JUDITH (Jackie) LONGO, M.A.
Judith Longo is the Registrar at Tompkins Cortland Community College (TC3). Judith has been working at TC3 since 1989. She decided to go back to school for her MA when her job description began to change. With an MA as a future requirement, she also knew that earning this degree would raise her base pay. The incentives to go back were at first driven solely by the practical, but, as she discovered McGregor and began her studies, she found she was driven by the desire to excel and continued to develop a passion for the field she's chosen. Jackie graduated with the first cohort in June 2005.

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Testimonial

I first learned of the Community College Program through the flyers McGregor sends out. It was probably the third flyer I received. I kept sticking the flyers on my desk like, 'this is interesting.’ Finally, I actually talked to my academic dean (my supervisor) and he was very enthusiastic about it, and thought I should really go for this.

The most attractive thing about the program is that it focuses on the community college. It really applies to the experience I have and the jobs I have had. I hadn't found an MA program that had that match before. I looked at an educational program at Cornell University and took some courses from them. I looked at another program at Portland State, but since I don't want to teach or go into research, they didn't really have what I wanted. There wasn't really a close college to make that transition. This is a good fit. At first, the online component of the program gave me pause, because I wasn't sure how it was going to work. The idea of going to Yellow Springs to a campus where I totally didn't know anybody made me nervous. More than anything, I was worried about actually fitting the work into my schedule. I needed to keep working and keep teaching. The deciding factor was my husband. He said ‘it's something you've always wanted to do, so go ahead and do it.’

Time is the most challenging part of the program: The time to do the work; the time to fit it into your schedule; and the time to make the connections with your team that you have to make in order to get the work done. It can be really challenging, but I would say the connections I've made with the people on my team, in the cohort and in the faculty, make the challenge worthwhile. The credentials of the faculty are amazing. I don't know if there is a particular professor who is especially helpful, but each professor, in their own way, in their courses, has been challenging. Bert's [Landau] class and the accounting courses, are related very strictly to the community college. You learn a lot about the community college from a totally different perspective than what you're used to. I think, because a lot of the faculty have experience in the community college, they really have a wealth of information to bring to the classes that they're teaching.

My studies haven't changed the work that I do, but they have made me understand the work that I do. It's really strange. Even last week I was talking to our associate dean for academics (he oversees the faculty and the scheduling) and we were talking about our global connections program. We talked about different case studies and they were right on point. Things like that seem to continually be coming up.

The team experience is different than what I expected. Even though you know the people pretty well, the team is actually at a different level. You get to know each other a lot more, and you are working pretty closely together. You learn that preconceived notions aren't correct. I think it's helped me with the program, because there is someone there as a resource whether they know that they are a resource or not.

The residencies also weren't what I expected. They were much better. In that short time of that first residency, you really got to know the people in your class. So when you're reading something or chatting with someone online, you have that face instead of someone just out in cyberspace. The team experience and the residencies really help you be more grounded. You have that commitment to someone besides yourself; you have that incentive to stay on track.