The man behind the college

It takes a lot of people to make the College of Liberal Studies work. Our staff is considerably larger than most because our programming requires a great deal of internal support. Our associate dean, Trent Gabert, will be the first one to support this fact.

I thought I would take this opportunity to tell you a little bit about him because after 40 years at the University of Oklahoma, he is retiring at the end of this month. For the last decade, he has been a driving force at CLS and the many people who came to a campus-wide reception earlier this week all testified to his administrative abilities. Our provost even tossed him a baseball – there is an inside joke attached to this gesture which I am not sure I can explain very well here – but her point was that Trent has an uncanny ability to see whatever pitch is coming his way.

Right there is something that sets him apart. We can call him Trent. His door is always open. Truly. When we, the faculty and staff in particular, need him, he responds right away. Issues get resolved. We continue to move forward. He treats everyone with equal respect.

Trent grew up on a farm in rural Wisconsin and earned his degrees from the University of Wisconsin. He originally thought he would be a coach, but when he earned five times as much teaching, decided that was the route he should take. In 1970, Trent came to OU where he joined the department of exercise science and accomplished many, many things there and served as its chair for 14 years. He even took a year of sabbatical leave to attend leadership training at West Point.

Since he came to CLS in 2000, enrollment has skyrocketed, online degrees have been introduced, the staff has more than doubled, and we now have five full time faculty members. Of course, people with Trent’s character are quick to give credit to others for such incredible changes. However, he has been the driver behind a lot of what our college has experienced.

Students don’t always have a reason to be in contact with administrators, yet I am certain many of you have talked with Trent. He’s still going to teach for us so I will not say goodbye. But I will miss working with him every day.

The acceptance of studying the liberal arts

If I had a dollar for every time I answered the question, “What is a liberal studies degree” I would be a rich woman. Of course, those of us who work in the College of Liberal Studies understand it.

Explaining the importance of studying the humanities never gets old but sometimes I feel like it is hard to get the message through.

The other day I read this entry on the Huffington Post and it affirms what we all believe here. Liberal education, it seems, is becoming more accepted.

Please forgive the brief post this week but I think Michael Roth's piece says it all. Check it out.

Writing help is at your fingertips

Writing – the foundation for just about everything. But writing can be kind of a scary thing for some people. Sort of like asking writers to do math, expecting non-writers to write, and prolifically as a student is intimidating, especially in the realm of academic writing. Even writers themselves sometimes are intimated about an upcoming project that has to be, well, written.

Learning to write well is critical, not only to your success as a student, but in life overall. It’s something we don’t often think about until we come across something that is so well-written, even something simple like an insert in your electric bill, that we pause to read and appreciate it.

If it has been awhile since you have written anything beyond a shopping list, or if you don’t feel you are as strong of a writer as you would like to be, there are several resources available to you at the University of Oklahoma.

The Writing Center at OU is a good place to start. Located in the beautiful new Wagner Hall across from Oklahoma Memorial Union, the center is staffed with writing consultants who are available on a walk-in basis or by appointment and are ready to provide support for all OU writers.

You can get feedback on a project already underway, or help before you even start with some pre-writing tips, learn about uses of style, plagiarism and academic integrity, to name a few. There is also an online submission option available through the center that serves distance students in particular.

The center originated in 1987 with a gathering of OU faculty, funded by a Ford Foundation grant. The writing center partners with a lot of people on campus to support a campus-wide writing initiative, so-called “writing across the curriculum” which has the stamp of approval from the provost and the president.

Bizzell Memorial Library also has a number of resources to help you in your academic journey. In fact, there is a section on the library website devoted to College of Liberal Studies students. This is where you will find helpful instructions on using library services, how to search the library and how to use library databases.

You may not be on campus, but all of the services OU offers in support of its students are available to you as well.

Alphabet soup

Sometimes when you work in an institution that uses a lot of acronyms, you forget that not everyone knows what they mean. I find myself saying things like, “Perhaps you should consider the MALS” without realizing the person with whom I am speaking has no clue what that means.

Even I have been in meetings and gotten lost when a string of letters is tossed out without a second thought and the conversation veers along without me as I try to think of what those letters might stand for.

You may have noticed a subtle change in the letters in some of our degree programs. Take the MAAL for example. That is the Master of Arts in Administrative Leadership degree. It used to be called the MALS-AL – even more letters! This is the Master of Liberal Studies – Administrative Leadership option. Same degree, but with some subtle changes.

Administrative leadership is one of our most popular degree programs and is in high demand. We thought if we created it as its own degree, instead of an option within an overarching one, it would be easier for our students to promote for themselves and their careers.

Not a lot changed about the program, although some of the requirements are different. But believe me, it took a very long time, well more than a year, to rearrange those letters. Our proposal went through several chains of command, all the way to the office of the state regent’s for higher education and back down. That is part of what administrators do – facilitate changes.

