As the new MA PD for the ECPI Emerywood campus, I am excited about working with students and faculty in an effort to achieve gainful employment for students who successfully pass the curriculum requirements for this program. In order to achieve the goal of student transition successfully into the workforce, I am planning on implementing a 3 pronged initiative over the next days, weeks, and months.

By working with instructors, reviewing student transcripts, and speaking with current/former Externship site/Employers of MAs. I want to find areas of weakness in the delivery of educational content and skills that ultimately lead to gainful employment.

1. Working with instructors

I want to speak with instructors to get their input on the areas where the program can be improved. This could include using additional media for instructional purposes, earlier implementation of hands-on skills, or field trips/guest speakers as part of the learning environment. Students bring many types of learning styles to the classroom, I hope to address as many of these learning styles each class meeting as possible in order to maximize students understanding of the material in the limited amount of time allotted due to the progression of the accelerated format of the program.

2. Reviewing student transcripts

Reviwing student transcripts of coursework completed by current students as well as coursework completed by former students is proving to be a very informative process. This is giving me the opportunity to see where students may be lacking and may provide additional areas of improvement for the delivery of material to our students. If a certain subject area proves to have a lower GPA/Passing Rate than another section, this may lead to the development of an action plan for this course in order to tap into additional resources, course/term pairings, and instructor delivery as a means of improving student understanding of content and skill competency.

3. Speaking with current/former Externship site/Employers of MAs

This is the key to learning the changes that are going on in the workplace where our graduates will be employed. By staying on top of trends, talking with employers about areas of improvement in student general knowledge and skills, and listening to employers as they educate us on their use of MAs and how they envision the use of MAs in their area in the future will help advance our program.