much more committed, much more creative, much more engaged way.

Chris Xaver:  I totally agree with that. I am hoping that the people who are not familiar with this will give it a chance, sometimes it is our personalities and our excitement that can encourage someone to give it a go, but we cannot do that, we cannot individually go tap on everybody and say try this, just try it. I am hoping that conversations like this will really help spark that. I just wanted to tell you because I actually had not even told you yet, how I did come across your book is one of our Academic Deans here purchased about a dozen copies and handed them out to different people at the institution, many of which are professional tutors and a lot of folks in the counseling office to help them with their engagement with our students.

Sara Orem:  Oh, is not that interesting. I find that interesting for the following reasons. I am in the process of developing a presentation which I will deliver to Capella graduate faculty for just such an outcome. The presentation will be about how to use this method as a base method for faculty-student relationships.

Chris Xaver:  That is so important. I believe that — and I have never really called it coaching, but the time I spend with students, that one-on-one time I spend with them, outside of the classroom is the most important work I do.

Sara Orem:  I agree, I absolutely agree, it allows them to be more effective in the classroom.

Chris Xaver:  Yeah, and really helping them to understand and appreciate what they bring to the table. I think oftentimes nobody has really done that with them before, have not really talked to them about what is working for you.

Sara Orem:  I think particularly in a new situation, and I consider being a freshman in college or being a first year graduate student or being a first year doctoral student to be a new situation, it calls up all of our fear about what it is that we would not be able to do, and to remind people that they have the skills and ability, that they have the experience that they can bring to bear on this new experience, I think really can help them to build their confidence much more quickly.

Chris Xaver:  I am about out of time but I do want to make sure that I have given you the opportunity to talk about the parts of your book and your work, both in your own organization and at Capella, that you want people to know, so is there anything that additionally you would like to add?

Sara Orem:  Well, one loose thread that we have is that you asked me to describe all four stages of Appreciative Inquiry and I think I launched into discovery without taking us through the whole cycle. So, discovery is the place where we really explore our past experience.

Then dream is one of my favorite parts of the cycle, because dream is where we articulate the big picture of what we want for our future. I tell people in the book and in my life and in my coaching practice, that dream is so much bigger than a goal. A goal is part of a dream, but a dream is the whole portrait; it has color, it has dimension, it has life. So, the second phase of Appreciative Inquiry is where we create that link.

Design, the third phase, is where we put action steps, where we put implementable experiments and practices to that dream, so that we begin to walk in the direction of that wholly created picture.

Destiny is when we begin to see ourselves in that picture, when we are acting into our future in such a way that we really are living partially or entirely within that dream.

So, that really completes the cycle of both Appreciative Inquiry and Appreciative Coaching. I have used Appreciative Coaching as my own method of coaching at Capella as a coach for the last five years as coach of Masters program. I have used it certainly since the publication of the book much more consciously because I can now refer to something that is in print in my coursework at Capella, both as a professor in the Masters program and in the Doctoral program at Capella. I certainly use it consciously in the comprehensive process because I there mentor learners one-to-one through the comprehensive exam process of their doctoral program.

Chris Xaver:  I just do not want let this go on the dream, because you really — you brought something to the forefront of my mind when I am working with students, and that is where I am in the role of coach for them. I find that they really self limit their dreams. Based upon whatever they have been told in the past, oh, I cannot do that, I am not good enough, I am not smart enough, I do not have the money for that, I do not have the opportunity, whatever, and I think that appreciative style can really help them break out of that. They are already telling themselves I cannot do this before they even started, even though they have kind of dreamt it, they will not allow themselves to dream it fully.

Sara Orem:  I think that we have been limited perhaps by our own creativity, but as we grow we are certainly limited by teachers who say it is not realistic for you to think you can do that, by parents who want us to have a good paying job and do not want us to be starving artists or whatever it is, people who have our very best in their intentions. So, I do not want to say that teachers are trying to break us down or that parents are either, but I think because people want us to live in reality, want us to be able to support ourselves, want us to be self-supporting and self directing human beings, they sometimes cut our boundaries pretty, pretty close.

So, I think often it is the role of the coach and particularly the appreciative coach to say break down those boundaries. For our initial discussion this dream does not have to be doable in this moment, it does not have to be doable in this year, it only has to be creatable in your mind.

Chris Xaver:  I have so loved that chapter, that section of the book, I was just so engrossed in that because I just feel as though that is the first barrier that they put up with me is the dream. So, it is just awesome. At least with my students discovery seems be an issue too, but the dream is where I am looking forward to working more with this.

I am so excited to have spent some time with you today talking about this subject, because I just think, as more and more people learn and appreciate the positive and understand that we can solve problems but in a positive way, is not that awesome?

Sara Orem:  Yes, it sure is.

Chris Xaver:  Thank you so much for joining me, Sara.

Sara Orem:  You are so very welcome Chris, I hope you have a great day.

Chris Xaver: Oh, I will, you too.

Sara Orem:  Alright.

Chris Xaver:  I am Chris Xaver, thanks for listening and we will talk to you soon. Remember, you can always find out more about Capella University online at Capella.edu.
Total Duration: 20 Minutes.

Chris Xaver:  Hi, I am Chris Xaver, and this is Capella Inside Online Education; it is another way you can find out about the people and programs at Capella University. We will talk to faculty and staff about what it is like to earn a degree online and why it might be right for you; we will also talk to some students about their experiences at Capella, how and why they chose Capella, how they are balancing work, school and family and what tips they may have for you; and we will have a little fun while we are at it. Joining me today is Carla Chladek, a Capella University student who was recently named Program Manager for the Joint Training Program at the Pentagon. First of all, congratulations!

