Masters, Specialists, Doctorate: Ja'Nel Jamerson on Graduate Education

Victors in Grad School

Embarking on a journey through graduate school is a significant undertaking, filled with challenges and opportunities for growth. In a recent podcast episode of Victors in Grad School, Dr. Christopher Lewis sat down with Ja'Nel Jamerson, the CEO of the Flint Center For Educational Excellence, to delve into Ja'Nel's educational journey and the lessons he learned along the way. This blog post will explore key insights shared by Ja'Nel Jamerson, offering valuable advice for those considering or currently enrolled in graduate programs.

Falling in Love with Your Subject

Ja'Nel emphasizes the importance of falling in love with your subject when pursuing a graduate degree. Whether studying law, education, or any other field, passion plays a crucial role in driving your success. By immersing yourself in your subject matter and connecting all aspects of your learning to it, you can make the educational experience more engaging and meaningful. Ja'Nel's advice underscores the value of being unapologetic about your pursuit and leveraging that passion to fuel your academic journey.

Building a Strong Network

Another key takeaway from Ja'Nel's discussion is the significance of building a strong network during your time in graduate school. The connections you make with peers and professors can have a lasting impact on your career trajectory. These relationships provide a support system, offer valuable insights, and open doors to collaborative opportunities. Ja'Nel's personal experience highlights how the network cultivated in graduate school can serve as a valuable resource in professional endeavors, underscoring the importance of fostering these connections.

The Value of Work Product

Ja'Nel emphasizes the value of the work produced during graduate studies, noting that the process of articulating and defending your ideas is instrumental in developing critical skills. The ability to construct persuasive arguments supported by data, adapt to new information, and defend your positions is essential for effective leadership. By honing these skills throughout graduate school, students can enhance their capacity to navigate complex challenges and contribute meaningfully to their respective fields.

Balancing Theory and Practice

A crucial aspect of Ja'Nel's journey is the balance between theory and practice. He underscores the importance of integrating academic knowledge with real-world experience, highlighting the symbiotic relationship between the two. By finding programs that honor this balance and cater to mid-career professionals or those seeking to advance their skills, individuals can bridge the gap between theoretical concepts and practical application, enhancing their impact in their professional roles.

Ja'Nel Jamerson's insights offer valuable guidance for individuals navigating the graduate school journey. From fostering a deep passion for your subject to leveraging networks and honing critical skills, his experiences underscore the multifaceted nature of graduate education. By embracing these lessons, current and prospective graduate students can enhance their academic experiences, cultivate meaningful connections, and equip themselves with the tools needed for success in their chosen fields. As you embark on your own graduate school journey, remember Ja'Nel's advice: fall in love with your subject, nurture your network, and value the work you produce as you balance theory and practice.

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to the victors in grad school, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Welcome back to Victor's in Grad School. I'm your host, doctor Christopher Lewis, director of graduate programs for the University of Michigan Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. As always, every week, I love being able to have conversations with you about this journey that you're on. Every week, we are going through the process of looking at grad school, and looking at what does it actually take to find success in this journey? And I say journey because it is a journey. Every step of the process is going to be a little bit different for every person. And your process of going to grad school, going through grad school is gonna be different than what I went through. But there are commonalities.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:58]: There are things that you can learn from others that have gone before you. And through those experiences, through what you learned from others, you can take those tools, add them to your toolbox, and help you to make good choices as you go through this process to help you find success sooner. That's why every week I love bringing you different guests, different people that have gone before you, that have gone through graduate school, and they come from all walks of life. And this week we've got another great guest with us today. Ja'Nelle Jamieson is with us today. Anyway, Doctor. Ja'Nelle Jamieson is with us today, and I'm really excited to have him here today. Doctor Jamerson is the chief executive officer for the Flint Center For Educational Excellence, and we'll talk about that journey that he was on to move to that point in his career.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:52]: But we're also gonna talk about his educational journey and what it took for him to be able to get in, get through, and find success. Ja'Nelle, thanks so much for being here today.

Ja'Nel Jamerson [00:02:06]: Definitely. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:07]: You know, first and foremost, what I wanna do is I wanna go back in time. I wanna turn that clock back, and I wanna go all the way back to those first moments that you did your undergraduate work at the University of Michigan Flint, And at some point at some point, you decided from going and getting that degree in English language and literature that at some point during that point in time you said, You know what? I'm going to keep going, and I'm going to get my secondary education and teaching master's degree. So talk bring me back to that point and talk to me about that first step of what made you decide to take that jump and go to grad school.

