Reflecting

Last Friday was Accepted Master's Preview Day. About 70 accepted students across the various Penn GSE programs came to see us! It was fabulous to meet and get to know you. You came all the way from California, Texas, Washington, Canada, North Carolina and other places to meet Penn GSE!

In the morning, we shared breakfast over the optional New To Philly Session. This session, which included a video, presentation and panel, was something new for this year. As someone who moved to Philadelphia and to Penn from across the country, a place that seemed worlds away, I thought it would be useful to have something like this so that students could begin to familiarize themselves with all that Philly has to offer. The students in the video and on the panel did a fabulous job of illustrating all of the amenities of the city and making the point that Philadelphia really is a city of neighborhoods!

Next, we heard from our Dean, Andy Porter. Andy talked about innovation in education, the education business plan, some of the recent investments Penn GSE has made and about the new opportunities for interdisciplinary research at Penn GSE! It was wonderful to hear from him! After he spoke, we moved right into the current student panel. There, accepted students asked questions about school-work-life balance, campus resources, student organizations, how we get around, what we do for fun and even where we get our groceries! Lots and lots of great questions came up in the panel. After the panel, it was time for lunch with more current students and some of the faculty! During lunch, students had the opportunity to speak with representatives from Student Health Services, financial aid, the libraries, the fitness center, the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly, student government, student organizations and the Graduate Student Center.

Fisher Fine Arts Library, one of the best places to study on campus!

As lunch came to a close, we moved into GSE and had divisional break-out sessions to discuss program specifics. then, we had the concurrent sessions, where students traveled between a mock class, a campus tour, a demonstration of next steps (for those who have already accepted their offers) and a panel on alumni, carer services and student life (from staff in those areas). Then, of course, we had a Happy Hour / Reception at City Tap House, one of my favorite Philadelphia hangouts, just blocks from campus.



If you did not make it to Preview Day, you can always join us at the Virtual Preview Day to be held on April 10th from 6 - 8 pm EST. You can RSVP for that here.

As part of the final project in professional development, I have been asked to develop a paper and presentation on my experience this year as a graduate assistant. On the right is what i will probably use as my opening slide! This presentation is bittersweet. It comes just as we come out of the last major event of the year and as our office is 'passing on the torch,' offering the position to two of next year's higher education cohort. Oh! How time flies! It's been an intensely productive year here at GSE, and I will be sad to go. I am moving on to the next phase of this adventurous life of mine as I seek out a full-time admissions position. That process has been going really well so far, and I am confident in my ability to secure a position that is both interesting and fulfilling. Then again, I was never that worried about this, as I said in the beginning of this year.

I can't wait for Enrollment Management class tonight. We read "The Order of Things" by Malcolm Gladwell and "The Admissions Arms Race" by Massy, Wegner and our very own Robert Zemsky so that we could gather to learn about and discuss competitive positioning in admissions. Here is the blurb from our syllabus this week:

In an era of branding, marketing and ranking, higher education confronts a competitive marketplace and which requires consideration of limited resources, consumer demands and peer pressures. The resulting dynamic has created a commercialized industry for higher education leaders and for its consumers. How do competition and commercialization impact institutional and consumer behavior and how do these dynamics influence each other?

Jenny Rickard and Eric Kaplan, the professors of Enrollment management, are both so knowledgeable about the field. It doesn't hurt that they work well together as collaborative teachers and both have a great sense of humor. The other wonderful thing about a class like enrollment is that it gets controversial. There is a lot of disagreement about early action, financial aid leveraging, the goals of admissions and the means used to meet those goals. I find it useful to hear the various perspectives mainly because these broad, diverse points of view are akin to what i will encounter as an admissions professional. Hearing a lot of view points now is what I like to think of as getting maximum exposure! This class gives me a whole new reason to love Monday nights!

- - - - - -  You should probably also know that  that I passed my master's comprehensive exam!