Carla Chladek:  Thank you.

Chris Xaver:  And you know, I also need to know a little bit more about what you do; I see in my press release that you are a Program Manager of staff training programs at the Pentagon, but what does that person do?

Carla Chladek:  It is actually the joint staff, and what I do is I manage the training program for the entire joint staff, which is about 2000 people, and I work under the Secretary of the Joint Staff, and we support the Chairman of the Joint Staff, General Peter Pace who reports to the President and gives strategic and military advice to him on what we should be doing — military advice on the world. And so, what I do is, I have several different training courses available to the staff, and most of our staff are high ranking officers. So, we are not training them on those little silly things. We really bring them up to a hands on level, “This is what you have to do” kind of thing, and we give them — right now we have a standard three-day course that everybody who comes under the Joint Staff must go through it.

It is like an orientation but it is not your standard, you know, “Here is your benefit to this type of orientation,” instead it is, “This is what your job is going to be like at the Pentagon,” and we go through a lot of computer exercises and briefings on security and how the Pentagon operates and how — for example, how you behave at one meeting versus another meeting, how you create briefings for those meetings? It is a huge transition for these people coming into the Pentagon because they are used to being in charge of something - it is usually something major, like 300 people or something like that, and a lot of them, they have been in Iraq and things like that and they have been the boss there, and when they get to the Pentagon, they have gone from being the boss to usually one of the lower ranking people on the totem pole because there are so many high ranking people there, that it is a very difficult transition, and we try to help them through that by giving them the tools and the skills that they need to adjust and survive their two to three years at the Pentagon.

Chris Xaver:  And these folks are all military people, right?

Carla Chladek:  No, I would say probably 80 percent are military and they are from all the services. We have people from the Air Force, the Army, Marines, Navy and a few Coast Guardsmen, and then we also have government civilians and they have to also come to our program, and then we have some contractors come in as well.

Chris Xaver:  How many people do you end up training each year?

Carla Chladek:  This past year, it was over 800; it was close to 900 people.

Chris Xaver:  That is a lot of people.

Carla Chladek:  Yeah, and we are a staff of four so…

Chris Xaver:  I thought I had big classes when I was in a traditional brick and mortar university. I think you might have some big classes too.

Carla Chladek:  Yeah, we stay very, very busy; even when they say we have our downtime at the holidays, we really are not down. We are busy preparing for the next big season of training, so…

Chris Xaver:  But you are busy personally as well because I am reading that you are working on your second Masters Degree from Capella right now?

Carla Chladek:  Actually at the time the press release was written, I was, and about a month ago, I decided to not do the second Masters and I decided to go for the PhD. So, I am working on my PhD now.

Chris Xaver:  So, there is just a little bit more work; I am a doctoral student.

Carla Chladek:  Yeah, surely killing me now.

Carla Chladek:  I am a doctoral student, you are cracking me up, it is like, “No, I decided not to do this.” I thought, oh, okay she has decided one Masters degree was enough. I did not realize you would say, “No, I am working on my Doctorate now.” I am thoroughly convinced Doctorate work is not any harder than Masters work; it is just ten times more involved - it is just so much more. I am in the middle of my comprehensive exams right now, and I have been living and breathing this process, and wow, I never did that as a Masters student.

Chris Xaver:  Yeah, as a Masters student I really tried hard to learn everything, because when I got my Bachelor’s degree — I hate to admit it, but I really just wanted to get the degree so I can move on, and I did not spend a lot of time actually learning the information beyond the text or the paper, whatever, and I really regretted that when I got into the workforce. So, when I went for my first Masters degree, I was intent on learning the information and getting it down because I needed to make sure that I knew what I was doing. And now I feel like four times bad that I have to be able to know this because how can you be a PhD person and not know what you are doing?

Chris Xaver:  It is completely different; I totally agree with you. I have got a — I had almost a 4.0 for my Bachelors degree, and I can remember almost none of it - and I did it really fast.

Carla Chladek:  Yeah, I did it in two-and-a-half years.

Chris Xaver:  Yes, I did the same thing and I had a child and I was intent on getting that under my belt so I could move on to my Masters — and it was when I got to the Masters, and now of course at the Doctorate level that I really, really cared about knowing the information - and I know that is horrible. I do not recommend that to anybody, but it really makes a big difference - and you have to learn it at this level because you spend so much more time with it.

Carla Chladek:  Right, I think that it is so normal though because everybody I talk to says the same thing about their Bachelors, and they remember maybe one or two key things from their four-year degree, and once you get to your Masters, you care; you are spending money and you care and you want to learn it because you want to succeed in life and you want to do better at work and know this stuff. And you do not want to be called a fraud either, because if somebody asks you something, the last thing you can do is say, “I don’t know.”

Chris Xaver:  I have a degree in that but I have no idea what you are talking about - yeah I know. That is probably not a good plan.

Carla Chladek:  Yeah.

Chris Xaver:  Alright, so you said, you know, you want to know something, you want to have this under your belt, you want to succeed; it sounds to me like you are succeeding with at least your first degree, and in the press release it said that your salary has increased 40 percent in a single year?

