Career Spotlight: Nursing Informatics Specialist

Posted on by Mary Kate Weaver

Nursing is the United States’ largest health care profession, with more than 3.8 million registered nurses nationwide. One reason nursing is such a popular profession is because there are so many fields to go into. Nurses can be found working at private practices, in acute care, in public health agencies, in nursing homes, in schools, and more. When people think of nurses, most think of people working in a hospital caring for the sick or the nurse you see once a year at your annual physical; however, there are many other options for nurses, including nursing informatics specialists.

Nursing informatics combines the need for patient care with the insights of health informatics and technology. While this role is still relatively new, it is a fast-growing field. According to the American Nurses Association, a nursing informatics specialist oversees the integration of data, information, and knowledge to support decision-making by patients and their health care providers. They help to create, develop, and implement health care technologies to deliver the best and most efficient health care services to patients. As a nurse informatics specialist, they have a different and invaluable view than that of software and technology developers. They understand what nurses need to do their jobs effectively and accurately and which information is important to patients and other health care providers—all while also understanding the technology side.

Earn your MS in Nursing Informatics and combine a passion for patient care with powerful data science.

Roles and Responsibilities

Nursing informatics is a high-level technical role, where each day you will use data and technology to monitor programs, systems, and different patient-care initiatives. While the role will vary based on the position, job level, and organization, below are some of the general duties you will find across the field.

• Implement, optimize, and use systems
• Train nurses and other health-care staff on new systems
• Act as a bridge between nursing and information technology departments
• Analyze data to ensure systems are working properly
• Educate other health-care professionals on how technology can improve patient-care outcomes
• Research the latest systems and give suggestions for new tools

A nursing informatics specialist is not your typical nursing job, but it plays a critical role in patient care. It is important to note that as a nursing informatics specialist, you are not likely to provide hands-on patient care. You might not report to the nursing department, and you are likely to not have anyone reporting to you. While most nursing jobs have no option to work from home, with this role you can. According to the HIMSS survey gathered in 2020, 45 percent of nurse informaticists work remotely.

What Are the Education Requirements?

At the very least, you will need a bachelor’s degree to work as a nurse informatics specialist. It is recommended and most jobs require a minimum of a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. At Excelsior College, you can earn your bachelor’s in nursing fully online, which allows you to continue to work full-time and spend time with your family and friends. It is important to note that a lot of jobs also require a master’s degree. According to the HIMSS survey, 66 percent of nurse informatics specialists have a master’s-level degree. Even more so, 27 percent reported they had a master’s specifically in nursing informatics. A master’s will put you ahead of the game in this career field, and allow you to move into leadership roles.

Excelsior College has many nursing degrees to choose from, including a master’s degree in nursing informatics. This degree will equip you with the knowledge and skills you need to make an impact in patient care, safety, and operational effectiveness. Check out the expert faculty, course catalog, career outcomes, and more on the website.

Salary and Job Outlook

According to payscale.com, nursing informatics specialists earn $85,714 on average annually. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that this field is projected to grow by 8 percent by 2029, which is much faster than the average for all occupations. The need for informatics specialists is much higher than the number of people qualified for the position.

Now more than ever, nursing informatics specialists are critical to the success of health care and the battle with COVID-19. Bonny Kehm, faculty program director of the MS in nursing program at Excelsior says, “Nursing informatics focuses on use of data-driven information, technology, and communication in the delivery of health care. The COVID-19 vaccine rollout has led to a surge in the need for logistical coordination and communication. Informatics will facilitate speedy coordination in vaccine distribution and administration to millions of Americans to help gain control of the deadly virus. The use of informatics by highly trained nurses has never been more important or vital, especially as distribution and administration of the vaccines is stalled. We have developed the tools to fight this virus. We must now quickly develop the personnel and tactics to take up the fight. That starts with nurses trained in the use of informatics and analytics. Armed with data and logistics training, nurse informaticists are vital to the future success of the COVID-19 vaccination plan, distribution, and administration.”

Earning your degree in nursing informatics will set you up for a long and successful career in health care.

Assessment in the Time of COVID with Natasha Jankowski, Ph.D., Executive Director, National Institute of Learning Outcomes Assessment.

Posted on by André Foisy

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-mwjht-fa4ec7?utm_campaign=w_share_ep&utm_medium=dlink&utm_source=w_share

Erin and André interview Dr. Natasha Jankowski, then of NILOA and now of AEFIS, about life as an assessment professional during covid and beyond. We talk equity, music, self-care, and leveraging uncertain times into meaningful change in our profession.

A Passion for Police

Posted on by Jenna Kerwin

Law enforcement is Jason Marcellus’ passion. He has spent his adult life serving the community or serving his country in a policing role. A member of the Army Reserves, Marcellus recently earned two degrees with Excelsior to help him move up in his civilian career. Now he is working to spread the word about how the police and communities must work together to keep people safe.

