Pride in the Accomplishment

Last Updated July 23, 2020

As a Michigan native, Angela Pulcini has “lots of fellow Spartans” in the family. “My sons graduated from there, my sister—it’s nice to be part of that family,” Angela says.

While her family of Spartans “definitely was a deciding factor” in choosing Michigan State University for graduate school, Angela also “wanted a school that had a good reputation.”

As a working wife and mom with a demanding position in healthcare, Angela knew that a program with “online features” was also a must. Ultimately, she decided that the Master of Science in Management, Strategy and Leadership (MSMSL), offered 100% online in a 20-month time frame, was the only program for her.

Prioritizing and Sacrificing

“At first, I thought I was a little crazy,” Angela admits of her first few weeks in the program. “I thought, ‘this can work; I just have to figure it out.’ For me part of it was the weekends. I would try to do things during the week, but work is unpredictable, so I just blocked out weekends, all day.”

“The workload is significant; it’s that adjustment,” she says. Angela found that adjusting to the “heavy lift in the beginning” of her student journey meant re-prioritizing what’s important and “carving out the time” so that “you just become so good at time management.”   

As an online graduate student, Angela explains that “when you have social events you find yourself cutting things short here or there…you just have to sacrifice. And I would do it again.”

Challenging Coursework, Changing Perspectives

The short-term sacrifices Angela made to keep up with the accelerated pace of the program pale in comparison to all she has gained from her online courses and classmates.

“The coursework is challenging—in a good way,” she emphasizes.  

Though she has a background in human resources, Angela found that “the HR classes, they weren’t a cake walk, but I had a frame of reference,” while other courses dealt with areas of management “completely foreign to me.”

The Negotiations course “scared me at first because we had to partner up with people and role play a situation, negotiate that,” she explains. “It was tough and a little intimidating at first, but the ability to apply what you’re reading and learning right away—it’s priceless.”

Angela found working in groups with fellow online students spread across the globe to be “a good component of the program but something that is a challenge,” especially when one group member is working out of South Africa.

“We had to get time together to write a paper every week and we’re in different time zones, and we’re all working [full-time] too,” she explains. “So, we had to figure out…when do we have a full window when someone is not talking in the middle of the night?!”

Besides putting into practice the team and time management skills needed to work in and manage a global team, the group component also helped Angela gain new perspectives on the coursework.

“I really do feel like…having people from different fields, a lot of military, law enforcement, some other people in healthcare, business—big business, small business—and the discussion boards where you interact with them, that I really learned a lot,” she says of collaborating with her classmates. “It’s amazing how from those discussion boards, you can carve out friendships.”

Enriching Collaboration, Lasting Connections

Even after graduating from the program, Angela has continued to cultivate those friendships and professional connections.  

“There’s about four people I still keep in contact with, people that during the program I could reach out to and say, ‘Oh my gosh I’m struggling with this paper; what did you think of this angle?’” she explains.

Each has a different professional background—from military to education to human resources—and offers “a different point of view.” Says Angela: “It helps me to think in a different way about things. They have a perspective that I hadn’t thought about.”

Learning from the diverse perspectives of her online classmates and diving into the challenging coursework that stretched her beyond her comfort level has led Angela to stretch herself in her career.

A few months after earning her degree, Angela moved into a new position with her current employer, Parkview Health, going from director of human resources to director of provider services.

“I handle all things physicians and nurse practitioners need as part of their employment,” she details. “From recruitment to retention—their whole lifecycle.”

She says the new role “is directly related to my application of what I’ve learned in the program.”

Renowned Faculty, Renowned People

The quality of the MSMSL program, the supportive online environment and the challenge to stretch beyond one’s limits is embodied by MSU’s renowned faculty.  

“I really appreciated the quality of the program and the quality of the professors. I know I would not have gotten that out of some…other programs,” Angela says, reflecting on her MSU experience.

“I felt like I did not sacrifice my learning experience by being online. It was the same people teaching these classes to the [students] on campus, and with their background, they’re renowned in their field. You get that level of expertise from the professors…”  

Besides the quality of instruction provided, the MSMSL program faculty also serve their students as relatable, quality human beings.

“There wasn’t one professor I had that wasn’t over the top accommodating,” says Angela. “I can’t think of one who didn’t say, ‘feel free to contact me after this class’…And I’d still feel comfortable reaching out to any of them now.”

Perhaps most important for student success is that the MSU faculty recognize this online degree program is not only a commitment and sacrifice for the students, but also for the friends and families supporting them.

As Angela’s Saturdays were often consumed by coursework, her teenage daughter “joked that she was going to sue MSU for taking her mother away!”

Angela recalls how, on the day of her commencement and with her family in attendance at the MSMSL graduate luncheon, “Dr. Hodges came over, and I appreciate this so much, he came to my children who were there and said, ‘Thank you for letting us have your mom for a while. I know you guys probably missed her on several things.’”

That Glenn Hodges, MSMSL Program Director, acknowledged her family and “their sacrifice as well, that meant so much to me, and I could tell that their eyes lit up and that they appreciated that…”

For Angela, hearing those words and meeting her online classmates and instructors face to face, “that really tied you back to the school,” she says. It was a “wonderful” experience that “meant more to me than walking in [my] cap and gown and getting [my] diploma.”

Proud to be a Spartan

Being tied to MSU as an alumnus of the MSMSL program is a source of lasting pride for Angela.

“Getting that degree is the ceremonial piece as you’re waiting for it to come in the mailbox—its finally official! It’s something I’m very proud of. I’m proud that I went there, that I took the time to go to Michigan State. I earned something that not everyone can do.”

And that is both Angela’s advice and encouragement to those considering MSU’s Master of Science in Management, Strategy and Leadership: “People need to [consider] the personal sacrifices that it takes to do it, but in the end, there’s great pride with the accomplishment.”