Issue link: http://ncumarketing.uberflip.com/i/1094833
MARGARET JUREK PhD in Education (2018) Emphasis in e-Learning 24 Teaching is Dr. Margaret Juerk's third career after serving in the United States Air Force and as a government contractor. She earned her teaching credentials through an online program and loved the flexibility it afforded. "Naturally, when it came time for my doctoral studies, online was the way I wanted to go," says Dr. Jurek. "The one-to-one format at NCU matched well with my learning style. Another helpful aspect of NCU's program was being able to overlap classes and complete my degree in three-and-a-half years." Dr. Jurek believes that teaching full time while "going to school" full time made that time fly by. "I love learning," she adds. "It was always great when I learned something new through this process and I could immediately implement it in my classroom and/or share it with my colleagues. I think my favorite courses were the two statistics classes I took." She credits this, in large part, to her mentor for those classes. "The fact that it was 'just math,' gave me a break from reading, researching, and writing. "The online library and library support staff are phenomenal at NCU," she states. Having always taught 9th-grade students, with a vast majority of them being at risk of dropping out of high school, Dr. Jurak pursued her PhD to better help those students. Through the dissertation process, she was able to hone her research and reasoning skills, resulting in producing NCU's Poster of the Year for 2018. Her dissertation was titled, "ePortfolios as a Strategy to Improve At-Risk Students' Self-Regulated Learning Skills." Her school is now implementing ePortfolio usage by all students and she is putting her NCU degree to work as her school's blended learning team lead and as a consultant on her district's research review board.