It's so nice to see such a nice group from all over the country with us this evening for our Mara virtual open house so welcome. We have a brief agenda but a lot to share with you so an introduction to the iSchool and to Mara the program and overview of that degree which stands for Archives and Records Administration and then we'll talk about what it's like to be an online student and one of our students should be joining us shortly and then we'll have a Q&A session if you have questions. So I'm at the top there the program administrator Dr. Franks, Pat Franks just call me Pat and down below me is our director who has just left but is still hanging in there until we find her replacement. She really has a promotion so she is the new associate dean for the college that we're in and then Dr. Main is below her and she is handling everything until we get a new replacement in place but she is the coordinator for admissions graduate advising she's the interim director and she really does so much for us and then down below is Sheila Gertrude and if you ask me questions send me a note and I don't know the answer I'm sending that along to Sheila so if you join us you'll be hearing from her quite a bit. She's the online student advisor and she advises mostly on the administrative questions that you might have such as how do I register for that class I need a permission number things like that and then you'll be hearing from Lisa in a minute so I'm going to wait to ask her to introduce herself but Dr. Lisa Dolby is with us and then she teaches one of the courses you would take in the fall if you joined us Jason Colton-Bocker teaches the other we recommend two those are the two people who teach the first two courses and then if you decide you want to take three courses Joshua Zimmerman teaches a research methods for information professionals that's fantastic you normally would get it later in your program but if you're trying to hurry through the program that's the other course we recommend and then Kenna I don't know Kenna if you're on you could open your mic and say hi but she should be here shortly. Kenna is our graduate assistant she does a lot of work for us and she just sent me a preview of a graduation video that she had worked on trying to get our Mar grads to participate as well as the MLS grads and really came out very well it'll be shown at the end of our online graduation ceremony so we'll hear from Kenna when she hops in and then I'm going to turn this right over now to Lisa and I don't know Lisa if you want me just to hit the slides for you if you want to take control. I think I'll just say next slide that's okay. That's fine. I think I'll just start by just just saying hello before I get into the benchmarks and just welcome to the open house I'm very excited to be speaking to you all today. I actually am speaking to you from Toronto Ontario Canada where I live. I have been teaching in the Mara program since 2009 which means that I have had this awesome opportunity to work with all of the students in the Mara program so far. I teach a few courses in the program and we can talk about that a little later. Again welcome and I'm happy to answer any questions during this session and if you think of anything later please don't hesitate to contact me and my information will be included at the end of this presentation so welcome everyone. So I just thought we'd talk a little bit about the foundations of the Mara program. The original framework and benchmarks for the program were developed from some really foundational important competencies from our professional associations and certification boards. So the Armour Core competencies which is our professional association the Society of American Archivists guidelines for graduate in archival education. Also much of the class content is much very based on the of these very important three industry standards which I'm going to talk about a little bit in the next slide but what I think about it was great about this program is by completing many of the core courses it really prepares you to take certifications in those exams but before I talk about that I just want to say that the framework for the program is very much based on industry standards from our professional associations and from our certification boards. Next slide. This is exciting for a new opportunity for the Mara program is that when you complete many of the foundational core competent core courses upon graduation at the end of your program in recognition of the content of the Mara courses Mara grads or if you choose to take this route can be recognized as a certified records analyst or a certified records manager from the institute of certified records managers and you'll see both Pat and I have those certifications and they're very important certifications if you want to work in the field of records and information management or information governance and so what happens is you'll take these upon graduation you will automatically qualify for the first it's a five courses sorry five five exams and if you want to be a certified records analyst you will you you'll be in that good standing and if you want to be a certified records manager you just have to take one additional exam and you will be certified even even with there's a requirement to have one year work experience so if you plan that right and you take an archival internship or a records management internship within the program which we offer you will meet all of these certifications and I just think it is a really great Dr. Frank's worked with the Institute of Certified Records managers to set this up and I just think it's a really awesome thing that that it's a really awesome opportunity for students you know I took these exams a few years ago and it was costly and I had to go through all the exams so you know if I was a student I would really love to use this as an opportunity as part of my graduation to be certified so thank you next slide in addition to those traditionally more records management certifications