Ed.D. in Educational Administration, 2006
School of Education
August 1, 2012
“Director of Community Education is the perfect blend of my desire to help kids and my talent for organizing.”
Dr. Patricia Robbins Smith began her journey as an educational leader in a very roundabout way, compared to most. “While the typical path for many is to start as a teacher and end up in the role of administrator, there are not many whom I know who can say they began in the business world, had never considered working in education, and then, 18 years later, couldn’t imagine working in any other field.”
Dr. Smith received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from UCLA in 1995, and did several internships throughout college in various PR and marketing jobs. Two of her four internships during her senior year involved organizing special events for Borders Books in Westwood and then for Starbucks through their regional office here in California.
I enjoyed the fast pace of the job and the “rush” of all of the activity that came along with putting together and running major events.
Upon graduation, Dr. Smith obtained full-time employment in the marketing department at an aerospace company where her main job was organizing tradeshows and special events. While she enjoyed the work for the first couple of years, after some time she started to feel that she was missing the human component in her work.
I began to feel more and more that I wanted to make an impact, to make a difference in the work I was doing, so I began a part-time job on the side working on weekends at UC Irvine in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) childcare study. I truly believed that this would be enough to get that “human component” part I felt was lacking in my work as an event planner, but after six months or so of working on this study, I felt pretty sure that I needed to change my career path fairly drastically. Consequently, I decided to leave my marketing job and to go back to school to be trained to be able to work with children full-time.
Dr. Smith quit her full-time job and returned to school to get trained in a field where she could impact the lives of others. She entered into the Marriage, Family Therapy Counseling program at California State University, Fullerton, and continued to also work part-time on the NICHD study at UC Irvine. Her work on the study involved collecting data on the students in the study, both in the on-site lab as well as “in the field” (“which in this case was at the students’ schools, in their classrooms”). She also worked part-time at the end of her master’s program as a marriage and family therapist (MFT) intern, counseling students both in an elementary school as well as at a mental health clinic.
After graduating with her master’s degree in 1999, Dr. Smith decided that the best way to couple in her work life her skills and talents with her passion and interests would be to find a career where she could be involved in something that was “important” and make a difference in the lives of others (which was how she felt about the work she was doing on the NICHD study – impacting the lives of kids). Over the next few years, Dr. Smith took a hard look at her career life and what she wanted out of it and began to explore where she could find a job that intertwined both her need to help others and her love of organizing and managing things.
After some time, I decided that working in the educational administration realm might be a good marriage of these two things–a blending of making lives better for individuals while needing to also organize and handle many details and essentially “make things run smoothly” (with all that that entails). So I went off to find a school that would give me a chance to explore whether the educational field and the role of an administrator would really be the best fit with my talents and interests.
It wasn’t long before a school took a chance on Dr. Smith and hired her, and she began working at Loyola Marymount University in 2000 as a Disability Support Services Coordinator. For two years she was able to help students while also being able to have a significant hand in streamlining the daily operations of the office so that things ran more smoothly.
Being a one-man office essentially gave me a lot of latitude to make the changes that I felt were needed to run a “tighter ship.”
After two years, Dr. Smith obtained a job closer to her home and even nearer and dearer to her passion for helping kids: Foster & Kinship Care Director at Cerritos College. In this role, she organized all of the training classes for prospective and current Los Angeles County foster parents and was able to impact the lives of foster parents by helping to organize training classes on helping the kids in their care whatever the specific needs of that child.
During this time Dr. Smith finally knew that this is where she should be–that she had found her niche and that she would spend the rest of her career life as an educational administrator. That insight led her to decide that in order to be the best that she could be, obtaining her doctoral degree in educational leadership was what she should work toward…and thus began her educational career at UC Irvine.
I chose UC Irvine because of the incredibly positive experience I had working there in the past. I felt that there wasn’t a better place to get my formal education in how to be the best administrator that I could be.
Dr. Smith worked full-time while completing her Ed.D. in Educational Administration degree at UC Irvine. Right after graduation in 2007, she was offered a promotion at Cerritos College as the Director of Community Education, a position she continues to hold. In this role, she organizes all of the not-for-credit classes the college offers–over 600 classes and workshops each year. The classes are available to anyone in the community, of any age, and topics range from career development courses to motorcycle training to dance to massage therapy training….and everything in between. Additionally, each summer the program expands to run a summer youth program that includes over 200 classes for more than 1,000 young people ages 5-17.
I am responsible for selecting the classes we will run, hiring the staff and instructors, doing all the marketing and advertising to the community about the program, and even being the pseudo “principal” that the kids have to come to when they are not behaving. The two months that the summer program runs are the most fun, exciting, and fulfilling time, while also the most crazy-making, hair-pulling-out time of my year! Being able to offer quality classes where students get to learn academically while also exploring their interests is an amazing thing to be able to run and make happen every summer.
Dr. Smith’s path to her current career position has definitely been a winding road, with some twists and turns, but ultimately has led her to be working in exactly the type of career she wanted–a career where she could help kids while also being able to do all the things important for running and organizing a business. She plans to continue in her current position, and while she says she does not know what the future may hold, she is sure that she will continue to be in educational administration for the rest of her career life.
I am happy doing the work I do, and since we are at work over half of the hours each day we are awake, why would anyone do something they don’t enjoy? Now that would be a waste of your life!