Ja'Nel Jamerson [00:02:49]: You know, I was coming up on the end of my undergrad experience at Flint, and throughout undergrad, I worked in the office of opportunity initiatives or EOI. And I was offered an opportunity to become the assistant manager for pre college programs, the same pre college programs that I have participated in since I was an 8th grade student at Longfellow Middle School in Flint. And so I was deeply committed to the programs. I was deeply committed to the university, but I knew that a bachelor's in arts in English didn't give me enough discipline. Right. That I would need to, to really strengthen the pathways for underserved students coming from very similar situations that I came from to the university. And so I looked at a number of places and then applied to graduate school all over the state, but just found the program at U of M Flint to be so unique. It just really harnessing, I think, the university's unique positioning as an an urban centered institution.

Ja'Nel Jamerson [00:03:46]: Most people who, who are trained as teachers, they, they student teach for a semester. I student taught for 2 years in 3 different schools. Right, as a graduate student who already had discipline in English. And so my 2 years of graduate experience was all discipline in the science and in the art of teaching. And so it was complimentary to the work that I was doing as a staff member of the university. There were there were obvious benefits to being able to pursue my graduate degree while being a staff member. And so it, it made the most sense. People say like, man, Ja'Nelle, you got every degree you ever gotten from U of M Flint.

Ja'Nel Jamerson [00:04:18]: And I tell people that the university has always made me an offer that I couldn't refuse. And I think that that's just a really clear experience being 22 years old right at the end of a of an under 21, actually at the end of an undergrad experience. Getting my first leadership opportunity offered to me before I even had the the ink was even dry on my BA and then also having the opportunity to go directly into graduate school. Again, it was just one of those offers that I couldn't refuse.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:43]: Well, you kind of just jumped into really my next question, which was you stayed at the University of Michigan Flint, not only for a master's degree. You went on and you got an educational specialist degree, then you went and continued on and got an educational doctorate degree. And I guess first and foremost, one of the questions that I would ask would be is you jump from being going and getting the the teaching degree into the EDS and EdD, which the EDS is very administratively focused. And then the EDD is administratively focused in some aspect, but also research focused. So talk to me about why the EDS, why the EDD, as you were looking at your career?

Ja'Nel Jamerson [00:05:23]: You know, Chris, there's a why and there's a how. And I think my story at at Flendon Graduate school are, is, is very unique in both of those ways. The why is really much more related to that question around discipline. I had a bachelor's degree in English. Right? And it was something that I understood well. But in my master's degree, right, I was able to really focus in on the art and science of teaching. The the ed specialist is administratively focused, but it depends on which pathway you take. There are 2 pathways, the education leadership pathway and the curriculum and instruction pathway.

Ja'Nel Jamerson [00:05:53]: And my ed specialist is in curriculum and instruction, really leaning in, right, on not only how do you teach, but how do you build tools that respond to a number of pedagogical approaches. And again, that discipline really kind of scaffolded up to what I would consider a very administratively focused doctorate degree in education leadership, really focusing in education administration. And so I think that for all professionals, we, we want to strike a balance between our professional experiences, what we do every day and the technical skills and training that we receive through graduate school, through professional development. And I think that pathway for me being able to really build discipline in my subject, right, in a way that I appreciate language and I can teach, I can see language in math and I can see language in art and I can see language in history, but then really having to lean in on how do you lead from within individuals, a passion for that subject as well. That's the experience I got from U of M Flint in my masters of teaching, figuring out then how you make that replicable and scalable in a way that produces an outcome for all kids and families, that's where my discipline was built in my education specialist in curriculum and instruction. And then finally, making sure that those systems can exist despite the context in urban context, in rural context, in in suburban context is really the focus of of the doctoral degree. So that so that scaffolded approach to me also with a very consistent, I would say, theory of change being at the same university who was evolving within the urban context. 2008, when I started at U of M Flint was a very different community than 2015, right? When I, when I finished graduate school, post in the middle of the recession in my freshman year, deleting into the water crisis, COVID pandemic, U of M Flint has really evolved in a way that working in the city day to day, what I was learning in graduate school, I was able to deploy immediately, or my professors became my colleague, that type of reciprocity between graduate school and my professional experience was really valuable for me.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:57]: You know, I'd love to have you go back in time again and think about the transitions because the way that you are educated as an undergraduate student, different than the way that you're educated as a graduate student. And I say that in the sense that transitioning from a bachelor's to a master's, that's one transition. But then you take about 3 years off, and you transition back into an EDS, and then go immediately on to an EDD. But at each of those levels, you're being challenged in different ways to think about things in different ways, to process things in different ways, and your faculty have different expectations. So talk to me about what you had to do throughout each of those transitions to not only prepare yourself well for success, But what did you have to do to be able to truly make that optimal transition in and through the program and maintain that success throughout the different programs that you went through?

