Joining the Student Advisory Board

In addition to my full-time work at Automattic and the family, I am also a MBA student at Midwestern State University.

I’m proud to share that I’m joining the Student Advisory Board for the Dilliard College of Business Administration.

MSU is primarily a traditional campus-based university, but their MBA program does offer all courses required for the degree online. While the program isn’t an “online degree” program, you can complete it without ever walking onto the physical campus.

With that in mind, I’ve met fellow students from various places around the country. MSU shares their hometown of Wichita Falls with Sheppard AFB, so it isn’t uncommon for someone to start studies and then need to transfer away. Additionally, it is an affordable and accessible program, which is great for folks like me self-funding and with a lackluster undergraduate career.

Automattic has been a distributed company from day one and I’ve been there for nearly ten years now. Distributed education, like distributed work, is often better than the physical, co-located situation, but it requires real intentionality. Just sticking a camera and a Zoom link on a colocated lecture doesn’t cut it or, what I see more, a professor recording a previous semester’s class and posting that online isn’t great either.

I’ve seen some great work from MSU in providing an online education experience, but there’s always room to grow and improve. I hope that I can contribute in some small way.