 All right so welcome everybody to today's Mara Open House. During the next hour maybe a little less you'll be introduced to our School of Information and the Master of Archives and Records Administration or Mara degree. One of our students Katie is with me today to answer your questions about what it's like to be a student. So please hold your questions until the end and we'll have time for some Q&A and I'll also leave you with my email address in case you have questions that we can't get to. So I'm Dr. Pat Franks up there at the top and I'm the Mara program coordinator but I'll also be your advisor if you're in the program for the duration of your time in the program so we can talk about things like courses you're taking and schedule you can handle that type of thing. Below me to the right there is Dr. Sandra Hirsch. She's our Director of the E.I. School. She's very progressive really go get her and she holds meetings with students once a semester at least. Below her is Dr. Linda Main. She's the Associate Director and she's the one who makes decisions on things like course offerings and she also jumps in when we have questions that we don't know how to answer so she really is the person working behind the scenes to make everything go really smoothly and then down at the bottom on the right is Sheila Gertrude and if you are if you apply and are accepted to our program you immediately hear from Sheila. She's what we call an online student advisor so she helps with things like forms and registration and if you're taking electives permission numbers things like that. Our primary faculty and we have other faculty members as well but primarily you're going to learn from Dr. Lisa Dalby who is a full-time lecturer. She is Certified Records Manager and an Information Governance Professional. Also from Jason Kaltenbacher who's Certified Records Manager and from Joshua Zimmerman who is a certified archivist and each of them teach different courses so you'll need several of them in fact two in the fall should you take the two courses we recommend and if you decide to take three you'll add Josh was down there on the bottom so you would meet all three in the fall and this is Katie and right now I'm going to let Katie introduce herself and then she's going to explain a little bit about the online resources that we have and you'll learn that she's responsible for a number of these so Katie why don't you take the mic and just let me know when you want me to move the slide ahead. All right hi everyone I'm Katie I've been in the program three years this is my last semester so I'm well versed in the MARA program and I love everything about it it's been such a wonderful experience and I'm very sad to go so Pat if you want to go to the next slide I will be talking about all our information online and our social media so this is our new website we've just updated it this past semester and it is a portal to learn more information about our program. We have a specific page that gives you the opportunity to download our brochure you can review our job trends we put out a job analysis report every year in the fall and on the site this is where you'll be able to read about it and any other information regarding admission requirements fees and learning outcomes also under the MARA tab on our website you can visit student experience which gives you 10 reasons to enroll in MARA and you can learn how to apply to our program and what life is like after MARA. You also have a chance to access our blog so we have six blogs throughout all of SGSU the most helpful for MARA is the MARA blog and this blog the i-student blog the i-school blog i-student blog provides important information and resources useful advice for both MARA and NLIS students their posts are about courses career pathways online learning time management student groups conference and conferences and financial aid it's such a useful tool for students during the program next slide okay so we'll be talking about social media I have been working really hard on promoting our program through Facebook and Twitter and our MARA blog so next slide all right so this is our this is one of our blogs it's our spotlight series which focuses on a student that is either current or alumni and sometimes it has to do with when they went to an ARMA chapter meeting what that's like or we have a blog post about someone who took the CRM exam but this this blog keeps you up to date on archives and records in the news and you can learn about students and alumni through the spotlight series and I also do a post on like different careers in the archives and records management right now I'm working on a post about a fashion archivist so we have a lot of interesting posts that go up and it also keeps you up to date on news because I like to make sure we're current and and talking about what's in the news next slide this is our Facebook page it's an opportunity to act interact with more students it will let you I'll let you know when blog posts are up when webinars are going on or going to happen and it's a place that you can post articles and interact as well or even if you have questions it's a great place for our students to communicate with each other next slide so we also have a second life program called the it's the virtual center for archives and records administration also known as the car this is an interactive site open to anyone who wants to join the car a host virtual world events such as the VWP VPE exhibit which is coming up soon as you can see that it's highlighted in purple and that's a completely virtual conference about the best practices in education and the car is such a great learning experience and through their blog you'll find highlights and lectures and events and you can also check out their new website to find out more information there's a brand new website up but the blog gives you a lot more insight to what the car does next slide I'm very excited about this webinar so we have guest lectures how many times a semester to a semester to a semester this one I've been working on this is my goal is to introduce different types of jobs in the records administration fields archives field and I have immersed myself in zoo life now and we have a curator of husbandry and records Matt Sagan who will be talking and Josh Kortru who is a training manager at species 360 that is is the