Ja'Nel Jamerson [00:09:03]: Yeah. I think the first step in each of those transitions is building the confidence to believe that you can make the transition. We almost idolize things like graduate degrees and because, you know, fewer and fewer individuals have them as you go through the kind of proportion of society, they become kind of mysterious if you will. And so really just building up the confidence to say that, Hey, I can demystify this thing. I can do this. I think that's the first step in the transition. I can remember I was looking at all of those different master's programs, and I picked up the phone and called the number on the UN Flint site and got doctor Mary Jo Finney in the college of education. You know, she's the director of the program, but that was the first person who I spoke to.

Ja'Nel Jamerson [00:09:40]: And she just convinced me that this was the right program. Frankly, my GPA wasn't, it didn't match what was on the website. And so again, this whole confidence thing, right, it's it's big because you look at things like that and you say, okay, I don't qualify. Maybe I should move on. But there's always this line about the mix of education and experience. And I don't know that that people really understand how valuable that mix is, right, when you're deciding on a graduate experience. And so my experience as a, you know, a pre college programs leader, as a student in urban education, as someone who was deeply committed to teaching and learning, that was compelling to the University of Michigan, Flint. And while it was compelling to others as well, I was doubling down on a commitment that the university had already made to me.

Ja'Nel Jamerson [00:10:22]: So I knew my way around campus. I didn't have to figure out where to hang up my coat kind of deal. And so once once kind of getting past the confidence factor, I remember getting into my first graduate course and realizing that these aren't all people who are, who went to undergrad at you in Flint with me, but that once you're moving into the graduate level at the university, you're really moving into a much more regional constituency of mostly educational leaders who are practicing, who are either retooling or leveling up, right, their skills in the field. And so very quickly for me being immediately out of undergrad, sitting in a, in a graduate class with who still I consider to be some of the most profound educational leaders. And we were a cohort, so I still know who they are. I remember my notes on the first day. I just had a long list of words down the margin, just terms I hadn't heard before. And it's like, man, I gotta look these up in order to really to, to perform on par with my peers.

Ja'Nel Jamerson [00:11:15]: And so I would say that, you know, that can be jarring. And so it kind of takes you back to that confidence factor, obviously. But I think that what I ultimately realized is that the graduate experience is really about the unique contribution that each learner brings to the space. It's not solely about the course and the syllabus. Those will be whatever they are, but what you're doing with that subject, right, it's really the beauty of graduate school, the path between the assignment and the right answer. I mean, you can, depending on what your passion is, there's a lot of different approaches that you can take. And my master's program, that was revealed to me. We would take on issues like student, you know, student attendance and people who really cared about social emotional learning would dive deeply into social emotional approaches.

Ja'Nel Jamerson [00:11:57]: And people who were real disciplined, most all words, they would lean into the discipline policies that were necessary to address these things. But you realize that that the right answer is really leaning into the thing that you're passionate about and figuring out how do you leverage the resource of this university to make you more disciplined in that passion. And so that's what I learned in my master's degree. And I, and I, and again, it was all about teaching. And so I came out of graduate school as a much more confident leader, as much more confident learner, frankly, and realizing that there was real power in just asking questions that the smartest people in this world are those who know what they don't know. And I took 3 years to really discover the things that I don't know to, to take my master's degree and slam it on the table and realize that there's not a whole lot there. There's a lot undergirding it, but only practice would strengthen with the tools that I have received from from my master's program. And I earned an executive director role and transitioned from teaching into nonprofit leadership and really realized that what happened in my classroom was really an effect of what was going on at a much larger systemic level in part, right? That the curriculum that I taught every day and I could, you know, I could schedule it out.

