Miami Feels Like a Community: Video Transcript

Sara Eilert (MA Philosophy, Miami, 2006) [Senior Acquisitions Editor in the areas of criminal justice, legal studies, and teacher education at Pearson Education]: I think that Philosophy really prepared me for just about any job other than heart surgery or, you know, accounting or something with a real skillset like that, in that everyone is looking for people who can write clearly, who can communicate their ideas, who are comfortable sitting at a seminar table or a conference table and defending ideas, thinking of new ideas. I feel like while I didn't get a degree in business or economics or nursing, I was prepared to do a lot of different things that I never, ever expected. I'm really glad that I got a degree in Philosophy.

Both when I was at Miami and then when I started my job search afterwards, I was very lucky to be mentored by wonderful faculty members, but also my peers in the program and former graduates as well were fantastic when I was thinking about other graduate programs and then when I was pursuing jobs outside of philosophy. They all gave me great advice, they were very supportive, and just generally helped me decide what was going to be important to me as I took the next step.

When I graduated, I thought about pursuing a graduate degree in Philosophy, a PhD, and had considered programs, but I decided to take some time off. I knew that I wanted to stay in higher ed, and I knew that I liked working with professors, I knew that I liked working with students, so higher ed publishing seemed like a natural fit. I immediately started looking for jobs. I knew other humanities people who had gotten jobs in publishing as well, so I just started putting my resume out there, networked with other alums who worked in publishing, and it worked out well for me. I got a job right away.

The liberal arts really prepare you to work with a variety of people. You get exposed to a lot of different ideas. If you're only in the biology lab all day long, or if you're only doing pre-med all day long, you sort of miss out on conversations that are happening in your life and just around you. I love the liberal arts because I found a lot of things that I don't think that I would have found if I had only been focusing on a particular major and if I hadn’t opened myself up to taking new classes or meeting new people.

What I love most about Miami, what I remember most fondly, and it was fun driving here this afternoon and seeing the campus again and the street names, is just the small community here. It's a big school obviously, I think a lot of people don't recognize how big it is, but it feels like a community. And it feels like a place where people, your instructors, your professors, and the other students really care about what happens to you. You're a name and not just a number. I was really, really happy to find that here at Miami. And it was fun to come back and feel that as well.

[March 2014]