 

Marcellus joined the Army after graduating from high school, but in 1997, he left following a catastrophic parachute malfunction. By the time 9/11 happened, he was anxious to rejoin the Army, but he broke his femur, was raising a young son alone, and was still doing rehab from his previous injury. By 2006, however, he was ready to move forward with his life, and joined the Army Reserves.

 

Years later, while working as a security manager for Motor City Casino in Detroit, Michigan, a coworker told Marcellus about Excelsior College. Marcellus promised to look into the college after his friend told him how many credits he could potentially transfer in toward a degree. Plus, as a veteran, the Army would help pay for his education. “The Army has provided me a lot of a lot of great opportunities—training opportunities—and has completely paid for both my associate and my bachelor’s degree from Excelsior,” says Marcellus. In 2017, he earned both an Associate in Science in Liberal Arts and a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice.

 

After earning his degrees, Marcellus was able to obtain a job as the chief of police in Fort Wainwright, Alaska. He didn’t stay long in this position, though, and soon moved to the Yakima Training Center, an Army base in Yakima, Washington. He managed the Army’s anti-terrorism program, which entailed coming up with solutions to combat the vulnerabilities that adversaries might be able to exploit. Marcellus also ensured that all Army civilians, contractors, employees, and soldiers on the installation underwent the required anti-terrorism training.

 

Being in the Army Reserves and taking courses with Excelsior helped prepare Marcellus for the role. He explains, “I managed 150 employees at a casino, to leading troops in combat, to being an Army civilian. I’m able to take key aspects from each of those and make it my own…being in the military, you’re exposed to almost every imaginable background, race, creed, color. It’s made me so much more rounded than some of my colleagues and peers.”

 

Marcellus also plans to use his experience in his new job as a police officer with the Yakima Police Department, which he began in September 2021. He is passionate about helping people understand how police officers are related to the community they serve. He uses the “broken window theory” to describe how a community can deteriorate as when ignoring windows that continue to break. In contrast, if you work to fix these windows, you can improve your community. Marcellus explains that it’s important to get police officers back into their respective neighborhoods, and for them to become more involved and help residents.

 

Marcellus is next pursuing a master’s in public safety and hopes that with a higher degree and his position in the police department, he will be able to better influence community leaders. With his background, education, and dedication, he can accomplish his goals. “I was kind of brought up to believe that you are your biggest obstacle,” says Marcellus. “And if you want something, you’re going to find a way or you’re going to make a way.”

 

Why study Human Resources (HR)?

Posted on by Dr. Gary Stroud

When you think about your career what do you want to do? Would you like to have a say-so in the strategic direction of the company? Would you like to help attract top-notch people to come work for you and/or your company? Would you like to coach people so that they become as successful as they can be? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then a career in human resources (HR) may be the right path for you.

It is important for all managers and entrepreneurs, not just those in human resource management, to have a good understanding of human resources. Managers play a key role in selecting employees, training, and motivating them, appraising them, promoting them, etc. These activities can be incredibly rewarding. Many business people have great business acumen but lack the skills necessary in HR. People who have knowledge and abilities can make the company. The founder of IBM, Thomas Watson, said, “You can get capital and erect buildings, but it takes people to build a business.” Many times, businesses fail because the people involved do not grasp the importance of HR.

When studying human resource management, it is important to understand human capital. Human capital refers to the knowledge, experience, and skills of the workforce. Human capital cannot be managed the way organizations manage products or technologies. When you study HR, you learn how to build or develop superior knowledge, skills, and experiences within the workforce that help retain and promote top performers. When you study HR, you learn that even though we are becoming more technology-driven, technology changes the nature of work itself. This digital transformation creates new jobs, but more importantly, it changes the nature of jobs, even entry-level ones. An example of this change is in the automobile industry. Rather than have humans assemble the car on the assembly line we now have robots that can assemble the car. Humans are now checking the work of robots!

When an employee reports to their first day on the job, they meet with HR. In that meeting, HR starts to build a company culture. Company culture is important to employees because workers are more likely to enjoy work when their needs and values are consistent with their employers. If you work somewhere where the culture is a good fit, you tend to develop better relationships with coworkers and be more productive. It is in those first few days that the important things about the company are discussed with you.

Do you have a certain coffee shop that you like to go to because they remember your last order? Or perhaps a particular department store where the workers treat you special, maybe even go out of their way to help you find what you want? That is culture. Those intangible things make a company more than just a business. HR helps build organizational culture.

If you’d like to start a career in human resources, check out Excelsior’s business programs and online human resources professional training courses to start your educational journey.

From the Uniform to the Office

Posted on by Jenna Kerwin

Jill McShane, of Virginia Beach, Virginia, joined the U.S. Navy at 18 and for the next 20 years, that was the only life she knew. As the time to retire from military service came closer, McShane was unsure how to best transition to civilian life. Then a conversation with a colleague who had earned an associate degree at Excelsior College sparked a direction, and the transition plan began to take shape.

