Student Profile Archives

Cathy Johnson
Keeping Learning Alive

Cathy Johnson discovered UMBC’s ISD graduate program while researching continuing education courses for her clients at COLA, a clinical laboratory education, consultation, and accreditation organization. Prior to COLA, Johnson worked as a medical technologist in a hospital laboratory for twenty-five years. Deciding to take her career on a different path, she joined COLA as an assistant manager for accreditation services. Before long, she moved up the ranks to manager of the Education Division for COLA.

But still her career would take another turn and place her on an even more satisfying course. She was now overseeing the day-to-day operations for education product development. While analyzing and directing the creation of fact sheets, guides, newsletters and co-directing several annual national symposiums in this role, she discovered her deep interest in adult education and ultimately UMBC’s ISD Program.

Currently, Johnson works at COLA as a developer for online courses for continuing education. She is a firm believer that learning is a lifetime activity, much like breathing. “The mind goes to mush if you don’t feed it,” states Johnson. This philosophy is what creates the perfect synergy she has with her position at COLA and with the courses she participated in at UMBC. She particularly enjoyed her introductory class in Flash and Dreamweaver that she took as part of the ISD program. Although she doesn’t feel particularly inclined to program courses on a computer, she was thoroughly interested in how the applications worked. “As a result of taking this class, I feel confident that I can talk intelligently with COLA’s course programmers now!”

Johnson feels that the program has had numerous positive impacts on her career. She says that since enrolling in the program, she has gained a number of valuable resources she can rely on when networking with clients at COLA. She plans to use these newly formed networks when developing courses and symposiums for COLA’s healthcare clients.

As she continues to refine her new career, Johnson would like to develop superior learning products, both for online courses and symposiums, for COLA and other healthcare organizations. And, as she so candidly stated, she also looks forward to, “receiving an increase in salary!” She plans to always keep her love for learning alive. In her pursuit, Johnson would like to acquire more hands-on, practical applications for developing meeting curriculum and event planning, and online course development.

Always interested in applying new concepts to her workplace and her symposium education activities, Johnson strives to continuously advance through education.