School Spirit

It's back to school time for students and parents. I haven't been a student since 2005 when I finished my last masters degree program. But every fall, I still get the itch. I like school. Always have. I like to learn. Sure, it's hard work sometimes. But if you actually got something out of it, then that's what it's all about.

This year, I'm on the other side of the table, sort of. I'm not a professor or a teacher - though I expect to be later in life. Instead, I'm involved as a member of an Advisory Board and as a possible capstone project.

I serve on the Advisory Board for the College of Health and Human Services at GMU. I'm a GMU alum, but that's almost incidental to my involvement with CHHS. Really, how I got on the board was through my last employer. The dean of CHHS, Dr. Shirley Travis, was looking for local companies to provide Advisory Board members. She pinged Northrop Grumman as a possible source, and as the marketing liaison for the Health organization within NGC, the request eventually ended up with me. I met with Shirley a couple of times to find out what was involved in being an Advisory Board member. As it turned out, NGC had all kinds of difficult rules about serving on outside boards and we decided to pass. But Shirley and I remained friends. One day, after I had left NGC, she and I were having lunch. We were talking about health IT, since it's part of both of our jobs. She asked me if I would join her board. I talked to my boss at my new company, Cognosante, and she agreed. And so I became a member of the Advisory Board. This fall, that means two things. First, I will be participating in a board meeting in October to talk about progress on some of our tasks. Second, I will be on the search committee for a nurse practioner CHHS is thinking about hiring for their health IT program. I've never done that before, though I've interviewed people for jobs, so I assume it will be much the same. We'll see.

The other academic role is that of a capstone proposer. The Executive MBA program, of which I am an alum, at GMU now includes a capstone project. A capstone project is a culminating project toward the end of the program that allows the students to apply some of their new skills in a real-world environment. We submitted a possible task for the capstone at the end of last year's academic year. On Friday, we go to present to this year's class. The class will then vote on the capstones that they want to do, which may or may not include ours. If the EMBA program doesn't choose our capstone, then the CHHS folks suggested that I talk to them. They have a practicum project, similar but for a single student. Again, applying the skills from academia in a real-world environment.

Being on this side of the academic equation is reasonably satisfying. But ultimately, I may need to go back to school again. Wonder what I'll study this time....