We sat down with new student Rebecca Gilbert to learn more about why she’s here and where she’s going. Rebecca is a mid-career professional looking to gain new skills to take her career to the next level. She is taking two classes this semester and will be at our upcoming weekend Immersion in October.

Hometown: Charlotte, North Carolina 

Undergrad Degree and Alma Mater: Government and Politics, University of Maryland

Current job title/Employer: Associate State Director of Advocacy & Outreach, AARP North Carolina

Areas of Interest: Nonprofit Management, Local Government

Q: Why the MPA?  How did you decide it was the right degree for you and your career goals?      

I have worked for various nonprofits, focused on public service at the local level, throughout my 14+ year professional career. I always felt that there was a missing piece of educational expertise that would take me to the next level, enabling me to develop new public programs and scale existing ones. The MPA degree will allow me to learn how to more effectively improve the lives of the people in the communities I serve. 

Q: There are lots of places out there to get your MPA.  How did you end up at Carolina?

I have lived in Charlotte, North Carolina for five years, and upon moving here it immediately felt like home. Obtaining the MPA degree at UNC Chapel Hill feels like a natural fit. It will allow me to form lasting North Carolina based connections and relationships to become more engrained in the state advocacy and local government framework. 

Q: Is there a class or professor or experience you are looking forward to in the program?

I am most excited about the immersion courses, and am signed up for the Fall 2024 immersion class “AI and Public Administration”. As an online student who lives just a two hour drive from Chapel Hill, the immersion classes seem like a great way to connect to other students and campus, while feeling like part of the larger UNC Chapel Hill student body.  I look forward to learning in a traditional classroom setting as well as the opportunity to work with students of varying backgrounds and work experiences. 

Q: Last question for fun, what are you currently reading or listening to?

As a hobby jogger and perpetual multitasker who likes to learn as they run, I always have a podcast playing in my AirPods. I love NPR’s “How I Built This” with Guy Raz, because I’m fascinated by innovation. He interviews individuals who have started businesses, nonprofits, and pursued ideas that many thought would fail. He always asks a question of the interviewee at the conclusion of each episode that goes something like “How much of your success is due to your skill and hard work and how much is due to luck?”  Usually, interviewees attribute most of their success to being in the right place at the right time, solving a specific problem that no one had found a solution for yet. I equate this to work in local governments and nonprofits. One has to be willing to be creative, seek out opportunities, and sometimes fail, before achieving eventual success. The resilience of the entrepreneurs in each episode is inspiring, and empowers me to never give up as I try to solve both large and small scale public issues. 

Welcome & welcome back! 

I am back with the MPA Matters blog! Since the start of the new academic year, I have taken on a new role as the Admissions Research Assistant. I am beyond excited to help recruit the best and the brightest to our MPA program! To kick off my new role, I figured that I would share a little bit about my MPA journey…

My name is Courtney Cooper-Lewter. I grew up in Columbia, South Carolina. For my undergraduate degree, I attended the University of South Carolina at Columbia. Now that I am here at UNC-Chapel Hill, it is safe to say that I have attended both “Carolinas.” In undergrad, I pursued a double major in Spanish and International Studies. Back then, I always thought that I would work in foreign affairs. I was always interested in facilitating conversations about cultural differences and improving global political relationships. It wasn’t until later that I realized that this type of work could actually happen right at home in local government. 

I began my professional career working with the Latinx community here in North Carolina as a case manager for unaccompanied children. This work did not incorporate much of foreign affairs, but it did expose me to different avenues of social work. After a little over a year of working as a case manager, I decided I wanted to pursue a Masters of Social Work degree to gain some leverage for upward mobility. As I applied to MSW programs, I realized that I loved working directly with the community members. I also realized that I did not want to become a licensed clinical therapist. When I envisioned my future, I imagined promoting systems-level change by analyzing policy from an equity lens and improving minority connectedness to institutions of political power. 

That is when I discovered the dual-degree program with Public Administration! It compiled many of the things I loved into a complimenting degree field; I got leadership, government, and policy. The MPA program has taught me foundational principles and values of public administrators, how to navigate local government, and how to frame issues to elected officials. It has also provided me with the skills to lead and facilitate groups, implement and evaluate programs, and how to view issues and solutions from differing perspectives. 

Now, I am in my second year of the MPA program and third year of graduate school. I will graduate with a Masters of Social Work and a Masters of Public Administration in May 2020. I am excited to close out my last academic year by working in UNC MPA Admissions supporting future leaders! In the future, I hope to continue working in local government to improve equity and inclusion across jurisdictions.

I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit about me! Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions about dual-degrees with Social Work or MPA student life. I would love to chat!

As strange as it may seem, I didn’t REALLY know what a MPA degree was until I landed the role of Director of Admissions for the MPA program at UNC.  I am pretty certain I could have told you it stood for ‘Master of Public Administration’, but I couldn’t really tell you what that meant.  Sure, I knew it was government related, but I thought it was a degree for someone who wanted to run for public office eventually.  Sometimes they do, but it is so much more than that.  And sometimes, it’s not even government related. (more…)