Ja'Nel Jamerson [00:13:08]: I could figure out how to make it my own, but that curriculum was directed by someone who had a set of values. And if we're not addressing curriculum from the values and outcomes level, then what we're doing in classrooms will likely be limited. I realized that in those 3 years, my nonprofit leadership, and we were getting into the early childhood space, and I actually was in a meeting, Bob Barnett. He said, Ja'Nelle, have you ever thought about getting a NET specialist? And I said, no. I mean, he said, you know, you, we let's have lunch. You should really consider it. And that lunch, he made me aware of a number of graduate funding opportunities available at the university in a way that really made my education specialist degree know the low cost. And so while I wasn't considering it, it was a legitimate pathway to a doctorate degree, which I did have aspirations for.

Ja'Nel Jamerson [00:13:50]: I did have interest in curriculum, and the university had a mix of funding sources available for graduate students, particularly those who were practicing in in Genesee County. It was an opportunity. So that transition again, another offer that I couldn't refuse, let me into curriculum and instruction. And in that space, you're beginning to realize that this is about administration. This is not about, this is not about operationalizing what administration directs. This is about directing. And so when there's a different transition there, when you're realizing that what you're not subordinate, if you will, to your professors, right? These are colleagues, these are peers. You need to really hone in on the experience that they're bringing into that classroom.

Ja'Nel Jamerson [00:14:30]: Interrogate it, challenge it, challenge yourself and your assumptions, because you pay for that safe space. You pay to say the thing that maybe is wrong and would be embarrassing to say in your daily context. But here, no, you can really deal with this, Write a paper about it, if you will. So my ed specialist allowed for me who I had a teaching degree, but I didn't get the experience of teaching for a long period of time in the way that many of my colleagues and peers did. It allowed for me to interrogate a lot of my assumptions about curriculum and about. Instruction. And I think that just set me up well for my doctorate degree when I when I knew that now it's my opportunity to contribute to the field, that mix of not for profit leadership and education preparation and pre college programs. It really led me tightly to a clear dissertation topic that I would be thinking about regardless of if I was in an education program or not.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:21]: So talking about that and talking about the end of the journey, you completed your degrees. You were successful in the journey for all three of those degrees or all four of those degrees. Now that you've completed your EDS, your EdD, how do you feel that the graduate degrees that you received, not only the EDS and EdD, but the masters as well, has prepared you for what you're doing as the chief executive officer for the Flint Center For Educational Excellence?

Ja'Nel Jamerson [00:15:57]: I think that, you know, I've been it's not only the degree, but it's the context on which it was earned. And so being able to earn graduate degrees as a practitioner, not having to choose between, do I take this job opportunity that allows me to go to sleep every night and wake up every morning thinking about this thing or this great educational experience, but being able to integrate those? It's given me an interesting tool belt. I think I have a good balance between must see how and must know why. I'm a practitioner for sure, but I'm also a researcher. And I think that being able to, to balance those 2 imperatives, but not see them as independent of one another, but really as interconnected and interdependent is the unique, I think, set of skills of of that scaffolded experience from me walking moving from a very implementation granular level of classroom teaching. What are we doing with 30 kids in a room with a highly qualified teacher? Moving up to what does that look like at a system level in my education specialist degree, but then being able to fully explore what does it look like with multiple organisms, if you will, at an ecosystem level and my doctoral degree, making it to the Flood Center For Educational Excellence. This entire work is about building an educational ecosystem that works for all kids. And that means regardless of where they go to school, right, regardless of their family context, regardless of their neighborhood context.

Ja'Nel Jamerson [00:17:20]: And so the discipline that I built in my education specialist and replicability and scalability of education interventions, yeah, it's very relevant to this work. The 2 years that I spent in classrooms teaching for free as a student teacher in Detroit, very relevant to the work that we do with our network for school excellence and working with instructional leaders across multiple school systems to improve outcomes from Flint Kids. And then ultimately my work in researching how philanthropic foundations influence education reform and small to midsize urban school districts is extremely relevant. And the work that we're doing every day to harness the philanthropic interests, of of our community, connect that those passions and those interests with real opportunities and outcomes related to kids thriving. So a lot of relevance, I caution everyone who's seeking to further their education through graduate school, that it's the balance between, between theory and practice that I think is really the sweet spot and finding a program that honors that balance for where you are in your career. If you're taking a break, right? And you wanna lean all the way in, find a program that allows you to lean all the way in. If you're at a point in your career where you know that you need to advance or you feel that you need more discipline, right. To undergird your practice, find a program that's really focused on a mid career professional.