 

McShane joined the Navy in April 2001 as a cryptologic technician–collection, which includes intercepting signals to provide tactical and strategic intelligence, technical guidance, and information to ships and special warfare units. The job includes reporting threats to protect the fleet and save lives. McShane emailed her unofficial transcripts to Excelsior and discovered she only needed four courses to earn an associate degree in liberal arts, which she earned in August 2019. She then discovered she only needed to complete seven courses to earn a bachelor’s degree and earned that in July 2020. “With Excelsior, I am surprised how many credits they applied for my military service,” she says.

 

The hardest part about attending school online, says McShane, was trying to balance coursework with being a single mother to two young boys. Luckily, McShane’s parents came to live with her for a time while she was attending Excelsior. She also made sure to balance her courses, following her academic advisor’s advice by taking the right mix of courses to be successful. Before she knew it, McShane had earned her degrees and then used them to apply for an internship through a Department of Defense program called SkillBridge, which provides service members with civilian work experience during their last 180 days of service.

 

“Trying to find a job post-retirement is a little scary, a little daunting. I’ve never interviewed for a job. I joined the Navy when I was 18 years old, so this is all I’ve really known,” explains McShane. Through the SkillBridge program, she made a request to her commanding officer to take an internship for her final six months of service. “I found one through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation called Hiring Our Heroes Corporate Fellowship, and there was a requirement to have a degree. Had I not had an associate or bachelor’s degree, I wouldn’t have qualified for this program. I set myself up so nicely for retirement, and I couldn’t be happier about it.”

 

McShane interned at Booz Allen Hamilton, a management and information technology consulting firm, and when her internship ended, she was hired full-time as an associate. The most surprising thing to McShane was the difference between the corporate world and the military world. “I think just getting into corporate America and losing the uniformity and the formalness is what really surprised me…and [during] my internship was how everyone goes by first name, and I’m just not used to that,” she says.

 

In her role at Booz Allen Hamilton, McShane is an associate with the Navy-Marine Corps team, where she maintains and supports relationships with stakeholders in the Navy and the Marine Corps. Booz Allen Hamilton supports and employs many veterans retiring from service, something that is important to McShane. She explains that she enjoys helping people to give back to the veteran’s community.

 

McShane separated from the Navy in June 2021, just before earning a Master of Science in Management from Excelsior in July 2021. She had also applied military experience toward that degree, earning nine credit hours for her time at the Navy Senior Enlisted Academy in 2015. As it turned out, she had only needed seven courses to earn the master’s degree, and she chose the MS in Management program based on her interest in business and human resources. Having earned three degrees in just over two years, McShane is proud she pursued her education. “I am thrilled that I gave myself that gift,” she says.

 

Living the Dream

Posted on by Jenna Kerwin

For Steve Adams, college never seemed like a possibility.

 

Adams, who lives in Aurora Colorado, grew up poor in Eastern Kentucky. He sometimes helped his mother carry groceries long distances and even spent a couple winters in a camper trailer without plumbing. Wearing inexpensive clothes and shoes in middle school drew the unwanted attention of more affluent kids and he dreamed he owned Air Jordan sneakers just to fit in. It was the kind of childhood that leads him to say, “By the time I turned 18, as far as I’m concerned, I already had a Ph.D. in poverty.”

But Adams refused to let his background win. He is a survivor, he says, and he chose to accomplish a lifelong dream of achieving higher education.

 

Out of high school, Adams sometimes worked long 60–70-hour weeks doing manual labor for a natural gas developer. “I loved the work. In just a few months I lost 30 pounds of awkward-didn’t-play-sports-senior-year-of-high-school fat, and my forearms got swole from carrying gravel and laying pipe,” he says. Eventually, he enrolled in a few courses at a local community college. His mother had instilled the importance of education in him—when he was young, she got her GED and attended community college in order to enrich herself and eventually be a role model to him.

 

By the time Adams was in his early 20s, he needed a change. He ended up in California and joined the California Army National Guard. While there, he was eventually accepted into the Defense Language Institute (DLI) in Monterey where he studied Chinese. His time there was a truly enjoyable experience—he went surfing, became scuba certified, and went snowboarding in the California mountains. “It was great. That was my first sort of college experience,” he says. But his college experience didn’t end there. Just a couple of months after being in the DLI, Adams was deployed to Kosovo, and while at Camp Bondsteel, an education counselor suggested he look into Excelsior College to complete a degree.

 

“Excelsior College accepted all my previous credits, and I eventually completed 12 upper-division credits in PoliSci from Excelsior during that deployment and my next. On my third deployment, I studied and completed the college mathematics CLEP exam, earning 6 credits and fulfilling the requirements for a BA in Liberal Arts,” says Adams, who completed his bachelor’s degree in June 2014 while entirely overseas. What was most interesting is that while he was deployed, he was simultaneously studying Contemporary European History and Politics. His location helped to put him in the frame of mind needed for the military situations he was in.

