Meet…
20 February 2009
Executive MLIS Program Gives Troy Christenson a National Network of Contacts
Working in an eastern Washington college town with a population of 8,000 residents, Troy Christenson's opportunities to network with other library science colleagues are few and far between. The Executive MLIS program changed that, introducing him to contacts around the continent in a range of library fields.
“Networking with faculty and fellow students through the program has been outstanding,” said Christenson, who expects to graduate in August. “And I didn't have to quit my day job to do it.”
Christenson, who heads the Interlibrary Loan Services Department at Eastern Washington University (EWU), has worked at the university's library for more than two decades. He decided to enroll in the Executive MLIS program so he would have the qualifications to pursue library directorship positions.
Christenson earned his Masters' in Business Administration from EWU about a decade ago, and was surprised to find through his Executive MLIS courses how much management philosophies have changed in recent years. The rigid, top-down approach he studied in the 1990s has been discarded in favor of a more collaborative approach with employees of all ranks. Christenson has already applied the new management teachings in his work with EWU employees and notes that they are “happier and much more productive” as a result. “Now when we're looking for new ideas or concepts, it's all on the table, and employees know they can contribute,” he said.
Knowledge gained through his Executive MLIS studies has also helped Christenson lead his department through the current budget crisis. His unit lost one position at a time when they are anticipating a 200 percent surge in activity following implementation of OCLC's WorldCat Navigator
, the new Summit union catalog search engine for the Orbis-Cascade Alliance.
Christenson's favorite class so far was also his hardest: Dr. Ken Haycock's seminar in Library Management and Human Resources Management. After working in nearly every library department during his career, the class forced Christenson to “step back and take a look at the bigger picture of library operations.”
Christenson hopes to do just that once he completes his MLIS, and he is open to the idea of moving around the country or even overseas. Between working full time and taking classes, he still manages to squeeze in his favorite hobby of reading science fiction. But these days he admits, “I mostly have time only for short stories.”
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