Online MSCE – Environmental Engineering Specialization

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Hello everyone welcome to the Ohio University Civil Engineering,
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Environmental Specialization webinar today we’re going to give others just a
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minute to log on bear with us we’ll get started shortly
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all right everyone hello my name is I leaving I am an enrollment advisor for
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the Master of Science and civil engineering programs here with Ohio
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University today’s webinar is going to be specifically on the environmental
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engineering specialization thank you for joining us before we get into the
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webinar I’d like to point out a couple of things that you’re seeing on your
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screen on the upper left-hand side you will see our appointment the seed of
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links so that you can set an appointment with either myself or my colleague nish
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ma we are the enrollment advisors for this program just below that you will
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see social media links that you can share this webinar presentation via
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email linked in different social media platforms do feel free just below that
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to see the Q&A; section you’ll be able to input questions which we will address at
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the end of our time together today and I want to welcome you all thank you so
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much for joining us we will have conversations with dr. gai Riefler he is
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our program director you will also get some information from students Rick
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coffer and Jennifer Montes both recent graduates of the program they will share
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a little bit with you all of their experiences with the program and how it
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has affected their career moving forward so let’s go ahead and get started
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we will look at today’s agenda as I mentioned the introductions the program
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overview with dr. Riefler the curriculum a little bit of a snapshot for the
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environmental engineering concentration and of course our student experience as
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I mentioned with Rick offer and Jennifer Montes and then at the end of today’s
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presentation the Q&A; session here you will see my and knishmas contact
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information our emails and phone numbers for future reference of course you can
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always use the links that I mentioned on the upper left-hand corner of this
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webinar
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so allow me to introduce to you dr. guy reefer he is our program director he’ll
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share a little bit about his background professionally dr. Riefler take it away
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I think sily yeah I got my bachelor’s degree at
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Cornell University and then I worked for a couple years at environ corporation in
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Arlington Virginia an environmental consulting firm
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I then realized in my my professional career that I needed a master’s to
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progress in the field which I imagine some of you are feeling so I went back
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to graduate school and I got my masters at the University of Connecticut and
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really enjoyed the research experience in the teaching experience so much that
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I just stayed and I got my PhD and I’ve been active been in academia ever since
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um I’ve been teaching at Ohio University for 16 years now and my focus is
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environmental engineering and in my research I do a lot of work on pollution
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transport and cleanup I am a registered professional engineer and um I’ve
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sponsored a trip with some of the students to gone on an engineer’s
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Without Borders project and we’ll talk a little bit about that later very nice
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thanks dr. Riefler so we will jump into the program details now as you’ll see
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and this is clearly you know informational we are professional civil
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engineers the courses are 100% online as well as midterms and finals using an
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online proctoring system if you want any additional info on that of course please
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contact your enrollment advisor the program consists of 32 credit hours
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total it can be completed in under two years and we can accept up to eight
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credit hours transferred in from other masters programs as you all know we have
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four concentrations construction engineering and management our
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environmental engineering which we will talk about today
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the transportation engineering and the structural engineering specializations
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this is a non thesis option program our tuition as you’ll be able to see here is
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not that much difference from in-state and out-of-state we can get more
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information to you individually of course with breakdowns we see unseen etc
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we start students three different terms a year spring is January summer is in
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early May and fall is in late August you also have flexibility to replace up
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to two classes from one of our other concentrations or specializations to
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your current specialization we can address that more individually as each
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student’s needs you know come up in our conversations here you will see for
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informational purposes the core courses and the specialization courses for each
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one of the different tracks specializations that we have this is for
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the construction engineering the next one you’ll see is for the structural
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track and the last one you will see is for the transportation track and the
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thing that you will see that these all have in common is that the core courses
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all apply to each one of the specializations and then there are
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different classes that you will have depending on your specialization of
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course
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so now throw it back to dr. reefer he will go into a little bit more in-depth
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information on the environmental engineering specialization itself dr.