 

A few years later, while deployed in the Middle East, Adams’ Contemporary Middle East History and Politics professor, who had worked for the RAND Corporation for 20 years and was also a professor of Denver University, introduced him to and encouraged him to apply to University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies. In 2021, he was accepted into the International Economic Affairs program. This was a dream come true for Adams. And, what’s more, Adams’s Post 9/11 GI Bill® and the Yellow Ribbon Program will pay for his education at the Josef Korbel School and supplement his mortgage.

 

“Maybe some of y’all don’t think this is a big deal,” Adams says about receiving his bachelor’s degree and going for his graduate degree. “But those of you who grew up poor, and who value organized higher education, understand that this is a milestone in living the dream.”

 

 

Currently, Adams works as a security guard for a contractor with the federal government. He likes the flexible hours and other benefits. The job provides stability and flexibility that will allow him to go to school while also supporting his family.

 

In a few years, Adams will have 20 years in the National Guard and can retire. He often encourages other servicemembers to take advantage of their GI Bill benefits and go to school. He says he wouldn’t be on the path he is today if it wasn’t for earning his degree at Excelsior. But, “I try to remember that living the dream isn’t about arriving at the destination. It’s about enjoying the ride.” Check out Excelsior College’s History Degree.

GI Bill® is a registered trademark of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). More information about education benefits offered by VA is available at the official U.S. government Web site at benefits.va.gov/gibill/.

Career Spotlight: What Is a Community Health Worker?

Posted on by Ermenita Kacani

Are you passionate about living a healthy lifestyle and want to share that passion with others? Do you believe education around health-care availability should be provided to everyone? If you feel strongly about either of these questions, a career as a community health worker might be for you. This career can be both challenging and rewarding. A strong candidate for this position wants to help others, enjoys working with a diverse group of people, and has a passion for health education.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the median annual wage for community health workers is $42,000. However, it is reported that the top 10 percent of workers earns more than $70,000 annually. Overall employment is expected to grow 13 percent by 2029; much faster than the average for all occupations. Take a leap and start your journey as a community health worker today.

What Does a Community Health Worker Do

Community health workers promote a healthy lifestyle within a community by educating individuals to adopt healthy behaviors and habits. They are not only educators, but also advocates for residents by effectively communicating with health-care providers and social service agencies. They create and implement programs that promote and improve individual and overall community health. This can be done in a variety of ways depending on where you work; some examples include implementing a wellness group, encouraging healthy meals in cafeterias, or providing preventative services such as blood pressure or hearing screenings. Community health workers are also responsible for collecting data to identify community needs and report information back to health educators, providers, or social service agencies.

Common Job Duties for a Community Health Worker

As with any position, job duties vary based on the industry. Community health workers hold positions in a variety of industries, including government, family services, health care, and education. Depending on the specific role, a community health worker may be staffing a table at a local community event, conducting home visits to check on clients, teaching a wellness class at an assisted living facility, or visiting schools to promote wellness programs.

According to the BLS, these are the most common and general duties of a community health worker:

• Discuss health concerns with community members
• Educate people about the importance and availability of health-care services
• Provide basic health services
• Collect data to help identify community needs
• Report findings to appropriate people
• Provide informal counseling and social support
• Conduct outreach programs
• Make referrals, provide transportation, and address other barriers to health-care access
• Advocate for individual and community needs

In any case, a community health worker is passionate about educating and improving the health of their community.

How Do You Become a Community Health Worker

There is no standard education requirement for all community health worker jobs, as it may vary depending on what industry you are in. Typically, community health workers must complete on-the-job training and some states may require a certificate program. A bachelor’s in any health sciences-related field will put you ahead of the game and allow you to advance in your career over time. The bachelor’s degree in health sciences at Excelsior College teaches you ways to empower people to maintain optimum health and wellness throughout their life span. In this program, you will learn to help people overcome obstacles related to wellness, and learn about the organization, purpose, and quality of the U.S. health care system. This degree will certainly prepare you for a career as a community health worker. Learn more about Excelsior College’s Health Science degrees.

Not Too Late to Hit the Restart Button

Posted on by Jenna Kerwin

Michelle Tochiki, of McCordsville, Indiana, has never been to bootcamp and has never experienced hand-to-hand combat. Still, she knows what it is like to serve. She is a military wife and understands what it means to sacrifice for her country. She left her career, put her dream of earning a degree on hold, and took care of her two children while her husband has pursued his military career.

 

But when it came time to restart her career, she found Excelsior College. Tochiki earned a Bachelor of Science in Liberal Arts in May 2015 and will earn an MBA in September 2021.

 

Her educational journey has run parallel to her husband’s Army career. While stationed in Germany with her husband, Tochiki heard about Excelsior College. At the time, she was taking online classes with a university in Hawaii, but the school wanted her to start attending in person. That was impossible, so, unfortunately, she had to give up her economics major. She decided to switch to pursuing a liberal arts degree with Excelsior and earned her degree much faster than she anticipated. The business courses within the liberal arts program have prepared Tochiki for a career in human resources.

