Woo Hoo!! It is now Dr. David Chambers, Ed.D.

It's done! What seemed like a huge mountain of time and effort ahead of me, now seems like a flash of time passing.  I'll miss my cohort and skilled professors I looked forward to seeing each week.  I am grateful to Loyola Marymount University and the innovative and caring faculty who looked after us as a labor of love during the accomplishment, joys and stresses we journeyed through for our years together.  I am also grateful for the gift of a traditional doctorate program while I worked full time in the field of education.  I know that online or hybrid programs allow more professionals to pursue a Ph.D. or Ed.D. while working full-time, but there really is no substitute for sitting in a class with a professor and your cohort each week (twice each week in the summer).  I'm here to tell you that it you can do both.  At 63 years old, I served full-time as Principal of a large Catholic high school in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles with close to 100 faculty and 1300 students while driving an hour or more once or twice each week to attend classes.  I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

I really enjoyed attending classes with my cohort.  That seems a little simplistic, but so many current programs these days can't offer that.  It feels very good to have been a part of a traditional doctoral program that gets us all in a classroom each week for every class.  I care as much about how my cohort views me as I do my professors. That leads to a strong bonding and a collegial environment that is truly a joy.  I am over twenty years older than the next oldest member of my cohort and thirty years older than most of them.  They embraced me and treated me as a complete equal.  It was incredibly refreshing and it just felt great.