the Academy of Certified Archivists for those who are here thinking that they want to be more on the archive side as opposed to the records and information management side has also reviewed all of and approved all of our core courses and they have seen them as meeting the educational component for students seeking to take the hundred-question examination to become a certified records archivist so again our courses and our program really do prepare you for after graduation if you do choose to take certifications beyond your your master's degree we put you in a very good light in that manner next slide so the MARA program has ten overarching core core competencies these form the objectives of the program and our commitment to you know many of these program core comps match directly to competencies in each and in all of your courses and to each of your assignments actually I don't you know read them all to you but this is our commitment to you upon graduation you will meet these criterias in terms of ethics and social cultural and economic dimensions of record keeping and understanding the evolution of information and record keeping systems again I don't want to read them all to you and they're on they're on our website but this is our commitment to you upon graduation you will have competencies in all of these areas and this is really the foundation of the program what is this so important and they're why we're probably showing this to you today is that at the end of the program you will need to look back and demonstrate your knowledge in each of these course areas and these core competencies in what we call an e-portfolio so I think that's our next slide oh before no it's not our next slide but I will be getting to the e-portfolio so remember those those core competencies but this isn't just a really probably foundational of what you want to know today is that students are required to take 14 courses 10 of which are required for which were electives and I'll say a little bit more about those electives a later's time but as Dr. France mentioned when you enter the program you'll get the kind of the foundational courses which are the intro courses which you see at the very top like 202.04 which are sort of the intro courses that will get you you know foundational whether you are have been working in the field for many many years or whether you're kind of new right out of your bachelor's program it doesn't matter we start everyone from scratch then we kind of move into 10 to 11 to 49 type courses which what I call the like the life cycle management courses where we understand about after we get a great foundation we what we understand we start to learn about you know record creation appraisal information storage and retrieval I teach a very technical course on digital data and so does Dr. France teach a very technical course almost very lab-like on content management and digital preservation which is heavily focused on really hands-on experience in working with SharePoint and Preservica and then as you move more into your senior years we go into the sort of senior seminar type courses and we have two really awesome courses on information governance and information assurance and security which are absolutely super cool hot topics in our industry now right now and our advisory boards which I'll talk about in a minute also have you know recommended that these are the two hot topics in our area in our program sorry in our field and we're actually teaching them right now and then you'll close out by or start by teaching research methods you can take that with at any point in the program but that's really a foundational course that allows you to be able to understand how we conduct research in in our field which is great and we conclude the program with our capstone project which is called an e-portfolio and I'll just say a little bit more about that in the next slide great thanks so within our course curriculum students will be required to take what is called an e-portfolio class it means electronic portfolio and generally it's an absolutely the last term of your program this is what we call kind of a capstone project or culminating experience it's a self reflection exercise that allows you to demonstrate your learning and what you have learned all within the program so students are required to demonstrate knowledge in those 10 core competencies I showed you on a previous slide and for each of those core competencies students are required to demonstrate what they understand the comp to mean they are are to provide evidence that they meet this requirements generally they have to submit two or three course assignments or products that they worked on and we're very flexible about you know what that looks like but you know what I love about this capstone project is like creating an e-portfolio it's just an excellent way to complete the program and showcase your work and reflect on your accomplishments I have had students tell me that their e-portfolio helped them get their first job or that promotion and what is great is that you can kind of turn this e-portfolio easily and turn and turn it into more of a professional portfolio that kind of links to your resume so I think it's a really awesome way of ending the program next slide so this is a one example of that students may select to complete their program so students entering the program often enter in the fall or the spring and it generally if they follow this kind of program and for the fall it would be mar 200 and 204 if you take two courses a term and maybe one course in the summer which is I don't know I call it the happy path but it's not that's just what this is you know demonstrating you would complete the program in three years and that this is a really helpful guide and would demonstrate that because mar courses are only offered once in a semester but you know that is not you don't have to follow this path I've had we have had students you know double up and take maybe three courses a term and then two courses in the