Carla Chladek:  Yeah it did. It is amazing. I mean, I started — after my Bachelors degree I started at the very, very bottom of where you can start with salaries. I took the best first job I could find and I went with it, and I was lucky because I had some wonderful mentors and I got great experience there but it is kind of — when you get a 5 percent raise, people say, “Oh, that is great,” but 5 percent is nothing.

Chris Xaver:  Is nothing.

Carla Chladek:  You know so, it seemed like it was taking forever to move up, and when I decided to do the Masters Degree, I said, I have got to do this so that I can move further along. And when I — I had not even graduated with my Masters, I was two weeks off from graduating, and I had gotten a job offer and I said, “Hmm, what should I do?” And it was very hard for me to negotiate that because I did not realize what I was worth. And so, I negotiated very low because I changed careers and I did go higher than the salary I had at the time but it still was very low and it was very unfulfilling financially. And so, within about nine months I actually was — I guess they call them headhunters, hunted down by somebody, and I was not interested in changing jobs at all because I was happy, and I was blown away at the offer. And I thought, “Is that what I am worth?” And I thought — so then I said, “Well, no, that is not enough.” So they offered me more and I was like, “What? Are you kidding me?” And so, then my mom said, “What are you doing? Take it.” So I took it and I did the math and it was like 38.9 percent or something was the increase in salary and it was just unbelievable.

Chris Xaver:  But more importantly, you are working in your area of expertise though now, because your Masters was in Training and Performance Improvement, right?

Carla Chladek:  Yes.

Chris Xaver:  I took — I am in higher education leadership, and I took a couple of courses in TPI; and I have to tell you, I got really excited about it and I thought, “Man! If I had to do it all over again, I might have chosen that route. I really like it.”

Carla Chladek:  I love it, I absolutely love it. It is hard to pick a Masters because my Bachelors is in Russian language and Linguistics and International Business; and I did absolutely nothing with that, it went nowhere. So, I thought well, what do I want to do, what do I want to be in, yet going through all the listings of all the careers out there, and I know that I like to fix things; I like things that are — processes that are broken, I like them to work better and I like to find a solution, and I got a Creative Problem Solver Award from a company I worked for once several years ago and I was like, “I really am a good problem solver, how do I put that to good use?” And when I was reading about training and performance improvement, it seemed like a natural move forward because I was doing technical writing, which is like a paper form of training in a sense and it just all flows so naturally, and I just fell in love with training and performance improvement. I love it.

Chris Xaver:  It is a wonderful thing to go to work each day and like what you do.

Carla Chladek:  Yes.

Chris Xaver:  Now, the Doctorate then, is it in the same field or a complementary field?

Carla Chladek:  It is in the same field; I was doing a second Masters in Adult and Post Secondary Education, and that is when I really realized how much I love Training and Performance Improvement because it is so different, doing college level things and not to put it down or anything. It is just a completely different mindset and a whole new set of rules that you have to deal with; and I just realized that you know what, this is not for me. This whole Post Secondary Education thing is not for me. I like the corporate stuff, I like looking at how to make people’s lives easier, how to make businesses run more efficiently; that is really where I belong. So, I flipped back over to the PhD and continued on the Training and Performance Improvement.

Chris Xaver:  But that is a wonderful thing that you can do that; you can shop a little bit and check it out and say, “Okay, I would rather do this.”

Carla Chladek:  Yes, and I was really glad that Capella had that opportunity for me to do that because otherwise it would have been such a waste of time and effort, had they not allowed me to test the waters, I guess.

Chris Xaver:  One of the things, because Capella is fairly new — online learning is fairly new, one of the things I am always concerned about when I tell people I am from Capella and they say, “I have never heard of it,” first of all, I always say, “You will”. But secondly, how are you finding that you are in the workforce? I am in academia, so a lot of our folks are aware of Capella University because it is a wonderful alternative for us. More than a thousand educators have chosen Capella for either their Masters or their Doctoral degrees, but how about business and industry? Are they receptive to Capella in your experience?

Carla Chladek:  I have not had anybody who has not been receptive; and I think the thing is, because what I have noticed is that most employers, at least the larger employers that you deal with, they all have some sort of tuition reimbursement plan for their employees, and when they do, HR is very involved in making sure that the universities and colleges are accredited — a lot of the students go to Capella, and most every single HR department you talk to knows who Capella is, because of the tuition reimbursement thing that they do with their Benefits Program and that alone I think has put Capella on the map with different businesses and showing that, “Hey, this is a real university, this is not just something that somebody found on the Internet one day and thought they would play.”

Chris Xaver:  Right, right — and that is really true. When they are putting out the money for it, they want some bang for their buck; they do not want this to be a paper degree.

Carla Chladek:  Yeah, exactly.

Chris Xaver:  It is interesting that you say that businesses do that because you are working in a military environment, and the military seems to have really taken hold of Capella and understands its worth as well.

Carla Chladek:  Oh, absolutely — I mean, the military has an immense need for online learning, because so many people are deployed right now it is just ridiculous. And they want their soldiers and their airmen and marines and sailors to all have educations, and they pay for those educations for them, and the thing is, they cannot get promoted without having some sort of education. And if they are deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever, their only source for education is either online learning or correspondence education — and correspondence stuff is slow, very difficult and tedious and it is usually not as helpful because the inner activity that you get online, all of that is so much better for those soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who are overseas, and they can always pick up where they left off if they have — they can do it any time of the day, it does not matter.

Chris Xaver:  And it really — there is a classroom environment in this online program; I was really stunned with that, I did not expect it. I thought I would feel very far away from my colleagues, and instead I felt very close to them.