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risa thanks so um in our curriculum as I li was saying with
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common courses that all of our master students take these are in statistics
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project management writing and a seminar where you will learn presentation skills
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these are all concepts and skills that we think are valuable to all of the
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students regardless of your specialization but then to focus on the
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environmental area we have six additional classes for you to
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and these these are broken up into two basically three different areas as you
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know environmental engineering itself is a fairly broad field
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originally it was a sanitary engineering just providing clean drinking water and
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getting rid of sewage we do have two classes in that area that’s in advanced
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water treatment and advanced wastewater treatment where you will learn how to
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design water and wastewater treatment plants particularly some of the more
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advanced topics in that area and that is you know even though that is sort of the
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original focus of the environmental engineer it’s it’s still a huge field
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today both in the United States not so much new plant design but there are
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millions of water and wastewater treatment plants that need upgrade and
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improvements so there’s a lot of work in that area right now the other focus area
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that we have is on pollution transport and cleanup and we have two classes in
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that environmental fate and transport and Institute remediation so in those
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classes you’ll you’ll learn more about what I would consider sort of the new
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for the newer field and environmental engineering is how to deal with
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pollution and how to clean up polluted sites um we’ll cover all all different
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aspects of that including some chemistry and geology and how to deal with
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different sites where you expect camp contaminants will move and what are the
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what’s the state of the art in cleaning up polluted sites and then finally we
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have two additional classes one in environmental analysis transportation
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systems the transportation students take this class as well this includes
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performing an environmental impact statement which which might be a
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something that you encounter as an environmental engineer for these large
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transportation projects um and then finally open channel hydraulics this is
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our core water resources class where you will learn how how fluids move to river
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systems and through design systems um you’ll also get a chance in this class
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to use some software okay so those are those are basically the three focus
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areas or the 3 main skills and topics we like to cover in our environmental
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curriculum all of the classes are the same classes that we teach to our
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face-to-face students and we like to include a mixture of theory modeling and
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design depending on the class and depending on them sort of how the
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material is applied um so for example in the wastewater advanced wastewater class
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you’ll use bio in which is a state-of-the-art wastewater treatment
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plant modeling software which you’ll find out in the industry if you’re doing
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more advanced which water modeling techniques arm in the hydraulics class
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you’ll use state-of-the-art slut flow routing flood routing software can’t
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pick the name of the raid right now and then in almost all of the classes I
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think I think in all of the classes in the environmental focus area you you
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will work on some sort of design projects where you where you will apply
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what you’ve learned practically to to a site or a specific project um but I
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talked about how designing water and wastewater treatment plants is a big
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source of employment in the United States and it really is most of our
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infrastructure including our water delivery our wastewater treatment is in
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pretty bad straits and there’s a huge backlog of upgrades and
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repairs that need to be done by eye trained engineers like yourself um but
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the the need worldwide is even is even scarier really um and the importance of
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this can be summed up in this figure right here so this shows the incidence
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of typhoid in Philadelphia back in from the late 1800s to the early 1900s and
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this is never well known but water and wastewater treatment has been credited
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as one of the key developments in in society to saving lives so you can see
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here in around the early 1900s in Philadelphia they put in their first
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water filtration plant and the incidence of typhoid which is a waterborne disease
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plummeted they then started chlorinating their drinking water and from those two
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simple water treatment processes they reduce the incidence of typhoid ten or a
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hundredfold and today in the United States we enjoy clean water and it’s
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something we’re accustomed to and we expect um
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worldwide it’s really not the case and it it is one of the major limiting
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factors that holds back the development and the progress of these underdeveloped
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countries um as I said I took a team of students – we went to Ghana in Africa to
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do some engineering projects over there and the first thing I expected a lot of
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cultural differences but there really was not we really live it up in a world
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a global society now you know everyone had cell phones everyone had TVs
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everyone was singing the same music that we sang was wearing jeans and t-shirts
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and but the stark thing what really stands
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out is the lack of infrastructure over there the roads are in horrible
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condition the electricity is body and if you have water it is a real treat most
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people do not world why do not have access to clean water or a way to
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dispose of sewage and this really holds back development it it keeps people in
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poverty and it is deadly really um 3.4 million people die every year from this
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more people that die from wars just from lack of access to clean water and sewage
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disposal so this career not only in the United States is profitable but
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worldwide there’s a huge need and and then the last thing I want to point out
