For the last few minutes I’ve been reading and re-reading the email.  It begins with “Welcome to A.T. Still University!”  With these words, I know that the application process is over, and now the real fun of doctoral study is about to begin.  But even though the admissions letter is a milestone in my academic life, it’s nowhere near the beginning of the story, so allow me to back up a little.

Hi!  My name is Steve Foerster, and this is the first post in my eLearners.com blog about my experience as a student in the Doctor of Health Education program at A.T. Still University.  I’ve been accepted, but classes don’t start until December, so in the meantime I’ll have the chance to tell you a bit about myself, what my academic journey has been like so far, why I chose this particular program and why I like ATSU, and what I hope to do with it in the long term.

I suppose the first thing to do is tell you all a little bit about me.  I’m a married father of four who just turned thirty-five years old.  I work as the Director of E-Learning at a small liberal arts college in Northern Virginia, which means I’m responsible for a pretty diverse set of things -- it’s sort of the department of technical miscellany.  I oversee Blackboard support, our computer labs, videography and multimedia production, and all the IT training that’s offered to faculty, staff, and students.  I don’t get to do as much as I’d like with distance learning, which is my field of interest, because Marymount is a traditional liberal arts college.  But sometimes faculty members want to use technology, and I’m happy to help them.  Sometimes I get to do neat things like help them produce videos they can add to their online courses, for example.

I’ve been working in higher education for about five years now.  Before this position, I was the international student advisor at a small college in nearby Washington, D.C., and before that I was a Student Success Coordinator at  Keiser University in Fort Lauderdale.  Before I became interested in higher education I was an IT and project management guy, both for companies in the U.S. and also spending three years as a consultant on the small island of Dominica in the Eastern Caribbean.

In my next post, I’ll start to explain my wayward academic history.