Carla Chladek:  Yeah, actually I have made — one of my best friends, I made online, and during my first Masters degree we still talk and we send gifts and we have never met in person. It is crazy; I know people think that it is a little strange, but it is just, we have something in common, we both pursued degrees, and you get to know each other and what you like and what you do not like and you get a rapport with people.

Chris Xaver:  Well, going back to the military comment, you were in the Army Reserves?

Carla Chladek:  I was in the Army Reserve.

Chris Xaver:  So, you are very familiar with the military lifestyle?

Carla Chladek:  Yes.

Chris Xaver:  Okay, I understand that, my family, we have military all over and I certainly understand how much they benefit from online learning. My stepson is doing the same thing and he was deployed to Afghanistan and he needed a way to be able to connect.

Carla Chladek:  Yes.

Chris Xaver:  Yeah, it is really interesting. Well, I have loved this conversation with you; I just cannot believe where we have gone with it; we have gone round in six different directions and I have had so much fun. Just what advice do you have for somebody who is maybe on the fence; they are considering pursuing an online degree or they are considering just more education. What do you want them to know?

Carla Chladek:  Well, that is hard because I was on the fence with all of the degrees I have gotten, and I guess one day you just kind of realize, if you do not take the first step, you are never going to move forward. And the worst that can happen is, you say, “I tried it, I did not like it and I am going to do something else.” And so far I have tried it a whole bunch of times obviously and I have liked it every time, and it is almost addictive for me. I think anytime you can learn something new, you are bettering yourself and you are giving yourself more credibility, especially at work because having my degrees from Capella and doing the real world work that you do with Capella, not just some text book case scenario — everybody does the same thing, but actually taking your own work and using it as your projects, it just changes everything; it makes everything realistic and meaningful for you as a student and at work. And people at work, your boss, they love it that you are doing this stuff for them for free because Capella is giving you that option to do it and they get a free something out of it depending on what the project is.

Chris Xaver:  It is the most incredible experience in my mind to be able to do something for a class that is immediately applicable at my work.

Carla Chladek:  Yes.

Chris Xaver:  It just changes the dynamic; it does not feel like homework then, it feels like, “I am helping out, I am contributing.”

Carla Chladek:  Yeah, it is a real project, and I do not feel like at the end of the day I have to be ready for a test because for people who are not good test takers — and I am not really a great test taker, I hate preparing for them — this is perfect because I have a chance to think about my ideas, synthesize them, research them, put them on paper, get feedback from not just my instructor, but all of my classmates, and everybody is very supportive. I mean it is the nicest group of people you ever wanted to work with because everybody wants to be there and everybody wants to do well.

Chris Xaver:  And everybody is in the same boat; most of us are all working professionals who are trying to squeeze this in with life and children and jobs and all of that and we all appreciate how much effort it is.

Carla Chladek:  Yes, absolutely; and it is just a fun experience; it really is. It is a nice distraction from everything else that I do in life, it is nice to go there and have this different world, and it is all mine; it is.

Chris Xaver:  Spoken like a mother who is sharing a lot.

Carla Chladek:  Yeah, nobody else can have it, it is just mine.

Chris Xaver:  I lock myself in the bathroom with my computer, and it is my time friends.

Carla Chladek:  Yeah, it is true; it is true, with the dog barking and the kids wants to eat this or that and you just say, you know what, I have got to think about something real quick here and type it up - and it is nice, it is fulfilling.

Chris Xaver:  Well, you have inspired me. I really — I am rooting 18:12 for you, I know you are going to get that doctorate. I can just hear it now.

Carla Chladek:  Me too.

Chris Xaver:  You will do it because it sounds to me like you have achieved all of your dreams and your goals so far.

Carla Chladek:  Oh, thanks.

Chris Xaver:  Well, Carla thank you so much for spending time with us.

Carla Chladek:  Oh, thank you very much.

Chris Xaver:  I am Chris Xaver, thanks for listening and we’ll talk to you soon; and remember, you can always find out more about Capella University online at capella.edu.
Total Duration: 19 Minutes.

Chris Xaver:  Hi! I am Chris Xaver and this is Capella Inside Online Education. It is another way you can find out about the people and programs at Capella University. We will talk to faculty and staff about what it is like to earn a degree online and why it might be right for you. We will also talk to some students about their experiences at Capella, how and why they chose Capella, how they are balancing work, school, and family and what tips they may have for you and we will have a little fun while we are at it.

Joining me today is, Dr. Carla Thomas. Dr. Thomas is a family practice physician in Alabama. She got her undergraduate degree from Yale, her MD from Harvard and she is now in Capella’s PhD program in Healthcare Administration. So, if it is okay I would love to start. I just want to ask you some questions about why are you at Capella?

Dr. Carla Thomas:  Oh, it is because I want to have some validation of expertise in a field.

Chris Xaver:  Why? What do you plan to do with that?

Dr. Carla Thomas:  I am going to explore Emergency Management and Long-Term Care.

Chris Xaver:  Okay. So, you are just by way of background to let our listeners know you are a family physician?

Dr. Carla Thomas:  Yes.

Chris Xaver:  And you are in Alabama?

Dr. Carla Thomas:  Yes.

Chris Xaver:  And you got your undergraduate degree from Yale and your MD from Harvard?

Dr. Carla Thomas:  Correct, and the BS degree was in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. So, I have had a lot of experience with experimental research, scientific method but not much with social research. So, I really felt the need to go back and learn that part of  field of Long-Term Care and Emergency Management.