If you are enrolled in the MALS-AL you will graduate with that option but we are not taking new students under that acronym. Everyone is now being enrolled in the MAAL. Since I explained what these letters mean already, I don’t think I need to do it again, right?

Ultimately, a master’s degree in administrative leadership is a quality credential well worth earning. Spelled out on your resumé, it will look very impressive.

Julie on the road

You may wonder when you e-mail me, why I seem to have my “Out of Office” auto reply message turned on, sometimes quite often. Well, aside from the obvious reason that I am not in my office, it is because I travel quite a bit as the director of graduate programs for the College.

For example, I recently spent a few days in San Antonio, Texas, attending a training meeting for Southwest Prevention Center, which is a part of the College of Continuing Education at the University of Oklahoma. While I am not a prevention science specialist, CLS recently introduced the Master of Prevention Science degree, the only degree program of its kind in the country. I wrote about this program a few weeks ago.

When I am at a conference like this, I visit with people attending and talk about the degree programs we offer at CLS. And, by studying the different learning tracks available, I am able to see what educational opportunities are out there and learn to develop curriculum or degree programs if there are certain areas of concentrations.

Next week, I will be going to the American Association of Museums annual meeting in San Diego. This is the largest museum association in the world and there will be a lot of people there to meet. Again, I am traveling sunny California because CLS offers a Master of Arts degree in museum studies.
Since this degree can be obtained completely online, our students live all over the world. After all, there are museums, national and state monuments, historic sites, galleries and zoos everywhere and the people who work and volunteer in these places often would like to advance their education. Our faculty is drawn from museums from around the country as well.

It makes sense, then, for me to be in a place where everyone in the museum profession is gathered. I will have a captive audience to talk with about the wonderful degree opportunities we have here at CLS. And, we can make our degrees better by understanding what students need based on what is offered by conferences such as the AAM annual meeting.

So, if you get that auto reply in the next few days, rest assured, I am still answering e-mail, just not quite as promptly as I do at home.

Free trip to Dallas!

Now that I have your attention, I would like to let you know about a wonderful opportunity available to you as a student in the master’s program. Part of being an academic is presenting research to others. While the College of Liberal Studies is a distance education provider at the University of Oklahoma, we also are an academic unit. So, I would like to let you know about an upcoming conference of the Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs (AGLSP) this fall.

This is an international organization with more than 120 institutional members that was founded in 1975. All kinds of colleges and universities are represented and the mission is to exchange information and ideas about graduate-level liberal education that serves primarily adult, part-time students. And, by the way our dean, Dr. James Pappas, is president of AGLSP this year.

Every fall we get together in a fantastic city for a few days of scholarship and education. This year we are gathering in Dallas, Texas Oct. 7-9 and will be hosted by Southern Methodist University. The conference theme is, “The Transformation of the 21st Century City.”

AGLSP is inviting papers that explore the transformation of the 21st century city through the arts and technology in particular. I would like to strongly encourage you to consider submitting a proposal to present. Our students have presented in the past and have done very well while enjoying the experience of learning how to present their research.

Best of all, if your paper gets accepted you can apply for a scholarship to attend the conference to present it.

Advancing your educational career in a great city like Dallas while meeting with fellow liberal studies students and faculty – what could be better than that?

Master of Prevention Science Degree

We have a long list of goals in the College of Liberal Studies. Creating new degree programs to serve the diverse needs of our students and, on a larger scale, the needs of our communities is high on the list. We survey the landscape and listen to our constituents when making these decisions, paying attention to what the labor market is requiring of its employees.

It takes a lot of time and energy to put a new degree program through the proper channels on both the local and state levels, and then bring it to life.
So I am happy to tell you about a brand new degree being offered at CLS – the Master of Prevention Science. I feel confident in saying that this is an innovative degree option for professionals who are working in the growing prevention science field.

What exactly is prevention science? A lot of things but right now, our degree is focusing on substance abuse prevention. Of course, prevention applies to a number of areas including HIV, obesity and suicide and these vital areas will be added as the program matures.

For now, substance abuse is our focus because we can tap into a vital resource here at the University of Oklahoma, the Southwest Prevention Center. These are the folks that helped us shepherd this degree program through the process to make it available to prospective students.

Some of the areas this degree will explore include:
• Prevention systems and development
• Media advocacy and social marketing
• Human growth and development
• Risk factors such as family circumstances, ecological context and skill development delays
• Protective factors like psychological resilience, skills and environmental advantages
• Prevention trials
• Brain development and the impact of substances on this development
• Designing, implementing and evaluating substance abuse prevention programs
• Prevention science and public health.

The MPS is a 33-credit hour degree, with the first 18 hours consisting of core requirements. The remaining 15 hours are elective. This program also was designed specifically to prepare students for the International Certification and Reciprocity Consortium’s Certified Prevention Specialist credential.