summer and really go through this and and complete the program in two years which is great or we've had students on you know they have a different path and they take one course here and there but just steadily taking one course per term and taking maybe five to six years to complete the program we kind of term out at seven but what students love about this program according to their access surveys is the flexibility of the program again you can finish anywhere from two to seven years and you can take a term off if required just one term up you know we get it family commitments and things and you are not alone when picking this rotation this is just one rotation that Dr. Frank has has devised but as Dr. Frank is your faculty advisor will help you pick your own path and so it might be a two-year path or it might be a three-year path or it might be four or five-year path but again you're not alone but you will have a path similar to this. In order to allow students the opportunity to customize their program based on their own interests students can select four additional electives from those required courses I sure I showed you on an earlier slide from the MLIS or the must our library science program during the course of this program as you can see from this extensive listing there are some really awesome courses including okay you just added a new one my SQL in depth wow fantastic I wish I could take that in digital curation privacy project management web2o I have to say that I wish I was a student again so that I had the opportunity to take some of these really cutting edge courses and relevant courses this little this listing was reviewed and approved by the Armara advisory committee and so I just Armara advisory committee is a group who advises Dr. Frank's and the program it's made up of industry professional experts in the field and so we really do need to them to you know opine on this listing along with other things but they ensure that the electives provide you with like real skills you need for success in the profession and I think the electives are just like an excellent educational component to those core MARA courses that you saw on a we talked to you on a earlier slide next this is also a really great opportunity within the MARA program students can take advanced certificates to complement and enhance their degree so within SGSU and the iSchool generally we have three one is on digital asset management another on information governance assurance and security and the third is on data analytics data driven decision making and if you choose your electives carefully strategically with with with our help you can also graduate with your master's degree but also with an advanced certificate in these areas which I think will just look super awesome and cool on your resume and what most MARA students take next slide and probably the easiest the easiest one to with very little effort to take is if they absolutely choose their courses right they can get without with very little work because they're already required to take to take some of these courses they can get an information governance assurance digital asset certificate and they're already required to take we are already required as MARA students are required to take you know the MARA courses but if you just as an example just took this one extra course at the bottom information security as an elective by just taking that one course as an elective you would by default get this advanced certification so it's just important and it's just like an awesome add-on to complement your master's degree so next part I think we'll turn it over to you I think this is fine all right so we mentioned the courses that you would take that are offered through the MLAS program but you can also take MARA short courses as electives as well and we have some pretty neat ones we offer those in the summer fall and spring and you would add your one and two credit courses up to equal a three credit MLAS course if you wish to do that this summer we have one in ethics one in blockchain leases in health information management and I'm thinking we have another one to help prepare for the job market for MARA grads so we've got other options and the MLAS program has one and two credit courses as well that you can select from so we have a lot to think about but what I wanted to do is to show you the specific courses if you joined us for the fall and you can still enroll until the end of this month so you still have time to do that for the fall if you apply by the end of the month one of them is Lisa's course that she mentioned records records in information management professions this is the first course that you should take if you're in the program and only taking one course they're all ACA pre-approved all of our required courses so you don't have to worry about that but the description explains that this is our writing course so it's really important for that it's also the course in which we take a look at the students enrolled and offer you a one-year paid membership in one of three different professional associations ASIS, Nagara, or SAA. ARMA is not on that list because they don't have an agreement with us for the costs the other associations do and so at least you'll be able to join one of those three professional associations for free for a year see if you like them. The other course is with Jason Kaltenbacher he is also the coordinator for the informatics program a new program that we have a new degree that concentrates specifically in cybersecurity or health information management and but he's been with us also since almost the beginning of the program he teaches one course each fall and spring. This one is our management oriented course management of archives records and information governance programs and you really enjoy his courses as well. The third course that I mentioned if you decide to take three courses because you don't want to follow that average timeline that we have there where we recommend to courses each fall spring one in