 

One benefit of being a military spouse, says Tochiki, is the ability to work from home. This has been invaluable to her while working in human resources. However, the opportunity to work from home also has its downside. Tochiki’s specialized area of human resources is data analytics, and sometimes it has been hard to find a remote job. “I had to give up my career, you know, to move around. Not every company in every state has the need for a data analyst,” she says. So, Tochiki is ready for her husband to retire so she can maintain a steady career as an HR data analyst at her current place of work, a workers’ compensation insurance company called AF Group. Her job entails auditing and simplifying data for executives at the company.

 

Tochiki believes Excelsior’s MBA program will help her achieve a promotion at work. “It could better align me to our team, to the growth of the company. And with the MBA, it will help me to step up into a supervisory or manager role,” says Tochiki. She says earning an MBA has always been a dream of hers and now that it falls in with her career, it just made sense to pursue it. She also wants to set a good example for her children. “It’s always like I want to be better off than my parents. And hopefully, we are paving the way for [our children] to be better than us.”

 

Tochiki believes other military spouses can better themselves, too, by earning higher degrees. She says it might be difficult to manage your studies, family, and career at times, but it is worth earning your degree in the end. She says it’s important to celebrate milestones, like she does with her family. When she finished every term, she went out to eat with her family. “The little wins matter,” she says.

 

With a daughter on the way to college and a husband retiring after 20 years in the military, Tochiki admits that life is going to be different now. But with her soon-to-be two degrees, a steady career, and a more permanent living arrangement, Tochiki thinks she can finally take a deep breath. “I’d like to go vacation somewhere. Maybe Australia or Japan. Not think of anything, you know, no school, and definitely not take my work with me.”

More from Michelle Tochiki

 

On Being a Military Spouse

“One thing that a lot of people don’t realize is that as a husband or a wife, being in the military means that the whole family is in the military. It affects the children; it affects me for the 20 years that he’s going to be in.”

Tips for Maintaining Work/School/Life Balance:

“Mental health is important. There’s a lot of resources. I talked to my neighbors, I talked to my family, my husband. Family support. I can’t stress it enough. It’s very important. Because there are times that I tell my husband I’m sorry there wasn’t dinner today because everything is due today.”

On Work Experience:

“I think we need to experience work in the field that you enjoy, or the fields that you like to grow into, because that way, you actually see the discrepancies that are at work, and learn, then make changes. Because without that experience, you have no clue what to fix.”

On the Future:

“I really like to see myself as a director in the next two years. I know that my superiors believe in me and with the MBA, I know that’s really going to help me push up in the company…I always wanted to be called a doctor, and I’m looking to pursue a doctorate but would like to breathe a little for now.”

 

Six In-Demand Jobs You Can Get with a General Business Degree

Posted on by Mary Kate Weaver

Many people think a business degree is the easy way out, or an answer for students who are unsure of what career direction to go. However, that is not the case. Earning a business degree can open many doors for you; everywhere you go, someone is selling a product, analyzing data, directing a team, or managing a project.

What Can You Do with a Business Degree?

If you are a hard worker, creative, and work well with others, a degree in business is the next step for you. Check out six of the most popular job opportunities you can pursue with a general business degree:

Business Analyst

A business analyst watches the market and business trends to create recommendations for the business they are serving. Depending on the industry or role you are in, job responsibilities can vary for this position. For example, you might analyze financial data to look for ways to save money on a certain project, or you could research new products to increase efficiency within the company. Qualities looked at for this position include research skills, problem-solving skills, analytical thinking, and effective communication skills for presenting your ideas and solutions.

In May 2020, the median annual salary for a business analyst was $87,900.

Project Manager

A project manager leads a group of professionals to ensure a project is accurately completed by a deadline. They are responsible for assigning tasks and roles, holding team meetings, tracking progress, and communicating any issues or changes to the appropriate people. A suitable candidate for a project management position would have strong attention to detail and an organized nature, as well as effective communication, time management, and leadership skills.

The average salary for a project manager is $76,600 a year.

Financial Analyst

Financial analysts guide businesses or individuals in decisions about spending and delegating money to earn a profit. They make recommendations based on market research, performance, financial data, and more. An ideal financial analyst will enjoy researching and examining economic and business trends and will have strong analytical skills.

On average, financial analysts earn $83,600 a year.

Sales Manager

Sales managers direct an organization’s sales teams and are responsible for creating and meeting goals, analyzing data, and developing training programs for the sales representatives. Sales managers should want to work in customer service. You might need to step in to resolve customer complaints regarding sales and services or monitor customer preferences and create plans to acquire new customers through direct sales techniques. Customer service and leadership skills are necessary for this role.

The salary varies based on what industry you work in; however, on average sales managers earn $132,290 per year. In some cases, a sales manager can earn money based on commission, meaning the more you sell, the more you make.

