Sometimes it’s fun to dream about what you might to do with your work life. Maybe you’ve fanaticized about joining the circus or owning a bed and breakfast. Maybe you fell into your current career and never got the opportunity to pursue your real passion. Wouldn’t it be great to get to a point in life when you can act on that inner ambition?

Today, many people are making a mid-career switch because they’re simply not passionate about what they do eight hours a day or they want to turn something personal into a career. One such Ashworth College graduate is doing just that.

Deborah Dykes, Jackson, MS, who recently completed the Ashworth College Teacher Assisting program is pursuing her dream of working in education, specifically with deaf and special needs children.

Dykes received her high school diploma in 1974 from the Mississippi School for the Deaf where she graduated with honors and served as her graduating classes Salutatorian.

Although she intended to go on to college, various factors lead her into the workforce instead. Dykes began a career in computers and is now long-time data entry operator for Mississippi Department of Employment Security.

Over the years, Dykes has given back to her community as a volunteer to deaf youth and has decided to turn this interest into a second career when she retires.

“For years I have been volunteering with deaf children through church as well as with students at the Mississippi School for the Deaf,” Dykes commented. “I would like to combine my experience in computers and technology with my passion for working with deaf children.”

“With the encouragement of my sister, who is also my hearing interpreter, and other family members I decided to turn my volunteer work into a second career as a teachers aide and work with deaf and other special needs children.” Read the rest of this entry »

Hello everyone. As we’ve discussed in the past, we think it’s really important to put a “face” on our student community. Yes, we have student avatars on our MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Forum Community pages, etc.  We also have photos from past Graduation Ceremonies on our Flickr Page.  This is a good start, but I’d really like our student community to be much more dynamic in terms of photographs.There’s so much we can do with photographs, i.e. Flickr Groups, Online Year Book, Student Paper, Photoblogs, etc.  What kind of photos are we looking for? We want this community to be as authentic as possible, so we’re simply looking for amateur “point and click” photos from your everday lives—the kind of real world photos that tell everyone a little bit about yourself.

I know that a lot of students are not familiar or particularly comfortable uploading photos to online sharing sites such as Flickr. Don’t get me wrong, I know that a lot of you are, but I want to make the photo submission process as simple as possible for everyone.

For the time being, please submit your photos to the following email address:

ashworthcollegeflickr@gmail.com

Don’t worry about what format you send them in, although thumbnail size is not good.

As we collect photos, we’ll create a unique group on our Flickr page that every student will have full access to. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a virtual gallery of your classmates that you can add to at the click of a button?  I think it would be very inspiring and the possibilities are endless once we actually begin building a substantial archive of photos.

I hope to begin receiving your photos soon.  Once I collect enough, we’ll create a new Flickr group that every student can upload their photos directly to.  Every student who participates will ultimately determine how we can best utilize these photos to create a more visually dynamic student community.  Let’s just focus on getting the ball rolling right now!  Thanks everyone!

James
Ashworth College Student Life

Susan is a student in Ashworth College’s online program in Nutrition, Diet, and Science.

In this candid video, Susan discusses how she’s applying the knowledge gained through her coursework to stay motivated and live healthier.

Christopher Snyder is the lead singer of the up and coming rock band, KrimZen, who proves that even a busy rock star touring around the world can still find enough time to earn his college degree online with Ashworth College.

We’re honored to recognize Christopher as a graduate of our Ashworth College Associate Degree Program in Psychology.

With all the attention given to forensic science in recent years, there has been an explosion of interest in this field. You should definitely feel inspired to be learning about this field at such an exciting time of growth and development! The courts have come to expect more from the forensic science community in respect to our capabilities, while at the same time applying more scrutiny to the analytical procedures and techniques utilized for the examination of evidence. Forensic labs are developing new techniques and utilizing new technology all the time to examine and make comparisons of forensic evidence. Many of these processes have allowed a level of comparison and identification not possible before and they have also created situations where procedures have been challenged in court as being “too new” or not “generally accepted”. The DNA examination procedures employed today went through this process a few years ago. Some newer DNA techniques such as “low copy number DNA” and Y-STR analysis are now being challenged in cases where they have been applied.

One bright light through all the criticism about the shallow attention given to forensic science research is the FBI’s Forensic Science Research and Training Center. This facility has established key research programs that have encouraged the standardization of many scientific procedures used by forensic labs throughout the U.S. Over my career, I have attended several training classes sponsored by this training center. I have also attended international symposiums sponsored by the FBI in which forensic scientists from all over the world were invited to attend and share information on the latest analytical techniques for conducting forensic examinations. The FBI is very involved in the establishment and maintenance of a variety of reference collections or databases in an effort to provide information which can help define the significance of the comparison of class materials.

I’ll close this blog by encouraging you to pursue your interests in this amazing field. Ashworth College’s forensic science covers a broad spectrum of the science of forensics and by now you should know that there is much more that can be learned. If you are taking this course because you were just curious to know more about forensics, then no doubt, you should have a much better understanding of the different aspects of forensic science and how the “real thing” is different from what is portrayed in the popular television programs. Read the rest of this entry »