the summer four two summers to get out in less than three years. If you prefer to accelerate your program you want to take the extra MARA courses when you can because they're only offered as Lisa said once a year so this records management research methods course is only offered every fall but Josh's course is unique in that it's not the traditional research methods course it is applied to practical use of the data that you gather when you're conducting research so this would be our third recommendation. This is an example of my course just a module I wanted to explain that all of us use a course learning management system it's canvas within there we put all of the modules for the semester so usually it ends up to be 15 weeks 15 months. The modules for the week contain all the work that you would do for that week so lectures, links to videos, reading assignments, projects, whatever it may be. On the screen what you see there is my second week this semester where students were being introduced to enterprise content management and also being brought into our SharePoint environment so that they could work within SharePoint the first half of the course and they got right into creating a site right away and declaring a record within SharePoint so that's all in just one week. Some assignments like your midterm will be explained to you at the beginning of the course and you'll have seven weeks to work on it at your own pace some of them will be assigned right that Monday and you're going to have to have them in by Sunday night that's my schedule I start on Monday and on Sunday night for my courses some instructors will be a little different they may decide to start on Tuesday or start on Saturday it's always up to the instructor so unfortunately you have to be able to accommodate the instructor schedule there so you can do a lot of planning to figure out when your assignments are due. I'm going to turn this over now though to Kana and I saw that Kana knocked in here I told them you would Kana and I explained that you sent me a link to a terrific video I did watch it and it came out really well for all the work that you said was involved so I'll let you go and I'll turn the slides for you whenever you're ready to move to the next one. Awesome perfectly taken to the first one hi guys I'm Kana I'm Pat's student assistant and this is my third and final year in the MARA program so I'm actually just finishing up my last two semesters which is really exciting for me so I'll just start off and before I get into what's on our slides and just say that our program is really great it's I've learned so much and if you guys want to reach out to me for anything I'm here happy to talk to you happy to tell you about my experience I work full-time and I work part-time for Pat and I do classes full-time as well so if you guys need any information on juggling schedules in life definitely reach out and I'm happy to answer okay so this is our what you see here is our blogs these are the blogs for the iSchool we have the iSchool in San Jose has quite a few blogs actually with varying information to help you through your time in the program and the first blog is the iSchool Curriculum Center this blog is managed by Dr. Main contains information such as courses offered when the classes are canceled and other important registration news updates it's been helpful just for any announcements to get through and the second blog is the iSchool blog it provides a little more specific information resources useful advice including posts about MLIS and MARA the program updates career pathways online learning tips for time management student groups etc etc next slide and then this is our MARA blog which I update and it keeps you up to date with what's happening in the profession the MARA community we've had a lot of spotlights recently which has been nice and you know could talk about anything from current news to what's going on in our program or anything like that so it highlights current students and alumni and shares their experiences with you you can see in april was rim month records and information management month and we did an interview with nick englis who's the executive director of content and programming management at arma international and that was a really cool interview for me to be able to do and talk to him and he's been a great resource for us as well next slide okay so this is our facebook page one of our main forms of social media it's a great reference for job announcements we post a lot of scholarship opportunities on there articles posts related to archives and records and info governance it's a great place to interact with fellow students and alumni you have to ask for approval to participate but once you're approved you can begin sharing posts and your thoughts and it's just sjsu mara if you wanted to look us up on facebook and join we'd be happy to have you next slide okay so these are webinars we have two a two a semester and they're presented to us usually via zoom the webinar focuses on people in the field such as the first one you see here is from the capuchin archives in Detroit um with one of our alumni um junia and she was able to tell us all about her experience after graduating which as somebody who is going to soon be a graduate was super cool to learn about um and she told us all about how her school experience um really helped her in her current job and she started um her archives kind of from the ground up she had to do a lot of organizing um and putting together collections and things like that and it was really cool to learn about um so if you're interested you can always look at for announcements on our facebook page emails come out but they're really great to participate in and to view especially if there's something that kind of piques your interest career-wise they're great and we always announce them and try and push them out as well and usually have a pretty good turnout next slide cool so this is um vicarra what you see here is our virtual center for archives and