Having spent a long and productive professional life to date managing a large variety of projects in the areas of Communications, Management and Marketing, I hope to bring vast experience to your program to share with my colleagues and the academic community. At 69, a non-traditional student, I am a black woman who is especially interested in questions of environmental as well as social justice. My extensive experience in management, providing information and services to various levels of government, industry, child advocacy groups, educational institutions, religious and community organizations, etc, has been enormously fulfilling. This is why I was always too busy to go to college, until more recently, completing my B.A.in Liberal and Interdisciplinary Studies in Culture and Society at XXXX. Here, I found a measure of excitement and joy—in my studies of culture and history in particular—that I had not previously known. And since I have worked hard for many years and been responsible, I now see it as time for me to indulge my innermost longings and pursue a graduate degree in History. I am most comfortable studying at XXXX and would thus like to do my graduate work in the same location as my undergraduate studies. I hope to contribute to the diversity of your program as a mature student, someone who remembers the many long and difficult years of our struggle as African Americans in America, and has had a long time to reflect on the complexity of the issues involved.
My key professional strengths lie in supervision, training, and materials development. I am very highly self-motivated and a strong communicator. After completing my Master’s Degree, it is my intention to continue my studies at the doctoral level. I hope to become a recognized scholar to some extent, writing about some of the burning social issues of our time, and the entrenched complexity of problems that often seem to defy solution. I have several special intellectual interests, surrounding questions of race and historical issues of justice, especially the evolution of institutional racism. Yet, while I struggle to think globally, I tend to apply what I learn to my local focus as a long term resident of Los Angeles with my keen awareness of the desperate social conditions that have plagued parts of the city for a very long time. I hope to have the opportunity to write a Master’s Thesis and/or someday a doctoral dissertation on the racial history of Los Angeles.
Perhaps my most notable achievement to date was the privilege of serving as the XXXX Administrator of The Children’s Television Workshop based in New York. Developing strategies for the utilization and promotion of CTW’s Television products and programs for a seven-state region, my duties included support services to 36 Public Broadcasting Stations (PBS), airing CTW programs. Conducting presentations for seminars, conferences and conventions with audiences ranging from five to five thousand—educators to welfare mothers, firefighters to prison authorities—I developed training materials and media strategies, utilizing radio, television and print media. I also generated and conducted research surveys and market tests, proposals, and grant applications. As a result of these experiences and my profound passion for social analysis, especially with respect to Los Angeles, I hope to be accepted to your program and I thank you for consideration of my application.