Harvard University Employees
Use TAP to Finance Degrees

Every year more Harvard University employees are taking advantage of the tremendous opportunity that the University's Tuition Assistance Plan (TAP) affords them. The program, which enables Harvard staff members to enroll in Harvard courses for a minimal program fee and entitles them to a three-quarter tuition reimbursement for courses outside the University, has produced many successful program graduates in its quarter-century history.

Monica Brooker, ALB 04

Monica Brooker, ALB '04, remembers the day she packed everything into her car and left Austin for Boston. "I recall making that journey with grand expectations," she says. Brooker wanted to take her professional and academic career to the next level. She had spent much of her time at Southwest Texas State University trying to find direction and passion, which is evident from her collection of credit hours in social work, sociology, and health care. But suddenly her path became clear: She wanted to earn a PhD in clinical psychology, and her immediate destination was Harvard.

Brooker came to Massachusetts specifically for the Harvard Extension School Bachelor of Liberal Arts (ALB) degree program and the promising employment opportunities in the area of research at Harvard. Though the Extension School has historically been a local institution for Cambridge and Boston residents, she represents a growing number--34 percent in 2002-03--of out-of-state undergraduate applicants to the Extension School's ALB degree program.

Brooker's intelligence, tenacity, and self-directed nature make her move here a success story. She arrived in early 2001, and by April she began work as a staff assistant/research assistant at the Murray Research Center, a data archive that focuses on the interdisciplinary study of lives over time, at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. In September she enrolled in classes at the Harvard Extension School, and she has been working and taking courses ever since. She graduates in June.

The Texas transplant has learned a great deal in and out of the classroom. "Academically, the Extension School and the University as a whole have so much to offer," she says. "I love being at Harvard, having access to all the magnificent people that I've met in the classroom, at work, and throughout the Harvard community at large." It hasn't been easy to keep up with the demands of full-time work, school, and extracurricular activities--Brooker is also vice president of the Harvard Extension School Student Association (see story). "It's challenging because you're trying to maintain a high level of academic achievement while maintaining things like family, job, and even social roles in the community." Support from fellow Extension School students with similar experiences helps her stay focused and determined. "The support you receive from your peers is truly great."

Brooker has no regrets about her big move east and, indeed, considers it her best decision yet. Now she is looking forward to her next great adventure. Luckily, packing the car again with all her belongings isn't necessary. Monica wants to spend more time working and learning at Harvard, so she plans to attend the Certificate of Special Studies in Administration and Management (CSS) Program while she prepares to apply to competitive PhD programs in psychology.

Joel Stern, ALM '03

Another TAP legacy, Joel Stern, expressed interest in pursuing a master's degree on his first day of work for Jack Strominger, Higgins Professor of Biochemistry. Strominger recommended the Extension School, and now--a little more than three years later--Stern has earned his Master of Liberal Arts (ALM) with a concentration in biological sciences thanks to a great deal of hard work and the financial assistance of TAP. Having completed his BS in biology at Columbia University in 1999, Joel was thrilled that the ALM Program offered him the opportunity to pursue important new research. His thesis on the use of novel compounds to suppress a humanized mouse model of multiple sclerosis drew high praise from Strominger. "Joel would not have to do a lot more if he were a graduate student in the department to submit it as his PhD thesis. . . . It is a spectacular accomplishment for a research assistant." So spectacular, in fact, that Stern's thesis work is to be published in four separate scholarly journals. Stern is confident the ALM will help him in his application to PhD programs in immunology at Yale, Stanford, and the University of Washington. "My master's thesis was the topic of all of my graduate school interviews," he says. "I can't imagine going through the process without it."

Joanne Donovan, ALM '03

Joanne Donovan came to the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies with eight years' experience at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts already to her credit. She had recognized that TAP could help her professionally before she took the position of audio-visual materials cataloguer but never imagined how "exceedingly rewarding" her experience as an ALM history concentrator would be. In Donovan's first Extension School class (and first academic class since she had graduated with an economics degree from the College of the Holy Cross 10 years before), Professor Alice Jardine paid her a high compliment when she said that a paper of Donovan's merited consideration for publication.

"The professors were simply amazing," says Donovan, whose thesis, Pottery, Progressivism, and Social Reform: Boston's Saturday Evening Girls, examined how a small book club in the North End grew into a large organization of working-class women committed to self-education through reading, writing, and arts and crafts. Because the Schlesinger Library collection is focused on American women's history and manuscripts, almost every step of Donovan's research benefited her on the job. She expresses gratitude to Julie Reuben, professor of education, who introduced her to many new resources. Reuben called Donovan's thesis "serious scholarship" and "a valuable contribution to our understanding of women and progressive reform."

Dr. Valentin Boerner, CSS '04

As a scientist, Dr. Valentin Boerner, a candidate in the Certificate of Special Studies in Administration and Management (CSS), knows the importance of an inquisitive mind. "A good scientist is someone who can ask questions," he says "questions that are worth asking, questions that inspire." It was his passion for inquiry that led him to pursue his first degree in genetics at the University of Munich, then a doctorate in biology and natural sciences, which he earned summa cum laude, also at the University of Munich. "During my doctoral studies," says Dr. Boerner, "a somewhat esoteric question concerning the molecular evolution of mammals as well as a lot of hard work collecting human tissue samples from doctors throughout Europe led me to discover a genetic mechanism lacking in humans."

This discovery led to a post-doctoral fellowship in Harvard's Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, under the tutelage of Nancy Kleckner, Herchel Smith Professor of Molecular Biology. The results of his six years of extensive work on the transmission of chromosomes from parents to children will soon be published in a joint paper with Kleckner.

So what led this accomplished scientist (who, incidentally, is also a student of the trumpet and the piano) to pursue management studies in the CSS Program? "I realized that Boston is one of the few areas in the world where excellence in fundamental research and leadership in the biotech industry seamlessly overlap," he says. "I also understood, especially when I started interviewing for positions in biotech, that I was struggling to formulate relevant questions dealing with the business side of the industry."

Since September 2002, Dr. Boerner has worked to complete the eight-course program--including classes in corporate restructuring, management, and conflict resolution--at a rate of two per semester. He will graduate in June. He entered the program wanting to learn as much as he could about finance but soon recognized the need to understand the human and organizational factors in management. "I've been satisfied with my CSS experience," says Dr. Boerner.