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.