Training and Development Manager

Training and development managers oversee training programs, staff, and budgets for their organization. Their main goal is to increase efficiencies within a company by holding training programs for employees to improve skills that align with the organization’s goals. Not only are they responsible for creating training programs, but also they facilitate and lead a team of specialists to assist in implementation. A training and development manager must be able to lead, collaborate, and make decisions at every level.

In May 2020, the median annual wage for training and development managers was $115,640.

Marketing Managers

A marketing manager analyzes industry trends to plan programs that will generate interest in a product or service. A marketing manager tends to work with a variety of people across a company to discuss topics such as budgets and contracts, marketing plans, and advertising media. They lead a team of skilled marketing professionals and also can be the idea makers. They bring their ideas to life with a plan that will increase brand awareness, sales, and much more. A marketing manager must be a creative thinker, a leader, a delegator, and a decision-maker. Strong organization and communication skills will come in handy for this role.

On average, marketing managers earn $133,460 a year.

To truly excel, every organization needs experts in the business field. Earn your business degree from Excelsior today!

Moving Toward Distributed Workforces

Posted on by Jennie Walker

In March 2020, when a national emergency was declared in the U.S. due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, stay-at-home orders across the country forced organizations to decide whether to shut down or pivot to distributed working arrangements.

The pandemic created a particularly challenging situation for organizations that either were not designed or prepared for the major change.  For the last 50 years, organizations have been experimenting with different workforce models with a variety of names—telework, telecommuting, work from home, remote work, virtual work, and now distributed workforces. These all reference work that does not take place within a singular office space. However, there are distinctions in the scope, roles, protocols, and technologies involved. Leaders need to understand these distinctions, as they have implications for how to best lead individuals and teams. Distributed workforces, in particular, are becoming increasingly prevalent and require more than just new skills; they require a new mindset for employees and leaders alike.

Telework and telecommuting were early references to working remotely with communication via telephone. Telework originally was designed to reduce real estate costs. However, it also created new options to support employees needing accommodation or additional flexibility with work arrangements.  Employees may have been assigned to an office location but worked temporarily or sporadically off-site.  When teams needed to collaborate, it either necessitated planning travel for in-person sessions or left employees in the relative isolation of telephone conference lines. Telework and telecommuting are terms that are rarely used anymore, as they pre-date the internet. The more common terms today are virtual and remote work. The rise of 21st-century technologies enabled organizations to stay connected in real-time with off-site employees. More importantly, technological advancements have allowed employees to collaborate in real-time via video conferencing, shared drives, and applications for collaborations.

Remote or virtual employees may or may not be part of distributed workforces, however. The distinctions are in the permanence of the working arrangement and the degree of collaboration involved. A distributed workforce is designed to be geographically dispersed and intended to collaborate with one another. During the pandemic, for example, some organizations worked remotely when it was deemed safest to do so and are now calling employees back to the office. This was an example of remote work. Distributed workforce arrangements intentionally build the systems and processes to support them as a long-term strategy, such as organizations that have done away with office locations entirely or those now operating in hybrid models. These often include multiple hubs in different locations along with employees permanently working from home.

The global pandemic did not create distributed workforces, but it arguably accelerated the move toward them. The dramatic shifts in workforce structure require that leaders understand how to manage the complexities of distributed workforces. For example, distributed teams benefit from working guidelines, but may need greater flexibility to navigate time zones, cultures, and technologies. Leadership, therefore, needs to be more flexible, responsive to diversity, adept with a variety of technologies, and more dynamic to motivate and influence from a distance. Distributed work has tremendous benefits to organizations and individuals, including cost savings, flexibility, innovation, and the ability to recruit talent from anywhere in the world. However, it does require leadership development for those who influence and manage others in this framework.

Excelsior College is pleased to offer the new Graduate Certificate in Distributed Workforce Management. The certificate is comprised of three courses: Organizational Behavior, Virtual Team Management, and Virtual Training and Development. It is ideal for those who either are new to leading teams in a distributed workforce or need to enhance their current skillset to better engage and influence employees in this framework.

Lifelong Teacher

Posted on by Jenna Kerwin

After four decades in health care, Excelsior graduate Pamela Addy, vice president of clinical and ambulatory services at the University of Maryland Medical System, has many accomplishments she can be proud of. One of those accomplishments is teaching and mentoring her leadership teams to use data and evidence-based practices to deliver health-care to those in need—something that is her passion.

 

After earning a certificate in radiologic technology at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1976, Addy began her management career at Hand Surgery & Rehab Center of New Jersey. With dedication and hard work, she worked her way through the ranks at several institutions; she was executive director at the Pennsauken MRI and Imaging Center in Pennsauken, New Jersey, the managing director at the Broad Street Open MRI and Imaging Center in Philadelphia, and director of Diagnostic Imaging and CardioPulmonary Services at Lodi Memorial Hospital in Lodi, California. In 2005, a recruiter asked Addy to come to Sutter Health in Northern California to help develop the ambulatory diagnostic imaging network. Nearly 15 years later, the Sacramento, California, region had more than 20 ambulatory imaging centers and was conducting 750,000 imaging exams per year. It was then that Addy was at a point in her career where she began looking for other opportunities.

