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The Higher Education Administration and Student Personnel Program at Kent State University is all about putting practical experience to theories, teaching, and research. The core of all of our classes is some foundation of theory; whether multicultural, law, leadership, or student development; research; either current or historical; or other forms of teaching about what has previously been done. Going along with all of this groundwork however is the overarching theme that since everyone is out in a Graduate Assistantship, doing practicums, and at various colleges, we have something to contribute to classes. The strength of this program is about how we can tie what we are learning about the foundations of higher education and infuse them into our day-to-day working lives.  Another major idea that is pervasive throughout our Higher Education Administration program is the idea that the professors want to set us up to be professionals once we graduate, not just entry level positions. From the very beginning of our course work when we took Student Affairs Functions, the program is setting up the various types of jobs that are available. These jobs were not just limited to different coordinator positions but went all the way to the Vice President positions as shown through our professor for the course Dr. Pete Goldsmith. Even before this, during the orientation, Dr. Thomas does a great job trying to push everyone to excel to great things by talking about the different alumni of our program and the jobs they have gone on to have. Dr. Thomas highlighted those people who had made it to Director, Assistant Vice President, or Vice President positions to show all of us what we should be reaching for.  This idea that we should go on to become professionals is not just limited to the program trying to encourage us to look to the upper administration, but it is also focused on us being professionals once we graduate from the program. Courses such as our Special Topics in Greek Life were focused on us being able to walk into an office right after graduating and being fully prepared to do the job. Having a practical based capstone experience in Case Studies, rather than doing a comprehensive exam or having each student write their own research thesis also emphasize the idea that we are to move out into the professional world. Case Studies is getting all of us to think about how we would respond to situations that occur on college campuses regularly as administrators. These situations are not the types of decisions we have been faced with through our practical experience so far, but are more complex; requiring us to think about how several offices would work together to solve a problem. Even this idea of using case studies as a capstone is not just limited to the one course, as case studies were used to cement our learning throughout a variety of courses. In Administration of Multicultural and Diversity in Higher Education one of our last assignments was to come together on a case study to use all the information we had learned, pull in new information, to demonstrate how we would handle a complex situation.  For this idea that we are to go out and become professionals when we graduate to really be complete the program made sure that we had all of the tools needed to perform as professionals. Having courses such as Research Methods, Law, and Businesses Administration is the culmination of giving us the tools to perform as professionals. Through Law we were taught to think about all the different legal ramifications for our universities, not just personally what laws we might be held liable to if we someday broke one of them. Business Administration is teaching us the skills that we might not need until our second or third job, above that of coordinator, when we will be in charge of making departmental budgets, hiring and firing people, and running an office. Research Methods did not just teach us how to do research, but also how to evaluate good research. This is a skill that we will need many years from now as we stay current on the most up to date research in the field and must determine what is good and what isn’t in the current literature that we are reading.  All of this is not what I expected to learn in such a program. I was expecting this program to teach us the tools that are needed to go out and do an entry level job, since when we graduate with our degree those are the positions that we will have. I was expecting to learn lots of different theories, types of colleges, and techniques for dealing with college students, so that we could enter into the job market well prepared and continue to learn as we advance through our jobs. I believe that by having a more long term focus on how our graduate program should help us the faculty have prepared everyone in the program to advance more quickly than other programs may prepare their students to do. Just looking around the class I see very few people that I can see staying in a coordinator, or other entry level position for more than two or three years; and can see those that will quickly begin moving up the ranks at whatever college they end up in.