records administration and it's a mara created space and community based in the virtual world of second life it's a virtual world that we host virtual world events um offer resources through annual vicarra conferences events and exhibits we hosted um a bit ago our 10th anniversary conference and then um we hosted the panel presentation for the vwvpe conference which is really cool um it's a great space you can interact with other students there as well and you can see uh some of the people in there you can see pat's avatar it's really fun to uh get in there and kind of create um who you are in your person and just kind of explore around and see there's a lot a lot to look at and a lot to learn from there next slide please i think the next slide is mine so i i'm just going to hang on to this one for a minute because i wanted to point out that uh we took a year off from our annual conference in order to explore virtual reality and augmented reality and so we now have homes not only in second life but in kitely which is also another virtual world but in addition we've been making homes in virtual reality spaces like alt space and mozilla hubs and we've been trying to find platforms that might be helpful for training in education and we found some that are being used right now for businesses to train their employees uh we're all a little zoomed out at this point right they were all using the web conferencing so looking for the next interesting thing and some businesses are moving toward the virtual reality space for that so if anybody's interested in joining me in this you've got to make it known to me right away and i'll drag you along with us it's one of my hobbies but a serious side here all i wanted to mention is that you can keep track of some of the salaries that are estimated for people in our profession this is for records manager they have others of course at salary.com and for this year it's looking fairly good as with everything you know it's always depends on your education years of experience and things like that that's why it's also so important to position yourself with certification in addition to the degree if you can do that that gives you a little bit of an edge people ask me if if you know it's important to take in and you'll be thinking about this too the MLIS program we do offer an archives and records career pathway you can take courses that are similar to these within the MLIS and that would prepare you to work in a library that's the distinction our MARA program is archives records information governance information assurance we don't want to have anything to do with the library i shouldn't say that but as far as being accredited so i often get questions from prospective students well why aren't you ALA accredited well because that means American Library Association and we don't offer library prep courses so what we look to is our students being able to prove that they are worthy of certification individually that they can master that by helping them get that CRA or CRM exam preparing them for the CA the certified archivist exam preparing them for information governance professional exams so that's where there's a little bit of a distinction so why SJSU and MARA well this is feedback from students and they tell us that they look to us for the quality program the technology the faculty but most of all for the experience with other students we pride ourselves on being a community of learners where we all help each other succeed so you're when you join us you're not in competition with anybody else you're in a team a large one that sometimes breaks into team projects smaller groups Kenna was just in one uh and in fact she was in the one i was talking about Kenna and i don't think you were on yet where i was talking about the foodie uh oh yeah that was off oh it was awesome that one yeah the repository uh so anyway students like Kenna you learn from and get supported by and i think all of our experiences whether working or not working in this field bring something new and fresh to every class that you take but also we offer opportunities to learn from experts through our MARA guest lecture series you just saw too this spring that were archives related but we're putting a third one in on may 27th if you have time it's on a blockchain it's a blockchain panel with four of us on it that should be really pretty interesting and if you decide to take an extra course before you start with us in the fall and happen to register for my two credit blockchain course that would fit right in because that recording of that session on may 27th is how we're going to start out that course so pretty neat opportunities in the fall i was just talking to somebody who wants to do another session for us on records for zoos we've had one before that was amazing on sea life and now we're looking at one that's going to take a look at the kinds of records that are created and maintained for zoos so a lot of opportunity to learn from all kinds of people the cost i think this is one of the most important things too i did have one student say i came to you because the cost there were two programs that i was interested in and yours was the lower cost one but she also added and i am so glad that i selected it because it really worked out the way i was hoping it would so we try to maintain and even heal within the the i guess within that realm of of what you might charge so we're not the highest we're not the lowest kind of in the middle but you certainly get your money's worth for your courses i think well especially depending on what you put into it right so if you really are excited about being in records management archives information governance and you get into a program like this and put your all into it you're going to get so much back out of it as well so there are some grants available registering now for fall you're a little too late to do that if you were thinking about registering or applying for next spring you would want to be able to apply for incoming students early but we