 

Any career growth would require Addy to earn her first college degree.

 

“What is the swiftest way I could put a bachelor’s degree on my resume?” Addy recalls thinking when she was looking to change her career. She discovered Excelsior College and enrolled in the Bachelor of Science in Health Sciences to Master of Science in Health Sciences program. She took a combination of courses and CLEP and DANTES exams for credit toward the degrees. During the four years it took Addy to earn the degrees, her family was not aware of what she was doing. It was a personal experience for her, so she didn’t tell her family until she had earned her degrees in August 2019.

 

“I made a plan: I looked at which subjects I knew something about already,” she says. “Excelsior made it so simple. I was able to just patchwork all of this together to be exactly what I needed for that [the bachelor’s] degree, and then be able to bridge over to the master’s.” Addy notes that 40 years’ experience in the health-care field gave her helpful life experience that she applied in the exams and the online courses.

 

After earning her degrees, Addy became an adjunct faculty instructor for the bachelor’s program for medical imaging and the BS in nursing program at the Gurnick Academy of Medical Arts in California. Teaching fits right in with Addy’s job at the University of Maryland Medical System, too, where she has been vice president since January 2020. “One of our primary objectives as a leader in health care is to develop people. This is where coaching, mentoring, and education support a healthcare organization to achieve its mission through its team members,” says Addy. She oversees the clinical services at three hospitals, a free-standing emergency department, multiple ambulatory facilities, and two urgent care facilities—the buildings of which are spread over five counties.

 

A large part of Addy’s job consists of strategic planning, which she describes as taking everything she’s learned through her career and applying it to current problems in order to establish priorities and allocate resources to reach intended results and outcomes. She applies educational training, like the Lean Management System, to her employees’ work, as well as the Lean process improvement approach to eliminate waste and reduce errors in work processes. “Our goal is to become a high-reliability organization with the highest standards of safety and quality,” says Addy.

 

Addy also encourages her employees to be passionate about health care, and she leads by example. It’s her mission as a healthcare leader to address access to health care and create and support healthier communities. “The problem is often access, whether it’s access through affordability, access through transportation, access through insurance, access through being able to get time off from work,” explains Addy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she has worked with the county departments of health and Chesapeake College to create a mass-testing site so people in more rural areas would have access to testing.

 

When reflecting on her career so far, Addy says she has been able to apply each life experience to the next and encourage others with her life lessons. One of her greatest accomplishments was helping to develop a successful ambulatory imaging network at Sutter Health, and she is excited for what is next. With her degrees from Excelsior, she is sure she can go anywhere and do anything. “You can be anything. Here I am: this is my story from a radiologic technologist in diagnostic imaging and now vice president. There is no ceiling, you can be anything.”

 

More from Pamela Addy

 

What is the most important trait for someone to succeed in health care?

I think you need to be humble. Keep learning. Ask for feedback. And reflect. I reflect on everything… . One more thing which is critical is relationships. It is invaluable to build solid relationships along the way. It means you always have someone to reach out to when you have a need or a question. I still reach out to people I worked with 20 years ago and they reach out to me. It is part of the continuous education process.

 

What is the best business advice you have received?

I was taught to have integrity in everything you do. That is the best advice. I grew up in health care management with leaders who demonstrated integrity. It builds trust. I’m also very transparent. I’m probably a lot more transparent than some other leaders. If you’re always demonstrating integrity, there’s no downside to being transparent. It’s absolutely the foundation.

Teaching Students and Hunting Killers

Posted on by Jenna Kerwin

Douglas Gilbertson, a veteran of the U.S. Army, earned a Bachelor of Science in Liberal Arts from Excelsior College in 1995 and went on to earn a master’s and then a Ph.D. Now a professor of criminal justice at St. Cloud State in Minnesota, most people know him as a teacher. Others recognize him as one-third of a team that investigates the cases of the Smiley Face Killers.

 

In 2005, Gilbertson was looking for a final project for his Crime Analysis, Mapping, and Profiling graduate-level class when he came across names of young men who had gone missing and presumably died of the same cause. He gave the topic to his students to research and profile, and also called a television producer he knew in the Twin Cities to record the students’ final presentations. The video was posted on the internet and that’s when things took off.

 

In October 2006, retired New York City detectives Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte approached Gilbertson with a request that he join them as they investigated the cases of those men, which they believed fell under the work of a murderer(s) dubbed the Smiley Face Killers. The moniker comes from the graffiti smiley faces that were found near the victims. Gannon and Duarte, and later Gilbertson, believed the young men found dead in bodies of water across several midwestern states from the late 1990s to the 2010s did not accidentally drown, as concluded by law enforcement.

