"One of the strengths of the Clark School and of MAGE is in responding to the market and industry needs... to ensure our students are able... to enhance their careers."
What is your position at MAGE and what are your main responsibilities?
I serve as the Associate Director for Academic Affairs within MAGE. The 5 person Academic Affairs team provides academic advising, community building, and general support to all Master of Engineering and Graduate Certificate in Engineering students from the point of admission through graduation and even beyond through alumni engagement activities. This equates to supporting 800-1,000+ admitted and continuing students per year on average! Our team also works on faculty identification and training, as well as course design, development, and support for all ENPM courses and with our partner units and corresponding Faculty Content Advisors on all M.Eng. and GCEN program curriculum development and assessment.
How many of our 5,000+ alumni have you seen graduate?
I've been with MAGE (then OAEE!) since Fall 2014, so I have seen 3,122 degrees conferred in total (2,747 M.Eng. and 375 GCEN) which is actually 60% of all of MAGE's degrees awarded since our unit's inception. This is actually blowing my mind to see numerically! Helping students reach their goals is a huge part of why I work in higher education—our graduates are so academically impressive and go on to have such a positive impact on the engineering industry in positions here in the United States and all across the world. That being said, the path to their degree is not always smooth and to have had even a tiny part in supporting them through roadblocks and towards those achievements is incredibly rewarding! I always feel like a proud Mama on graduation day seeing our graduates in their regalia, surrounded by their friends and families, full of pride in their achievement and excitement about their next steps as they leave the UMD nest.
What is a typical day for you working at MAGE?
One of the best things about my job is that there is no typical day! On any given day I could be meeting with a potential new faculty member, providing data to a partner unit, working with our Senior Academic Advisor to provide guidance to a student navigating a difficult situation, analyzing enrollment trends to determine what courses to offer in upcoming semesters, touching base with our Instructional Designers on the design of MAGE's Grader/TA Course Support training, attending a meeting with a campus partner like the Graduate School or ISSS, brainstorming our next industry field trip with our Coordinator for Academic Affairs, exploring a new technology for incorporation into our workflow or into our hands-on courses, or meeting with Dr. Syrmos and our Senior Staff team on exploring potential new programs or how a new policy will affect achieving our goals. My days are full of data, discussions, and driving MAGE and its offerings forward (in collaboration with the whole talented MAGE team and all of our academic and campus partners, of course!).
What is your favorite thing about working at MAGE?
Over the past decade, I have seen MAGE grow in student enrollment, programmatic offerings, course options, and in staff, and feel really fortunate to have a position in an office that encourages innovation and change, to have had a small hand in MAGE's success, and to have been surrounded my amazing teammates throughout the years who have all also had a hand in that success. Moreover, to be able to see all of that growth reflected on a daily basis in the strong academics, services and support we are able to provide to our students and faculty is definitely one of my favorite things. However, my truly favorite thing about working at MAGE is being surrounded by a team of people who genuinely care about our mission and by such a diverse, interesting (and fun!) student, staff and faculty population from whom I learn on a daily basis.
On a more personal note, one of my favorite things is being in an office environment that supports me both professionally AND personally. For perspective, when I began at MAGE my two children were in daycare and some of the MAGE staff were their babysitters! Now, they're almost finished with middle school and are attending UMD events like lacrosse summer camp. Who knows, maybe in another 5 years, I'll be celebrating 15 years with MAGE and welcoming my kids to the Terp family as students!
What do you think sets our faculty apart from the faculty at other graduate engineering programs?
MAGE has 83 lecturers that teach our ENPM courses directly—the vast majority of whom are full-time industry professionals working in the field that our graduates are aiming to enter or to advance within! We also work with 40+ UMD faculty each year who teach departmentally-based courses within the M.Eng. and GCEN programs AND with 20 Faculty Content Advisors—each of whom are tenure or tenure-track professors within Engineering departments at UMD—on ensuring our programmatic curriculum stays on the cutting edge of new technology and industry standards. This means that at any given time, there are 140+ faculty working towards the success of our students and guiding them as they make crucial decisions on their academic and career pathways!
Which of our 19 graduate engineering programs are you most excited about in 2025?
I can't choose! I have been with MAGE and have worked with our invaluable partner units for the initial creation and implementation of 15+ on-campus and/or online programs during my 10 years within the office. This includes adding an online program option to our M.Eng. and GCENs in Cybersecurity, Project Management, Robotics, and Systems Engineering, working on an online GCEN in Hypersonics made up of departmental courses in Aerospace, as well as the more recent full creation of on-campus and online programs in Cloud Engineering and Embedded Systems, along with the development of all of the corresponding core courses. I've also been a part of the phasing out of a few academic options based on decreasing industry demand. One of the strengths of the Clark School and of MAGE is in responding to the market and industry needs to iterate existing programs and to create new programs to ensure our students are able to gain foundational knowledge and technical, applied cutting edge knowledge, in traditional and niche areas to enhance their careers. For me, each stage of a program is exciting from introducing it to the world and identifying faculty who will bring the curriculum to life—like we're doing right now with Cloud and Embedded Systems—all the way to the program reaching steady state, sending its graduates into the industry and hearing direct feedback from industry connections on how our MAGE-educated alumni are advancing the field—like we see with so many of our more established programs like Cybersecurity, Robotics, and Software, among others. And, up next, we have been working hard all year with multiple partner units on a new on-campus and online M.Eng. and GCEN in Engineering Artificial Intelligence that is set to be rolled out soon!
What do you think has made MAGE's 30th year the best year yet?
MAGE celebrating its 30th year gives us the opportunity to reflect on how much we have grown and accomplished. While we reflect, we plan for the future and set goals for the next thirty years. I look forward to continuing to contribute to the growth of MAGE and the Clark School and I can’t wait to see what comes next!