Malia: Educational leadership (Ph.D.'23)

My name is Melissa Roberts. I serve as a staff member in the Graduate College, and I'm the interim senior director of graduate college Enrollment. I graduated from the Educational Leadership Ph.D. program here at Western Michigan University. My role here at the Graduate College is to oversee graduate enrollment and at Western, we have over 150 graduate programs, ranging from graduate certificates to master's to doctoral programs. And part of my purview is to work with the academic departments and units around campus to ensure that they are recruiting and attracting high quality students to their program who will be successful here and become successful graduates and great quality citizens in our community. I have also taught FYE (First Year Experience) at Western.

Some of the things that are available as resources through the graduate College for our graduate students include writing circles and writing support. Sometimes when it comes to writing a thesis or a dissertation, it can be a really lonely process, so we bring students who are at that stage of their academic career together in the Graduate College and we do that through something called a writing circle. One of the amazing things about this resource is the camaraderie that is felt built through that writing circle as well as support, and also just helps our graduate students to get into the right headspace, to be able to tackle the writing that they need to do to be able to progress through their program.It's a great space to be able to do some quality writing. Writing is a big deal when it comes to grad school, but there's also other resources that we offer things that come in the form of workshops and seminars that help students to be able to build themselves and develop themselves professionally in preparation for whatever that career trajectory might be in some cases, students are interested in entering the professoriate, becoming future faculty.

In my role, there are a team of five graduate students who are masters and doctoral students in various academic programs, ranging from social work to to counseling, psychology. And these students help to support the graduate College mission through efforts of recruitment, outreach and also service.

And so these different areas that they're involved in certainly do help to support our recruitment initiatives in terms of helping graduate students who are thinking about pursuing work here at the university to gain some familiarity with our campus, to better understand what life is like as a graduate student here at the university. And then they're also involved in ensuring that our current graduate students have a good grasp of the different professional development seminars, workshops, writing circles, those kinds of activities that are going on.

I chose to pursue my Ph.D. in educational leadership here at the university because I already had a master's degree when I started my role at the university. But I also knew that it would help me to grow my skills as a professional and also provide me with that strong credential for future opportunities and I could learn more about the research that goes into educational leadership. I had some early interest in exploring several topics as it related to females in higher education who were aspiring into higher level roles. And that in fact is what I ended up doing my dissertation on. So, when I spent some time looking at the programs that were available, the Ph.D. in educational leadership with an emphasis on higher education, really spoke to me. I felt like it fit my professional goals, my research interests. It also was something that would accommodate my working schedule, and so I felt like it was a win on all of those points. I also realized that the WMU tuition remission benefit covered the cost of all of my graduate tuition and mandatory free fees. And I just felt like I couldn't decline that fantastic benefit that's available as employees here.

This is my first semester as an FYE instructor, FYE standing for first year experience. The purpose of this class is to welcome and also educate first year students at the university on the resources that exist on developing good study skills and habits, and also time management habits.

I'm really enjoying the class so far. It's been a terrific experience. I have a class of 19 freshmen and they all bring something different to the classroom. It's been phenomenal. I've really enjoyed the activities that we've done in class and outside of class. One of the most fun things that we did that the students appreciated because it added some levity and some action to their day to day was the scavenger hunt.

And so I have a co-facilitator named Cass Davis, who is a sophomore and a music therapy student who is working with me to facilitate this class. Cass had the assignment of putting together this scavenger hunt activity and sending out the students in small groups around campus so that they could get more familiar with the campus, better understand some of the big spots around campus, like Sindecuse Health Center, like the student recreation Center, like the new student center, and to not only visit these buildings, but to take a picture of themselves and then put together a short presentation showcasing the different spots around campus that they went.

So they worked in these small groups and all together there were about four different groups and they all covered different spots on campus, came back to class, worked on the presentation and were able to highlight these different areas, and that helped everybody to learn more about the campus. And it was just a fun activity that everybody got a lot out of.

I recommend Western Michigan University for graduate school at all levels, graduate certificates, master's and doctoral programs alike. Because it's a large research intensive institution. But also you're going to have smaller classes.

You're going to be able to spend time in the lab or with your professors or with small groups. Most of the classes that I took as a doctoral student had less than 15 students in them. And so it was really engaging. And I felt like I could get a lot from every one of the classes that I took.

Plus I found that my courses were offered either online or if they were in-person after 5:00 so that I could make it all work with my busy schedule. I'm working full time. I have a family, I'd like to have a social life. And so introducing grad school into the mix was at first going to be really challenging. But then it all worked out and I was still able to do the important things that I needed to do.