Can you tell us about your professional journey and current position?
I was a Hickory cohort student and graduated December 2020. I graduated from Chapel Hill in 1998 for nursing and knew right off the bat that I wanted to go into public health. I realized early on in nursing school that I was mostly interested in how to prevent disease, rather than work at the bedside and take care of somebody who already had a disease. There is definitely a calling for folks who want to do bedside care, I just knew that this is not where I wanted to land. Just like any nurse, you have to do your hospital tour of duty, so I spent the first year that I graduated working at UNC hospital and then was fortunate enough to be hired at Catawba County Public Health very early on in my career. I will have been at Catawba County Public Health for 23 years this September and I have worked in a variety of positions. Most recently in March of 2020, I was appointed health director during a pandemic and during my last semester of MPA school. I started graduate school later in life and I’m really glad that I did that. The reason why is that it had always been on my list. I promised my dad when I graduated from college that I would go back and get a master’s degree. At that point, early in my career, I thought that it made the most sense to get a master’s degree in nursing, that’s what most nurses did. However, as I got into public health and learned more about public health, I started to think that I wanted to get my Masters in Public Health. I was married and we ended up starting a family. Trying to work full time and raise young children, I could not do everything, so I put graduate school off just a little bit until I felt that I could handle it. Again, I am glad that I did and I’m glad that the delay happened because it made me really start thinking about a Master of Public Administration over a Master in Public Health. The former health director, who was my mentor, had his MPA and was always very much a proponent of getting a Master of Public Administration. It gives you that broader range of government. I love public health, I see myself retiring in public health, but it is so beneficial to have a broader scope under your belt. While I delayed my master’s degree for many years, I felt that I ended up with the right degree, the one that would benefit me the most as I continue in my career and beyond.
What contributed to your decision to pursue an MPA degree?
I worked various positions at Catawba County Public Health, and I became a supervisor young in my career. I had been here for three years when I became a supervisor and moved across various supervisory positions. About six years ago I was in the assistant director of public health position and it really opened my eyes to aspects about government and public health that were more than just clinical. I was able to be exposed more to our environmental health program, which not only deals with inspections, restaurants, parlors, and other types of establishments, but also has the onsite wastewater protection program. This deals with aspects of community development, economic development, bringing in new businesses to the community. We have to make sure that we have water in place, we have to get sewer or well water to those building sites. It really broadened her perspective and opened her eyes to many different aspects of county government. It intrigued me, so that helped lead me to an MPA and pursuing that.
How did the App State MPA program prepare you to work in government, nonprofit, or the private sector?
The MPA program opened my eyes to broader government. It gave us the opportunity to learn budgeting and finance, which is critical and that is an area that I had not had a lot of in-depth exposure to. That certainly better prepared me for my current role as Health Director. Thinking in terms of organizational theory, personnel, policy; all of those classes gave a richer and broader perspective of all the different aspects of government. Whereas my position was health focused, moving to the Health Director position brought in a lot of different subject areas that they do not teach you in nursing school. It is on the job training. The curriculum of the MPA program gave an in depth look at certain issues, gave me resources to tap in to, gave me exposure to experts in the field that I can call upon whenever I need to. Again, it really gave me a deeper and richer understanding of those areas that I had not had as much exposure to.
What advice would you give to individuals considering the App State MPA program?
Just do it! My biggest fear as a working mother and a wife and someone with a very busy schedule, my fear was time and not having time and not believing in myself enough to just do it. I remember talking to my husband and he said, “why wouldn’t you? why not?” So just do it, you will be able to carve out the time and things will fall into place, so that really helped me make that decision. A couple of other factors that definitely contributed was the promise I made to my dad. I wasn’t going to not fulfill that; it just took a little bit of time. Also, I knew that I wanted to be a Health Director and part of being a Health director is that you have to have a master’s degree in public health or public administration or some related masters. I knew from a career development standpoint that I needed a masters at some point. Also, just the fact that Appalachian offered the Hickory cohort and made it convenient for me to be able to take classes locally. Also, something that I really liked was being able to be in a cohort and be able to meet face-to-face with professors, a group of peers, and colleagues on a routine basis. When COVID hit it kind of shut us down in March of 2020, so we had to go to remote learning. That was okay, we made it work and the professors were great, but having that option of meeting face-to-face was very enticing and made me want to choose Appalachian's program over other programs. One thing I will say as a professional is that fear of not having enough time; like if I commit to school am I going to have enough time to still commit to my obligations to my family, commit to obligations at work, be a good community member and be able to participate on boards and committees? I was able to find that through the curriculum and through the flexibility that the program offers, I was able to tailor many of my interests with course assignments. I was interested in Covid because I was knee deep in it and I was able to use that subject area that I was working on every day to write a paper for the policy class. In the grants writing class, I was able to take a grant that I was working on or something that I wanted to do and use that content and expertise and apply it to that area. Professors encouraged us to do that and it made a difference in connecting both my professional life and life as a student. It helped me personally and professionally, so that made a huge difference for me. Also, I think advice that I would give to a student considering an MPA at Appalachian is that the faculty is like no other and the support that you get and the personal relationships that you develop, you just don’t find that. I did my undergraduate at a large university and the community that I found at Appalachian was so much different and so rewarding. It’s hard to put a price on that because it just doesn’t happen at other places.
If hiring, what would you look for in new graduates of the App State MPA program?
Well-rounded individuals, folks who have had exposure to a lot of areas of government including nonprofit. I feel like they would have the ability to network and establish strong partnerships in the community. Community partnerships are so important. I think just this past year, working in the pandemic, I’ve realized just how important community partnerships are. You can’t do it all, you need the community to be able to function effectively. I would certainly be looking for an App State graduate that has the ability to form connections, partnerships, and find common ground. I would also expect them to be critical thinkers. I think we can all say as alumni that the professors and faculty really challenge you to think on all aspects of an issue and think critically. It is important as anyone who is moving into a leadership position to be able to think critically through issues. Someone committed to quality. It is not just about the volume of work; it is the quality of the work. I think about some of those rigorous assignments in budget and finance and the volume of the budget document we would have to go through and the attention to detail we had to pay. While it seemed very tedious and time consuming, it really did have a larger purpose that I think anyone coming out of the Appalachian program would have an appreciation for. The ability to think critically, but also think through the details. At the end of the day, I think the desire for excellence is something that I would look for. I think that is something the professors at Appalachian have demanded of me and my cohort when we were students. Everybody in my cohort were in-service students, were working full time and then going to school so we all had work obligations, but that did not lessen the expectations that the faculty had for us. They still expected us to meet deadlines and do things with the utmost quality and care. I am so thankful that they held us to that expectation. Although it was very difficult at times, it made me want to be better and improve with each and every assignment. So those are just a few things that I would be looking for and expect if I were sitting in front of an Appalachian candidate and asking what they could bring to my organization.