also have other grants dr. dolby works on the scholarship committee for that but our school likes to also tout some of the other things that i don't normally talk about like networking opportunities travel grants if you're in one of the associations the student groups and you're invited to speak or do a poster at a conference our school will give you a stipend to do that so there are many other ways that we support our students and the application process the application process is very simple however you will see that we do require a 3.0 gpa minimum and we don't control that that's set the university does all of our processing of applications we in our high school don't even see them until after you're approved so if you don't have a 3.0 they look at first your overall gpa if that is a 3.0 they look at your last 60 units of credit if that's a 3.0 you're still asked to join us you're still approved but if it's not then of course you would get this letter saying you know sorry you don't meet that qualification however you're not alone in that if that happens to you because we have on our website instructions for what to happen if if that's your situation what you would do is take a course somewhere else at another institution but it has to be accredited and erase your gpa to that 3.0 and then you would be able to apply and be accepted and if you have another master's degree and you'd be surprised at how many students we get that already have a master's degree and are just coming for a second one that is an automatic acceptance because when you graduate from a master's degree it is assumed you have at least a 3.0 average so you would not be able to graduate so you can apply online right now it says it closes June 1st but i get the applications in before the end of May if you plan to do that and then you have to get all of your documents in by the end of well June 20th actually if you're in college now and you're not graduating until the end of the semester you can apply now and then you would be accepted conditionally you would still be able to start your classes they would wait and see what your transcript is so you'd still be able to get into your classes for the fall but you may not proceed after that if your transcript is not presented or if you have not finished that program so don't let the fact that you're still in class keep you from applying if you'd like to do that all right i mentioned our summer classes i just want to mention them again we have something called open classes so you could even take a three credit elective from the mlis program if you wanted to you're allowed to take courses in open classes and then apply them to your program uh so if you're thinking about something to do for the summer i've only listed the mark courses here because i think they're so much fun and i wanted you to see the actual names because it's hard for me to remember those long names but those are the ones that are available to you this summer and they have you could see different start mandates so for more information uh you're going to be able to contact me of course but i have all three of us here uh if you want to talk off the record as far as what's it really like to be a student contact canna because she'll tell you like it is she she doesn't hold back and then if you're interested in dr dolby's course for fall if you want to learn a little more about internship possibilities she supervises that you want to get in touch with dr dolby and then i can help you with anything else that that you have questions on so now i'm just going to stop talking and ask if any of you have any questions and if you do just unmute yourself and go ahead and ask any comments actually yes um my name is jennifer peterson hi i'm curious about your um your certificates i saw you had one in digital curation would you be able to tell me anything about that well what uh what it is uh there's a three credit certificate that you're eligible to ask for after you finish the mara program and uh that is i'm going to see if i could get back to that that has just three options it's only one certificate but three pathways if you will so what you would do is choose the pathway that you wouldn't want and this is the one right here so this is not a digital curation um certificate what it is at the top outside of that box it's a advanced certificate in strategic management of digital assets and services so we call it a digital assets certificate and then if you decide you want to do that you look at those three options you can only pick one right because the name of the certificate is the same for all of these it's your focus it's different so the digital asset management one is the one that you would be allowed to take your digital curation course or there's a tools and services one that's in there there are a few other courses in there that relate right to digital content or asset management so that's a pretty neat one you have four uh three credit courses that you can take as electives and you only need three for that pathway so with the right planning you'd be able to get that one very easily and when you finish the MARA program you know you're going to graduate then you're allowed to send a request to the office and state check my transcript i finished these courses i am also uh supposed to receive a certificate does that answer your question um sort of yeah it's um so you need to complete the MARA program first so say yeah yep okay we do have we do have a five credit uh certificate program and i forgot the actual name of it uh a five course i should say but okay you look under all of our offerings you'll see that we have three degrees and we have that certificate program it's a post master certificate program though so you're actually right right you wouldn't have your masters and then you'd say i want to come back for a refresher i have some gifts to fill in i'm going to pick five courses uh and then i think i'm going to be uh better prepared for whatever my goal is so there's that's a good option too great