Chris Xaver:  So, your PhD is in Healthcare Administration?

Dr. Carla Thomas:  Yes.

Chris Xaver:  Now, I have to wonder, you went to two of  the best schools in the world, were you nervous about coming to Capella?

Dr. Carla Thomas:  No.

Chris Xaver:  Why not?

Dr. Carla Thomas:  First of all, I have been out of school for 20 years, so my need to continue my education, I was the driving force and this venue was perfect for me. I could do homework at 2’o clock in the morning; I could have communication with people from all over the world, what could be better than that?

Chris Xaver:  I so agree. I am a PhD student myself and I love the fact that I can logon when I am up and ready and I know we had a little problem connecting this morning, you have got kids?

Dr. Carla Thomas: Yes.

Chris Xaver:  You have to get the kids off to the bus.

Dr. Carla Thomas:  That is well, in this case you have to get them up, getting them to the bus is a second part.

Chris Xaver:  So, I am assuming your life is very, very full. You have kids, you have a medical practice and if I understand right you even offer free medical care at your clinic?

Dr. Carla Thomas:  That is right, that is right.

Chris Xaver:  That is a lot. I mean, it is a lot on your plate.

Dr. Carla Thomas:  I know that I have other dreams, other goals and I have reached a lot of my goals that I have set out to do and now it is time to move on.

Chris Xaver:  Is one of those goals perhaps one day to be Surgeon General of the U.S.?

Dr. Carla Thomas:  One of the goals is to be Surgeon General? Yes.

Chris Xaver:  It sounds like you might be able to achieve that.

Dr. Carla Thomas:  So, I am certainly working on it,  I understand it may not happen tomorrow but I also understand what you need to be good at that position and I know I do not have those qualifications just yet and that is what I need to work on right now.

Chris Xaver:  Will you compare for me your schooling, I mean, obviously Medical School is very different but, the rigor of what you are doing at Capella with what you have done at Yale and Harvard?

Dr. Carla Thomas:  The rigor is different, I mean, in college, it is classroom you are seeing somebody eyeball to eyeball and you are with the other people who are also struggling whereas the online experience really broaden your horizons, you are communicating with people using other venues, other methods and so there is greater networking but also the potential for more of loneliness, so those are the two things you have to balance.

Chris Xaver:  Have you been to any of the Colloquia yet?

Dr. Carla Thomas:  Yes, yes the first time I went I was an absolute wall flower and it was very exhilarating because my modus operandi initially was to get through it, and then I met Dr. Nova and after that I became a friend with people and began to see myself as less of an island and more as an interlocking, continent with other learners and so that was very much of an eye opener for me.

Chris Xaver:  I really needed Colloquia to really feel connected and once time I went, I went, oh, my goodness and now I have friends all over the world that I made at Colloquia..

Dr. Carla Thomas:  That is right, friends forever.

Chris Xaver:  I agree with you and I am excited about that because I think it is just a wonderful thing to have all those folks kind of rooting for you. They are in your corner.

Dr. Carla Thomas:  Yes.

Chris Xaver:  What do you want people to know, people who are on the fence, going I do not know, my life is very busy, I have a lot going on, I do not know if I can squeeze in an advanced degree?

Dr. Carla Thomas:  What is my advice to them or how would I inspire them?

Chris Xaver:  Yes.

Dr. Carla Thomas:  Well, and I have been thinking about this as well. I have certain employees who really have a potential to go on and do something academically but they feel like they are too busy. And I though this is the perfect selling point because with the online environment, you can move around your time if you are good at time management. It does require that. If you are willing to sacrifice a little bit of your income and sacrifice a little bit of your free time, you can do it and the other thing to remember is, even if you do not get an A+ on every assignment, that is okay, that is okay; go through the process and even though you cannot give it a 110% all the time, go through the process and you will find that you start doing better and better. I do not get A+s on every paper because I cannot spend 24×7 working on it but I can get the major part of the assignment done and I can understand what they are trying to get us to see in terms of, for example, I had a question the other day about explaining to me the theory of Emergency Management and I thought, I do not know how to do that and so I had to work at that and filing.

Now I know what the instructor was saying, the theoretical framework means something to me now. I still do not get perfect grip on it but it is a process that you have to go through and it does not happen overnight but it happens little steps at a time. And even if you do not quite get your foot 100% on the step, take the step and that is really the best point for me is to become — have a fuller grasp of the concept of what we are trying to do. It is just one thing to be on the front line which is what I am but it is another thing to understand how to improve the front line but you cannot do when you ride up against the tree; you have to step back a little bit and get a sense of the forest and that is what Capella teaches you to do, step back, get a sense of the forest, otherwise we keep doing the same things and we think we are doing them the best way we can, but that is not necessarily  true.

Chris Xaver:  You are so right. Sometimes we are so close that we cannot see that big picture.

Dr. Carla Thomas:  Right!

Chris Xaver:  You sound like you are on the move and I understand that because you are a very busy lady so I am going to keep it fairly short. I do want to add to what you said. I just thought it was so right on that grades at this level do not seem to be as much of an issue at least in my life as well. I do not care so much about getting an A+, all I ask myself at the end is, did I understand it?

Dr. Carla Thomas:  Yes, yes.

Chris Xaver:  Did I learn? That is an important thing for me. Well, Dr. Thomas, I can hear you are getting ready to hop in  that car and I know you have got places to go so I thank  you,  so very much for spending time with us. Any last word of wisdom you want for anyone?

