Interview Your Boss

I have two dream jobs at the university which is why I chose to intern here at ASU.  One being a provost or a Dean of student affairs and the other is an advisor. I know they are drastically different but in a way they have a lot of similarities mostly the interaction they have with students.  From my very first blog I have said I really like working with students. This to me is really a dream job so since I also am a student work here in the college I have always worked closely with adviser and picked their brain on how I could become one. Since I have for a while been talking to many advisers here in the college I wanted to go for the provost of the downtown campus. The Assistant Dean of Students and Down Phoenix Campus Dean of Students is Dr. Ronald Briggs and unfortunately I wasn’t able to meet with him recently. However over the summer in my previous student worker job I was able to work with him some and I actually had an opportunity to talk to him about how he got to where he is today. During the conversation I had with him we talked a lot about his education and what degrees he had why he chose them and how they helped in becoming an Assistant Dean of Students. We talked about While he was an under grad he was a student worker just like me he worked in housing, and said that was what really kick started his career in academia. Although we never got around to what his under graduate degree was he did say if you plan on going to graduate school, that your bachelor’s degree doesn’t really matter pre-say. It matter that you have it just not what you have it in.  He went on to discuss that he got his Masters in higher education and went on to get his Ed.D. He said to be any kind of Dean at a University you must have some sort of doctoral degree, and the Ed.D. is an education doctorate which the slight difference is the Ed.D. is a terminal degree. What that means that you can’t become a 10 year professor and do research. It is meant strictly for people who want to work in the administrative side of academics. At the time of our conversation I hadn’t made up my mind about what Master’s degree I wanted. Most people I talked to said I should just get M.Ed. but I wasn’t sold on it. What if for some reason I didn’t always want to work in education, my degree would be pointless and I wouldn’t be able to get a job. In the conversation I asked Dr. Briggs what he thought would be better for me and my journey. I told him I was thinking of the M.Ed. and the MPA. I explained to him that I wanted the MPA more because if for some reason I didn’t want to work in the academic setting any more I could get a job elsewhere with the MPA more so then the M.Ed. He said I was on the right track, that yes the M.Ed. is a good degree for working in higher ed but the MPA would allow me to work the same position as well as outside of the university setting as well. I asked him then if I would still be able to the Ed.D. from the MPA, he told me of another student within our college that got his MPA and is now working on his Ed.D, and has very similar aspirations as I do, so yes it was very possible. That conversation with Dr. Briggs is what made me decided to get my MPA and although some other things that I want to do have changed since that conversation it still made a huge impact on my education and what decision I have made about what degrees I want to pursue.