great thank you okay all right anyone else good evening dr france hello hello i can hear you how are you i am good it's rocks and rollux from trinidad oh rocks and very good how are you i'm just fine and i'm glad you're calling in from trinidad so how's the weather there okay yes it's great i knew it i i did have i do have sorry questions and i sent it in an email because it would be too much to discuss in this short time okay all right um yeah um because of the covid pandemic in trinidad and tobago we have a lot of restrictions um our schools and the educational institutions are closed so i outlined it in the email and we could always discuss further so i am having some setbacks in getting information to start this whole process but we we can talk further very good okay so i will look for uh it's uh what 9 18 here in the evening and i've been i'm since morning so i don't look for your email in the morning that's okay and then i'll answer all of your questions and if you'd like you and i could set up a zoom meeting so we could just talk together that's great yeah i'd be happy to do that and then we could go over everything we also have restrictions and many of our schools are closed as well and we were fine with our mar program because we've always been online but the other programs on our campus had to quickly figure out how to teach online it's not that easy it's been a challenge for them yeah so i understand what you're saying so i will look for your email and watch for my response tomorrow thank you okay any other questions hi this is jenny in boston i have a couple questions sure um is there a a spring start time or does the program just start in the fall nope uh usually it's uh around the 20th 21st of january that we start again we call that our spring semester and uh applications for that will be open the first of august so if you decide you want to apply for spring look for uh applications in august to be open you go ahead and apply and students start out taking different courses i had a rotation schedule on there uh that i'm not sure if i'm going in the right direction yes here it is you'll see this is for students entering the fall term but if you were entering in the spring you would come down this column i have a different page for it so it doesn't look exactly like this but you would actually if you were starting in the spring take 210 uh with jason colton bacher it's the introduction to records management really and 283 with me so i would get you in sharepoint there and in uh preservation program digital repository and then what you would do is uh the next fall you would take these courses okay and then you would go ahead and just the opposite we've got it laid out for you on another page i didn't include here but uh yeah it's quite possible to start in uh in january with us i started in january um like pat said there's another course rotation it looks like this but it's for special people like us who start in the spring so it's pretty easy to um follow along with i forgot that you're leaving us in december right now i'm special i know i was hoping you'd be on another year ken's been working with me for quite a while now i hate to see her go uh okay so do you have any other questions jenny uh yes hold on i have a list here um hold on uh so our classes uh same crenus i know i'm saying that the term incorrectly or asynchronous you're saying the term correctly there the asynchronous that means you don't have to be there we don't have meetings like the one tonight unless there's a reason to do that uh and it's never a requirement for a class uh we have our uh guest speakers of course that you'd have to dial in when they're speaking but even that's recorded so everything we have out for you you could get in at your own time and you just meet those deadlines that are set uh and you're fine uh we get in and respond to your questions when we can you get in and do your assignments when you can you will find though that we are uh required uh to respond to you within 24 hours so you're never going to go uh more than a day without hearing from us and that would be the outside we're usually on every day a couple of times a day so you work at your own pace pretty much within the time frame that we set up for the course and i'm sorry i do have one other question can um is there an internship opportunity i think there's an internship class correct yeah i'll at least talk about internship yeah great great question um we do have a course um related to internships and we actually have an internship database uh on our website that has pre-approved internships that mara students can apply for i actually work with the internships students and they do some fantastic stuff so if you want to uh you know you know connect with me offline um there are some if you you know we have pre-approved internships in the internship database but if you have your own internship that you've sourced independently uh there's a little bit of a process to get that into our internship database or what we've been doing recently is just turning those internships into projects special projects and that's another course that we can work on but yes we do value uh oh it's internships are so important and it looks awesome on your resume and so yes absolutely we have as i mentioned pre-approved internships but if you want to work on something yourself or if you want to collaborate on something with one of the professors uh in terms of a research decision we're open we're open to all ideas around internships but absolutely mara 294 is an absolute course that you can register for and uh you would get credit for doing internship and that one is only offered in the spring so you'll want to plan your schedule too so that you can take that in the spring any other questions um this is saunia um so basically i have a bachelor's degree it's in a different area um for taking this program doesn't have to be you know kind of like coming from the library or no same area no that's the interesting part records and information