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which I noticed when I was there as well as this has a disproportionate impact on
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women many of these developing societies because of culture it is the woman’s
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responsibility to get the water and when I was in Ghana for two weeks every
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morning at 5 o’clock you can hear the women all the women in the village
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getting up and walking to the well with buckets on their head to carry water
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back they’d fill up one or two buckets carry it back sometimes several miles
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and that would be the families water for the day um so
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as practicing environmental engineers there’s a lot of work the United States
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there’s a lot of work internationally on this now these are just some projects
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that I pulled from the World Bank that are going on in two countries that are
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undergoing rapid developer development right now India and China there are
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massive projects going on and more and more US firms are are able to get
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involved in this type of work um I really want me to do this slide it’s up
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to you if you like you can okay yeah I’ll keep going so some things that I
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like about our curriculum is that a lot of civil engineering degrees require you
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to take classes sort of outside of your area of expertise ours are four
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different focus areas are really focused on your area of specialization and yet
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we do allow flexibility in the classes you take if you find it there is a class
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outside your area that is worthwhile to you for whatever you do in your job
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you’re you’re welcome to take that and replace it with another class in the
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curriculum we have a pretty big student body now I’m teaching the seminar class
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right now and we have 50 students in it so it’s a great networking opportunity
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there’s a lot of interaction between the students in each class all of our
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classes have very active Russian boards and all of the classes sharp start with
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sort of sharing stories of where you work and where you’re from and amazing
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all the connections that I see getting made in that first week of class um the
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format is for all the classes is asynchronous so there is for all your
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classes there is never a specific time that you have to be there to attend a
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lecture or discuss something you can do it all
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here whenever you have availability and we don’t have a requirement for you to
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come to to canvas although we do encourage you to come for graduation
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we’ve had a few people walk in their robes now and then finally the classes
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are all developed and taught by our full-time faculty of expertise in the
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area and faculty to teach our face-to-face classes um and we all do
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specialize in the areas we teach you may encounter me in class I teach many of
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the environmental classes um that work that I went through before and then
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finally we do we not just our online but our face-to-face program as well we
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really have a focus on training engineers a lot of graduate schools are
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focused more on training researchers training future faculty members but we
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have a different approach a lot of our research is a very practical applied
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engineering work and we really have a focus on training practicing engineers
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and our courses although we do cover some theory because we think it’s
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valuable um we always try to bring it back to the applied material and how
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would you use this in a design setting
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thank you for mentioning that on dr. Reiss or that’s that’s really excellent
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for I think prospective students to know because I get that question quite a lot
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is this going to make me a better engineer right now is this going to help
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my employer see the value in my going to school and you know working at the same
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time and being supportive of us in that I think that’s something of course that
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both Rick and Jennifer can help us address even and how you know they were
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supported by their employers when they began the programs so
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thanks for sharing that so as you as you heard everyone dr. Reiss or shared
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really great and important information we can always you know address this as
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well and answer any additional questions that you might have on any of those
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squads or any of that topic on discussion that we’ve just had certainly
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feel free to reach out to us now I’d like to welcome Rick offer Rick is going
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to share a little bit of his background with us and on Rick I hope you’ll stick
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around afterwards so if we have questions that might be addressed to you
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you can certainly help the prospective students with those great thank you glad
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to be here thanks so much so tell us a little bit about on about your
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educational background and your professional experience and your
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experience with Ohio yes I’ve got a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering
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from University of Miami also a bachelor’s degree in architectural
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engineering from the same school of course of MSC degree from Ohio
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University which we’re talking about now this program also I decided to kind of
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continue I’m a currently pursuing an MBA degree
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at Ohio University which is also in the online environment so continuing to
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enjoy that debt program also am a registered professional engineer and a
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certified project management professional as far as job I am a senior
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project manager with a company called CDM Smith which is really an
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environmental engineering consulting firm but has full line of services too
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and I’ve been working in this field of environmental engineering for quite some
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time it’s actually been somewhere around 20 years impressive so how do you feel
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the program in the coursework curriculum impacted your career and your current
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work
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yes I think it’s really strengthen my credentials which is a good thing in
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today’s global marketplace it’s it’s really really focused on what your
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credentials are and what you’ve done in your career it’s really they could make
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me more marketable in my current work organization as well as externally to