program that their records management is on so all of the zoos they work through this program through species 360 so this is a great lecture that will be having March 26th just to learn about a different version of records administration in archives so next slide okay so also since we have webinars if you can't make them we do have them online at this website and if I if you want to see some of our past past lectures and what they've been about this is the page to go to to access those listening to past webinars can give you an idea of what careers are like and it's just a great way to learn more that's it okay thank you Katie you are always welcome to attend our webinars whether or not your students so if you go to search on webcasts or webinars SJSUI school and you can register for those you don't actually don't have to register what you do is see the link to the session it'll be held in zoom just like this one and on the day of the presentation just feel free to join us now I'll tell you a little bit about the Mara program when it was first developed and that was quite some time ago we're celebrating our 10th anniversary this academic year the individuals who created it took a look at our McCourt competencies and Society of American Archivist Guidelines graduate programs thinking that we really should be combining the skills for both archives and records since record keeping is a continuum from creation through whatever you do with disposition or permanent retention and we also looked at the certification examinations for certified records managers and for certified archivists and make sure that our curriculum covered all of that well of course over the years things have changed and a few years ago I believe but it was maybe what 2015 2016 was the first time that there was an exam for information governance professional and I sat for the very first exam as a way to figure out what the heck was going to be in it because we were going to launch our very first course in information governance right as soon as that exam came out and so we are sure that within our curriculum we cover the information that you need also to prepare yourself for the exam for information governance professional. We took our curriculum and talked to the people at the ICRM the Institute for certifying records analysts and records managers and had them review it and worked out in agreement whereby if you graduate from the MAR program you automatically are given credits for parts one through five of the six part exam the six part is a key study but if you graduate from the program and have either work experience or take the internship course or an organizational consulting project course you would be prepared to submit a request to become a certified records analyst immediately or you could take the six part of the exam to become a certified records manager so this agreement saved our students I think about $500 in exam fees and a lot of time and preparing for those five different exams and we've had a number of students take advantage of this but we also have a lot of students that are in our program they're already certified records managers. We also presented our curriculum to the Academy of Certified Archivists because we contend that we are preparing you for both so we wanted to be sure that's what we're really doing and their exam you need to look at all of our courses we have 11 one of them is either an internship or organizational consulting project so that never has consistent learning outcomes because all situations are different however our 10 courses that have contents their lecture courses were all pre-approved by the ACA so as students if you ever wanted to sit for the examination to be a certified archivist you are well prepared after taking your courses in order to sit for that examination as well they have only one exam it's a hundred questions and so they do not of course give credit for that but they do pre-approved you as having been prepared to sit for it. I mentioned learning outcomes and how we looked at all of those different areas to create a framework upon which to build our courses and first we took a look at what do we really want our students to be prepared to do by the time they graduate and how could we put that into 10 simple statements that we can make that you understand this is what you need to do and at the end of it you're going to be able to prove that you can do that so here are the 10 they're called program learning outcomes by the university and we call them our core competencies. They if you finish all of these courses you are well prepared to provide evidence that you have a mastered all of those core competencies and you see the 11 courses I mentioned here down at the bottom is the professional experience or organizational consulting project one or the other all of the rest of them are required. The last one where I mentioned the organizational consulting project or internship if there's a reason that your employer does not allow you to participate in something like this we can substitute a fourth elected for you so there is a way that you can request a substitution for that but the rest of the courses prepare you very well for careers in archives records and information governance. I mentioned asking you to prove that you've mastered core competencies will you do that by completing a course which is the March 89 it's an e-portfolio course. We have the same requirement in our MLIS program as well. This is an example of Rachel's from I think it was last spring. What she did was use WordPress and she created her e-portfolio by providing an introduction to it and then you see the term competencies here if you clicked on that on her real site you would see each one of those ten competency statements I mentioned but each one of them would be expanded upon to explain what she believes that means how she's mastered it how she's going to use what she's learned through that competency in the future and the evidence that she can provide and it's usually two or three activities that have been created or assignments so it could be very substantial discussions that she engaged in but it also should be written assignments, group projects, presentations that she's made and there were even cases where students have prepared something at work that satisfied as evidence for one of the core competencies so