Celebrating Penn State’s online education programs

Helping learners modify their lives

Brianne Gridley is an academic adviser and outreach expert at Howard Group School in Columbia, Maryland. She began doing the job at Penn Condition in the Place of work for Summer time Session in 2016 and promptly understood higher education was her calling.

Soon after finishing her next undergraduate diploma in a Bachelor of Arts in Organizational Management plan on the web by means of Penn Point out Entire world Campus, she enrolled in the Master of Instruction in Better Education and learning application. She favored Penn Point out Environment Campus for the reason that it felt extra accessible, allowing her to manage a perform-lifetime equilibrium, she reported.

“I required the capability to get a graduate degree in a extremely revered software, but I nonetheless needed the versatility,” she claimed. “You could tell that the operate was place in to give the Environment Campus system students the similar excellent and degree of practical experience as the on-campus learners.”

Throughout the method, Gridley found out her enthusiasm for serving 1st-era and underrepresented college student populations. She concentrated her capstone project on college student challenges, which furthered her drive to effects other people.

“I realized I always required to support people adjust their life,” she explained.

Incorporating engineering to enrich studying prospects

Samantha Cinque is effective as an tutorial designer at a credit score union and is nearing completion of her Master of Schooling in Studying, Layout, and Know-how software, in drop 2023. She pursued the diploma, trying to get new training tactics with the incorporation of engineering.

She at first started as an educational know-how integration certificate scholar, but loved her coursework so significantly, she said, that she determined to pursue a master’s diploma.

Cinque found what she was finding out online was often straight away relevant to her responsibilities at perform. She integrated a “Learn-Do-Connect” approach she acquired in one particular of her programs into a new-employ the service of schooling software.

“So considerably, the new hires like it and sense like they have realized a large amount. Even a trainee with former banking knowledge reported she thought she discovered more in a 7 days with our instruction than she did in a 10-week instruction with her aged corporation,” Cinque said.

Acquiring capabilities to evoke change

Just after beginning her initially work, Leila Farzam found a master’s diploma would be vital for upcoming developments. So, she enrolled in the Master of Skilled Reports in Organizational Progress and Improve program the place she was impressed by the system operate and the experience introduced by college associates. She learned about theories and foundational ideas, but what created it unique was the sharing of experienced experiences by school members.

Farzam worked total-time and done the plan in one particular yr, graduating in 2016. She credits a great deal of difficult get the job done as a university student and guidance from her professors for her results. Farzam mentioned the plan offers options for investigate and tasks with alumni and market leaders, to write and publish educational papers, and a lot more.

“That degree plan altered the trajectory of my daily life. I understood I preferred to be in the human capital realm, but the business development system supplied me with a entire new outlook of impacting full-process improve. I finally fell in like with mastering corporation progress and was blessed plenty of to develop a profitable occupation in this line of get the job done,” she stated.

She finally remaining her work and gained a doctorate in workforce instruction and enhancement as a result of Penn State’s School of Schooling.

Farzam now serves as the director of organizational improvement for AARP, exactly where she delivers leadership and aim to the business on modernized methods to discover organizational demands and establish innovated answers to attain wished-for effects and outcomes.