Dr. Carla Thomas:  Do not give up and I am going to quote one of my professors, Dr. Clive Burn (ph), be (Inaudible) and not be fair breathing quick hair, be the (Inaudible) one step at a time.

Chris Xaver:  Taking one step at a time, I got it. Dr. Thomas, thank you so much.

Dr. Carla Thomas:  You are welcome!

Chris Xaver:  And thanks for listening and whenever you can always find out more about more about Capella University online at Capella.edu.

Announcer:  This presentation has been brought to you by Capella University. It may not be retransmitted or used for any commercial purposes without expressed or written consent.
Total Duration: 10 Minutes.

Chris Xaver:  Hi, I am Chris Xaver and this is Capella Inside Online Education. It is another way you can find out about the people and programs at Capella University. We will talk to faculty and staff about what it is like to earn a degree online and why it might be right for you. We will also talk to some students about their experiences at Capella, how and why they chose Capella, how they are balancing work, school and family and what tips they may have for you; and we will have a little fun while we are at it. Joining me today is Judy Kenny; she is a Capella PhD student who is in Iraq. She is living, working and studying in Iraq. The first question I really have is, “Why are you in Iraq working on your PhD?”

Judy Kenney:  Well, I had a great employment opportunity that led me to Iraq to be able to support the troops that we have over here. As you can imagine, there is a number of civilians who are over here supporting the troops, making sure that they have a place to sleep, great food to eat and things like that so all of those niceties are taken care of, and those employees actually need support as well. So, I actually provide part of the HR function, which is more employee relations to ensure that employees are able to resolve conflict or if they have any concerns, they have someone that they could bring them to.

Chris Xaver:  Are you in the military?

Judy Kenney:  No I am not; I am a civilian over here.

Chris Xaver:  And who do you work for?

Judy Kenney:  I actually work for KBR; KBR is the company that I work for. KBR actually stands for Kellogg Brown and Root; that is the company that I work for, that provides those services to the troops.

Chris Xaver:  So, you are an employee relations specialist?

Judy Kenney:  Yes, that is correct.

Chris Xaver:  Okay, how long do you envision staying in Iraq?

Judy Kenney:  For the, I would say, indefinite future; I am enjoying what I am doing right now and I really plan to stay over here as long as I enjoy it. I really like the fact that I am able to still pursue my degree. My desire is to actually finish my degree while I am over here, and then when I return to the States, I will return with this great wonderful experience as well as my degree being completed. So that is my goal.

Chris Xaver:  And you did not start your degree over in Iraq though right? You started it here when you were at States side?

Judy Kenney:  I started the degree back in 2003 in Atlanta, and it is wonderful that it is an online program, because it has afforded me the opportunity to be able to be mobile and at the same time still continue my pursuits there educationally.

Chris Xaver:  Well, if I read right, you actually started it in Atlanta and have moved a couple of times before you landed in Iraq.  

Judy Kenney:  Yes, that is correct. Well, actually prior to coming onboard here in Iraq, I was actually located in Toledo, Ohio for about a year. And so, it has actually been a wonderful opportunity, and it is one of the considerations that I had prior to selecting the particular program that I wanted to work on because I wanted to have that flexibility and not feel like I could not leave a city or a specific location because of the program that I was in.

Chris Xaver:  You are doing what I am doing; I am also in the PhD program. Yours is in Organization and Management with a specialization in Human Resources, and mine is very aligned to my current position as well. Do you find that Scholar-Practitioner Model to be awesome like I do?

Judy Kenney:  Yes I do. Absolutely; from that standpoint, I think that there is a lot of benefit to having that practical experience and being able to apply that and learn various scholarly approaches to things. For me, I think it has actually enhanced my ability to do my job, my critical thinking and the different things that I look forward to support some of my thoughts. I think that has been changed by pursuing this degree, but in the long term I think it is really going to help me when I pursue, which is my next goal, is to be an online professor. And I think that when I am an online instructor, my students will be able to benefit from the fact that I have hands on practical experience as well as the academic side of it as well. So, I am looking forward to being able to merge both of those backgrounds and help my students ultimately.

Chris Xaver:  I think it is fascinating; you say you want to be an online instructor, because I do teach online, but that — I have been doing that prior to when I became a learner at Capella. And I am a much better online instructor now than I ever was, when I was just a traditional brick and mortar instructor, because I understand now what I need as a learner.

Judy Kenney:  Absolutely; I can agree from that standpoint. I was actually fortunate at one time, I taught a hybrid class, which was a combination of online and class studies for a particular university, and when I went through that process, I felt the same way as an online learner, I felt like I knew exactly what the students needed regarding support and things like that. So, I think really in the future, when we look at online instructors, individuals that have that online experience firsthand, because they have obtained their degrees that way, will be extremely valuable, because we will know exactly what — like you said, what students need, what they are going through, some of the challenges of pursuing their degree that way.
Chris Xaver:  Speaking of what students need, has it been difficult at all for you? I mean, when we started this interview, you sent me an email and it says, “Now wait a minute, the lines might be down,” - you know that sort of stuff. Has it been difficult for you at all keeping up in the courseroom or with the classes?

Judy Kenney:  I think my challenges are probably more frequent than the average person obviously, you know, if you are not in Iraq trying to do it. Occasionally our systems may be down, but the good thing about being over here for me is, there is a time difference. So, when individuals here are asleep, and if the systems come apart, it might be daytime in the States, so I am still able to get some things done. That is a great thing about being online, is 24 hours a day, seven days a week, as long as you can get a signal.

