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Joining the new students at orientation reinvigorated my learning spirit. Since I've stayed in the MSU community for so long and had already completed three courses I volunteered to help answer questions for the other incoming students. I found out we had a great deal of diversity in our cohort. We had a few international students, a couple of people that already had more then one degree, and a couple that were switching careers. Many of us already had substantial experience working in higher education and were building on that with the degree program.

While I was studying learning organizations in EAD802 I found many opportunities to connect the theory and ideas to my professional practice. The format of the course included many hands-on exercises and activities. In addition to providing an introduction to the work scholars such as Peter Senge, Chris Agyris, and Ettienne Wenger there were many practical suggestions offered. The primary text for the course is the fifth discipline field book (Senge, et-al, 1994) which translates Senge (1990) into tangible suggestions and exercises that are broadly relevant to people working in organizations.

Studying adult learning resulted in interesting spillovers from the topics I knew we'd be covering. Many of the 'differences' that adults demand from educational systems to enable their learning also potentially benefit all learners. Studying adult learning therefore, calls for studying learning broadly, and challenges us to focus more on learning then on the practice of instruction. Adult learning also reminds us that although we are educators, people are very able to learn on their own and many thrive outside traditional formal learning environments.

Taking EAD805 Higher Education Administration was a great start for my graduate work. I made strong connections between the material and my professional work. Birnbaum(1998) provided four excellent lenses into the dynamics of a higher education institution. I was able to frame the way departments and faculty peer-groups operate differently then operational wings of the university. These ideas were most useful in committee and project work where more than one social form is in play at once.