 

Duarte, Gannon, and Gilbertson brought new media attention to the deaths of the young men and appeared on the documentary series “Smiley Face Killers: The Hunt for Justice” that aired on the Oxygen channel from January to February 2019. Gilbertson and Gannon have also co-written a book, “Case Studies in Drowning Forensics,” and Gilbertson has appeared on several television shows, including “Larry King Live,” “Dr. Phil,” and “Dr. Oz.”

 

He continues to spend summers with Gannon, visiting the families of the deceased young men. “Every summer, every June, Kevin will fly in here to Minnesota. I’ll pick him up at the airport, we’ll hit the road for a couple of weeks, and we go check out some of the old cases that are still open,” says Gilbertson, adding that they always make sure to visit with the families of the deceased. It’s usually not hard to work with law enforcement to obtain files because by now the information is public record, and they are able to obtain the data with the Freedom of Information Act. What is hard, however, is talking with the parents, Gilbertson says, because they are often looking for end-all answers about their family member that Gilbertson and Gannon cannot give.

 

Gilbertson is glad to work on the Smiley Face Killers cases but has also worked on other controversial and high-profile cases. For instance, he says his biggest triumph so far is having brought to light the possible innocence of Rodney Reed, who was convicted in Texas of murder. With new evidence, Gilbertson and others were able to get a stay of execution for Reed in 2019, and Reed is now working with the Innocence Project to prove his innocence.

 

Gilbertson’s career is the outcome of his military experience and educational journey. When he was just leaving the Army and lacked educational experience, Gilbertson didn’t have many options for work. He happened to find a flyer for Regents [now Excelsior] College at his base, Fort Hood. Regents awarded 21 credits in Czech Studies for the language training he completed at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center in Monterey, California, and then he took history courses at St. Cloud State University that he also transferred into Excelsior.

 

After earning his bachelor’s degree, Gilbertson pursued a master’s in criminal justice and specialized in gangs to complement his time as a signals intelligence analyst in the Army, where he was exposed to different groups of peoples’ ways of operating and communicating. “I’m like, ‘how can I translate, transfer those skills as a signals intelligence analyst into criminal justice?’ It’s just like trying to keep track of gangs; you’ve got the Crips; the leader’s name is this, and he goes by Scoop, and their colors are blue. And these are their symbols…And so it was the same skill set, just a different group of people,” Gilbertson says, explaining that being a signal intelligence analyst meant you also had to look closely at the uniforms, colors, and flags of different groups of people.

 

Gilbertson went on to earn a Ph.D. in Sociology from Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to further understand the inner workings of criminal activity. “I need to understand the sociological theory to understand the criminological theories and that’s what led me to sociology,” he recalls.

 

Gilbertson’s work doesn’t stop at tracking down killers; he continues to speak at conferences and has the privilege of saying he is the only person to have done a content analysis on gang theory from the 20th century. He has also worked with George W. Knox at the National Gang Crime Research Center since the 1990s and is the executive editor for the Center’s Journal of Gang Research. He is also able to boast that even before he finished his master’s degree, he was invited to speak on war crimes at a conference in Amsterdam.

 

Whether he’s investigating old cases or teaching a class of future criminologists, Gilbertson has pride in his work and has fun doing it. While recording an episode for the Oxygen documentary, Gilbertson offered to jump into the Charles River in Boston when no one else would. The producer loved it —Gilbertson’s determination, vigor, knowledge, and dedication make for good tv.

 

More from Gilbertson:

 

What advice would you give somebody who wanted to pursue a career similar to yours?

“You need to figure out first where you are. Are you concerned about victims or the offenders’ rights?

Because criminal justice is multidisciplinary. It’s not just biology. It’s not sociology or social work. You know, it’s chemistry, biology, it’s law…so if you think [offenders] can be rehabilitated, then maybe you should be a probation or parole officer. If you don’t; you’re okay with just babysitting them, well, you might make a good prison guard or correctional officer. If you want to go out and get the bad guys on the street, then maybe you should be a cop. But if you’re out there for the thrill of the chase, and you might be shot at, do us all a favor and don’t put on a badge; join the Army or the Marine Corps.”

 

What do you think is the best piece of advice you ever received on the job?

“The guy who started our program was an Ohio state trooper. He had all kinds of little gems. ‘If you’re hunting raccoons, don’t let your dogs go chasing after rabbits.’ In other words, stay focused. Another one was, ‘Unless you’re willing to go to court with it, don’t record it. Don’t write it down. Say it and be done with it.’”

 

Is making ethical decisions something you find that you come across daily?

“They’re about the biggest challenge. Ethics-wise, don’t lie to the family. Don’t tell them what they want to hear…Because it’s more important for them to know the truth, so they can have closure. Never lie. Never.” Follow Gilbertson’s education path by learning more about Excelsior’s Liberal Arts degrees.