So, if I am a little behind and I cannot work on something for a couple of hours, I still have the flexibility that I can work on it a little later that day, or even the next day, maybe putting four hours instead of the two hours that I actually planned on putting in on a particular day. So from that standpoint, it just really works out for me, and I think that if I had a class that I had to attend on an ongoing basis, I would not be able to do that obviously because of the geographic location, but also because I would not be able to predict when issues happen. And occasionally, there are things that prohibit me from being able to sign on to take a class, but that flexibility, I have really encountered very minimal issues with that, so I feel extremely fortunate.

Chris Xaver:  I would assume because of that, you learn to plan ahead.

Judy Kenney:  Absolutely; and I always say that one of the things that I learnt — probably the greatest lesson learnt from this whole process is not to wait until the last minute. I think when I was — yes, absolutely, when I was very new to the program, I found myself — if there was a ‘by midnight deadline’, I would find myself hours before, trying to wrap things up. But I learnt that that is not the best thing to do, because even when I was in the States, you could have a technical problem, something that would happen - and it would not be the Capella side, it would be something like my local Internet Provider, or some issue with weather at home or something like that that would keep me from being able to do it.

So I just learnt not to wait until the last minute, try to do as much as I possibly could ahead of time, and then maybe even start working on the stuff for the following week - and that is a wonderful thing about being online, because you can actually do that. Most of the time, you can start reading ahead, you can start working on things, because you know from week to week exactly what you are going to be doing, and that is all laid out for you in the very beginning of the course. So, I tried to really do that to stay ahead of the game as much as I possibly could, and that actually paid off; so after a short period of time, I think I got into a rhythm and I had my system in terms of how I did things, and that was wonderful.

Chris Xaver:  You know you said that you know what is coming, because it is all laid out ahead of you, and that is on the Capella side, and that is a wonderful thing, because what we do not know and I am sure what you really do not know is what your workday is going to be like.

Judy Kenney:  Absolutely not, I do not; the only thing that I do know is, what to do from Capella and when. But I might have on a particular day, like I said my schedule, I might plan that I am going to dedicate two or three hours on that particular day to my studies; and then I find out that something else happens and I am unable to do that, which means the next day, I may need to double up or put in some extra hours over the week in order to get things done. But the good thing is, I know what is going on in terms of the courseroom for that week, and I can also plan for what I want to do the next week if I think that it will give me more flexibility the following week. Maybe I will just work really, really hard this week and just fall into the next week knowing that even though I have worked hard this week, next week might be a much lighter week given the assignments that I have.

Chris Xaver:  But your work in Iraq, if I am reading right, you can often do 12 hour-days; you routinely do 80-hour weeks.

Judy Kenney:  Yes, on an ongoing basis, I work 84 hours a week, which is 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

Chris Xaver:  And Judy, you are getting a PhD while working that many hours?

Judy Kenney:  Yes. It is a little insane for me, but fortunate for me. The particular program that I selected was something that I like and something that I enjoy; Human Resources is really for me; I think it is the perfect career field for me, because I really thoroughly enjoy what I am doing. And the other positive thing too is the job and the position that I have over here and the service that I am able to provide. I feel really good about that as well. So, it is not exhausting work, and at the end of the day I may be a little fatigued just because 12 plus hours a day is kind of rough, but I am really excited about getting online and doing the research and trying to fine tune things as it relates to the point of the program that I am in currently.

Chris Xaver:  Well, tell me a little bit more about over there and the work that you are doing; you are actually on a military base?

Judy Kenney:  Yes I am; I am on a military base, and actually support the civilians that we have here. There are a large number of civilians that we have in Iraq that help to support the troops. And as you can imagine, just like any other employer, you have employees that might have matters that they wish to have addressed, whether it is training that they are in need of, or if there is questions that they have about management, coworkers. Sometimes there is conflict and you need someone who can actually help to resolve those conflicts; and that is basically what I do in terms of employee relations. I help to try to be proactive to address things, and also at times I may serve in a — basically I am in investigative capacity to look into concerns and allegations that people might have from time to time, investigate them and provide recommendations to senior management to decide how we move forward to resolve that issue.

Chris Xaver:  I guess Iraq is in the news big time right now, and I am sure all of our listeners right now are worried about your safety.

Judy Kenney:  I feel fine where I am currently; I have no concerns about safety. I think our military does a wonderful job keeping us safe. I feel very positive, but I know that I am probably not the typical person, because I think the average person probably would not even embark on this type of adventure. They probably would think I was insane for coming over here, but I think my prior military background really has made me somewhat fearless in terms of this. I mean, I was fortunate enough, maybe a little more than ten years ago, I was actually in Turkey, and here in the Middle East when I was in the Air Force. So, just like coming back to an area that I was quite familiar with, so no concerns on my part.

Chris Xaver:  Just a quick question about where you were in Turkey? Were you in Ankara by chance?

Judy Kenney:  I was outside of Ankara in an area called — really it is Adana, Turkey, and Incirlik was the Air Force Base where I was located at.                

Chris Xaver:  I have been to your Air Force base, a part of operation Northern Watch; I was living with one of the Lieutenant Commanders who did the PR there. So I have spent some time there; it is a wonderful part of the world.