management is important for everybody uh and you will see that uh even those of us who teach it that have come in from different backgrounds so some people come in from history we've had paralegals uh i come from business uh i i don't know of very many that have actually had any coursework in records management before they joined the program some may work in the field but a lot do not so it's quite a diverse group and no it doesn't matter what your bachelor's is in just as long as you have one hi i can add to that absolutely support that um people come from all sorts of backgrounds and people that the the follow-up question to that is usually you know uh do i you know um the appropriate word is i'm just a new graduate i'm coming out of my bachelor's and i'm and or you know mid-career and i'm looking for a career change what is it yeah that's that's really grand i'm at yeah like what's what's that demographic like right and so i'm gonna say it's 50 50 and it doesn't even it it makes no matter no difference it doesn't everyone starts out equal whether and every every every experiences is so valued so even if you come and you're career changing um as i did i went back and did my phd in my forties and so you know we all have we all bring different values to the course room and and different experiences whether you're a new grad mid-career change you have experience don't have experience it's it's all it's all treated equally in the course room i think where you'll find us that um even though you come from with a different background our assignments are so flexible that you can tailor a lot of them to your own interest too and i i think that's pretty exciting i've seen a lot of wonderful work come out of lisa's courses there final assignments when i get to work with the students on their e-portfolio i have a chance to see the assignments they're using as evidence and uh they're amazing and diverse so there's there's a lot of opportunity for everybody with different interests to be able to concentrate more in those areas and i think i'm just going to add real quick to that um my undergrad is in sociology criminology and women in gender studies so not at all related um but i i'm already working in the field i was working in the field when i um joined the program but um just from being in classes with everybody that i've been in and met um actually i think it really works to our advantage that we have a lot of different um people and different careers and backgrounds coming in and it just adds a lot to the discussion the experience so it's not a problem at all coming in one more question regarding the internships is there something that um you have um virtual internships uh yeah absolutely uh just to follow up on on kena's last question point i'm just reminded of an assignment i graded and i gave permission just talking about diversity and we have a really super super student who said to me i just want to code for your electronic records course i don't want to do it i want to i want to code i want to develop an app and i will like give you my code as the final assignment and i will write about my experience and i was like oh i was like okay i'm gonna just experiment with this she's a super smart amazing student anyway so i wasn't gonna question her integrity um but at the end of it she created this amazing archives app that overlays geographical areas in her local community and pops up um historical information on a certain corner i was just so amazed so i'm so glad uh i took the risk and said sure uh you don't let's let's if you want to do this as your final paper uh for sure so uh just to to you know you work with your instructors and you work with what you uh as pat mentioned sometimes she sees some submissions as assignments that are a little out there and that's just an example of one but that student you know it just worked for her and that was probably the best assignment that i've ever seen and and i'm glad i took that risk of being open minded and saying hey yeah let's try this as an assignment and now let's open my mind uh for for you know going forward in in terms of do you need a traditional research paper maybe not but to answer your questions about virtual internships absolutely they are completely possible um i want to share an experience with you with co-vid we've had a bunch of students who started i was working with started very very tech uh place-based virtual internships and then we had to you know during co-vid we had to really quickly pivot and decide what are we going to do uh in terms of those you know i had one student who is working at the new york state archives another um in san francisco with the the the one archives like they were very place-based organizations so in some situations that was great and there was some situations where they were already virtual and so that was great so we do have virtual internships so if you wanted to take that route absolutely and if you wanted to do a physical internship absolutely but we've had those people who were physical internships this term will go completely virtual so that's how flexible our program is is we were able to pivot and not only change those those physical internships into into physical within their organizations or we found them other ones uh that were uh virtual kind of for the the last few weeks of their internships so they can get their hours so needless to say physical virtual and pivoting any other questions i know we're uh at our hour now and i don't want to keep you longer than we promised but uh i think i'll end it there and say if you have any other questions send them along to us any one of us or bother all of us with your email we would love to hear from you and we'll answer them for you if necessary you'd like to speak to me one-on-one we can set something up so that we can do that as well yes you can apply for fall or we'd love to see you in the spring whatever works for you but that's it for us for this evening so thank you very much for attending and i hope to hear from you soon