you can certainly look to an internship or a work experience for evidence of some of these competencies as well and then she prepared a conclusion the affirmation just means she's stating this was all of her work. This is as I said a course itself and it's a very rigorous one but students say that the opportunity to go back and reflect on all they've learned throughout the program helps them better position themselves now to put together either a actual portfolio for a job they may be seeking or to update the resume or to use in some other way. So now the courses themselves well if you begin the program in the fall you see that the first course you would take would be March 200 and 204. Now this is a recommendation for courses each semester and one in each of two summers in order to finish in less than three years and I believe it's about 75 percent of students according to a recent survey complete within the three years. Some students do go a little faster but not faster than that and that's because as you see on the spring our courses are only offered once a year either fall or spring so you have to be very careful in how you prepare your schedule to be sure that you complete the courses in a timely manner. You do have up to seven years to complete the program after seven years the first courses you finish falls off because they're too old and so at that point it's very difficult to try to take those plus whatever else you need to complete the program so you really need to get it done within those seven years. If you'd like as I said to take more than two courses a semester that's when you contact me and we work out what's the best third course for you to take I don't believe I've ever had anyone take four courses but they have had a number of students take three. You can also take courses in the summer but MARA courses are not offered in the summer except for electives. Our required courses are not so any electives MLIS electives or MARA one or two credit courses that you take in the summer can be used as your elective credit. So that brings me to what is the elective credit. Well we had 11 courses you must take in MARA so there you've got 33 units of credit but our program is 42 so another nine units of credit must be earned somewhere and most often it's by students taking three three credit courses that are offered through the MLIS program that they think are really interesting. We have a MARA program advisory committee that reviews every student request for an elective to approve addition to our list or to reject that and we do not allow students to take courses that are not on the list but we are very responsive in trying to understand why a request is made and to expand the list so you see we have maybe about 40 right now options that you can select from. Now we have something new as well when you graduate with the MARA degree you can also at that time request and advance certificate and strategic management of digital assets and services. That certificate is a certificate from the school. It is not another degree and it's not a certification but it is a certificate verifying that you've taken three courses in one of these three pathways. You can only do one. It could be digital asset management, it could be information governance assurance and security or it could be data analytics and data-driven decision-making. The easiest one for our students to achieve is the information governance assurance and security one. That's because you already have two required courses within this certificate. It's information governance and information assurance and then by adding just an elected and sacred security you'll be able to graduate with the MARA degree and a certificate in digital assets. So talk to you a little bit about how a MARA course works. As I mentioned we're recommending for students starting in the fall two courses one is MARA 200. This as you see there is ACA pre-approved but this is course that is our writing course. Every program has to have one writing course so this is the one. That's where you're introduced to the APA style manual for writing for references and text citations and that. But it's also the one that introduces you to our view of the combination of archives, records, information governance, everything that goes into what would be what we call the record-keeping profession. Jason Calzenbacher teaches a second course that suffered in the fall as record and record-keeping professions. He also takes the viewpoint of looking at from a management view how you would manage either records or archival institutions or programs and he has, as Lisa does, a lot of experience in the real world. They both worked for a number of companies. Jason as a consultant and then also as a records manager at Nike actually and Lisa still is very involved in her consulting work. So they make sure that you have everything you need that really keeps you up to date on what is happening in the field. Now this is an example of course I teach. In fact I'm teaching it right now to MARA students so it's called MARA 283. But it's enterprise content management and digital preservation and the way it's set up is we use a canvas learning management system. Within there we set up modules for each week. You see an expanded module for the very first week. In there it kind of goes in order so it's easy to follow. You'll have lectures, you'll have readings, you'll have links to sites online that we think you should be looking at. We all include a video at least in one of our sections in each module so you will have that interaction there. We also always have discussions and in this course I have hands-on activities because in this one we use Office 365 and SharePoint for the first half of the course to create SharePoint sites and then in the second half of the course we use Preservica. I'm not sure if you are familiar with that. It's a digital repository online software and service that powers a lot of very important archives and digital repositories right now. And so our students have the opportunity to create collections and make them accessible through universal access. It's a wordpress that we use. So anyway this is what this looks like. We never require you to be in one place at a certain time. What we give you is that week within which to get your work done. I kind of require all of my students by Thursday night