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the organization and it’s really allowed me to reconnect with some of the
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engineering theory that I hadn’t utilized for some time which has
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increased my flexibility to work on projects that really outside of my my
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specialty which have which is very important very nice that’s good so it
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made you a more well-rounded engineer it sounds like yes yes and more marketable
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very good I’m sure the prospective students that are in the webinar with us
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today and the ones that are going to hear this in future and the recorded
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version will be very happy to hear that do you have anything else that you’d
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like to add I was really impressed with the program it’s you know very well you
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know the university has been around for a long time the engineering program is
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very solid and that was really impressed with the with the well organized online
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program and really with what I got out of the program I think I achieved all
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the goals I set out to achieve so I was very happy with it
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excellent I’m very glad to hear that thank you so much Jennifer I would like
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to introduce everyone Jennifer Montez Olmo she is also a
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recent grad of the program and will be sharing the same sort of information
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with you a little bit about her background both educationally and
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professionally so Jennifer take it away hello yeah like you favorite month is I
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graduated from a bachelor’s in engineering with specialization in water
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resources for NMSU and this method of hni being
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involved in restoration and rotation of gardens and for the last last year I’ve
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been working for the Department of Defense as a civilian and it’s been five
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months so far and I’d be the new water quality manager of Holloman Air Force
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Base I became more interested in environmental studies because is the
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closest thing to water like they work together in terms for me to provide what
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good water to a area how I can do it without the knowledge in environmental
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engineer um like I say before when I graduated for my passion is senior and I
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started working in the workforce I realized it at that time what I did
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knowledge that I have it wasn’t enough so I stopped evading the decision to do
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in a master with my family I realized that what I need is more knowledge and
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experience in order to work in a variety of settings while I wasn’t certain
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enough in what I’m going to apply I mean you’d that an advanced degree will open
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far more doors and give me the academic grounding in credentials that I can
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leverage for years to come and to be recognized as a professional and for
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that it needs to do a master degree very nice thank you for sharing that did you
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have anything in particular that jumped out at you about Ohio University and our
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program that helped you sort of choose us and then and leap course concluding
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it here yeah I would be straightforward I did apply for another institution to
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do my master but months before starting I wasn’t sure if I could pull that up
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working being a mom wife and go to school then some concerns starting to
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arrive I start searching from school and I’ve never been a fan before of a online
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school and I thought he was in what worth it
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so I started to do this on the instant other programs and I love me chisel and
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I can I pick and I came to Ohio University so I thought it’s our ask
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after doing some digging unlearn and I feel that Ohio University
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provide me I give balance of learning but the theoretical for and the
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technology for and what were seen with the increase in technology this might be
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a good team and to the extent of a little bit more has some co-workers with
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mastering environmental engineer from really good school but sometimes we talk
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about situation and I speak of some software the ones that don’t arise Allah
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mentioned in slide 11 there have been introduced in this
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program and nobody knows about that and that lead of team is what has mainly so
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bubble and my work right now like like this to attend to before this program
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has covered groundwater studied contaminant with water treatment water
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doing to stander and he has helped me a lot and thanks to that is what I am
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right now and are definitely better yes yeah in the facility that I have right
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now to spend more time with my family to study from any computer any place is a
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good decision to do the math online specially when you work in the half
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family too of course and you’d be surprised
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I get that question every single conversation I have with a prospective
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student they have those same concerns on that Jennifer mentioned and of course
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that Rick also alluded to it is difficult to imagine yourself being able
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to manage not only employment and studies and be able to be effective in
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both capacities as effective as you really need we need to stay employed
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right so you need to ensure not you or not having things falling off of your
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plate this program and the flexibility the meet the fact that it’s asynchronous
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it allows you to log in at any time of day as you were mentioning from wherever
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you happen to be as long as you have a laptop with you I think helped you and
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it keeps you encouraged wouldn’t you say yeah no no it’s amazing and I just want
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to point out that it’s being a few months that I passed might be II and I
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co say that there are eighty percent of this is
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as of my performance on the test I see my crusade it was because of all the
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knowledge that I had gained through this program and I’m very happy of that and
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if this program had open any more doors and opportunities that I could ever
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imagine that I would have never been at the position that I have right now is
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because of what has done in what I have right now and I’m really happy I’m not
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saying easy but it’s completely worth it that is so wonderful to hear thank you
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so much both of you let’s quickly jump into the Q&A; section we have several
