Not that I’m going anywhere, but it’ll be nice to have a
chance to catch up on some things and hopefully it will mean warmer weather!
Classes are going well. I feel like I’m being very proactive
this semester. Go figure, just when you feel like you’re getting really good at
something, it’s over! Actually that may not be entirely true for me, I found
out this week I have been accepted to UK’s Educational Policy doctoral program!
I’m very excited about this opportunity and will be traveling down to Lexington
early next week to meet with some faculty.
Ok, back to classes. In policy, I've had a slight change of
direction on my term project. I will now be working with one classmate on early
childhood HEALTH intervention. We have submitted our proposal and both done our
individual mini-presentations. We both presented on articles related to our
topic and the policy process as an installment toward our final paper.
In org. theory, my group and I presented our chapter on
organizations as machines and used McDonald’s as an example. We were the first
group to go (each group has to present for an hour and a half each week) and we
felt like it went pretty well.
In capstone, we had a resume building session with members
of the MPA advisory board. Overall, it was very helpful and informative. Some things
that really resonated with me were their advice to “dig deeper” than your job
description on your resume and they pointed out areas of my resume I could
quantify, which I hadn't been able to see previously. We are also putting
together our portfolio, which is a reflection of our MPA experience and is due
next week. I have a good jump on this and am feeling really good about it. For
our major project, our survey instrument is complete and we are just waiting
for a signed statement from the agency we are working with before we can submit
our packet to the Institutional Review Board.
The dinner with Rina Saperstein was very interesting and
enjoyable. As I might have mentioned, she discussed social entrepreneurship.
One thing that really got me thinking was that she talked about how nonprofit
to for-profit has become less black and white and more of a continuum and along
the way to you see cause related marketing, social conscious corporations,
thrift stores, nonprofits that sell products, etc. Definitely a subject I’d be
interested in hearing and learning more about!