to do an initial post so that we really have a discussion. Try to prevent all of them from coming in on Sunday right before the mod closes. That really isn't helpful to anyone but other than that they have the entire week to do the activities that are assigned and the readings. Now students also have the ability to create Zoom sessions just like the one you're in. So if we get into group assignments which we do in the second half of this course they will be setting up their own Zoom sessions if they want to get together and meet that way. So this is something Katie worked on but I grabbed a few of the stats from her work. What she did for the last two years in the fall was put together a jobs analysis. Took a look at a number of job postings for a certain specific period of time. Last year it was between August 20 and October 31st and evaluated 176 unique jobs and you'll see how they break out into archival or archives and records combined or records management or information governance that are now records and information governance combined. When we started putting information governance on there is something to add. A few years ago there was 1% and then it grew to 3%. Now we're up to 7% plus another 3% that is combined with records. So we're seeing movement in more job postings for the field information governance. Some of the statistics we have five to ten years of experience for a lot of the jobs within the RIM and IG field but that doesn't mean that you won't be employed if you don't have that experience but it is a good reason to emphasize that if you don't have the experience volunteer get into internships things like that. We also took a look at the educational requirements and about 25% 24% actually asked for a master's degree. There was a very small percentage that asked for a doctorate a number that asked for bachelors but the thing to remember here is that the more qualified you are the more likely you're the one that's going to be offered the position if they're a group of you looking for the same type of job. Also we have 26% of the openings are in companies that have 100 to 500 employees and you could see the rest of the breakdown. There's still over 20% in companies with 1,000 to 7,500 employees as well so it's a little medium-sized there. We also have 20% of openings in education government and non-profits so one of the presentations that we had not too long ago was by a number of people that worked in archives in state government and that's in our webinar archives theory. You can go back and listen to what they have to say about that. Now salaries this is from a salary wizard that we found and it's just kind of a breakdown and it changes it morphs this was for records manager. If you looked for the salary wizard and look for archives or information governance you'll see other figures but this is just one that that I grabbed to put in here. There's a median salary but you know of course that people are paid less and more depending on your experience as well as your education and I can't emphasize enough your activities as well whether it's in professional associations or volunteer work or something like Katie's doing where she's just had so much experience working with a lot of people in her position as a graduate student assistant. So I'm coming to the end of why if you decide that you want this type of degree would you choose San Jose smart program. We conduct surveys and according to the students that respond to those surveys they selected and are pleased with the program in fact the last several years we have 100% of the respondents that would recommend the program to others based on the quality faculty the program itself the technology but most of all the community of learners the students that we have in our programs are amazing whether they have experience in the field or not they have so much life experience the work experience that they bring to the program and to the classes that everyone learns from one another and then also opportunities to learn from the experts through our guest lecture series just like the one that Katie helped set up for us on zoos and aquariums which I am so eager to attend and you're welcome to attend so think about that and also second-life student presentations and guest lectures in there we had some amazing ones on artificial intelligence in fact one of the presenters showed how she developed an app in second life that she is now moving to commercial product outside of second life to be used on on smartphones so we get a lot of really great input from people in the field the third reason though is our cost we have been steady since I came into this program when it was first launched $474 per unit and you pay only for what you take each semester so you're not paying a tuition fee for the semester you're just paying for the number of credits that you're enrolled in and it's less than 20,000 as you see there for the entire master's degree regardless of how long it takes you now students can apply or prospective students can apply up until June 1st you want to apply as soon as you decide that this is something for you in order to be accepted you need a bachelor's degree with a 3.0 GPA minimum or any master's degree will do and we have a number of students that already have one and sometimes two other master's degrees if you do not have a 3.0 overall GPA our admissions office computes the last 60 units of credit to see if your last 60 units were a 3.0 because sometimes we get off to a rocky start if they were a 3.0 you will be accepted but if neither is a 3.0 you still have the opportunity to take courses at another accredited institution and then bring up that GPA so that when you do apply you'll have those extra transcripts that you can submit so that you can prove that your last 60 units of credits were a 3.0 now you see here that the application period ends on June 1st it's closed on that date so you want to get it in before the end of May however if you do decide to apply to the program and you'd like to be considered for one of our special scholarships you need to apply for that by May 1st so you want to get the application in soon so that you are a student that's been accepted so that you can apply for one of the $1,422 scholarships that would cover one of your courses contact me directly through email I want to thank you very much for attending