Judy Kenney:  Yes it is, and I was telling someone that you just would not believe it, when I was there, I remember the beach. There was a couple of beaches that we went to, and they were just gorgeous, and you would never just think it because there is a lot of things that we do not see in the media and — until we get the opportunity to expand our horizons and visit some of those places. So I really enjoyed Turkey a lot.

Chris Xaver:  And it really changes your perspective when you go over. I mean, I was very worried when I traveled to Turkey; “Oh my goodness, it this dangerous, I am going to be staying on an Air Force Base in Incirlik. This is very, very scary.” And when I got there it was not at all what I expected.

Judy Kenney:  No, not at all; but I am somewhat a world traveler; a few years back, maybe about two and a half years ago, I went to Israel, spent a couple of weeks in Israel — and this is post 9/11, so a lot of people said, “Well, why would you go there,” and I went to visit on a trip there. I have been several places in Africa, other places in Europe, England, France, in the military as well as just civilian travel. So, I really enjoyed that — and that is one of the positive things about being over here, the company that I work for, they are really good about allowing us a few times a year that we can actually travel away from this environment. We can go home, we can travel and see Europe if we like and I really plan to see more of the world while I am here and have plans in March to go to Thailand because I have never been to Thailand. So, I am going there.    

Chris Xaver:  Well, you are talking to the Thailand Queen; I am a Tsunami survivor from Phuket, Thailand. So, when you are ready to go Judy, you reconnect with me; my son lives in Thailand and I will connect you with all of the right places.

Judy Kenney:  Oh, sounds wonderful; I am looking forward to it.

Chris Xaver:  That sounds wonderful. Well, I so have enjoyed this conversation with you. I am sorry to have to bring it to a close. I think I found a kindred spirit, and believe me I am going to send you some information on Thailand. I am going back there myself very soon in about two months. So I am just — I am loving your spirit for life, your zest, the fact that I am talking to you from Iraq right this moment — and girl, you are fearless.

Judy Kenney:  Thank you very much; well thank you very much for having me. I have enjoyed the conversation as well, and if there is anything that I can say to your listeners regarding travels or regarding living life to its fullest or pursuing online education, I can just say that for me it has been one of the best decisions that I made to pursue that degree online. It has allowed me the flexibility that has really paid off. I can imagine, if I had enrolled in a brick and mortar school, I probably would have dropped out of school several times already. I just really think that that was a really good decision for me, and I am looking forward to graduating next year. So, I have my fingers crossed.

Chris Xaver:  You are on track.

Judy Kenney:  So thank you very much- thank you.     

Chris Xaver:  Thank you Judy. I am Chris Xaver, thanks for listening, and we will talk to you soon and remember, you can always find out more about Capella University online at capella.edu.
Total Duration: 17 Minutes.

Chris Xaver:  Hi! I am Chris Xaver, and this is Capella Inside Online Education. It is another way you can find out about the people and programs at Capella University. We will talk to faculty and staff about what it is like to earn a degree online and why it might be right for you. We will also talk to some students about their experiences at Capella, how and why they chose Capella, how they are balancing work, school, and family and what tips they may have for you; and we will have a little fun while we are at it.

Joining me today is, Jerald Nine. He is a PhD learner in the School of Education. And by way of background Jerry, I want to let our listeners know how I met you and why I asked you to be on the program with me, because we were just both in Virginia at colloquia - and colloquia is the college’s intensive face-to-face residency program; it is for doctoral learners and some Masters students in specific programs. And anyway, I noticed you at some of the sessions I attended at colloquia because let’s be honest here, you have a fan club.

Jerald Nine:  Well, I am pleased to hear that.

Chris Xaver:  It is almost a passé. You have a lot of people who really enjoy hanging around with you.

Jerald Nine:  Well I certainly enjoy my colleagues.

Chris Xaver:  You looked like you were just having a great time at colloquia?

Jerald Nine:  I enjoyed this — that was my second colloquia and I enjoyed both of them very much.

Chris Xaver:  Well, you know, I came over to you and I pulled up a chair and I asked you to tell me your story. I said, ‘Tell me your story’ — and part of the reason I did that was of course because you were so popular but it is also because you are a little bit different that the average Capella learner. Most of the average Capella learners are about 40 years old and that is the average age, and you are a little bit older than that. Would you share how old?

Jerald Nine:  I am 75.

Chris Xaver:  75 years old; and you are a PhD student.

Jerald Nine:  Right!

Chris Xaver:  Why on earth are you a PhD student at 75 years old?

Jerald Nine:  Well, I am really CEO of a New York Stock Exchange company and very successful. I guess I was penalized for success, that they had a merger; they came in one morning and they said, Mr. Nine, you have to leave now, the company has been merged. We all get everything in your office that belongs to you personally and ship it to you, but we would appreciate it if you would leave now - and that is how brutal it was.

Chris Xaver:  Ah!

Jerald Nine:  So, I was stunned for about five minutes and said, well, I can make — turn this into something different. So, I went into education here in Virginia in the public schools, and I really appreciate the educational environment. The people are so nice, there is no cutthroat activity going on, and with that enjoyment I decided to go ahead and pursue another degree. I have other degrees.

Chris Xaver:  I talked to you about that. You told me you got your first Masters in 1958, was not it?

Jerald Nine:  That was Electrical Engineering, yes.

Chris Xaver:  And then, your second Masters in 1985?

Jerald Nine:  MBA.

Chris Xaver:  And now what area do you think you are going to have the PhD?

Jerald Nine:  Well, I have one other degree and that because the — in order to get into Capella and have a recent Masters, so I did a MS in Educ