Reflection Of My Personal Experience: Leadership In Higher Education

1284 Words3 Pages

When I graduated with my Bachelor’s of Psychology degree in 2004, I remember feeling unsure of what it was I wanted to do. Nine years later I entered my Master’s program in Educational Leadership and I remember feeling that same apprehension. I had been a Guidance Counselor providing college advising to inner city high school students for 8 years. I knew I wanted to focus on Higher Education Administration but was unsure of how I could transition into the field. In the summer of 2015, I was preparing to graduate with my Master’s degree but, before I could, I had one final course: Leadership in Higher Education. Throughout my final one-week class, we heard from various panels of leadership from Temple University, Community College of Philadelphia, and Lincoln University. …show more content…

However, within that next year or two, I remained committed to professional development and training. I left the Leadership course eager to research what set of skills or background experience I could acquire while still in a K-12 setting. This brought me to a comment Dr. Hirsch had made regarding the challenges facing community college leaders: limited funds and decreasing budgets. With diminishing budgets, writing grants and securing outside funding is a skill that is highly desired at many higher education institutions. By September of 2015, I enrolled in the course, “Grant Writing for Profit and Non-Profit Industries.” By the end of the year, I had written my first grant for the Prudential Foundation. Unfortunately, we had not received the grant but I followed Dr. Brunner’s advice and contacted the foundation to gain insight into why we may not have been selected. Using their feedback, I then applied for the Computers for Learning Program and we were elated to learn that we were recipients of the

Open Document