This year’s Master’s Commencement Ceremony marked a high point for many students. For online students, it was even more exhilarating, as it was the first time as USC Rossier students that many of them had ever set foot on the USC campus.
One such student was Carolyn Delfino De Oliveira MAT '15. She began her odyssey to the degree as an English teacher in South Korea. A Los Angeles native, she moved to the Bay Area upon her return from South Korea, looking for a change of scene and career. As it turned out, her future track would run through an education program with roots in her hometown.
"I was browsing the web and saw an ad for the USC Rossier MAT Online,” said De Oliveira, “so I clicked just for the heck of it." That click led to a follow-up call from an admissions counselor. After a little research and talking to the counselor "a bunch of times," De Oliveira decided to take the plunge and applied for the program, but not without hesitation.
"The concern I had was the perception that other people might have about an online program—that people wouldn't believe it was as rigorous as on-campus programs," she said.
She couldn’t have been more surprised. "It's the same program, the same content. It's just that instead of being in a classroom, you’re one computer instead," she said. The flexibility of online education also won her over. "I travel a lot, so being able to be online for classes and not having to miss class is huge."
An integral part of the online MAT is the field placement. “My student teaching experiences were wonderful. I couldn't have had better placements,” said De Oliveira. “In fact, in the middle school I did my teaching at, there is a teacher who only accepts USC students as teachers. I think that is a testament to the quality of the program—that people actively seek out USC students as student teachers."
The prestige of the program opened many doors, including a crucial one: just prior to Commencement, De Oliveira’s placement school made a job offer. "I started my teacher training in January and was scheduled to go until March," said De Oliveira. "Before my time came to an end, they offered me a position!" She will be teaching history at Fremont High School in Oakland, Calif., where the demographics are mostly African-American and Latino with a small Yemeni population.
Commencement was a heady experience.
“Meeting classmates and faculty was exciting,” she says. “I felt that people looked a little different in person than they had looked on Adobe Connect.” The proceedings had great significance for her, summoning memories of the distance she had traveled from her start as a teacher and evoking potential futures yet to come.
“For me,” says De Oliveira, “the most memorable part of the day was sitting there with my classmates, realizing that it's all over and we made it! That feeling of accomplishment and great things to come was incredibly exciting and terrifying all at once.”
