On the morning of Dec. 9, many OHS students and staff were at school going about their normal routines and day, but there was one staff member who was doing something very special — Dana Skrabacz, an OHS administrator, was graduating from Maryville University with her Doctorate of Education.

“When I took this position, I only had a master’s in Secondary Education Administration, so I knew that I needed to continue to pursue leadership education,” Skrabacz said. “So I had to decide, did I want a specialist or a doctorate?” 

This specific program is two and a half years long, with only one month off in the summer. Skrabacz would meet with her class every Tuesday night for the full two years.

“The coursework goes in line with your capstone project, which is kind of like a dissertation …” Skrabacz said. “So in other programs, you do your coursework like completely separately from writing your big project dissertation, but at Maryville, it’s worked into the coursework.”

Skrabacz spent a lot of time working on her capstone project, even sharing how she would wake up early on the weekend before the rest of her family to work on it.

“A lot of my project was about Algebra I interventions, and so a lot of that work was what we were doing here,” Skrabacz said. “It was ingrained into the work that I was doing throughout the day, and meeting with people about interventions and planning those. So some of the work was built into what I was supposed to be doing with my job anyways.”

This extra work from Skrabacz’s selected program came with challenges, from limited family and free time to the amounts of extra school work on top of her demanding job.

“It was kind of a daunting task at first, but I feel like Maryville is so good. They want you to choose a project that you’re going to do when you’re building. So Algebra I interventions was something that we were already going to do …” Skrabacz said. “That made it feel less overwhelming because it was something that needed to happen here anyways. The time commitment is challenging, but I also loved our classes. I loved the cohort that I was with.”

“I think my biggest takeaway, everybody knows that they have strengths and weaknesses, right? And when I went into this program, I thought in order to be a good leader, I had to identify all of my weaknesses and fix them all …” Skrabacz said. “You’re going to have weaknesses, whether you like it or not. And this program helped me see that I can still be really good at this with weaknesses.” 

Skrabacz also learned how to bring a better balance with the administration team and build her own strengths.

“The team that you are surrounded with, that you collaborate with, every team needs a balance …” Skrbacz said. “And that through our reflection together, we are able to serve our community to the fullest ability because we fill in the gaps for each other.”

While Skrabacz’s  journey was long, today she is a doctor of education.

“I started this thinking that getting my doctorate was just like another hoop that I had to jump through,” Skrabacz said. “But how much I’ve grown in the reflection and learned, all the learning that happened over the last two and a half years, I can’t imagine now moving forward in an educational leadership career without this experience.”