Ja'Nel Jamerson [00:18:35]: Who's working every day, but is really willing to lean in every single night to build their discipline. So it's prepared me for sure, but as a practitioner, I'm learning more and more every day, but that ability to learn that ability to interrogate a new issue that may be complex, I would say that muscle I've built, since from that first day as a graduate student with my list of words and terms down my margin to completing my doctorate of education, and that's a muscle that I've definitely built.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:19:05]: So as you think back to the graduate degrees and the graduate experiences that you've had and you think about students that are coming along behind you, no matter if they're going through an education degree at a graduate level or if they're going to law school, they're going chiropractic school, doesn't matter. What are some tips that you might offer others that are considering graduate education that would help them find success sooner?

Ja'Nel Jamerson [00:19:33]: The first thing I I would say is just to really fall in love with your subject, whatever it is. So if you're going to law school and people say like, oh, yeah. I should really love the law. It's like I've met a lot of lawyers. I've never met anyone who really just loves the law. I mean, like, what is your subject? What is the thing that you will be thinking about that you would be doing that you care about regardless of what context that you're in? And there's likely opportunities to explore that through graduate education. So I say if you've made the decision to apply to graduate school, if you're already in graduate school, to be unapologetic about your subject and to really fall in love with it. Right? When you have an opportunity to write, write about your subject.

Ja'Nel Jamerson [00:20:13]: Right? When you have an opportunity to talk about your subject because that's going to make the work effortless. It becomes an opportunity almost to get this thing off your chest, this thing that you will be talking about anyway. So one major tip again would just be to fall in love fall in love with subject and be unapologetic about pursuit of it, no matter what path you've chosen from a graduate perspective. The second would be to really, honor, appreciate, and value the network that exists within any graduate classroom that they're in, their peers and colleagues who sit next to them, but also the professors who are imparting information on them. Many of my professors throughout my graduate education are now my peers and colleagues as chief executives of not for profits or other organizations in Genesee County and in Michigan. And so building rapport with those individuals in a way where social capital already exists, it really has downstream value for you professionally. And I would say that that's true of wherever you find yourself in grad school. And the same thing with your peers.

Ja'Nel Jamerson [00:21:14]: I tell people all the time that I didn't get the opportunity to teach as long as many of my peers did, but I was educated next to some of the most powerful educators that that that this ecosystem will likely ever, ever experience. And I could pick up the phone and call any of them. Having that network, you don't realize until you're in your office by yourself with the decision to make, and there's no more time to consider this thing. The value of being able to pick up the phone and call someone who understands the context in which you're leading from, but also understands, right, that the the outcome that that you're leading towards and has really had to wrestle with these concepts with you. And so, yeah, I just really value the network that exists, that is imparted on you in graduate school and and don't take it for granted. I'd say, lastly, you know, really hold on to your work product. The entire experience is scaffolded in a way that pushes you as a learner to get what is in your head out, right, in a way that really allows for your deeply held beliefs related to your profession or your subject, if you will, to be interrogated publicly. And, I mean, you don't really know the value or you really don't know how much so strongly you can believe in something until you have to defend it.

Ja'Nel Jamerson [00:22:29]: But that ability to make an argument defensible, to support an argument with data, to change an argument, if that data tells you something different, those are important skills for leadership that are transferable, I believe. So I just think those three things just really falling in loving falling in love with subject and being unapologetic about connecting all things to it, just really just honoring and valuing that network that that's available to you through graduate school. But then just lastly and certainly not least, just connecting all of those things together.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:23:02]: Great points, and I truly appreciate you sharing all of those. Definitely things that every person should consider if they're thinking about going for a graduate degree, applying for a graduate degree, and spending the time, the effort, the money to go through that process, to push yourself in so many different ways. Juno, I just wanna say thank you. Thank you for all of the pearls of wisdom, for all that you've shared today, and I truly wish you all the best.

Ja'Nel Jamerson [00:23:29]: Definitely. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:27:30]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of masters and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [e-mail].