About Me - Julie Raadschelders

Assistant professor
Program coordinator for graduate programs
College of Liberal Studies

I’m originally from Mooresville, Indiana, home of John Dillinger. My mother advised me against marrying anyone from Mooresville, so I married a Dutchman instead. As part of my master’s degree in public administration from Indiana University, I studied in Leiden, the Netherlands. One of my professors was Jozef Cornelis Nicolaas Raadschelders – a.k.a. Jos. We married in the summer of 1990, and I moved to the Netherlands in January of 1991.

The Netherlands is a beautiful country. Lots of green grass and pretty flowers – because it rains all of the time! I earned my Ph.D. from Indiana University in Public Policy in 1995 and started my own business translating Dutch texts for English publication. I also worked for two years at the Forum on Debt and Development, a research institute that facilitated policy discussion and publications on global financial issues. Things were good in the Netherlands, but it is a small, crowded country – about a one-sixth the size of Oklahoma but with more than 15 million people. My husband was offered a position at the University of Oklahoma beginning the fall of 1998 so we moved to Norman.

I spent my first years here enjoying the sunshine and the space and getting the family settled in. I continued to translate texts, and I worked for the Carl Albert Center for a year coordinating a conference on Women and Congress. In 2005, I decided I would like to work full-time and was very fortunate to be hired as the site manager for Advanced Programs which offers degree programs to military service members. In November 2006, I moved to the College of Liberal Studies to serve as the MA Program Coordinator. Both positions have involved working with graduate programs.

I am so impressed with our graduate students, adults who lead busy lives with family and work, but motivated and enthused about going back to school. It is inspiring to see how they manage to juggle the different demands and obligations in their lives while taking graduate coursework and earning their master’s degrees,

I am enjoying teaching in the program as well. Our students bring a range of experiences and ideas to the classroom that broadens everyone’s understanding, including my own. Teaching gives me the opportunity to see our program working firsthand and to have better insight into what works and what doesn’t always work.

CLS is in a unique position to develop courses and degree programs to meet the needs of students in a format that works for them. We have an excellent group of individuals working on all aspects of the program delivery, and I consider myself very fortunate to be working in such an innovative, progressive environment with these talented people.