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questions coming in a couple of these if I can’t get to them I promise I will
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address them individually with you all so bear with us quickly a couple of
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questions that we have here dr. Riefler this is going to be for you if you don’t
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mind are the online classes pre-recorded or are they taught in tandem with the
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in-person classes I live in Michigan and I could travel to Ohio University for an
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in-person class if you could just briefly touch on that dr. Reiss or that
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would be helpful thank you sure now the in-person and the face-to-face
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and the online classes are kept separate often they’re not even taught at the
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same time so so yeah you could you could always come to Ohio to meet with a
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professor to ask questions but there wouldn’t be a lecture available
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synchronous with the class you’re taking um
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so online yeah many of our classes do have pre-recorded lectures we don’t do
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the kind of thing where a professor is standing at a board teaching and take a
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video that would do that we find that very ineffective but if we have online
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career reported lectures it’s more of a narrated PowerPoint type format we also
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have some faculty who narrate as they write things like that and then and then
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sometimes we do other things as well you know if the
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if the textbook is very good we rely on student using a textbook with additional
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notes and recommendations from the professor so usually the courses really
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rely on a variety of different teaching methods and one thing I want to point
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out is that education has really changed or it really should be changing from
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maybe what you were used to in your bachelor’s degree sitting in a classroom
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while someone talks for an hour and you listen and write down what they say is
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really not a very effective teaching tool and it’s my own feeling that the
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learning in the online environment is not it isn’t any less of an experience
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of taking a face-to-face class in fact I think from the online learning is better
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than it is than when you’re sitting in a classroom listening to someone talk and
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in fact in my face-to-face classes though I’ve actually flipped them I’m
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using some of the online teaching methods or the face-to-face students now
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very nice it’s it’s growing I can attest to it myself I completed my degree
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online being organized I get this question
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quite a lot Jennifer alluded to it as well you know how do you balance that
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how do you manage to do the homework keep up with deadlines one of the
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questions that we have here is about you were talking about dr. Riefler it being
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asynchronous but then are there deadlines for homework and what about
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group projects so yes there are deadlines for homework each week you’ll
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have varying assignments that you need to accomplish within that week and
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certainly turn them in and prior to that on deadlines and make sure that work is
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into the Dropbox in the platform you use blackboard as our platform
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dr. referre will you touch briefly on group projects and do we generally do
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group projects as as a rule yeah I would say about half of
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the environmental specialization classes there are group projects and it’d be
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small dat to three or four people at the most and there are online a number of
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online tools in blackboard to ease working as a group you can use Google
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Docs share Docs tear documents online word has some online capability now
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where you can share things in the cloud rather than sending files back and forth
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so yeah sometimes students are nervous about the group work but to be honest
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I’ve never really had any problem with students being able to work together and
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find find the time to collaborate very nice we’ll do one last question this
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question is for Rick why did you choose Ohio University and do you feel that the
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coursework you have seen impacted your work and/or career directly yes I chose
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Ohio University because of really the the reputation of the school it’s kind
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of a very good reputation now that silent engineering program and you know
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mostly because of the also the online environment which is really what allowed
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me to pursue this degree and to actually obtain it and be successful as far as a
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you know in my work world I think it really has helped me a lot it’s helped
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me to feel like I said firm up my credentials when we go after work pursue
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work we put all of our credentials together along with what type of
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projects we worked on in what positions we’ve been in whenever we propose to
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work for a client so clients see what we’ve done what our credentials are what
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our degrees are and those sort of things and that really helps us get work so
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that’s I think really really helped me out – like I said
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become more marketable so short answer is yes I think it’s been very helpful in
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my my work world as well as what I touched on a little bit earlier – is you
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know it’s allowed me to reconnect with some of the technical sides of things
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that I kind of lost touch with which has given me a little more confidence to
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kind of delve into some other areas that I’ve been interested in but frankly had
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kind of lost touch with so it allows me a little more flexibility which is
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really critical these days and same with work we all need to stay with busy and
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that sort of things so it’s allowed me to delve into other areas that I’ve been
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interested in and that’s been helpful excellent thank you so much so on that
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positive note and clearly a very good return on both Rick and Jennifer’s
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investment we will leave you for today ladies and gentlemen if I did not get to
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your questions please don’t worry I will address them individually either via
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email or with a follow-up phone call I want to thank you all for attending
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today’s webinar you’ll be receiving in a few short days a link to the recorded
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version please do feel free to share that with anyone you think might benefit
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from our program again thank you for joining us enjoy the rest of your day