Advancing to Faculty Status - U of Phoenix

Who says that you can't teach an old dog new tricks? 10 years ago, I had serious questions about employees who wanted to be reimbursed by the company's educational assistance program for online college courses. I mean, if you're not "in class" with everyone else and a professor, where is the value of that? I actually denied some employee requests for assistance in online courses!

For the past four weeks, I have been in an online faculty preparation course for the University of Phoenix, preparing to teach masters level courses in Safety Management, and eventually courses in Human Resources. What I thought would be an easy time actually turned out to be a rigorous schedule of about 20-25 solid hours per week, learning the U of Phoenix learning process for online courses. The good news is that today I received notice that I successfully completed the four week course, and now move on to the next step, mentorship.

Mentorship will be where I facilitate an online course, while guided on the side by an experienced faculty member.

The online environment allows one to attend class from anywhere in the world, and I am looking forward to the diversity of thought and opinion in these courses, with folks who have advanced already to a level in their working career. Although student privacy will not allow specifics, I will look forward to sharing some of the great stories in this new venture...teaching online.