Brendan Guenther's Portfolio

Joining the new students at orientation reinvigorated my learning spirit. Since I've stayed in the MSU community for so long and had already completed three courses I volunteered to help answer questions for the other incoming students. I found out we had a great deal of diversity in our cohort. We had a few international students, a couple of people that already had more then one degree, and a couple that were switching careers. Many of us already had substantial experience working in higher education and were building on that with the degree program.

I formally entered the program in Fall of 2006 at the bottom of this page you'll find a link to my statement of interests I wrote shortly after entering the program. I started by maintaining focus on the three areas that had already attracted my attention: further practice writing, study of higher education organizations, and theories on teaching and learning.

Attached to this page is a statement of goals I wrote prior to entering the HALE MA Program at Michigan State University. I tried to set a path for my studies and declare some scholarly interests while setting them in the context of my professional life. As I record this in my portfolio now, with limited exposure to the program, I'm optimistic that joining will turn out to be a great decision. I'm looking forward to further interactions with colleagues in my cohort, the faculty, literature in the field, and most of all the living examples in my professional work.